A/N: Sorry it's late folks, but I hope you all enjoy it! As always, thanks to FenrisInside and Leona2016 and to all you wonderful people out there who continue to read/review/follow/favorite. Take care of yourselves until next time:)

"We've got it!"

"Got what?" Ben groaned, rolling over and squinting in the blue glow of Mela's image where it flickered above the holoprojector at his bedside. "What are you talking about, Mela?"

"And it had better be good," Rey grumbled against his shoulder; eyes still shut, but awake and not pleased about it.

"Taryn managed to salvage most of the files from Coruscant last night. His program just broke through the decryption! You'd better get down here."

As quickly as it had come, the hologram fizzled out, and Rey pushed herself up beside him with less than her usual grace. A moment later Ben heard her breath leave her lungs in a sharp gasp and he jerked upright.

"Rey- "

"I'm fine," she wheezed, before he could ask. "It was just a kick."

Once she'd caught her breath, she scooted to the edge of the bed and stood, pulling a heavy black robe over her tunic and knotting the belt around her stomach. Ben yawned and got up as well, stretching out his hand for his saber. It came as he called it, snapping against his palm.

"We'd better get moving," he said. "It sounds like they're on to something."

"I suppose it would be too much to ask for them to wait until morning for this," Rey said, glancing longingly toward the rumpled bed. "I'd only just managed to fall asleep."

"Nightmares again?" asked Ben.

"For once, no," Rey said, with a wry chuckle as she gestured to her swollen stomach. "It's the baby."

"Are you still having pains?"

"They come and go. Nothing to make me think it will be today."

"But Patch thinks it's going to come soon?"

"Patch has been saying this baby's going to come soon for the last two months," Rey said with a long sigh. "I don't know what her definition of 'soon' is, but it's definitely not mine."

Ben smiled and gave her hand a small squeeze. She returned the pressure of his fingers, holding fast to him as if he could give her strength. He tried not to think about what "soon" meant, or about Sidious, though his old master still stalked his nightmares. His waking visions, too, were haunted by the tyrant. Ben had seen the dark robes from the corner of his eye more times than he could count, and the voice still came to him in his moments of weakness.

Ben clipped his lightsaber to his belt, Rey's hand still in his. Together, they left the room to pass quietly through the silent corridors, walking at a fair pace towards the Finalizer's emergency bridge. Luke had commandeered it as soon as they'd returned from Coruscant, setting it up as a base of operations for the hunt for the wayfinders. They hadn't gone far when Ben heard Rey's breathing take on a ragged edge as she hurried along beside him, and he slowed his pace by a margin. He knew that she was struggling, though she refused to show how tired she was and would ignore him if he offered help.

The door to the bridge opened with a gasp of air and they stepped beyond the threshold as one. Mela met them with wild excitement in her face. She beckoned them to join her where Taryn sat at a screen; his fingers flying over a keypad while Luke stood looking over his shoulder. For the first time in the week since he'd first seen the files, Ben found intelligible words scrolling across the screen.

"What have you found?" he asked, stepping forward to lean over Taryn's other shoulder to peer at the text.

"Kef Bir," Luke said, pointing to a slowly rotating hologram. "It's a moon of Endor, where the second Death Star crashed during the last battle of the war. We found records of the wayfinders. One was given to my father and hidden somewhere on Mustafar, but Sidious kept the other and took it with him wherever he went. Its last reported whereabouts were on the second Death Star."

"So, it's on Kef Bir," Ben surmised. "In the ruins of the station."

"If it wasn't destroyed in the crash," Mela put in, wryly.

"Is there a record of a specific location for the one Vader took to Mustafar?" Rey asked. "We can't search the whole planet."

"We haven't found any so far," Taryn said.

"But that doesn't mean we don't know where it is," Luke added hastily. "My father had a fortress on Mustafar that was his personal refuge during the war. I'd wager almost anything that the second wayfinder is hidden there."

"And what if it's not?" Rey asked. "What if we can't find either?"

