16 days after the Battle of Crait-Base Rebel of Arbra:

Rey was finishing packing her stuff. They were scheduled to depart for Hoth in one hour. She let out a sigh of disappointment as she thought about her friends and their mission on Endor's moon. She would have liked to meet Leman Drill to ask him all the questions that had been bothering her since she'd left Jakku. Her father's brooch was resting on her bookshelf by the bed, and Maz's words went back and forth in her head.

This emblem belonged to the Naboo Royal Council.

Ever since her conversation with the small, orange-skinned woman, Rey's mind had been turning at full speed, thinking about different scenarios. Were her parents really from Naboo? Were they part of the aristocracy, or even of the nobility? No, it was stupid ... The most likely explanation was the one she gave Maz that day: her parents had found that object while rummaging through the wreckage of a crashed ship somewhere. In the time of the Empire, many battles had taken place between Imperial Forces and the Naboo. Or maybe her parents had simply stolen it? Ridiculous: Naboo high dignitaries were always escorted by a slew of armed guards, even in the seediest spaceports in the galaxy. Perhaps a bet? A payment in exchange for spare parts? Here again, she couldn't imagine a Naboo aristocrat compromising himself with a couple of scavengers and trading a splendid royal jewel for some pieces of durasteel. The more time passed, the more curiosity devoured her, and her assumptions became increasingly far-fetched.

Shortly after her return from Jakku, before revealing the truth to Finn, Rey had consulted Resistance databases looking for all available information on the various governments that had followed one another in the city of Theed for the past hundred standard years. She had learned that cohabitation between the Naboo and Gungan people had been complicated at first. Some colonized the surface while the others built bubble cities beneath the surface of Lake Paongah.

Many of the archives contained illustrations showing the broad cobblestone streets, domes, columns, flowered balconies, statues and canals crisscrossing the capital city of Theed. The palace was built on the edge of majestic waterfalls. It was the seat of the Royal Council, composed of a sovereign elected by the people, a governor and a cabinet of six members. At each transfer of power, the entire Council was renewed.

Rey had compiled hundreds of files, memorized dates, scanned dozens of family trees, and observed dozens of photos in detail. She had gone back in time and discovered the destiny of these extraordinary women who had ruled the planet for centuries: Sosha Soruna, Neeyutnée, Jamillia... And in each picture where the queens posed with their family members, Rey had noticed that even their parents wore royal insignia.

Another lead to pursue ...

Among all the queens she'd discovered, the one that caught her attention was Padmé Amidala, the youngest daughter of a modest Naboo family, and wife of Anakin Skywalker. Rey had been fascinated by the story of this young woman, beloved by her people, gone tragically all too soon. Anakin had fallen to the Dark Side and killed his pregnant wife. The babies, Luke and Leia, had been saved but were separated at birth.

What a tragic story.

The young woman could not help but think about Ben. Had he searched the past too? Was that why he wanted to erase, at all costs, everything that bound him to his family?

Once again, she realized that her mind was always bringing her back to him, no matter what she did...

She closed her canvas bag and leaned over to pick up her staff. A strange pain suddenly erupted in her abdomen and disappeared just as quickly. Rey put a hand under her chest and rubbed her ribs slightly. She probably still needed rest but it was out of the question to postpone the mission. She was about to go out when her eyes rested for a moment on the Jedi books and the pieces of the lightsaber still waiting on the little table.

One thing after another ...

First of all, she had to go to Hoth to find some parts to repair the accumulators, and then she'd fix Luke's saber, and finally, go to Naboo to discover the whole truth.

OooooO

At the same time, aboard the Finalizer:

Time had stopped. Kylo Ren's face was impenetrable again. Hux noticed the involuntary flicker of his cheekbone just below his left eye and knew that it did not bode well. He'd already seen, on many occasions, that this nervous twitch was the harbinger of a storm.

Without a word, Kylo rose from his seat and descended the few steps of the platform to come and stand before the general and his knights. By pure reflex, Hux took a step back. The atmosphere was suffocating.

"You lied to us. The girl didn't kill Snoke," Viri hissed.

Still motionless, Ren analyzed the situation.

Sylla gave him a devastating look, not bothering to hide her emotions anymore, her hatred and jealousy devouring her from the inside. She did not care at all about Snoke's death. All her thoughts were focused on that dirty little bitch who thought she was a Jedi, and on the feeling of betrayal that ravaged her heart.

