The X-Wing touched down on Coruscant, one of the higher spires atop some grand castle among castles.

If this was the same Coruscant she saw in some of those holos, it'd certainly changed. Come to think of it, she'd seen some of the changes in everything. The Empire really liked pulling technology back, breaking it down into simple, oppressive edges and dark colors. An incomplete process, it turned the bottomless city below her into a patchwork of sleek curves and kaleidoscopic glass against razor-sharp prisms with few memorable features.

Not only that, but it was raining. It only ever rained when things were supposed to be somber. Coruscant was always the sunny, bustling world with no floor and no ceiling. Now she couldn't even see this world's Hel, which the occasional docu-holo had declared as the richest for human life. She didn't even know what a human was, except that she was apparently one of them. They had hair and skin, muscle and bone, two legs, dedders and a brain. So far that was all she could equate between herself and this big new world.

The lid of her cell came open and she was quick to stand up. Even quicker to be pulled down by soreness and the harness. What she had to wonder about was how that man had gotten that harness on her. Of course, that fell low on the list, but now it had a place.

Artoo wrote another message to her: You know how to get out of one of those, don't you?

Didn't realize it was on me.

"Want to get kwak-too ahx-shti smogolo-ed? I'm sure your friend can tell you about that one."

"He's dead."

Beat.

"Or, come to think of it, haven't seen him in years. Probably dead. Do you know how many times I've saved that clunky bastard?"

How nice. Even in death, he expects his companion to be grateful. The universe might not be that different from Jakku after all, hate to say it.

Maybe this was all for nothing.

It was then she remembered to undo her harness. Her fingers kept fumbling, over and over and over again. Eventually she got it. A ladder hooked over the hull to the cockpit, and with that first clank it seemed her ears were opened to the whole grander world of great sounds. Engines, the alien patter of rain, wind, thunder, millions of speeders above and below. Some passed by the platform close enough to blow her hair all about. Had it come undone during the trip?

How long was she out?

She climbed down, and the rain assaulted her. She wondered if the cyclesuit would catch any of it, or would it leak out of every hole and drag what water she had left with it. Speaking of which, how long had she gone completely dehydrated? Crews in uniform naran jackets craned the astromech droid out of the ship. The rain seemed to bounce off them at soft angles, almost forming an aura of warm air between them. Meanwhile she seemed to be a magnet for the wet stuff, and it was a strange feeling she wanted to relish forever.

One of the crew in a black mask and amarillen helmet walked to her, tapped his helmet and began speaking. Judging by his voice she could tell two things: it was indeed a "he," and "he" wasn't human. Two legs, gloved dedders, a head and likely skin. No more.

He pointed to the tower this platform branched outward from. Multicolored guidelights blinked randomly, always light was on, some more powerful torches throwing shadows even on the thing they illuminated. A lightning strike somewhere far off threw the world almost to heavy Helover-light, devoid of darkness.

"You go inside. The Jedi will be with you soon."

"Jedi!?" The crewman nodded.

"Luke Skywalker. That's his droid, got ye here." He pointed to Artoo. "And!" His arm drifted upward. By the look of it, a big red box was falling from the sky. "They'll approach another platform, I - " Flash. Explosion in the sky. Lightning. Pause. "Think you should get inside. Go."

She wasn't in much mood to protest. She'd rather stay out here forever, letting this powerful sky wash over here for all eternity. But even the sky paled in comparison with the plans things seemed to have for her. Was it she who wondered that, or that little internal voice that seemed to be anyone's but her own?

Rey started walking. Didn't seem to be much option otherwise. "Inside" meant being out of the rain, but it also meant answers.

Still...

Answers can wait.

Nar, they can't.

The platform was far slicker a surface than she'd dealt with in a long time. Even metal hulls scored smooth by time had some grip to them. This place was polished, and wet. Fairly unblemished. Taking that fact in meant she no longer liked it quite the same. Too unfamiliar, and not in the good way. That being said, she was happy to be out this far, at least.

Inside. Answers. Go now.

