Chapter Twenty Five – Hero of the Republic

Rey sat alone in the apartment on Coruscant, looking out at the ships and flying cars passing by. The sun was high in the sky, and the height of the apartment building meant she could see for miles, with only the smog eventually reducing the skyline of the world city to an indistinct haze. Looking out the window, even with the intrusion of reality in the form of people flying from place to place, made this place feel familiar, in a way the furniture and décor didn't quite. The residents of the apartment after Padme Amidala had been Senators from another system, and, Rey guessed from the furniture, not quite human sized. Finn had done some digging and found that the apartment had stayed empty for several years after Padme Amidala's death, seemingly because no one had wanted to take over a space associated with someone who was both a political opponent of Palpatine when he was Chancellor, but also the second most famous native of his home world. The political valence of such a move being unclear the Senatorial elites stayed away from it, despite how in demand the building was in general. Eventually though, as Senator Amidala's name faded into history and Palpatine showed no public interest in Naboo, the apartment started renting out again. Rey walked out towards he balcony, the brown robe she wore over her plain white tunic and pants from her days on Jakku swaying slightly as she did so. On the balcony the place looked the most like it had in her dreams. She stood there for a moment basking in the warmth of the Coruscant sun, watching the ships go by, until she heard the elevator door open.

Rey turned and walked back towards the sitting area in the apartment, where she found Poe and Finn waiting for her. Each wore the formal military garb of the New Republic, both festooned with medals the Senate had fallen over itself to bestow upon them. Shortly, Rey knew, Finn planned to put his military position aside and take up his role as official Senatorial legate to the decommissioned soldiers of the now defunct First Order. The Stormtrooper who had joined the Resistance would represent and protect his fellow victims of kidnapping and brainwashing as they were brought into future as equal citizens. That this would be how the First Order soldiers would be handled once victory had been achieved had been something Leia had demanded as soon as victory looked likely, and the initially skeptical Senate had to be strong armed into accepting it as a condition of their adoption of the Resistance fleet. Rey sometimes wondered whether she had done it more out of her respect for Finn and what his actions implied about the state and possibilities of other First Order soldiers, and how much of it was about her wish that somehow that forgiveness could be extended to Ben.

In the aftermath of the fall of the First Order and the events on Naboo there had been something of an incident concerning what to do with Ben Solo. Rey had woken up in the medical bay to find that Ben was being kept sedated in the brig. Poe had told her at the time that it was the best compromise he could reach with the members of the Senate who wanted him imprisoned and then executed. Rey had visiting the sleeping Ben every day as Poe found reasons to delay the fleet's arrival on Coruscant. First he told the Senate he was engaged in scouting operations to make sure there were no stragglers from the First Order fleet still loose. Then he had told them that interrogations of the captured First Order officers were taking longer than expected. Then he had told them, truthfully this time, that mustering out the roughly 70% of the fleet that wished to go home once the war was over was turning out to be a logistical operation that required all his attention. All the while he was pushing to get the Senate to back down on Ben's punishment. He was aided in this by the elderly, but still tremendously influential, Mon Mothma. Between Poe's incredible popularity and Mon's combination of stature and political savvy they eventually got the Senate to accept the necessity of a public trial. After that agreement had been publicly announced Mon had slowly spread the news that Ben Solo would surely both tell the story of his role in defeating the last of the First Order fleet, and identify any Senators, past or present, whose actions, whether through corruption or stupidity, had played a role in allowing the First Order to grow. As she had expected this lead to significant behind the scenes pressure to get the trial delayed, and a narrative was spread throughout the galactic media stressing Ben's role in ending the First Order, killing Snoke and cancelling all projects designed to produce world killing weapons the First Order was still cooking up. The motion to set the date for the trial had been tabled and then forgotten about with an efficiency that was not common for the Senate. When Rey had asked the pair of leaders why they had done it Poe had gruffly said, "For Leia," and Mon had simply launched into stories about her early friendship with Padme Amidala, who despite being a bit younger than Mon herself had been, because of her more eventful life, something of a mentor and inspiration to Mon. Mon had capped the story off with, "So no, I don't think I will be allowing anyone to bury her grandson."