Ben knew the path of her thoughts almost as soon as they passed through her mind. If the wayfinder on Mustafar could not be found and the other was beyond repair, they were out of options. There would be no more time to search before the baby was born.

"We'll decide what to do then, if it comes to that," said Mela, glancing at Rey with a worried crease between her brows.

"Well," said Luke, "whether they're there or not, we need to go look. If we can, we should split up to save ourselves time and energy, so we have to decide who's going where."

"I'll go to Mustafar," Rey said, before Ben could speak.

"Rey, there are rumors of a cult on Mustafar," he protested. "From the few reports that have come back to me, they worship Vader. They could easily turn violent."

"Which is why I'm not going alone," Rey said. "I'll take Mela and a platoon of soldiers with me."

"I'd rather I went in your place."

Ben. Her voice in his mind startled him, and he looked up to meet her eyes. Mustafar is not dangerous because of a cult. Not for you.

He paused, reading the concern for him in her mind. She wasn't worried that he would be killed. She was worried that the darkness of the planet would swallow him, as it had swallowed Anakin Skywalker. She was afraid that she would lose him, not to death, but to the dark side once and for all.

Ben sighed, rubbing his hand through his hair. She was right, as much as he didn't want to admit it.

"I hate sending you into this," he muttered. "Especially with the baby. Will you at least take Patch with you?"

She nodded, pulling her robes a little closer around her shoulders. For a moment, Ben thought he saw fear flicker across her face, but it was gone before he was sure. The same dogged expression that he'd seen dozens of times had settled over her features, but it didn't distract him from how drawn and pale she was, or from the dark circles that smudged the skin beneath her eyes.

"I'll take her," she agreed aloud. "Better not to risk it."

"If that's decided, then we shouldn't waste any more time," Luke said. "We need to go now."

"Taryn should stay," Mela said. "He can keep looking through the files and let us know if there's any more details about where the wayfinders are hidden."

"I don't know if I'll find anything else, Mela," said Taryn. "Most of what's left is pretty damaged."

"Then stay and help Cy and the others," Ben said. "You'll be needed if there's another battle. Mitaka has been on the hunt for some of the last few holdouts over the past week. The most recent report is that he's located a few ships in the Bestine system, including another destroyer. I imagine he'll be going after them as soon as he gathers the fleet."

Taryn dipped his chin in acknowledgement before he turned back to the screen, his fingers again flying over the keys as he continued to scroll through the files. At his side, Mela pulled her comm from her pocket and clicked a button a few times to rouse a response. A moment later, she was giving rapid instructions to the voice that crackled over the speaker. She drew Rey a few steps away, both of them speaking in low voices as they discussed how best to go about searching Vader's fortress. Ben watched Rey carefully as she murmured agreements and suggestions, trying to judge her strength and weighing it against her task. He flinched, startled from his thoughts, when Luke's hand closed around his shoulder.

"You're sure about this?" Luke asked, his eyes on Rey's back. "It could be dangerous."

"She wouldn't listen, even if I tried to convince her to stay," said Ben. "If she thinks she can do it, I trust her. Mela will watch her back, and if any of us have a hope of accomplishing this, it's those two."

"Then we're going to Kef Bir?"

"I am, at any rate. I leave the decision up to you. Stay, or go, it's your choice. I don't pretend to have any influence over you."

"And you would be very wrong," Luke said with a wry smile. "But I'll go with you. I've been on the Death Star before and I'm at least vaguely familiar with its layout from my days in the Rebellion. The partial set of schematics we found on Coruscant will only get you so far. You're going to need me."

Ben didn't reply, unwilling to admit that Luke's guidance would make the hunt easier. But when he turned to look at Rey again, his resolve began to slip. Their child could arrive any day now, and Sidious wouldn't wait long to set his plot in motion. Time was precious now in a way it had not been before. He couldn't afford to be obstinate.

Slowly, Ben nodded his consent. Luke, seeming to sense where his thoughts had been, returned the gesture.

