Author's Note: See previous chapter for update changes. Again I'm no professional so all grammatical mistakes and error are mine and mine alone.

Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars. Never have, never will. I simply play in their world.

Reviews: Having a good time?

"Sometimes there is no darker

place than our own thoughts: the

moonless midnight of the mind."

-Nortisia

Rey

"You should never have run. The Emperor gave you life and this is how you repay that generosity."

Farinaceous words spoken with a serpents hiss through a lipless mouth and I see Ochi slash the dagger across my father's face.

A woman screams from the shadows.

"Get away from him! Stop, please!"

A harsh, guttural laugh from my father even as blood seeps from the wound.

"Don't beg mercy from him. He doesn't have any."

"True." Ochi pins my father with bored, distasteful look and digs the point of the blade into his bound arm. Slowly he carves a single line from shoulder to elbow as my father writhes in his bonds, biting through his lip so that he won't scream.

When the dagger pulls away, I see bone gleaming through the cut and blood flows like a river down his arm.

"Your reticence will ensure you a prolonged death. Tell me where the girl is and I will make it a swift one."

My father turns his head and spits blood out of his mouth.

"What girl?"

A sneering defiance that enrages the assassin. He backhands my father and blood dribbles down his torn lip.

"No! Leave him alone!"

Ochi looks up from my father to stare at my mother and I see her death in his cold eyes.

"Answer my question and I will spare him."

He's lying and I scream at my mother not to listen but I am nothing more than a phantom and can only watch helplessly as Ochi stalks past my father to where my mother is chained.

He tips the dagger beneath her chin and I see blood well up from where he pierced the skin.

"Ochi! She has nothing to do with this! It's me you're after!"

My father twists in his restraints and I wonder why he just doesn't use the Force to manipulate the ropes and free himself. He had enough power to wipe my memories so why is he so helpless now?

The alien assassin ignores my father in lieu of my mother.

"Foolish human tell me what I want to know. Now!"

The dagger digs into her flesh, blood staining the collar and she gasps but there are no tears in her eyes.

"Dead! She's dead!"

She screams her answer at Ochi and he recoils, pulling the blade from her neck.

There is a touch of madness in her eyes.

"You lie! You must be lying. The Emperor sensed her presence and he is never wrong!" He cuts the dagger across one cheekbone and I stare as my mother laughs at him, madness now reflected in her voice.

"Then where is she!" She struggles against her bonds and I see her blood drench the chains crimson. "Gone I tell you! Dead and buried in some nameless grave!"

"You lie!"

He turns back to my father and there is strange smile on his face that makes me shiver.

"Tell me where the girl is!" The dagger flashes in the low light and I scream when he pierces his collar bone, hear the snap of bone, "Where is your daughter Drystan!"

My father doesn't scream when the bone shoves through his skin. My mother is still laughing and it is the laughter of one who knows she is already dead.

My father blinks golden eyes veiled in shadows at Ochi, "I killed her. I buried her body in the wastes of Pasaana rather than let that monster you serve have her."

My father spits on Ochi and the infuriated creature yanks the dagger free and slashes it across his throat.

The scent of iron in the air, a spray of red rain.

The light goes out of father's eyes and I scream for him.

"Father! No, father!"

"MURDERER!"

Hysterical words from my mother and I blink, shocked when she shoves Ochi away from him. The dagger falls from his grip, scarlet hand prints on his chest and only then do I realize what she did to free herself.

Her wrists are nothing but ruined flesh with blood flowing like water, a pool already at her feet.

"Mother...no mother!"

I'm reaching for her but my hands pass through and I scream and cry when she drops to her knees at my father's dead body and looks up at Ochi, a macabre smile twisting her white lips.

"You've lost. What will you tell your precious master now that you have your answer?"

She's laughing again and I clamp my hands over my ears to hear the madness of her grief.

"Bitch! Worthless human, what have you done!"

My mother stops laughing and she stares at Ochi with a hatred that makes me flinch to see it.

"What was necessary and may I never be forgiven."

She grabs the dagger, her hands slick with blood and slits her own throat.

"No! No! Mother stop, don't leave me!"

Ochi is screaming but it's too late, her dead eyes stare up at me as she hits the floor.

It's more than I can take.

"No! No! Make it stop! Please make it stop!"

"But this is what you wanted isn't it? To finally learn the truth."

The memory fades and I'm left standing in darkness with something else in its place.

A child that resembles me when I was young.

But it's not me. Her eyes are wrong, yellow ringed in black that look up at me with feral cunning. Her cruel smile reveals needle-sharp teeth.

I take a step back, the screams of my mother echoing in my head.

"Who...what are you?"

A shrug of tiny shoulders.

"I am you."

I refuse to believe what I'm hearing.

"No...no, that's not true. It can't be true."

It has to be an illusion.

She laughs and I cringe to hear the malice coming from her. She looks like me but she is not me.

"It is. I have always been with you Rey. Don't you remember calling out to me?

"You're lying," I'm trying to sound brave but I feel as though I'm suffocating, "I would never call on something as evil as you!"

A sly smile and yellow tinted eyes darken to pure black and I don't want to be here anymore.

"Oh but you did. Many times, when you were angry and afraid. How do you think you defeated Kylo Ren that night so long ago?"