Yehnu remained impervious but anger was bubbling inside him like molten lava. And Bram's eyes were full of disappointment.

Kylo then realized there was no way out.

"Yes, it was me," he confessed.

Bram's final doubts about Kylo's guilt flew away.

"And thus I completed my training, as the student defeated the Master. Snoke was no longer useful to me. You, who never hesitate to put forth your precious Sith doctrine, should be the first to approve what I did."

There was a moment of hesitation before Sylla screamed: "You attacked Snoke with this girl! "

"To allow her to escape!" Viri spat in turn. "What did she do or promise you to make you join forces with this rebel scum?"

Kylo gritted his teeth. His knights were becoming uncontrollable. He felt it. He would not be able to manipulate them this time. He suddenly wondered where Elias might be.

"I asked her to join me, to join the First Order. The Force is extremely powerful in her. I thought she could have made a valuable asset but …"

Yehnu, who had not said a word until then, interrupted him without compunction: "Now I understand why you've become so reluctant to eradicate the Resistance. This girl turned you."

"Traitor..." Sylla said before grabbing her sword to activate it.

Hux continued his discreet and silent progression toward the back of the room. Things were going badly and he had no intention of being caught in the middle of a clash between these Dark Side practitioners.

Yehnu took his weapon too and came slowly between Kylo and the throne. Viri displayed a sadistic smile before doing the same. Ren found himself surrounded.

"You're absolutely right," the Zabrak added. "The student must one day surpass the Master. And I think that day has finally arrived for us too."

Then everything became chaos. Kylo heard Bram's sword ignite and felt Yéhnu and Viri converge on him from behind. He had just enough time to turn and take his own weapon in hand.

He dodged the rattataki's yellow blade and defused a shock wave projected by Viri. Sylla's tried a mental attack on him, but he managed to block it before jumping to the right to prevent Bram from piercing his chest. The brunette warrior charged him and he took advantage of her too-low guard to hit her without restraint on the face. She collapsed on the floor, a little dazed.

The dance of sabers continued for several minutes.

Viri slashed Kylo's arm and gave him an uppercut that popped his lower lip. Bram sliced his thigh. Kylo was weakening, but he could now focus all his will on his opponents without Sylla intruding on his mind. Viri threw a new shock wave, but Kylo managed to redirect it to Yehnu, who was propelled against the throne. Bram's scream of rage echoed to his left. With a clever parry, the young boy dodged the scarlet blade aimed at his head, and struck back with ferocity. But Kylo felt a weakness in the Arkanian's determination, as if the white-haired kid was holding his blow.

Hux stared at the scene with a mixture of shock and exaltation. Ren's disciples were finally close to winning. But Kylo was fighting with the fury of desperation. Hux had to admit that Snoke's former apprentice was impressive. He understood why the Praetorian guards were unable to take him down in the throne room.

Sylla's saber was now on the other side of the room. Her vision was still blurry and her jaw was aching. In front of her, Viri and Bram continued their assault on Kylo, who was beginning to falter. She spat a little blood on the floor and reached back to pull two long daggers out of her pack. She met Bram's gaze, and saw immediate understanding in his eyes. Viri too. Yehnu nodded. The three boys simultaneously launched a new attack and Kylo had to use his power again to push them away. As a result, he did not see Sylla arrive behind him. She drove one of her knives with all her strength into Ren's right side. She would have struck him with the second, but he turned around and lacerated her chest with one of the short guard beams on his saber. This time, Sylla fell on the ground, unconscious.

Bram, Viri, and Yehnu froze for a moment, panting and motionless around their Master who was now staggering and groaning in pain, the dagger still lodged just below his ribs. Kylo grabbed the handle and removed it without hesitation. A jet of dark blood escaped the wound and began to spill onto the floor. Then Ren bent one knee, sinking down to put a hand on the ground. He was finished. They were going to tear him to pieces. At that moment, strangely, the three knights hesitated, as if Kylo Ren at their mercy could not be real.

"You are dead," Viri Pax finally shouted as he pulled himself together and walked toward him.

Kylo inhaled deeply and tried to overcome the extreme pain and weakness that were threatening to overwhelm him. The image of Luke's ghost impressed itself on his closed eyelids. He saw his grandfather's lifeless body too, in the middle of the Death Star's hangar about to explode.