"I'll go prep the ship," he said. "Meet me in the hangar in an hour and we'll be ready to fly."

Without another word, Luke slipped away to stride quickly from the room. Mela followed behind him, giving a series of rapid orders into her comm, her conversation with Rey apparently finished. Taryn pushed himself back from his screen and stood, stretching for a moment, before he too made for the door. Ben saw him lay a hand on Rey's head as he passed her, something that almost passed for a smile on his worn features.

"Be safe, little sister. Take care of that baby of yours."

"Take care, yourself," Rey said with an equally feeble smile as she ducked out from under his hand and gave him a shove. "Don't get into too much trouble while we're gone."

Any other time, it might have been a gentle ribbing, but Ben heard the strain in both the voices and watched Rey's face go a shade paler even as Taryn disappeared into the corridor. She stood for a moment, watching the door, before her eyes squeezed shut and her brow furrowed. He heard he let out her breath in a long exhale through pursed lips and watched as she reached for a desk as though to steady herself, her shoulders hunched and her body tense.

"Rey?" he asked, careful to keep his voice low. "Are you alright?"

She didn't reply for a long moment, but when she straightened, the pinched expression on her face was gone and she nodded, beginning to leave. Ben caught her before she could take more than a few steps and turned her to face him.

"If you're not alright, we can work something out. Luke can go to Mustafar instead. You can stay-"

"Ben, don't make this any harder than it already is," she interrupted, wrapping her arms around his waist and resting her head on his chest.

Ben drew her closer, until she was nestled under his chin, as near as the expanse of her stomach would allow her. He closed his eyes, breathing in her scent, wishing with everything in him that things could be different. That he could take her somewhere far away where they could live in peace without the threat of Sidious or the First Order.

"We can't, Ben," Rey said softly, reading his thoughts. "He'd hunt us down just the same."

"I know. I just- "

"You just want me to be safe, in the same way that I want you to be safe," she said, with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "It's what you and I do. Force only knows what we'd do if we didn't have to worry about one another all the time."

"Well," Ben said with his own quiet laugh, "I, for one, would get a full night of sleep."

Rey's smile grew a little wider and she stretched up to kiss him.

"This is our last chance, Ben. I'm not going to waste it. When all of this is over, and it's just us…"

Her words trailed off into silence and Ben saw her thoughts: her desperate longing for a quiet life on a distant planet with their child safe and happy, thriving in the light, and her fear that it would never happen. That the power that had been passed down to her, and which she had in turn given, would corrupt and twist the innocent life of their child until it was a monster consumed by the dark side. It was the same fear he carried in the depths of his heart.

"When it's all over, I'll take both of you there," he said. "We'll leave all of this behind us, alright?"

Rey nodded, brushing aside her tears. He pressed a kiss against her forehead, wrapping her in one last tight embrace.

"Whatever I have to do," he whispered into her hair, his words little more than an exhale. "Whatever I have to do."

...

The wind roared in Ben's ears as he clung to the side of the tower. It howled around him, twisting through the wreckage of the second Death Star to tug at his tunic and threaten to send him spinning out into empty air. He reached for another handhold, pulling himself higher. He felt the shift in the second before the strip of metal broke free and his heart froze in his chest. It fell away with a crash to disappear into the rushing waves far beneath him, leaving him hanging by one hand, desperately searching for a foothold to take some of his weight. His boots finally found purchase against the water-slick surface and he rested there for several seconds, pressed tight to the cold steel as he caught his breath and tried to slow the racing of his heart.

Taking a long, slow breath, he took a better grip and pulled himself higher, climbing hand over hand up the sheer side of the structure. He paused, glancing over his shoulder to where Kef Bir's sea washed in and out hundreds of meters below before struggling onward up the tower.

He clung there, eyes closed, gathering his strength. The Force flowed around him like water, dark and cold and wild. He could sense the pull of the wayfinder against him as if it were a living thing. He'd been able to sense it from the moment he'd first set foot among the rusting remains of Darth Sidious' greatest defeat.

It was here.

He just had to find it.

