The Amaya shot through deep space faster than the speed of light as Kira ran through an inventory of the damage inflicted on her ship during the escape from Nal Hutta. Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the galley, she read the report that BD-5 provided, noting that half of her weapons systems were offline, long-range communication was fried, and the shields were only capable of generating at about 20% capacity. The item that wrought the most concern was the hyperdrive; although it was continuing to hold together after two short lightspeed jumps to throw any potential Republic ships off her tail, BD-5 worried that continuing to use the hyperdrive would cause it to malfunction, with fatal consequences.

As she rummaged through her trove of tools and spare parts, an alarm blared from the cockpit. Racing from the galley, she ran to the cockpit and checked the readout. The ship's computer indicated that the hyperdrive was on the verge of collapsing due to structural damage. Recalling BD-5's warnings, she eased back the hyperdrive lever, and the ship slowed back to sublight speed in the vastness of deep space. A quick glance at the screen told her that the nearest system was seven lightyears away. She plugged in the calculations for the jump to see if the hyperdrive would hold up, and the computer responded that the hyperdrive would fail within 10 minutes of hyperspace travel, potentially taking the ship with it. She looked up from the ship's computer and out through the cockpit at the infinite field of tiny, glowing pinpricks set against an unceasing blackness. She might have been the only being within ten lightyears in any direction.

Placing the ship on autopilot to continue her trajectory toward Cophrigin, which was one hundred lightyears away, she walked back to the galley and resumed her rummaging. She had enough parts to correct a lot of the issues present with most hyperdrive malfunctions, but she wouldn't know for sure until she took the hyperdrive apart. Grabbing a tray of hydrospanners, she entered the crawlspace leading back to the hyperdrive, and she set to work dismantling the drive's outer casing and frame. Within fifteen minutes, she had dismantled the drive all the way down to its core. She pried the casing open for the motivator, and what she saw sapped all hope from her intention to get the ship moving again. Several splintering fractures ran the length of the motivator, and those fractures would only widen the longer she attempted to use it. If the motivator were to split, the drive would enter a positive feedback loop, causing a chain reaction through the ship's primary drive, leading to the ship's instant vaporization. One thing she had not found while rummaging through parts was a spare motivator. Without a motivator, the hyperdrive would not work. Without the hyperdrive, she was dead in space with no long-range communications array.

Awash in mounting fear and frustration, Kira backed out of the crawlspace and collapsed to the galley floor. In her frantic attempts to escape and create enough confusion in her route to throw the Republic off her tail, she had not allowed herself the opportunity to begin processing what had happened. But now, with a critically damaged hyperdrive and no means of long-range communication, the weight of her isolation collapsed in on her. Leia was gone, their mission had failed, and she was now lost in space. What was worse, she could not outrun the tidal wave of guilt that threatened to subsume her. She had lost focus, and her focus had cost the Resistance their mission objective, a squadron of elite soldiers, and a good friend in Zhey'la. And the failure of their mission objective meant that Leia had died for nothing.

She could have screamed in pain and frustration had there been any utility to it, but she refrained knowing that all it would do was hurt her throat. As she sat crumpled on the floor, the weight of grief and guilt surged, and finally the dam broke as she could hold back her pain any longer. Her body convulsed as she sobbed, feeling the boundless sense of loss that Leia was gone. But no sooner had she begun to grieve when she sensed a familiar presence. Her sobbing subsided as her guard went up, and she dragged herself back to her feet to stand before a vision emerging on the opposite side of the galley. Wiping her tears away, her grief gave way to anger as the vision of Ben coalesced before her.

She was ready to wound, blame, shame, and attack him emotionally, but her desire faltered as she saw that he too was awash in grief. Unlike the past year when he had diligently pressed and prodded to break through her psychological defenses, Ben had not appeared to initiate this contact. He appeared as surprised as she did that the connection had emerged.

He became aware that she was there shortly after she had, and when he realized that they were connected, he attempted to cover up the emotion he was clearly awash in. He stood to face her as well, and the expression on his face was a cocktail of grief, defiance, anger, and resentment.

"Did you do it?" Kira asked him without preamble.

The question hit Ben like a Force push, but he responded calmly, his voice hoarse, saying, "No."

"Then who did?" Kira asked, determined to extract the truth from him.

"Melso," Ben said, and Kira could see the shadow of anger and hatred pass across his face as his voice hardened.

Kira was still uncertain whether she could trust him, and she pressed for details, saying, "Explain."

"Tell me what you were doing on Nal Hutta," Ben countered.

"That's none of your concern," Kira replied acidly. "Don't try to shift the blame."

"The blame?" Ben said, his voice stony in response.

"That's right," Kira spat before he could respond. "She would still be alive if you hadn't gone there."

"I told you I didn't kill her," Ben argued back, his defensiveness evident.

