Chapter Nine – Ren and Rey

Kylo Ren returned to his quarters after hearing Phasma's story. After entering he turned to look for a moment at Darth Vader's helmet on the pedestal. He removed his own helmet and dropped it to the floor after giving it a long look in turn. He had rebuilt it in the months after Crait. He had felt the fear he had once inspired in his subordinates weakening. His hold on the First Order as Supreme Leader had been tenuous at the start and he had needed every advantage he could find, so he put the mask on again. How different things would have been if Rey had simply accepted his offer and gone with him. 'You would have killed your mother for real,' a voice in his mind said. The voice had been growing for years. At first he had fought it, as a sign of his weakness. Then, having failed to silence it, he had simply tried to ignore it. But it was right. If Rey had joined him the First Order would have wiped out the Resistance, and he would have truly killed his mother. Instead she died of some idiotic condition that struck her down like she wasn't Leia Organa, the woman who had shaped the galaxy. Kylo's lip curled as he thought of it, but the voice said, 'At least you didn't kill her.' The voice always made him think of Rey, and it was, he reasoned, as good a time to contact her as any. He reached out with his mind, pushing his awareness beyond the room, the ship or even the system, knowing it would find her quickly. "Rey," he said out loud.

Sitting in the cockpit of her new Naboo ship, Rey heard Kylo's call and looked up from the control panel. She turned to R2, who was hooked into the ship's system, and said, " R2, keep an eye on the ship."

"Mistress Rey, might I ask, where are we going?" C-3PO asked.

As she walked out of the cockpit and into the seating area of the ship she said, "I'm going to find out."

When the door to the cockpit closed behind her, Rey closed her eyes and said, "Ben?"

Just then it seemed to Rey as though she heard, from behind her, snippets of a song. The song sounded familiar, and she felt as though she could identify it if she could only hear a bit more of it. Far away, Kylo Ren heard a man's voice coming from behind him. He too thinks the sound is a familiar one. As they turned, it seemed to each that they saw the other in their actual location first, before the ships in which they stood dissolved and were replaced with a room neither of them had ever been in. It was, though neither knew it, the sitting room in Padme Amidala's Coruscant apartment, just as it was when she lived there. Through the windows they could see the Coruscant skyline lit up by the soft golden light of either dusk or dawn, though no ships could be seen.

Kylo was the first to break through their shared shock by asking, "Is this where you are?

"What?" Rey asked, not seeming to have registered what Kylo had actually said.

"This room," he said, "is this where you are?" He walked over to one of the windows and looked out of it. "What is this? Coruscant?"

Rey, still not processing the questions being asked, turned slowly around, taking in everything she was seeing. She took a few steps to the nearest couch, dragging her fingers gently across its fabric. She did the same with the table between the couches, the side table and the lamp sitting on it.

"No," Kylo said, answering his own question, "there would be thousands of ships going by. But it's Coruscant, it has to be. I can see the Senate building, and the ruins of the Temple."

"You aren't here," Rey insisted.

Mistaking her statement for a question Kylo responded with, "I am on my ship. Where are you?"

"I'm…I am on a ship too," she said.

Kylo looked around at the apartment, trying to figure out what was happening, before finally giving in and saying, "So…this is a new development."

When he turned his head back to look at Rey, she appeared shaken, as though she were barely able to keep herself standing. When her eyes met his he felt as though he could see through them, right to the center of her. Something had shocked her enough to tear all her barriers down. Kylo was at first surprised at her reaction. Certainly they had never, in all their astral conversations, appeared to each other somewhere neither of them actually were, but he did not see why this should affect her so. Finally, her mouth trembling a bit as she prepared to speak, she asked, "Are you doing this?"

"What?" Kylo asked, taken aback. "No."

"Ben, I mean it, if you are doing this you need to tell me," she said tremulously.

"Rey, I'm not. I wouldn't know how," Kylo replied.

Rey nodded, glad to have something make sense, which his answer did. "Do you know where this is? You said it was Coruscant?" she asked.

Kylo looked back out the window and said, "The skyline looks like Coruscant. But there are over a trillion people on Coruscant, so I guess it can't be."

Rey, her voice trembling, said, "I used to dream about this place."

Kylo turned back to her and asked, "When?"