His muscles tensed and, with a great shove, he pushed himself away from the tower, twisting hard on the Force in the moment his feet left the ledge. The jump carried him far out into the emptiness; much further than if his muscles alone had propelled him. His hands closed around a jutting section of metal and he almost cried out as his fingers caught on a sharp edge and it sliced deep into his skin. But then his chest struck the armored plating, driving the breath from his lungs and cutting off any noise of pain. Blood began to trickle over his hands and down his wrists; the scent of it mingling with the smell of salt water.

Gasping for air and clenching his jaw against the agony he dragged himself upward until he was safely away from the edge. The sound of water cascading down the walls and the crash of the distant waves was loud in the silence around him, and he found his mind turning to Rey. She'd dreamed of waves, long ago. He'd seen it among her memories on that first day. Sometimes she still dreamed of them.

Straightening, he tore away a strip of cloth from his cloak to bind his hand. He would heal it when he returned to the Finalizer; when he had the time and the energy to concentrate. As he tightened the makeshift bandage with his teeth, he found a distant part of himself wondering if Luke had found the throne room. They'd agreed to split up soon after landing, with Ben climbing the southern side of the tower while Luke tried to find a way in from the north. But the comm on his belt had been silent since they'd separated, and Ben had neither seen, nor felt his uncle's presence since.

He pushed aside the thoughts, bringing his mind back to the task at hand, and leapt upward to catch another piece of wreckage and pull himself up. Hand over hand, he climbed higher, his feet finding one ledge and then another to brace him on the vertical face. Every moment was a new torture as his torn hands took his weight and held him. But his fingers at last closed around a ledge deeper than he'd expected and he found, to his surprise, that he had come to a place where a corridor had once opened. He dragged himself through the half-closed doors, staggering upright on shaking legs.

The floor slanted under his feet; angled so that a wrong step could send him sliding back into the abyss he'd left behind. Old cables and pneumatic tubes brushed the top of his head and the remains of stormtroopers littered the floor. Rain was coming in through the shattered ceiling to run down the slope, flowing in small streams around his boots.

He stood there, trying to reorient himself. The wayfinder was close. The pull of it was stronger against him, and his own darkness rose to meet it. He tried to fight it, but the light Rey held was far away in this place and he felt the black waves closing over his head. Drowning him.

Ben fought to push it back; to claw his way back to the surface. But it dragged him down again, deeper into darkness. Anger overwhelmed him: anger at the galaxy for the pain he had suffered and anger at himself for the suffering he'd brought to those he cared about. All because of the man that had haunted his family for generations. All because of Sidious.

He was just starting forward again, his fury growing with every step, when movement caught in the corner of his eye. Ben whirled, his saber drawn and blazing in his hands, to find nothing but the same dismal gray plating of the corridor and more corpses of long-dead stormtroopers. But there was something in the feel of the air that had changed. Something that caused a shift in the Force.

"Luke?" he shouted, backing up until his spine pressed against a wall. "Is that you?"

There was no response except for the wail of the wind as it swept through the corridor. Ben pulled his comm from his pack, clicking the button several times to try to raise his uncle. There wasn't even a crackle of static in reply. He glanced down at the device in his hand, only to find that the lights that usually flickered over its surface had gone dark. Dead.

"Luke?" he called again, easing away from his cover, eyes sweeping back and forth as he took one tentative step forward. His head snapped to the side as something brushed past his shoulder and he had the briefest glimpse of a tall form in heavy black robes rounding the corner before it disappeared into the side passage.

He was after it in a moment, lurching into a sprint that propelled him across the corridor. If it wasn't Luke, then surely it was one of Sidious' spies, come to take the wayfinder before he could find it. His saber crackled in his hands as he ran, heedless of his surroundings until his feet slid from under him. He went down hard in a tangle of wire, his shoulder slamming against the floor. He was up again in a moment, freeing himself with a quick swipe of his saber, but the strange figure was already gone.