Now!

A transparent door slid off to one side and granted her entry. Inside the light was mostly gelden and stark-white. Supposed to be clean and calming, came out to her as something trying to hide panic just under the surface. Was this how people of the wider galaxy lived? Not that she

[REMEMBERED.]

The planet of thorns and rocks. Levitating. The deformed brill, the boys. The rest of it. A good chunk of that, at least, was just a dream. A promise.

Intuitively as she could, sopping wet from head to toe and relishing the sensation she hadn't felt in so long, if ever.

She slipped. It happened, she kept her curses to herself. She got back up silently, continued following that little curve of the hall forward and down, keeping the nearest window always in view.

That's when she remembered.

She didn't have her staff.

Schet. Ti smogolo. Trakno toboi, soo'ka! Krii'kii! Dozens of others, most of which she'd enjoyed guessing at the meanings of.

"Damn it."


When Lando's carrier shuttle landed, none of them saw Luke leave until he was already walking off the platform into the tower. Lando didn't stop him, only looked on and shook his head in sorrow. He'd known him since he was a kid, he himself not much older in the grand scheme. Through a mutual friend, the old Rebel pirate...!

...rest his poor soul.

Luke, meanwhile, had to deal with the girl. The grona, groné or whatever the word was. If she was here, that was bad. But also unavoidable. Destiny, or whatever passed for it these days. "The Will of the Force." Against what disciplines he had he wanted to scoff.

He needed to talk to Leia. He hadn't been back here for a while, but this is where the action was for one of the Republic's senior diplomats. Especially with her major role in the ever-busy tribunal.

Girl first. Sister later, as soon as possible. He didn't want her to suffer alone. Of course, neither did he. Even in this faraway galaxy, "misery craves company."

He found her wandering the halls, drenched from head to toe, tracking black-flaked water across the carpet, eyes wide and torn between scowling and smirking in admiration. Something about that made him want to smack sense into her, and he choked that down. He was a Jedi, no testimony or memory of pain would interfere with that. She looked up when she saw him and any semblance of smile disappeared.

"My staff." His eyes narrowed, if only a little.

"You're not getting that back. Follow me." He turned, and she followed, head spinning from one side to the other, taking it all in. The art, the structure, the lighting, the busy world outside. Platforms like her own were scattered everywhere like branches on a tree, impossible and seemingly impractical but somehow not so much as scraping on the traffic of countless speeders and all altitudes, of the lightning in the distance. The system here was hard not to see. The delicate balance somehow made commonplace.

Eventually narrow halls and large windows faded into sharp-angled staircases. The robed old man turned into what might've easily been a... what was the word? Closet. But behind each thin closet door was a dark passageway Rey was sure they were not supposed to know about.

She had questions. She didn't ask.

She would correct that mistake, no matter how little she wanted to talk.

"This is Coruscant. You're a Jedi Knight. You're..."

"Luke Skywalker. Son of Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader. Enemy of the Empire and the First Order, hero of the Rebel Alliance, destroyer of the Emperor and the Death Stars. And yes, a Jedi Knight. Anything else you need to know can wait. Right now we focus on reaching our destination."

And so they did. Rey got the feeling he didn't like her very much, go figure. Still, he knew plenty she didn't. And, if she was lucky, she knew things he didn't know. Of course, she knew little of the world beyond nomads declaring war every time they crossed paths. And Luke definitely knew about the holos...

What happened to Jakku? And why? She wanted to ask of Charlie, Beebee and their mission. In the end she was fully invested but knew only what that verbose droid had told her before dying. And the mooks proved its importance. All of a sudden she's here with a Jedi, a figure from those times, presumed dead when they turned their backs on the Republic forever.

Puzzling. She didn't like puzzles, hated not knowing. She needed to know who her Family were: Father, Brother. Mother.

The thunder echoed powerfully, even on the colorless stone. It rang in her ears like the roar of so much turbolaser fire, so many godly engines.