I swallow hard and take another step back and though she doesn't move I can't seem to get away from her.

"No...I did that on my own..."

But I hesitate and her smile grows only more malicious.

"You?" she laughs and it makes my bones ache to hear it, "Don't be stupid. If not for me you would never have defeated him. Even then the best you could do was wound him."

Scorn dripping from her words and I feel my temper get the better of me and I lash out with it.

"Liar! I am a Jedi, the Force is my ally..."

I stop when she continues to stare up at me, her smile deepening with every angry word I speak.

"Yes the Force is your ally and a powerful ally I am when used correctly."

She lifts her hand to me.

"Take it Rey. Take my hand and we will be one and you will never fear the darkness."

She flickers as if made of nothing but shadows and ash. The child is gone only to be reformed.

I see myself as if looking at a mirror image.

A distorted one.

Blood red-lips and eyes tinged gold, the power I feel from her is a crushing weight.

"Take my hand Rey."

I can't move and she steps closer, the cloak she wears falling like wings around her and I gasp when icy fingers brush my cheek.

"You can be so much more than just another Jedi fated to die. You will be Empress," whispered words in my ear, a sharp ringing in my head, "with an Emperor standing at your side."

"I will never stand with Palpatine!"

Laughter like razors over my skin.

"Wrong Emperor."

Her words meant to terrify but instead I feel a blaze of heat in my soul, chasing the chill of her touch off my frost-bitten skin.

Ben.

In this smothering darkness he is my light and I cling to his name, a talisman to ward off this evil vision.

I thrust my hand out, shoving this dark apparition from me. I know what she is now.

She is the Force. The dark side that both Master Skywalker and General Organa warned me about.

The side that Ben embraced when he became Kylo Ren.

"I will never join you! I don't need you!"

Cold, calculating eyes of hammered gold stare at me with indifference.

"You will turn to me before the end. I alone can save you."

"I'm not alone." I clench my fist and close my eyes. I have to calm my raging thoughts. Negative emotions feed the dark side. I needed calm not anger to deal with her.

"Ben is with me."

Cruel, mocking laughter and I feel the scrape of a pointed nail beneath my chin.

"Is he? Tell me will you keep your faith in him after you learn the secrets he still conceals?"

I snap my eyes open to see scarlet lips smiling at me.

"What secrets?"

The question is out before I can take it back and she laughs and drops her hand and shakes her head at me.

"Oh no, that would be cheating." She looks at me with cold amusement, "You think you saved your friends?"

A chill across my soul at her cryptic response.

"My friends will find the emperors wayfinder and get to Exegol where I will be waiting for them. They have the coordinates."

"But not the dagger," conciliatory words that sends a wave of nervous butterflies winging through my blood, "So perhaps...not."

I step forward and grab her wrists, forgetting about needing to be calm around her.

"Stop playing games with me and tell me what you know! What about the dagger? Threepio already knows the inscription, they have everything they need!"

She laughs and I don't understand until I realize I'm not holding her anymore. She has once more turned to shadows and disappeared.

"Don't you dare run away from me! Answer me!"

"Who said I was running?"

I go motionless when a red saber cuts across my vision, crackling heat next to my cheek as the saber comes perilously close to my skin.

She's behind me.

"Let me give you a hint, you naïve girl. Kylo Ren told you only what you wanted to hear to keep you by his side. He's been lying to you from the start."

"That's not true. You're the one trying to deceive me."

"Am I?"

The saber disappears and I turn but she is gone and I stand in darkness.

"The dagger is the key to the wayfinder."

Minacious laughter echoing but she is no longer with me and I turn in circles, unable to see, only hear.

"Who will you choose to believe? Me or Kylo Ren?"

"That isn't a choice! I know who I trust!"

"Then ask him for the real translation on the dagger. Ask him Rey and see where your trust has led you."

I scream as the ground beneath my feet gives way...

"Rey!"

Gentle hands holding me and I look up into worried eyes of Ben Solo.

My heart twists with uncertainty.

Is this really Ben or is the words my shadow self spoke the truth and he's really been Kylo Ren this entire team, only tricking me into believing that he was my Ben.

"I know the truth. About my parents."

Shards of glass in my throat and I'm shaking at what I had to witness.

"We can talk about that later. You need rest now Rey. You've pushed yourself far enough."

"No!" I grip his arm and get back on my feet, the dagger still clutched in my hand, "I don't need rest."

"Rey..."

"No!" I thrust off his helping hand and stagger away from him. "Stop telling me what to do."

"What is wrong? Why are you acting like this?"

There is a terrifying pressure in my head and I press my hand to my temple, the cool metal of the blade touching my skin.

No longer do I hear the screams of my dead parents in it. Those memories have been purged but I still can't let go of it.

Not yet.

I look up at Ben and I feel a chill cross my soul.

His eyes are nothing but darkness, a cold calculating look as he gazes at the dagger.

"Give that me," he thrusts out his hand, "you're not acting right."

"No." I clutch it my chest and shake my head. "It's mine. I found it."

"Rey are you listening to yourself? This isn't you. Please, let me help you. Give me the dagger."

"Why so you can hide the truth from me?"

The words tumble free and I watch his eyes widen, his hand jerk away from me.

"What?"

I take a deep breath. It was time to sort the truth from the lies.