"It doesn't matter. If you didn't lead Melso there, she'd still be alive," Kira accused, her own anger spiking.

Ben looked for a moment as if he wanted to attack her, but instead, he turned away and walked to a chair to sit down. As he hung his head in his hands, Kira got a sense of his surroundings, and she recognized that he was on the Falcon. A wave of regret passed through her as she saw him suffering, but her desire to wound him remained strong. She was ready to continue attacking him, striking his vulnerabilities to hammer home the guilt and shame. In a moment where she had no other recourse, it felt good to have an avenue to vent her pain and anger.

Ben did not move from the chair, but Kira could see that his body was shaking. He had begun crying. Zhey'la had talked about the pressures he was under, and even though her anger was still high, she felt a twinge of regret at attacking him.

Taking a deep breath with her eyes closed, she steadied herself and said, "I'm sorry, Ben."

He did not turn to her, but his breathing had steadied. She knew he was listening. She continued, saying, "Zhey'la told me that the Jedi were putting a lot of pressure on you. If she were here, she'd tell me I was being too hard on you."

At the mention of Zhey'la, Ben looked up. His eyes were red, and his face was red. "Is she ok?" he asked, and Kira saw in his expression that he cared for her, regardless of having spent a year trying to hunt her down.

"She's dead, too," Kira said. Ben inhaled sharply, and for a moment, his breathing was unsteady. Kira felt grief rising as well. Losing Leia had been catastrophic, but Zhey'la, with her calm, empathic demeanor, had also become a source of support, solace, and friendship through the struggles of the past year. For a long moment, the two remained silent, awash in grief and connected through the Force despite being hundreds of lightyears apart. Ben was the first to break the silence when he asked, "Where are you?"

Kira's distrust flared back up, and defensively, she said, "That's none of your concern." Then, her curiosity competing with her defensiveness, she asked, "Did you really kill Melso?"

Ben's grief subsided and a cold anger showed in his expression. "Yes. And Lothor. And Ven."

"Why?" Kira asked, shocked and frightened.

"I confronted my mother, and I told Melso to stay on the Falcon. She wanted to talk. She stunned Lothor and Ven, and nearly had me convinced. Then. . ." Ben hesitated, resisting the pain of the memory before continuing. "Then Melso appeared out of nowhere and murdered her."

"Did she. . . vanish?" Kira asked, wondering if it would be possible for Leia to become one with the Force despite the departed Masters being beyond reach.

"She's one with the Force," Ben said, as he lifted her limp robes up for Kira to see.

The knowledge that Leia had been able to go on gave her a sliver of hope – perhaps she would find a way to talk to her again. But then her curiosity emerged again, and she asked, "But if you killed Melso. . ."

"I avenged her death. Just like I'm going to avenge my father's." Ben said, his anger returning and his resolve hardening.

"Ben, what are you talking about?" Kira asked.

"Darth Vader came to me," Ben explained. "He appeared after she died. He told me to find him so that he could show me the way to avenge their deaths."

Kira was confused. She had watched Anakin disappear on Jakku, and she learned afterward that none of the Force ghosts were appearing any longer. She responded, "But Ben, that's impossible. Luke said that the Force ghosts had disappeared."

"Luke is a liar," Ben said, straightening up in defiance.

"But he appeared as Anakin to me," Kira said, confused and concerned.

But Ben suddenly did not appear to be open to what she had to say about it. She could feel his resolve hardening, and she could feel anger and a cold determination for revenge radiating from him. His voice icy, Ben said, "My grandfather will help me kill Veryx. And after that, I will kill whoever else is responsible for this."

Kira became afraid. She remembered fighting Veryx and how they both nearly died. Even if it was possible that Anakin had found a way to break through, facing Veryx alone seemed like suicide. Kira responded, "Ben, please don't. He's too strong."

"Then join me," Ben said, reaching out a hand.

Kira stepped forward, but then hesitated. Leia was gone. Luke was missing. He was all she had left. A second voice spoke in her mind as she regarded him holding his hand out, asking for her to join him. He hunted you. He pursued you. He did it for his own ambitions.

"Just tell me where you are, and together we can put an end to this," Ben said, a note of pleading in his voice. His anger softened, and she could see clearly that he wanted to reunite with her as well.

Kira's lack of trust won out. Her face hardening and her voice stony, she responded, "No," and with a massive effort, she closed her mind to him. The vision of him faded rapidly, and the last image she saw was of him stepping forward with his hand out.

With Ben gone, her isolation returned, as had the full weight of her predicament. She scanned the galley toward the hastily rummaged tools and spare parts scattered around the ground. BD-5 watched her curiously, clucking quietly to himself. The ship's systems hummed dimly in the background. She sat back down onto the ground and crossed her legs. She closed her eyes and sank deep into the Force. Reaching out, she said aloud, "Leia. . ."