A whole life wasted on obeying the Jedi, then the Emperor. These people saw in him only a servant, a weapon to achieve their ends. All this had destroyed his family. His legacy was based only on lies and suffering.

So no ... It was out of the question for him to die slumped here, curled up at the feet of these Sith puppets.

Rage returned to supplant exhaustion. Fury returned to overcome weakness. A familiar wave was born in the hollow of his belly to billow out and spread in his chest. It was like the swell of a typhoon. His hatred for all those who'd lied to him, used him, betrayed him - Luke, Rey, Snoke, Sylla, Bram, Viri, Yehnu, Han, and even Vader - came up from the depths of his soul. So he focused it, tamed it to convert it into pure energy.

Viri was about to strike under the satisfied gaze of General Hux and the four other knights.

Reviving every cell and every nerve fiber in Kylo's body, the energy pulsed and wandered to his hands. As if immersed in a second state, he held out his arms and his piercing cry echoed throughout the room. A stream of purple and blue lightning flashed from his fingers and branched out in crackling bolts that hit the four black knights full force. Only Hux, who was in retreat, escaped the dazzling attack by throwing himself on the ground before the electric arcs reached him.

When everything was over, Kylo collapsed, totally emptied and on the verge of losing consciousness. His opponents were all down. He stared at his hands for a moment, still in shock. Never before had he been able to create Force lightning. The only people he'd seen do that were Snoke, on two or three occasions, and Palpatine, in Luke's vision.

An unbearable pain suddenly shot through his side and he began to moan. A pool of blood had formed below him. He had to stop the bleeding or he was going to die here.

Suddenly, he perceived a slight movement next to the exit. Hux, flat on the floor, was trying to crawl out. The coward did not even have the courage to use his blaster to kill Kylo himself, but if he managed to reach the corridor, he would send a squadron of stormtroopers in to achieve this aim. Although Ren was the leader of the First Order, he knew that Hux's precious soldiers would obey him without question.

Forgetting the soldier, Kylo got up and walked painfully the ten meters that separated him from the platform. He passed in front of the motionless bodies of Viri and Yehnu to come collapse on the first steps.

Hurried footsteps echoed through the entrance and the imposing figure of Elias stopped in the doorway. The tall blonde showed a frightened face at the sight of his four unconscious comrades on the floor and Hux spread out at his feet.

"Damn it!" he exclaimed before running across the room to join Kylo.

He knelt beside him and tipped him to the side to see the extent of the damage. Then the knight glanced furtively towards the exit. Hux was gone.

Ren then ordered in a weak voice: "Call the guards, these four must be taken to a detention cell before they wake up." Then he began to cough and a spurt of scarlet came from his mouth. On the point of wiping his lips with his sleeve, he suddenly stopped.

Something was wrong.

Elias had risen to his full height to loom over Kylo, and was now wearing a ridiculously exaggerated expression of sorrow on his face.

"What a mess ..." the blond man sighed, looking up to the ceiling.

Kylo's heart missed a beat.

"See? I told them to wait for me. But you know them, they are worse than children, undisciplined and too impatient. If I had been there, you would definitely be dead by now."

Kylo took a few seconds to assimilate what he'd just heard. When he finally realized what was happening, he suppressed a bubble of fury and reached out to grab his saber on the ground a few feet away. But Elias was faster and the weapon lifted to land in his palm.

"The Great Kylo, Master of the Knights of Ren and new Supreme Leader of the First Order!" he continued in a theatrical tone. "Did you really believe that I was going to let you destroy everything I've always believed in?"

Leia's son stared at him silently, struggling to breathe. Elias now seemed to delight in his expression of disgust and added with a hoarse laugh, "I've been searching forever for a way to make these idiots see how weak you really are! You can't even imagine how exhausting it was! Viri was afraid of you, Bram revered you as a God, Sylla was madly in love and Yehnu's fawning gratitude to you was pitiful. Speaking of Yehnu, I've always been so disheartened to see how close the two of you have become. Perhaps because of the comforting shoulder you gave him at the death of his dear little brother. What a misfortune, is not it? This poor Jor, unfortunately murdered by rebels …"

Elias began to sneer and Kylo's face broke.

"It was you. You killed Jor …" he whispered, climbing up a little more on the platform.

"This moron discovered my secret and he immediately wanted to inform you. I was not going to let him do it."

"What secret?" Kylo asked without understanding.

The tall blond activated Ren's lightsaber and began to admire the crackling red blade. Then he pointed it directly at Kylo's chest while giving him a look full of hatred.