Down more stairs. She'd forgotten stairs existed for the longest time, that they were simple machines to ease the stress of terrain going up and down. She had to crouch to avoid taking a low-hanging chunk of ceiling to the head, and that was fine with her. This place almost felt like an abandoned ship, and despite everything she hated about Jakku, she liked that. Like the rain, which even now made little sloshing noises in her boots, made her shiver. What an amazing feeling it really was!

Not many lights, and the ones she saw seemed old, not just bordering on relics. Certainly not what she'd call "antique," either. It was like someone had cut this whole center of the building out of a single stone, chiseled away, left some lines of old liquid paint and wired in some torchlamps. All very crude, all very secret, no-nonsense. Spoke volumes if she was reading it correctly, she couldn't tell.

The old brill - Luke - finally brought a door open. It squealed, as if scared of him. She knew that feeling too. The sound of a hundred species in one place. Oh, the noise! It pained her. Physically. The noise, the light, the crowd, the untouchable heat given off by so many living beings!

"Keep up, move quickly." She nodded, hunching her shoulders and crouching forward as they advanced without realizing it. The weight of her staff in her hand was really not helping the situation, the thing was like a talisman to her.

Dozens of species, most of which she'd never seen before. Some humans, not many. The kind of dress she saw on greedy Federation bastards and Imperial "heroes" all around her. Most did not seem to see her, she kept her eyes on the crimson carpet. Crimson carpet that seemed to follow her with gelden rings like oyos.

She had the slight urge to grip the back of the brill Luke's robe, though she was certain he'd brush her hand off and tell her to keep walking.

You can get through this, you can get through this.

You've been through so much worse, perpetrated surely by much scarier "people."

But never this many. Those thugs for whatever-gangs-or-factions came in waves, choked by narrow hallway and diversion. Never like this. Flesh gangs rarely had more than a dozen members, even that's a stretch.

How does anyone survive crowds!?

Something about war. War is worse here. I don't know how, but the violence here is the heart of all violence. All Darkness. All Evil. Whatever Evil is.

She hadn't seen many crowds, except those that tried to kill her. She didn't care much for them even now, even actively detested these things for standing so close in such a large space, rendering it ever smaller.

Rey didn't know when, but they came out of it. She looked up.

Scratch that, they hadn't come out of it. Luke was standing to one side, showing her a door. A big silver thing with several concentric ovals stretching inward, darkening. She couldn't see what was on the other side, but it opened. Inside, surprise surprise, a smaller room. She hadn't seen a turbolift in a while, but she got the feeling that's what it was.

Luke was trying to tell her something. She couldn't hear. Too much noise. Too much to focus on, all of it painful, building on itself in sharp, heavy layers. Lightly frustrated, he held up several dedders by his chin - between his throat and his old-bearded mouth. Suddenly he spoke, and it transcended the air. Spoke directly to her mind, almost as a whisper above any din. She might hear the voice from thousands of worlds away. It was an effect almost like her Family's call...

"Take this up, a droid'll show you to guest quarters. Don't let anyone in until I come up."

She nodded, just happy it would mean the end.

The door slid shut - sideways again, closing her off from that horrible noise! Some of it stayed behind with she and the silence. The almost physical onslaught, the whispering of disembodied bats. Evil things. Things with gelden oyos. Still, she sighed that it was over. Follow the droid, find the place. It might even be a place of her own, from the way he talked. Don't accept any visitors. No need to tell her twice, a visit is a declaration of war.

Unkar visited you, found you broken in the wreckage. He declared war by taking you.

She hoped never to see Unkar again. That he burned along with Jakku - yar, she'd suddenly realized that Jakku was no more. He and Wiles and those Teedos. Even in her indefinite sleep she could feel that tingle as it all went up. The pain, she could relate well enough to the pain. That had been somewhere in the dream as well.

Suddenly she remembered that... she could not remember much. Of the dream. If anything. She couldn't remember if she woke up even realizing she'd dreamed, certainly not now. So much in so little time, all of it seeming to flow unexpectedly into everything else.