It was as the preparations were nearing completion that Finn had entered medbay and, with a great deal of concentration, turned the machine delivering sedatives to Ben off, and then left. The cameras in the medical bay could only document that Finn had entered and left without going anywhere near Ben Solo's bed. That the sedatives turned off while he was in the room was certainly suspicious, but someone would have had to bring those suspicions to General Dameron, and it was made very clear how unwelcome that would be. Rey had not asked Finn why he did it, nor did she plan to. She knew the answer. She had, after waking up herself, found that she could remember what she had done while she had been under Palpatine's control. She could remember attacking Chewie, and she could remember her duel with Ben. She had told Finn that there had been opportunities for Ben to be more aggressive, and at least one moment where he could have killed her, but had chosen not to. There was no point forcing Finn to say out loud what he had done, given the bitterness he still held in his heart for Ben Solo. Rey was confident her tale had something to do with Poe's efforts to keep Ben Solo alive.

Waking up in an otherwise empty medical bay an hour or so later, Ben had silently slipped away, taking the Falcon, C-3PO and R2-D2 with him. The security cameras showed him making his way to the hangar bay and finding the droids waiting for him. Subsequent analysis of the computer system showed that R2 had been monitoring Ben's condition and that the two had set out to the Falcon as soon as the sedatives had been cut off. They had belonged to the Skywalkers in one form or another for their entire existence, and it was fitting, Rey thought, that they should accompany Ben on his journey. Poe and Finn had agreed to that part, though the Falcon was another matter.

"I'm just saying, I never got a chance to fly it, is all," Poe was saying to Finn as he turned to smile at Rey. The argument about the Falcon had continued off and on in the days since Ben's escape. Poe had not objected to Finn releasing Ben, but had objected to the Falcon not being locked down first.

"I never got a chance to fly it either," Finn said.

"Yeah, but I'm the head of the Resistance, and it's the most famous ship in the history of the Resistance. Doesn't that seem a little strange to you?" Poe responded, turning back to Finn.

"I agree," Finn said smiling, "It is strange that you are the head of the Resistance."

"I walked in to that one," Poe said nodding as Rey walked towards him.

"Yep," Finn said.

Rey grinned at the pair of them and Finn said, "It's odd to be here for real."

"It was nice of the current owners to let me use it," Rey said.

Poe shrugged and said, "I didn't exactly stress it being optional." Rey shook her head and smiled. Seeing this Poe continued, "What? They barely live here anyway. They spend most of the year on Corellia. Mon Mothma knows them."

The three of them walked towards the elevator. As Finn and Poe entered, Rey stopped to take a last look around before she followed. Once gone from the apartment the three settled into silence as Rey thought about what she was about to have to do, and Poe and Finn tried to give her some time to herself. The very short elevator ride ended at the top of the building, and the doors opened to reveal an open air transport waiting for them. Rose waited on board for them, looking resplendent in her own uniform. She would shortly take Finn's spot as Poe's second in command and had been honored by the Senate almost to the same degree as the two of them. But she still wore her crescent necklace proudly over the uniform. She smiled at the three of them as they entered the transport. Poe walked up to the front to join her, and Finn and Rey moved to the back as they took off.

"I don't think I can do this again," Rey said quietly to Finn as they looked out over the city moving beneath them.

"This one will be easier," Finn reassured her.

They didn't make me speak at the last one," Rey said. "I shouldn't be speaking at this one."

"It wasn't your fault," Finn insisted as he put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

Rey did not answer, but just looked out at Coruscant as the transport settled into a lane all its own, free from other cars and ships. She turned her head to look towards the front of the car and saw the Senate house as they approached it. As they passed by it she could see the thousands of people standing around it, filling every inch of the great plaza. There were similar crowds on the floating platforms beneath them, and she could see the windows of the buildings full of faces of every variety, all watching as the leaders of the Resistance flew by. Rey patted Finn's hand and then began to walk forward to join Poe and Rose. Before them the ruins of the Jedi Temple were growing rapidly closer.