Ben turned in a circle, trying to find any sign of it in the dim light. He could see nothing; not even a trail to follow. It struck him as odd that a being as large as it had seemed would be able to navigate in the wreckage without leaving a sign of its passing behind. Ben slowed, pushing aside a mass of cables to reveal a shelf of metal that rose to the level of his eyes. Beyond it, he could see a large chamber illuminated with a dismal light.

He scrambled over the barrier with little effort and found himself standing in a room the likes of which he'd never seen before. He gazed about him, turning in a full circle. Four viewports let in the day's gray afternoon, rain and ocean spray mingling to be brought in through the shattered glass by a harsh sea breeze. But even here, there was still no sign of the phantom he was chasing.

It was the high-backed throne that told Ben that it was the place for which he'd been searching. The Emperor's throne. A sick feeling twisted in his stomach as he looked at it, the memory of Sidious' mocking laughter again filling his ears. He turned away from the sight, glancing over the room and trying to discern where Sidious would have hidden the wayfinder. He kept his saber drawn at his side, too uneasy to turn it off. With quick footsteps, he paced the room from one end to the other, hunting for a trap door or a concealed storage compartment. He found nothing but more empty armor and scattered debris.

He was on the verge of despair, able to sense how near the wayfinder was and yet unable to find it, when he found the door. It was nearly buried under a pile of rusting scrap metal so that he'd missed it on his first search. If he concentrated, he could feel the pull of the wayfinder tugging him towards it.

Ben stretched out his hand toward it, his bandaged fingers beginning to tremble as he reached for the dark side. It rushed in like a tide of the sea, as cold and familiar as ever. Even with its aid, it was several minutes before the blocked portal stood clear before him. He gestured once more, and its interlocking panels opened slowly, grinding in their tracks without the pneumatic pumps that had once powered them. Ben winced at the noise, glancing over his shoulder in half expectation that it had drawn the strange figure to his location, before ducking beneath the panel and into the darkness beyond. The doors closed behind him when he released his hold on them; the shriek of metal on metal raising the hair on the nape of his neck.

The space beyond the threshold seemed small and crowded compared with the relative freedom of the throne room. He could see little more than the next step ahead of his feet and the air smelled of rust and decay. As he drew deeper into the room his eyes began to adjust until he could make out a faint greenish light reflecting from oddly tapered pillars.

He felt the pulse of the wayfinder before he saw it. He whirled to find it hovering in a space cut from one of the pillars, balanced perfectly between what he now guessed were two poles of a magnet. Before he realized what he was doing, he put out his hand to take it. His fingers stopped a fraction of an inch from its surface. It seemed too easy. They had been hunting for it for so long, and now it was right in front of him. He was almost afraid that it would disappear the moment he tried to seize it.

Hardly daring to draw breath, Ben stretched out his hand and closed his fingers around the wayfinder. It was cold and solid and as soon as he touched it, he sensed the dark side coiled within it. But it was beautiful too, its sides of a deep green glass etched with delicate lines and circles, light pulsing faintly in its depths.

He was just about to tuck it into his pack when he caught movement in the corner of his eye. Whirling, he just managed to glimpse the edge of a set of black robes as they disappeared through the door. Ben froze. He hadn't even heard it open. The portal began to slide shut again even as Ben ran. He tumbled out into the half-light of a gray late afternoon, the wayfinder still clutched in his hand.

He staggered to his feet, only to go perfectly still when he saw the man that stood in the middle of the room. His pulse began to pound in his ears as the stranger turned and his pale eyes locked on Ben's.

"Who are you?" Ben demanded, reaching for the saber at his belt. "Why are you here?"

A slight smile spread over the man's face, his head bowing by a fraction as if he wanted to hide the expression from the world. But he didn't say anything.

"Who are you?" Ben asked again.

"You know who I am."

The man's voice was low and held a pleasant rasp that almost put Ben off his guard. He peered harder at him, trying to get a better look at his expression. There was certainly something about him that seemed familiar. Something in the eyes.