The door opened. Time to exit. Find a droid. She wondered if she was good at finding droids. And bad at people.


The noise wasn't easy for Luke to handle, either. A Jedi's attuning to the workings of the universe sometimes got muddled when he was listening in on too many channels. Too many strong minds. From what he understood, most Jedi developed the nasty habit of keeping to themselves, separated from the worst of the crowds. Wasn't easy to understand why. They could feel the pain of an entire planet erased in an instant, imagine that in comparison to bickering politicians of a hundred worlds in a lobby meant for the small trickle of delegations. How she stood it he had no idea.

Leia. Leia, where are you?

I'm coming. Stay where you are. And watch out for the - !

No need to tell him. He found himself stepping forward abruptly as some very large and very hairy alien with a skull the size of his torso brushed behind him, vocalizing niceties at an octave below Luke's lowest register. While he was sure even old Jedi knew little of the practice, careful tuning to the Force could sometimes double a speaker's vocal range in volume and pitch. Old Ben had used that once, on some nasty Tusken raiders. Now he was almost to the age Old Ben was, and it saddened him.

"Luke."

His sister found him, and together they guided each other in walking. A little nudge here or there, they all moved out of the way. Luke grinned a little, mocking disapproval.

"You've never stopped me from doing that before."

"Never wanted to. But..."

"Jakku?"

He nodded. "It... it burned. I wasn't supposed to stop it."

Somewhere between a raised eyebrow and an empathetic grimace. She felt it when it happened, too. She could only imagine what he had to go through, and even saying that was a stretch. She could do nothing here, she had no power. Alderaan, that was the closest she could get, but even then it was a statistic, an untrained impulse. He'd spent his whole life attuning himself to the most minute feelings, just to get hit with that same onslaught. So no, words would not do. Still, he'd always appreciated the gesture in the past. The being-out-there.

"I'm sorry." Suddenly his sister's hand was on his left shoulder. With a black-gloved hand that had been his own for a long time now, he covered it in his own. They moved almost as one through the last of the smugly-dressed bureaucrats who in the end were of no importance. They found somewhere they could talk, one on one: an exposed balcony with a slick tile floor. With a nudge between them the water droplets slid off their clothes and left nothing behind. The air between them was an impenetrable hall of perfect audibility. The thunder faded to background music, and Luke almost swore he could hear something else in there, something more melodic. More terrifying.

The audible emanations of the Emperor's touch.

Leia heard it too. Sure cast a shadow over everything here for them, but this world was important, could not be given up.

Luke had to speak. Leia needed to let him.

"Tell me everything. Leave out what you must, we haven't got that long."

"Trial?" She nodded.

"Moving forward, exactly as planned. Thete's no doubt she did it, the only question is what to do with her now that we know." She'd caught that little attempt at diversion even as she explained in as few words as she could. "But you're not getting it out of this so easily. Spill."

He sighed.

"We were almost there, Leia. I was there, it all drew me there, to that station. And... I found her." He did not need to tell her who. "She's the one that helped send that signal burst. She... fought off everything she was up against, was already dead when I found her. A little Push, not much more than Old Ben gave me, and she survived a ride with Artoo all the way back up there, then again to here."

Leia kept her face tight as possible. Reaction would come later. Listening was now, that's what it demanded with Luke. She nodded again to him: "Go on."

"I saw the Terror Troopers. They're wearing his face like a trophy, Leia. Not just that, they're building them like him, too."

Now she had to ask something.

"Did you do anything?"

"I couldn't. I didn't reason with Darth Vader, I begged my father to save my life. They were in front of me, and I put them down. Just like that. I stole one of their fighters and made life difficult as I could for their fleet until...

"They were there. The Knights. Snoke was breathing down their necks the whole time. Their General, the Hunter, Ben. I could feel where they'd all walked through that base. And up there over the planet they trapped me until I got that message: that I couldn't stop it. But I stayed behind long enough to reach him, Leia. I know he received the message."

"Anything more?"