"On Jakku," she answered. "When I was little. I used to dream of this place. This room. Those buildings in the distance. That sunrise."

"Sounds like a boring dream," Kylo said, smirking.

Rey ignored his sarcasm. In fact she made no sign she heard what he said at all. "There was a man and a woman in the dream," she said. "I used to think they were my parents. That I was dreaming about my parents."

"I doubt very much your parents ever had an apartment on Coruscant. Unless they got way more money for you than I thought," Kylo said. When Rey still did not respond to him, he asked, "So this is your memory we are in? A memory of a dream? What happened in these dreams?"

"We would dance," she said with a smile. "The man and I would dance."

This answer disturbed Kylo greatly. A mixture of absurd jealousy and protectiveness forced their way into his expression. "Dance?" he asked.

"Not together. Not with each other. He would show me a dance, and I would copy him," Rey explained. "The woman would sit and watch. I remember that she was very beautiful. She never spoke though. I think she would sing…"

"But the man spoke?" Kylo asked.

Rey remembered those dreams, which she had not thought of for years. She remembered her little hands and feet going through the motions she had seen in the dream. When she thought about it now, she realized how close the movements seemed to things she had been taught by Leia. She remembered the man, tall and lean, standing behind her, moving as she moved, guiding her gently with words and an occasional brief touch on the elbow or shoulders. She remembered his voice, deep and soothing. "Just a bit," she said in response to Kylo's question. "He would give me little instructions, talk me through what I was supposed to do. Sometimes he would say 'Well done Rey.' I would always wake up so happy from those dreams."

"And this woman, she would just watch you?" Kylo asked.

"She would watch me and smile. She had the kindest smile, but her eyes…they were always very sad," Rey said, smiling sadly herself.

Something about what Rey said sounded familiar to Kylo Ren, like a part of some story he had not heard for so long he could remember neither who told him to it, nor what the story was about. Shaking his head at his own lack of focus he asked, "You haven't had that dream for a while, you said?

"Not for years. Many years," Rey answered.

"Well while this is honestly very interesting, we need to talk," Kylo said.

Rey felt the wonder at this surprise dissipate, replaced by a wary determination as she remembered why she had wanted to speak to Kylo in the first place. "Yes, we do," she said.

"I need you to call the Resistance off. I know they are coming for us, and I need you to hold them back," Kylo said.

Rey sat down on the couch with a weary expression on her face and shook her head as she said, "No, Ben."

Moving to stand between Rey and the couch opposite her Kylo continued, "It would just for a little while. I'm not asking you to call off the whole war. I just need some time."

"Time to what Ben? To finish some superweapon you've been working on for years?" she asked, somewhat mockingly.

"What? No. We can barely keep our ships flying," he said. He had started to pace nervously, as he worked himself up to share with Rey the topic that had been dominating his mind for a long time.

"What then?" Rey asked.

"There's a question I need answered, and I can't answer it if I am dead, on the run, or in a New Republic prison," Kylo replied.

Rey put her face in her hands and rested her arms on her knees before she asked, "Really? What's this question?" She was tired of Kylo's refusal to let go of what she had considered for years a foolish dream of galactic conquest, and anticipated that she was about to get another expression of that stubborn refusal.

"It's nothing that can hurt the Resistance, or the New Republic, or any of your friends," Kylo said, attempting to reassure her as he continued to pace in front of her.

Rather than being reassured, Rey was simply annoyed. She stood up so abruptly that Kylo stopped pacing, then said, "Just tell me the question Ben!"

"Snoke," he said.

Rey gave Kylo a quizzical look and then asked, "What about Snoke?"

"Who was he? Where did he come from? What was he trying to do?" Kylo asked.

"You're telling me you don't already know the answers to those questions?" Rey asked in a combination of surprise and anger.

"I thought I did, once. But now…," Kylo trailed off.

"You followed this man, betrayed your family, killed your father, all for him," Rey asks, "and you don't know who he was or what he wanted?"

Slightly annoyed by Rey's response, Kylo looked around the room aimlessly while she spoke and replied with, "You forgot that I also don't know where he came from."

"Is this some kind of joke? Are you having me on?" Rey asked, genuinely unsure what the answer was. "Can you be serious?"