She had hoped based on Ben's assertion that Anakin had appeared that Leia might also be able to appear. Ben had intimated that her body had vanished, and that she had been able to become one with the Force. With the Departed Masters having vanished, Kira had been afraid that Leia would not be able to pass on, but she had managed it. If she had managed that, maybe she could return.

But after 15 minutes of trying, Leia did not appear. Kira abandoned the effort, and instead, she switched to Luke. Reaching out into the Force, she called his name, too. After another 20 minutes of trying to reach him with no response, she gave that up as well. Where the hell did he go? Kira asked herself, but her inner voice had no answer for that either. The two people who were the closest things she had known to parents were now gone, and with that awareness, Kira found herself thinking of her mother. First her mother, then Luke, then Leia. Orphaned thrice-over. She spent hours awash in grief, consumed by the loss until gradually, she drifted into a deep, uneasy sleep.

Ben tried for several minutes to re-establish his connection to Kira, but her walls were powerful, and he could make no headway. Abandoning the effort, his own grief returned, as did his sense of guilt and shame. Kira had accused him of being responsible for Leia's death, which was a consideration Ben had resisted as much as he could. However, he could not turn away from it now. He had not wanted to track them to Nal Hutta. He wanted to keep the knowledge to himself to protect them, but Melso found out. He tried to keep Melso at bay, but he had failed there as well. It was Melso's fault. It had to be. Or it was Bolsko's. He had wanted her dead. The fact that Ben had found Kira and Leia was only coincidental – an accident. Or was it? A voice deep inside him told him to stop lying to himself, and he tried to shut the voice away. A mental image of Veryx mocking him for his weakness emerged, and the cold rage shut out the grief for a moment. While he touched that anger, his sadness of shame also receded into the shadows of his mind.

His attention turned back to the ship at the proximity alert signaling that he was about to come out of hyperspace. When the countdown hit zero, Ben pulled back the lever, and the Falcon slowed to sublight speed. From the cockpit, Ben could see a massive, silver gaseous planet illuminated by a distant sun. Set against that gas giant was a small, blue moon swirled with clouds. Ben plugged in the coordinates for the moon and the Falcon shot directly toward it.

Ben piloted the ship down through the atmosphere, and then skimmed the forested surface of the planet. Towering trees rose hundreds of meters from an obscured floor below, and occasionally, he soared past massive debris fields where the remains of the second Death Star had fallen to the moon, caught up in its gravity. Ben recalled from his history lessons that most of the debris from the Death Star had drifted into the planet Endor, although some of the debris had hit the nearby moon, Kef Bir. The devastation had been significant, with vast tracts of forest burnt to skeletal corpses rising from an understory of recovering vegetation. Something about the devastation of the moon underscored the fraudulence of his parents' claims of "victory" against the Empire. What victory caused so much destruction to a peaceful planet?

Reaching out with his senses, Ben sank into a meditation as he sought out his grandfather's presence. Nearly immediately, he became aware of a black hatred far above the moon, and as his senses touched the hatred, it registered to him that it must have been the spot where the Emperor died, leaving a scar on the fabric of time and space as his essence left his body. Ben shuddered before he turned his senses away. A slight tingling on the back of his neck preceded a tremor, and Ben felt the Force guide the steering on the Falcon toward the northwest quadrant of the moon.

Within an hour of flying, Ben felt a sudden thrill of awareness. He slowed the Falcon to a crawl, and looking down out of the cockpit, he saw a blackened pile of logs in the middle of clearing. He set the Falcon down to the ground with slight bump and rose to his feet. He looked down to the pile of his mother's robes in the co-pilot's chair, her lightsaber set on top. He paused for a moment, feeling a burst of grief. But the grief only served to spur him forward, and he left the ship, entering the clearing.

A thin veil of mist hung above the ground as he stepped forward toward the blackened remains of an old funeral pyre. Twisted bits of plastic and armor lay strewn about. Ben turned over a large log using the Force, and beneath the log, he saw something that shocked, disgusted, and excited him. There, below where the log had lain was a black, melted helmet – the helmet of Darth Vader. Ben knelt, picking up the helmet and holding it in his hands. He investigated the helmet's cracked visor, imagining what it might have felt like to face the legendary Sith. As he knelt on the ground holding the helmet, he felt the thrill of awareness pass through him again. He stood to his feet, the helmet still in his hands. He turned around as a red glow passing illuminated the mist. The glow surrounded the figure of Darth Vader, who stood motionless gazing at Ben, his mechanical breathing the only sound in the mist-shrouded meadow.

The two regarded each other for a moment before Vader said, "Welcome, grandson."

Ben set the helmet down on the ground and straightened up. He felt the surge of anger and hatred that had quelled his grief rising, and meeting his grandfather's imposing gaze, he said, "Teach me, grandfather. Show me how to avenge my father's death."