He shook his head. Then nodded, correcting himself like feeble old fool he was becoming all too quickly:

"The girl. I felt it in her, too. I was almost there, reliving some of the things she'd done to get them there. We suspected Jakku was a place like that, yes. But even then the Darkness was alive in her, it was keeping her going. Almost like the Light was its shadow, instead. That's the only reason she's still breathing, and she's currently finding quarters two floors above us!"

"There has been Darkness in every Jedi to ever live. In you and me, too. We also know some of what she's been through, even if she doesn't. And that'll change soon - she's seen you again."

"It's all part of His plan and you know it. Snoke. The timing of all this, think about it."

"I have. And I'm quickly deciding that one way or another she's back in your care, and we're surrounded on two sides by forces that can overtake us in an instant if we let them. One's run by Darkness, the other's the same Empire as always, we have a General being charged with treason and one of the major levers in pushing us here has been brought down again. Potential for anything, Light or Dark. Same as everyone else in this galaxy. The universe, even."

The siblings drew in close for an embrace, both a little lost in their roles but impossible to be torn away from them. Right now, they might as well be all each other had. Save maybe Lando and Artoo, had they not been subject to neglect in their older ages. That was becoming the way of things, leaving the outdated behind but never fully investing in the new. The Empire for its mad tactics, the First Order for its flashy toys and disregard for life. The Republic in forgetting its heroes.

"We'll get through this. We always have."


Two levels above, Rey was enjoying the silence in the newfound safety of a room to herself - a room with a view, like every other room. The droid had known exactly what she meant and guided her to yet another door. She had no idea what they kept these places for but that meant little.

The Darkness spoke to her now, in the faux-soothing tones of an old man dead now for almost thirty years. She'd never had a room to herself, never even as a child. She was always moving, but now she could move no more.

She stripped. Without any sense of traditional embarrassment, more a kind of attachment to her clothes, and lack of interest in seeing all her body had been through. Taking off the cyclesuit did allow her to better assess its damage, and she was afraid yet another Frankster patch-job would only plug the holes she saw, not the ones she knew she couldn't. In disappointment she tossed them in a heap to the - you guessed it - carpeted floor.

Without meaning to, she found scars. A lot of them. Her arms, hands, stomach, a little unnatural curve of several twice-broken dedders. Gelden-red scabs totaling to an area the size of her open hand around her stomach and right leg. She knew better than to touch these when she found them. A bit of dried blood, nothing serious.

Heh.

Nothing serious.

She remembered now that she should've been dead, too. All these wounds, had they been sustained in one attack there would be no question. Time had let things reset how they would, and she had pressed on. Pressed on even now, and would until the day she died.

Distortedly, almost like watching a holo, she felt some this place's scars in the back of her skull. Mutilation. Murder, bordering on genocide. Deception. No witnesses. Immolation. The forging of the bloodiest regime in thousands of years. Yet it was still here. It still rained outside, and she still saw it. It was beautiful, she knew that.

She'd never thought about people as beautiful. It was something for places, for feelings. She'd never had much time for those ideas on Jakku, but from time to time...

But people. People weren't beautiful, they were savages. Their scars were always visible, hideous to look at, and they passed them on tenfold to everything else in the wilderness. She'd received it, and she'd dealt it. Hence, couldn't be beautiful.

Jakku was beautiful in an ironic way. Its death had probably been beautiful.

She was tired, she knew that. She also wondered if her Family were beautiful. Probably not, no one in this galaxy was. Then again, they were never really of this galaxy.

Rey had to reiterate. She was tired, and needed to sleep. Try to forget her staff was gone, that this was a world she'd never seen before, that Charlie and probably Beebee were dead, and she had no answers.

She would not sleep in her cyclesuit. She would not let herself either, she was sure of that. The cyclesuit still handled that well enough, at least. Still naked, she crawled under heavy sheets and pretended they were Mother's arms, Father's arms, Brother's arms.

She'd seen Father and Brother before. Brother recently.

But the thought abandoned her just they did - just as she abandoned the waking world, and had the easiest sleep in her life.