Chapter Three – Anakin's Reservations
It had taken the better part of a day to get the moisture farm squared away, and the whole of the next day to get out to where Rey had hidden Luke's old X-Wing. After a day spent on dewback she worked until the following morning getting the ship operational again. The trip there she made alone. Anakin re-appeared once she had climbed to the top of the mesa where she had placed the X-Wing, and watched as she lifted the boulders she had stacked around it.
"Why didn't you just sell this thing when you got here?" Anakin asked as she started an inspection of the ship to see what repairs would have to be made.
"This is your son's ship," she said exasperatedly.
"I know," he said.
"Oh I forgot about that time you tried to kill him while he was flying it," Rey said under her breath.
"That's not fair," Anakin said, his veneer of placidity breaking. "I didn't know it was him."
"No, it could have been any brave freedom fighter trying to prevent you from committing genocide a second time that day," Rey replied.
Anakin, deciding to change the subject, said, "This ship is decades out of date. Do they even make these anymore?"
"It's the ship I have!" Rey yelled.
"I am just saying if you had sold it, especially considering it's a collector's item, you could then have bought a much better ship," Anakin said.
"Next you're going to say I should have sold the Falcon," Rey said while pulling some corroded wires out of the left engine.
"Who would even buy that piece of junk?" Anakin said dismissively.
"So many people!" Rey yelled. "That ship is in a museum on Coruscant. People from across the galaxy come to visit it. Thousands every day!"
"The rebels should have been embarrassed to be seen in that thing," Anakin replied.
"Got away from you well enough in it, didn't they?" Rey muttered.
"No. No they didn't. I let them go from the Death Star. I caught them again at Bespin, let them go again, and if I had been in command of the fleet at Endor, believe me, there would have been no more Millennium Falcon," Anakin said huffily.
"Just so I'm clear," Rey said as she looked for replacement wires in her pack, "you are now wishing the Empire had won?"
"Of course not," Anakin said as he watched Rey climb back up on the X-Wing, "though I will say if things had worked out where Luke and I killed Palpatine and then I took command of the Imperial Forces, lots of things would have been better."
Rey looked up, genuinely surprised now. "What would you have done, if you hadn't…died?"
"I would have ordered the Imperial Forces to stand down. I would have eliminated any commander who defied me. None of this Grand Admiral Thrawn or General Hux nonsense. We could have integrated the Rebel leadership into the Imperial government; slowly transitioned back to Republican institutions. I could have purged the military of the bad eggs," Anakin said. "No Imperial Remnant, no First Order, no Final Order."
"That's interesting," Rey said as she rewired the engine. "Not the self-aggrandizement, but the idea that the key was to keep the Imperial fleet from breaking up. You really think that would work?"
"I think it would have worked," Anakin said pointedly.
"If you aren't going to get on board with this idea, why are you still hanging about?" Rey asked before putting a flashlight between her teeth so she could hold it in place while she reached into the right engine.
"Just use the Force to hold it in place," Anakin said exasperatedly while shaking his ethereal head.
"Dimm ol huh uh lul ern," Rey said around the flashlight.
"I refuse to participate in this," Anakin said.
Rey took the flashlight out of her mouth and gave Anakin a sour look. "This is how I learned to fix things. It's just second nature."
"And now you don't have to do it," Anakin said, shaking his head again.
"Fine," Rey said, levitating the flashlight above the engine. "Now answer my question. What are you doing here if you aren't going to help me?"
"I am going to help you, by convincing you that this is a bad idea," he said.
"No you're not," she said simply.
"Because you will not listen," Anakin said.
"No, because you don't have a better alternative," Rey said as she closed the engine up. "And now I think we are ready to go."
"The alternative is to simply go on as you have been, training those you can rely on, sending them out to find and train others. The new Jedi Order will grow organically, distributed across the galaxy, decentralized, like the Rebellion was. There won't be a single point at which a future enemy will be able to strike and wipe them out. Over time they will bring peace to the galaxy," Anakin said as Rey slid down off the wing.
"No, that won't work," Rey said as she took a last look around the ship.
"I am simply repeating your plan back to you," Anakin said as he looked on.
"My old plan. My new one is better," Rey said as she started to climb up the ladder to the cockpit.
"Your new one doesn't even make sense. You have no idea whether the attempt itself is possible, and you don't know what the consequences of success would be, because there is no evidence anyone has even tried what you intend, much less succeeded," Anakin said.
"I have to do something," Rey said after sitting in the cockpit. The combative tone to her voice was gone. She sounded more tired than anything else, worn down by the years spent on Tatooine.
"You have been doing something," Anakin said.
"And for all we know my former padawans will die before they teach padawans of their own. The galaxy is a dangerous place, and getting more so every year. Maybe they get sick, maybe they die in a war. Or maybe the Sith, or something like them, come again and wipe them all out. I took the slow and steady path because I thought it was the only way, but it isn't. I can do this. But I need you to believe that I can, because I need your help," she said. "Please Anakin. I can't…I can't let it end this way."
Anakin considered her words and looked out onto the twin suns setting on the horizon, as he had done as a child, as his son had done. He turned back to Rey and said, "I will meet you on Mustafar." Then he disappeared.
Rey nodded, to herself as much as anyone else. The canopy descended and she sighed, thinking of how much more tiresome the journey would be without an astromech droid with her. She took off and flew low for a while before heading to space. She knew that if she was successful she would likely never see Tatooine again. She jumped to hyperspace shortly after leaving the atmosphere.