With a sudden cold shock, Ben realized that the man was nearly transparent. A dim blue light seemed to shine out from him, almost unnoticeable in the dim sunlight of the viewport behind him. Ben drew back a step, eyes widening, and the man's smile grew by a fraction.

"So, you see me for what I am," he said quietly. "And now you must tell me who you are."

Ben's fingers tightened around the hilt of his saber and he drew it to brandish at the man's chest.

"My name is Kylo Ren," he said, his voice coming through clenched teeth. "I am the Supreme Leader of this galaxy. I demand to know who you are."

"You already know," replied the man. "Don't you recognize me?"

Ben paused, saber still crackling before him, and studied the stranger, trying to imagine why those brilliant blue eyes staring at him from beneath the thick shock of brown hair seemed so familiar. The man was tall, though not as tall as he was himself, and lean, but it was difficult to say for certain with the loose robes that hung about him. But the strangest thing of all, was that the man seemed young; perhaps no more than a few years younger than Ben. Yet in the next moment he seemed far older. Centuries older. As if he had seen and done terrible things, and as if he had suffered terrible things as well. It was that old face, that suffering face, that Ben recognized.

And it came to him then like a bolt of lightning.

"My dream," he murmured. "You're the man from my dream. The one that warned me about the dark side…"

"I am."

"That's hardly an answer," Ben said, eyeing the man with distrust. "And how is it that you managed to appear in my dreams?"

"I think we will not speak of that yet," said the man. "But be patient, young Solo. We both have time before the end."

"How do you know my name?"

"Because I know you, Ben Solo, as I once knew myself. And you are not Kylo Ren, as I am not Darth Vader."

In that moment, the world seemed to go silent around Ben. The noises of the sea and the wind that he'd heard as a constant rushing since he'd stepped out of his ship had vanished and left him alone with this phantom.

"Anakin Skywalker…" Ben rasped, his throat suddenly dry. "Why now? You've never come before. Not when I needed your guidance. Not when I asked you to show me the power of the darkness to hide myself from my master. You abandoned me. I begged you…"

"You were never alone. Not even when the darkness around you was deepest."

"Then why did I feel alone?"

The ghost of his grandfather dipped its chin and gave Ben another one of his sad smiles.

"Your feelings will not always be true. The dark side can twist them and shape them into a weapon to be used against you. Search them closely and you will see."

Ben stared at the man before him, the years of darkness and pain he himself had spent under Sidious' eye washing over him to fill him with a sadness that sank deep into his soul. His hatred of the dark side had followed him through the years, until he had voiced his desire to Rey. He wanted to leave. But was it even possible?

It was something he had wondered ever since he'd told Rey that he wanted to return to the light. Now, with his grandfather standing before him, Ben felt his doubts surfacing once again. Anakin had lived and died at Palpatine's hand: Darth Vader had been created as Kylo Ren had been created. And Anakin had died even as he defied the will of his master. What did that mean for Ben?

"I can't return to who I was before," he said quietly.

"And no one would ask you to become that boy again," said Anakin. "But if you remain who you are now, the darkness will consume you."

"So, I must become something new?" Ben asked.

"No," Anakin said, shaking his head. "You must simply become the man you have hidden for too many years. Ben Solo lives still, as I lived within Vader. Remember what it is to be that man."

"Will you help me?"

Somewhere high above them, the feeble sun finally broke through the cloud cover and a shaft of weak light shone in through the shattered viewport. Ben saw it strike his grandfather's form, and then it was shining through as light through a prism. For an instant, it flashed brighter, and a hundred thousand colors leapt up and died in an instant. Ben squeezed his eyes shut against it, but when he opened them again, his vision was dark. He sensed a pressure over his eyes, as if a hand were covering them, and panic nearly took him, until he heard the voice whispering in his ear. A rustling wind rose around him, sending the damp strands of his hair dancing around his face.

"I will always help you," said Anakin. "Even when you cannot see me."

And then he was alone again: standing bewildered in the ruins of Sidious' throne room with the wayfinder still clutched tight in his hand.