"Do you really think you were Snoke's only apprentice?"

So that was it. Everything was clearing now in Kylo's mind. How could he have been so stupid?

He remembered, now, the mysterious missions entrusted to Elias by the old man, sending him out for weeks of supposedly keeping order on isolated planets of the Outer Rim ... Whenever he returned, the progress he had made in the mastery of the Force was remarkable. Not to mention his growing interest in ancient Sith texts ...

Kylo had known Elias for so many years that he had forgotten the most basic principles of the Dark Side: "power to the strongest" and "never trust anyone."

"After your little speech about your new ambitions for the First Order, I went to pay a visit to our dear Armitage Hux," Elias spat. "He showed me this very interesting video of your performance against the Praetorian Guard alongside this girl. I must say that I did not expect him to be so useful to me. I think you underestimated the man. After that, I just organized a small viewing with our four comrades and voilà! The great Kylo Ren finally fell from his pedestal."

The face of the Sith had a cold determination. He stepped forward and the blade almost touched Ren's cheek. The latter, however, gave him a defiant look.

"Does Yehnu know that you killed his brother?"

"Because you think you'll have the opportunity to tell him?" Elias jeered.

Against all odds, he lowered his weapon and stepped back to where Bram's body lay on the ground, without losing sight of Kylo.

"I am impressed!" he smirked with sham admiration. "Force lightning? Wow! I did not expect that! Can you do it again?"

Kylo clenched his teeth, struggling to get up, and Elias laughed again.

The blond knight raised his hand and Bram's dead body was raised and held in the air as if it weighed nothing. With a gesture as unexpected as it was sadistic, Elias pierced his chest with the scarlet blade before letting the Arkanian's body fall like a rag doll.

Kylo flinched. He suddenly felt like throwing up. The young boy may have turned against him, but he certainly did not deserve to die like this.

"So sad!" he joked again. "I arrived too late!"

Elias then continued to play out his sordid comedy.

"When I burst into the room, you had just coldly executed Bram, and the others were about to meet the same fate at your hands! We fought and by the grace of the Dark Side, I defeated you. What do you think about my little story?"

Kylo winced as he reached the top of the steps leading to the throne. He was still trying to apply pressure to his abdominal injury, and Elias watched him do so with amusement.

"You are a traitor ..." Kylo said in a rattle.

"Pftttttt, Kylo…. You are not in a position to talk to me about treason."

At that moment, a squadron of stormtroopers burst into the room, guns in hand. Hux had finally sent troops to finish the job. Taking advantage of Elias' momentary distraction, Kylo gathered his last strength to lift the throne and throw it at the tall blond's face. But Elias was not surprised. He also used the Force to avoid being crushed by the imposing projectile. As a result, he released Ren's sword, and Kylo took the opportunity to get his weapon back.

A voice from the corridor shouted to open fire and the soldiers complied. The shots almost hit Elias who, furious, turned to propel the levitating metal seat in front of him onto the first row of troopers.

"Idiots!" he roared.

Kylo was finally able to reach the wall. He put his hand on one of the sliding panels to reveal what appeared to be an elevator shaft. He threw himself inside with the force of despair before the wall closed behind him.

"No!" Elias yelled as Kylo disappeared.

The knight rushed to the top of the promontory and tried in vain to move the wall again, without success. Then he went straight to the holocom and activated it.

"To all hangars, no ships are authorized to leave the Finalizer. General Hux's orders!" he shouted.

"All the transports are nailed to the ground, Sir," one of the technicians replied.

Suddenly, through the panoramic window of the room, Elias saw a shuttle speeding away from the destroyer.

"Damn it! What did I just tell you, you hopeless incompetent! I can see from here that a ship is leaving!"

"My apologies, Sir, but that shuttle is not part of any loading dock. It was actually docked on a deck below where you are. "

Elias let out a cry of rage and punched the holocom so hard that the console cracked. He then saw Ren's shuttle go into hyperspace, permanently out of reach of the Finalizer.

OooooO

Author's note :

OK. Now we know why Kylo was on Hoth, bleeding and desperate.
The next chapter will take place after a four month time jump.
Bendemption is on the good way.
I hope you will enjoy it but as no one leaves reviews, I do not know what to think. If you like this story, please please, leave me some comments! Or tell me what I have to improve ! ;-)))))

xoxo