Their car landed in front of the Temple, near the front stairway. Surrounding the landing area and the walkway that led into the Temple were more people. All the surviving members of the Alliance joined all the remaining members of the Resistance fleet were there, surrounding and filling the Temple. The discipline of these men and women was such that as Rey and the others disembarked all that could be heard was the traffic. Rey walked in front, with Poe, Finn and Rose following close behind, into the Temple. This would soon be her place, Rey knew, but she had still initially argued against walking in front as they entered. The place of honor should, she thought, have been given to someone who had never betrayed them, had never gotten others killed because of their foolishness. As the group entered the Temple, Poe pressed a button on his wrist communicator and a signal went out to the entire world of Coruscant. All the cars and ships came to a halt in the sky. For the duration of the event, the hustle and bustle of the capital planet would grow quiet.

Rey looked up as she entered the Temple, and saw the sky above. Like the now destroyed palace on Naboo the Jedi Temple's roof had collapsed. In the years since the fall of the Galactic Empire, the public had been hard on the Imperial Palace that Palpatine had turned the former temple into. There had been a formal effort to remove and destroy all the Imperial symbols from the Temple in the first few years of the New Republic's existence. Many on Coruscant had been hopeful, when they heard of Luke's new Jedi Order, that the Temple would once again serve as the Order's headquarters. This in turn, they had hoped, would put pressure on the New Republic government to move the capital there permanently. But those hopes were dashed, as so many hopes of that era had been. Over time, as it first became clear that Luke was not housing the Jedi Order there, and then after it had been wiped out, the Temple fell into ruin. The somewhat hasty repair job done on it after the post-Imperial rioting and looting had turned out to be inadequate and much of the structure would, Rey knew, need to be rebuilt. But it would be rebuilt along different lines than before. Much about the new Jedi would be different.

As their party proceeded towards the center of the building, Rey noted those in attendance. Some she was familiar with from the Resistance, but others she knew only from holo-recordings and stories. Among the latter were some whose assistance she hoped to have in the years to come. She saw Ezra Bridger along with his Mandalorian consort Sabine Wren. Standing nearby them was General Hera Syndulla and her son Jacen, whose own daughter seemed to be devoting her whole self to not fidgeting. Behind them she could see the distinctive montrals of Ahsoka Tano, with whom she had spoken several times over the previous few days. On the other side of the walkway she saw Mon Mothma, who stood despite having been offered a hover chair. Standing by her side was General Wedge Antilles, who, despite retirement, had donned his old Rebel uniform for the day's events, just as he had for Leia's funeral a few short weeks before.

Between her and the platform to which she was headed there stood a Wookie honor guard, arranged so as to surround a large patch of exposed soil. Rey was reminded of Leia's funeral on Alderaan, where, because of the continued danger of First Order raids and the small space, many people on Coruscant that day had been unable to join them. The platform itself floated above the area of soil the Wookies guarded. Near to the steps to the platform she saw Lando Calrissian, and had to smile at how expensive his apparel looked. He could buy a dozen Corellian freighters with what it cost him to outfit himself for the day, but of course there was only one Corellian freighter he had any interest in, and unlike Poe he had no objections to its current whereabouts. As she passed by him, Lando gave her a little wink and a smile. The Wookies made no sound, but merely stood in place with their various weapons held in front of them.

Poe, Finn and Rose followed Rey up the steps, but once on the platform fell back as Rey stepped in front of the floating microphone that waited for her there. Before starting to speak Rey looked down at the little sapling that had already pushed its way up and out of the soil. She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and lifted it so she could read from it while speaking into the microphone. The paper shook along with her hand as she tried to calm herself.

At last she decided she wasn't ever going to feel ready to give this eulogy, so she just started, "As many of you know, this is not the first ceremony that has been held in honor of our friend Chewbacca. His life was first celebrated, and passing mourned, fittingly, on his home planet of Kashyyyk, the world from which he was so long separated. But today there are celebrations happening across the galaxy, and to each one of them the Wookies of Kashyyyk, the people of the trees, have given a wroshyr sapling." Rey gestured at the sapling and then tried to find her place again on the page. She could hear how stilted and formal her speech sounded and the pause had done nothing but increase her nervousness about it. She looked at the page but the words written there had all run together. She realized while looking at it that the words didn't matter. She had spent the last several days trying to get them right, and knew she had not gotten there. So she lowered the paper and looked out over the vast crowd.