I am serious," Kylo insisted. "I used to think he was just some Force user from the unknown regions, and that he was hiding until after Palpatine died. He told me he wanted to bring order to the galaxy. That I was key to establishing that order."

"And now?" Rey asked.

"Now I don't know," Kylo answered.

"He's been dead five years Ben. What's so important now?" she asked.

Kylo sat down on the couch behind him, leaving Rey standing above him. He thought about his answer for a while and then said, "Five years ago, that was the last time I heard my grandfather's voice."

"What?" Rey said, flabbergasted at the apparent change of topic.

"Since I was a boy, I would hear the voice of Darth Vader. It started as a whisper. At night. This was before I even knew he was my grandfather. My mother and Luke tried to keep that truth from me as long as they could. It was my father that told me," Kylo said, the clear disgust in his voice when he said his uncle's name turning to pain when he mentioned Han. "I had been showing so much interest in Vader. It made my mother so scared, and I didn't understand why. Then my father told me the truth. He took me flying, just him and me. No Chewbacca. And there I was sitting in the Falcon, in Chewie's seat, and he lays it all on me."

For a moment, despite himself, Kylo Ren smiles at the memory, before another memory, of his father falling into the depths of Starkiller Base replaces it and his smile fades. "After that I was mad for relics of Vader's. I tried to find everything I could. And every little thing of his that I would acquire, the voice got stronger."

Rey, now interested, sat down opposite Kylo and asked, "What did the voice say?"

"That my mother and Luke were weak. That they had the power to do what was necessary, what was right, but that they refused to use it. That he had brought order to the galaxy but that they were letting it slip away. That it would be up to me to set things right again," Kylo said. "As time went on it grew more and more insistent. While I was training it told me Luke was lying. Told me that the Jedi code was a straitjacket. That he had left the Jedi behind and that I should as well."

"Luke said he saw terrible things in your mind. Things you had already done," Rey said hesitantly.

"When did he see this?" Kylo asked with mock curiosity, "Before he tried to kill me?"

"Before whatever happened that night," Rey said, trying to be diplomatic.

"He was wrong. I hadn't killed anyone. I would think about it though. Killing all the parasites, the corrupt politicians. Couldn't stop thinking about it really. But I never did any of it. Not until after," Kylo said darkly.

Rey thought for a moment while Kylo looked at the floor. "And then after you killed Snoke, the voice stopped? Have you considered…," she started to ask.

Kylo looked to the sky and rolled his eyes. "Of course the voice was Snoke all along! I know that now!"

"Why are you getting mad at me?" Rey shouted, her temper flaring up. "And what does all this have to do with anything? What happened to letting the past die?"

"I tried. It turns out the past doesn't let go of you just because you let go of it," Kylo shot back.

"What does that mean?" Rey said, exasperated at his grandiosity.

"The thing you have to ask yourself is how did he know I was Vader's grandson?" Kylo said, ignoring both Rey's question and her frustration. "Most of the galaxy had no idea Darth Vader was Anakin Skywalker. Who did? My parents? Luke? My dad probably told Chewbacca. So a pair of smugglers, and the two people Snoke lived in constant fear of, two people he did everything he could to stay away from. Who did he hear it from?"

Rey leaned back on the couch, clearly a little annoyed at being forced into this conversation at all. "I am sure there were people who figured it out."

"Who?" Kylo asks dismissively.

"I don't know, the surviving Jedi maybe. Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi. The Emperor had to know, maybe he told people," Rey said.

"I thought that for a time too. Maybe Kenobi or Palpatine told people. Then from there the story spreads. Snoke hears the story, wants a powerful apprentice, so he goes looking for me. There's just one problem. No one but Snoke knew. Stories don't spread to just one person, they spread to lots of people. How did the truth get from that small group of people who knew my grandfather to just one other person?" Kylo said.

"You think Snoke knew Vader?" Rey asked, now more interested.

"Knew him well enough to know who his children were?" Kylo asked skeptically. "Vader himself didn't know until the last few years of his life. It's a very short list of people who could have had that information. But the list gets narrowed down by the fact that the first thing Snoke did, after contacting the First Order, is make a trip to Endor, to the ruins of the Death Star. To retrieve something."

"To retrieve what?" Rey asked, not fully engrossed.

Rey's interest fueled a kind of intensity in Kylo, who stood up dramatically and walked grandly towards the window. "I don't know, but my guess is that Palpatine made a Holocron. An ancient information storage device, that can only be accessed by a Force user."

Rey stood up and followed him towards the window, speaking to his back as she said, "I know what those are. The old Jedi texts mention them. They say the secret of making them was lost tens of thousands of years ago."

Kylo turned towards her, hands behind his back, and said, "The Sith knew how. Holocrons carry more than just information, Rey. They can carry a replica of the Force User that made them. One that can talk to you, interact with you. One that still has the personality and the goals of the person who made it. One made by Palpatine." After pausing for effect he said, "So you see, the past doesn't let us go."

Something about the way Kylo put it triggered a memory in Rey, and her face darkened. "Your past. Not mine. Right?" she said. "Because I'm no one. Nothing. That's what you said."

"Yes," he said, it now being his turn to be bewildered at a change in subject.

"And you weren't lying to me? I just showed up out of nowhere. Random nobody parents, but I dreamed of this place before I ever knew I could use the Force. Without having ever gone to Coruscant or seen a picture of it," she asked skeptically.

"I didn't lie to you Rey. I don't know why we are seeing each other in one of your old dreams, but I didn't lie to you. I looked in your mind. I saw the memories you had forgotten, that you had chosen to forget. You parents were trash. They are beneath your consideration or worry. You should be happy that they don't matter," Ren said firmly.

"I don't want my parents to be nothing! I don't want my past to not matter!" Rey shouted.

Kylo leaned forward and yelled back, "You know what comes of your past mattering? Your life becomes nothing but the consequences of decisions other people made! I had to lead the next generation of Jedi because my mother was a Skywalker! She and Luke had to defeat their father. It was the task they were born for, because of who their parents were. Anakin Skywalker came from nothing, and he reshaped the galaxy, because he was free. He had no past to weigh him down, to shackle him to someone else's fate!"

"He plunged the galaxy into darkness! He lost everyone who cared about him and died full of regret. And now you are making the same decisions he did. If you want to free yourself from your past then stop doing the same things he did," she said.

"I'm trying! Vader let his freedom go! Let himself become Palpatine's pawn! But he overcame it! He broke free! Just like I will!" he shouted, beating the chest by the end.

"He broke free by saving someone he loved," Rey said. "But you don't have that do you? You don't have anyone you love. Not enough to actually change for."

Kylo shook his head angrily as he replied, "I am trying to tell you that Palpatine might be behind all of this, the First Order, the war. Controlling me, controlling all of us. And you are acting like some lovesick child!"

"I left my friends behind, because I wanted to help you. But you don't care about that. You don't care how long the war lasts; you don't care about how it affects anyone else. All you care about is your precious freedom," Rey said.

"You've never had your freedom taken from you!" Kylo said, almost spitting in rage. "I couldn't just be a boy, because my uncle decided I was too strong to go untrained. So I was ripped away from my friends and my family to go live at some Academy at the edge of the galaxy. And Snoke whispered in my ear for years, putting thoughts in my head, just like he put them in yours, because of my bloodline. And when those thoughts scared my uncle, made him think I would end up too much like his father, he tried to kill me! And because I dared to defend myself I was cast out! I had nowhere to turn but my family's enemies!"

"But you are leading those enemies now! And I am just asking you to stop," Rey replied.

"Why? Why do you care? Who are you doing this for? Is this some kind of debt you owe to my mother and Luke? Turn me back as a way to repay them? What did they do for you, besides involve you in a fight that wasn't yours? Or is it for me? You want to do this for me. Why?" Kylo asked. When Rey didn't response but simply set her jaw and glared at him, he continued, "You think I am lying to you. You think your own memories are lying to you. You think your parents were something else, something grand. Why? So that you can have a destiny? Just another word for chains. Make your own choices!"

"I have," she said. "I chose this fight. To fight the First Order."

The two stared at each other for several seconds before Kylo, his voice calmer, said, "Then come fight me." Then he closed his eyes and opened them to see his own quarters. He walked to the wall, pressed a button for the intercom and said, "Prep my ship and tell General Pride that once he is prepared, he is to execute his plan."

Rey opened her eyes to see the seating area in the Naboo ship, and walked to the cockpit. Once there she said, "R2, set course for Endor."