"I don't know many of you. Most of you did not know Chewie. Most of us who did know him didn't know him long. It's odd that Chewie is today being thought of by so many people he never met. Odd that he is being remembered as the last of the great Heroes of the Old Republic. Odd because I don't think he ever meant to fight for the Republic. Chewie didn't fight for abstractions or governments. He fought to defend his home. He fought to protect his friends. He had no special powers, he had no grand destiny. He did not need them, for he had a loyal and warm heart. A heart open to all, and full of love for those who deserved it and for many of us who did not," she said. Lando looked up at Rey and grinned wistfully at the line about friends who did not deserve Chewie.

"And it is true that he did great things. But he did not do them because of an ideology, or some great plan. He did them because his friends were in danger, and he would not abandon them. And he made those of us who knew him capable of more than we thought possible, for we knew that Chewie would always be there. We knew that whatever else might happen Chewie would love us, protect us and forgive us. That he would give all he had for us. When the day finally came when Chewie had to sacrifice it all, he did. He saved a girl, a scavenger from Jakku, from her own mistakes...and the son of his greatest friend from the legacy of his own sins. Without hesitation. Because of his love for his friends."

Rey paused, knowing that mentioning Ben was something she was supposed to avoid, but not caring. New beginnings should be honest affairs, she thought. She looked down at the tree and continued, "If our New Republic is going to survive it will take people like Chewbacca. It will take people who preserve the bonds of friendship and love, who tend to them and keep them strong, as we will tend to this tree. These trees are said to live for thousands of years, and to grow tall as buildings. It was decided to plant it here, in the ruins of the Jedi Temple, in the hope that under its branches new Jedi will one day walk, and train and love. I have been called the Last of the Jedi, but that is wrong. It is wrong because Chewbacca saved me. And while I hope to pass on what I have learned, what I was taught by those who came before, to found a new Jedi Order, that is not why Chewie saved me. He saved me because I was his friend, and he was mine. The old Jedi feared that kind of attachment, but here, under the shade of this tree, the new Jedi will live by the example of this Hero of the Republic. And I will sit and think of my friend."

Rey stepped away from the microphone and was greeted by silence. Then she felt Poe's firm clap on the back a second before the Wookies roared their approval of her words, a roar that shaded imperceptibly into a Wookie song of mourning, a mixture of triumph and grief. Hearing this the other attendees began to applaud and cheer.

Over the next few hours Rey would search out as many members of the old Alliance as she could. They shared their stories about Chewbacca, and Rey was shocked to find out that he had somehow been friends with Yoda, until a memory that wasn't truly hers of a night on Kashyyyk was called to her mind. As night fell, Rey slipped away from the crowd, just as she had done at Leia's funeral. Despite her weariness she climbed the steps to the old Jedi council chamber, now completely empty. She walked along the balcony and looked out onto the city, the light from which blocked out the stars. She thought about spending her days on this world, so different from Jakku. That brought her mind to another desert world and the one person she knew lived there. She closed her eyes and whispered, "Ben."

At the Lars homestead on Tatooine, Ben Solo was at that moment working to restore power to one of the scanners that surrounded the complex. There were still Sand People in the area, and they had gotten used to the moisture farm being empty. Ben's arrival had tempted them to more than one raid already. Ben had no fear of these raids, having already fought them off. But at some point one of the Sand People was going to get themselves killed, and besides, he needed a good night's sleep.

When, in his mind, he heard Rey's call, he smiled. He knew what was taking place that day on Coruscant. He had, without any but Rey knowing, attended Chewie's funeral on Kashyyyk. He had cried his tears for Chewbacca while sitting high the branches of a particularly old wroshyr tree. Trying something similar on Coruscant would have been dangerous, and besides, he thought to himself, that wasn't the real funeral anyway. But the ceremony did, he realized, mark the official beginning of the New Republic and the New Jedi Order, both to be headquartered once again on Coruscant. Soon Rey would be, in accordance with a law that was in the first package of bills being passed by the Senate later that day, starting the search for Force Sensitive children, and their parents. Her plan was for them all to move to Coruscant together, at the Republic's expense, if the family chose to let their child be trained. If not their child's identity would be noted by the Republic and they would be subject to light surveillance to ensure that their abilities were not misused. Rey did not want the new Jedi to grow up as she did, with no parents, with no connection to anyone outside the Order. They Jedi Order would be their school, and, if they chose, eventually their vocation. But they would not be seizing infants and trying to get them to live up to the goal of complete non-attachment. It had been Rey's attachments that had saved her from Palpatine, and her hunger for a family that had allowed him to trap her.

She had asked him to come with her. While there was a real concern that he would be arrested the moment he stepped foot on a New Republic world, that was not his real reason for declining. He had debts to pay, transgressions to make up for. He would start on Tatooine. That Luke had grown up at the Lars moisture farm was not its primary attraction for Ben. Owen Lars had been raised by his great-grandmother. He had taken responsibility for his nephew and kept him safe. In return he and his wife had been killed by the same power that Ben had placed himself in service to. It was by Owen and Beru Lars' sacrifice that Anakin Skywalker had eventually been redeemed. This place was their home, and so Ben had committed himself to rebuilding it. He could not bring back those who had become one with the Force, but he could start the process of clearing away the ruins left behind by him and those like him. If he could find some Lars cousins he thought he might contact them and give the farm to them when he was done fixing it up. If he couldn't then maybe he would just live there. After all, in a way it belonged to his family. He was, no matter how he felt about it, the inheritor of Luke's legacy.

And of course while he had refused to live in the Temple on Coruscant with Rey, at least for now, he had agreed to a part of her plan that would require him to have a home in a few years. Not only would the Jedi younglings have families, they would learn to live somewhere other than the capital. Rey would teach them, along with help from the remaining trained Force Sensitives like Ahsoka Tano, but at a certain age they would be sent to him. When they were strong enough in their commitment to the Light they would come to learn about the dangers of the Dark. He thought he would also probably teach them how to use a lightsaber properly.

But that was all years in the future. For now, the scanners needed to go up, and he needed to find a way to repair the vaporators. It was night on Coruscant, but on Tatooine the twin suns were still an hour or so from setting. In the house itself R2 was at work fixing some of the wiring, while C-3PO was either trying to look like he was sweeping away sand, or just failing to actually seep sand, Ben couldn't tell which. In the garage, the ghost of Anakin Skywalker watched as his and Padme's droids went about their business. He smiled at C-3PO's delicate fussiness and R2's steady efficiency. He walked across the bridge connecting the garage to the main house and then up the steps until he was on the surface. He looked down at the place where his son had grown up, and then over at the gravestones where his mother was buried next to her husband. There were two freshly dug graves there. Ben had found the remains of Owen and Beru Lars under the sand and then shaped two grave markers for them. Anakin's heart was heavy as he considered the cost of his mistakes for all around him. He was thankful that his family was back at that place.

The wind picked up shortly after Rey's brief message to Ben, and when he noticed it Ben put his hood up and gathered his tools, resigning himself to one more night without scanners. Anakin watched his grandson and felt the pride Ben had always wanted from him. Ben would do it, Anakin knew. He would set all things right again. He would ensure that the legacy of Anakin Skywalker was more than a tragedy. He could see in his grandson his mother's resoluteness, his father's resourcefulness, his uncle's wisdom, his grandfather's strength and, most importantly, his grandmother's compassion. They were finally present him, all at once. Anakin had done what he set out to do, all those years ago after Endor. It was time to go.

Anakin closed his eyes and say a vision of Rey training adolescents in the Jedi Temple, and of Ben training young adults on the sands of Tatooine. Then he saw the worshyr tree on Coruscant, full grown, its limbs stretching out past the roof of the Temple, which had been rebuilt around it, letting it grow as it would. Beneath the tree stood all the dead Jedi Anakin knew; Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan, Mace Windu, Yoda, and all the others. At the fore stood Luke and Leia. But with them were Chewbacca and Han standing with Leia. Owen and Beru Lars stood behind Luke. Behind her extended family, Anakin saw his mother as she was the day he left Tatooine. But in the front stood Padme, between her children, a hand outstretched towards Anakin.

As Ben walked towards the stairs down into the house his head was down to keep the sand from blowing in his face. As he approached Anakin's Force Ghost he looked up and saw him standing there smiling. Anakin reached up to touch his grandson's forehead. For a moment Ben saw all that Anakin saw, the tree, his family and all those who came before him, welcoming Anakin home at last. Standing next to Anakin inside the vision Ben turned to ask him what was happening when he saw Anakin turning into brilliant blue light, which melted into Ben.

Ben opened his eyes, to find the ghost of his grandfather gone. He turned his face to the wind and watched the twin suns set.