Chapter Eight – The Last Light of the Old Republic
The trip from Tython to Lothal was about as long as a hyperspace trip could be. Lothal was a more populated world than Tatooine, but Tatooine had the good fortune to be near many more important worlds. Lothal was close to nothing of contemporary importance. This had surely, Rey thought, been part of why the Empire had decided to use it as a base for a factory. Tuck the vital installation in some out of the way corner of the galaxy where there was almost no one to object, or resist. Anakin said there had been a Jedi Temple there in the past, but one of little importance. The Inquisitors had shown it to him when they had taken it from the rebel Jedi, but there had been nothing particularly interesting about it, to him or to Palpatine. Because of this lack of importance, Lothal was not on any major hyperspace routes. That in turn meant the trip would take long enough that Rey would have to stop over on a planet along the way to eat and refuel herself and the ship.
Despite the fact that it was not close to half the way to Lothal she decided to stop at Chandrilla. She was weary and did not want to sleep in the cockpit again. She also felt the need to take a break and think over what she had been told by the watcher in the stone, as she had started to call the lingering spirit of the first Jedi, at least to herself. She did not know if the spirit had been correct that she should perhaps be content with the world they had made, but she did know that the brief time she had spent in the woman's presence had left her soul feeling clean and calm, in a way it had not felt for some time. There was a wisdom in her stillness and a warmth in her watchfulness. She had reminded Rey of Leia. She wondered if the first Jedi would have reminded her of her mother, if Rey had ever really known her.
Despite her intention to stay awake, Rey slipped into unconsciousness again. In it she felt no wind, and heard no sound. She was standing atop something she could not see, and she waited. And while she waited she looked out over the stars, and the paths that stretched into eternity. At last the cub arrived, walking through the night, a shock of white against the darkness. He was lost, but he was used to that by now. She would show him the way. It was why she had come. It was why she had waited so very long there, alone in the hated darkness. But the cub would set things right. Everything was going to be alright.
Rey awoke from the dream with an uneasy feeling. It felt like when she would walk down the steps at the moisture farm on Tatooine and forget the last one, her foot anticipating the level surface and finding nothing. Her balance was thrown off and she could not tell why.
"Anakin?" she said, wondering whether he was listening. She waited for a while and heard no reply. Anxious for a reason she could not identify she turned on the comm system and tried to lock onto a broadcast frequency, but found everything a jumbled mess. Several of the dedicated New Republic frequencies had so many messages going through them that they were basically unusable, and more ominously several were simply silent. She turned the system back off, still tired despite her brief nap. She told herself she was simply feeling off for waking up too suddenly. She decided that she was close enough to Chandrilla that she should just prepare for landing.
It was a world that Rey had never visited before, and she had thought that perhaps it would help to see something new, some world she and Poe and Finn had saved. When she dropped out of hyperspace a pleasant looking blue green world greeted her. There were several orbital spaceports but she decided she wanted real ground beneath her feet for a while, so she flew down to the surface. She landed her ship at a makeshift spaceport on the outskirts of Hanna City, wanting to avoid the commotion her arrival would cause in the capitol. The manager of the spaceport she used had a disreputable air about him, and no doubt the spaceport was unregistered and unregulated. Most of the hangars, which were really repurposed animal pens, were too small for the X-Wing and used primarily for small shuttles which could take off and land without much notice. Knowing what kinds of goods were likely transported on such shuttles, Rey felt no compunction making the weak-minded man forget about his docking fee. She found her way to an inn that serviced mainly visitors to Hanna City too poor to stay at any of the hotels there, and was able to get some hot food, a bathroom and a bed.
While at the bar eating the spicy noodle concoction, which she had to admit, despite her initial skepticism, was delicious, she first noticed the tense atmosphere. She had been so tired when she arrived and so focused on just getting a place to lay her head that she hadn't really been open to what was around her. Everyone in the room with her was ready for a fight, but the aggression wasn't focused on anyone else in the room in particular. She turned around and looked at the people there, and saw the mix of humans and aliens that was normal for a cheap place like the one she was in. They were talking to each other in small groups, but she could see clenched jaws, shaking heads or barred teeth in every conversation.
"Something up?" she asked the bartender.
He was a burly human with dark hair and darker eyes. He raised an eyebrow at her and said, "What are you stupid? It's about the generals."
Rey looked down at her bowl and then closed her eyes. "Of course," she said sadly.
The Twi'lek sitting next to her nudged her and said menacingly, "Hey, you from Corellia?"
"No," Rey said, wiping away her tears. "I'm from Jakku."
"Oh, should have known you weren't, way you talk" the Twi'lek said. He lifted his glass and said, "To Admiral Ackbar, hero of Jakku!"
Rey lifted her glass of water in reply. "Why did you ask if I was from Corellia?" she asked.
"You been travelling for a while?" the bartender asked. "Ain't heard the news?"
When Rey shook her head the Twi'lek said, "Those bastards on Corellia killed Poe Dameron and Finn the rebel Stormtrooper. Kidnapped them then killed them!"
The human on the other side of her yelled out in response, "We're gonna crush 'em! We're gonna pound that useless planet till its dead! Bastards got rich building weapons for the Empire! Now they killed our Generals! Traitors every one of them!"
"Wasn't Han Solo from Corellia?" Rey asked.
"Well…yeah," the man said. "But he got off that slag heap as quick as he could didn't he? Because he knew it was a nest of damned vipers! Take your credits and then smile as they cut your throat!"
"They've really stepped in it now," the Twi'lek said. "Plenty of worlds that never rejoined the New Republic are pledging their support for a war against Corellia."
"Because everyone hates those bastards!" the other man said. "They're half the reason no one wanted to join the New Republic! Now the galaxy'll see!"
"Well let's hope we win quickly," Rey said as she finished up her meal.
"We will! One world thinks it can hold everyone else hostage?" the Twi'lek said as Rey walked towards her room. When she got there she looked in the bathroom to see whether she had been given a bath, but found only a tiny space for a shower. What was the point of living on a water rich world like this, Rey asked herself, if you weren't going to take baths? Rey disrobed, showered while cursing the stinginess of the inn owner and realized when she got out that she was going to have to put the same dirty clothes on. Laying in bed later, feeling the grime from her sweat suffused robes seeping into her skin, she wondered how long it would take her to get to sleep with all the noise from Hanna City. She was not used to cities, having never stay more than a night or two in one, and that was something which happened only once every few years. There had been trips to Coruscant in the years following the battle of Exegol, and then some trips with her Padawans to various worlds. But she had never gotten used to the background noise, and it made her miss the hollowed out AT-AT that had been her home on Jakku.
As she was starting to drift off Anakin appeared in her room. She groaned as she sat up and asked, "What is it?"
"You should turn on the news," Anakin said softly.
"What is it?" Rey said slowly and groggily.
"You need to see it. Its Coruscant," Anakin said
"What about it?" Rey asked as she turned on the holoprojector. Anakin did not answer. He did not need to. The holoprojector sputtered to life and the unsteady light left a lot of details hazy, but you didn't need much detail to make out what was going on. Coruscant was burning. The camera feed was shaky, probably coming from the nose of a ship flying in atmosphere, but high enough up that the image had needed to be magnified, which made it blurry. But Rey could see enough to realize that huge sections of the great world city were burning wreckage.
"What happened!?" Rey shouted.
"The Corellians panicked as word of Poe's and Finn's deaths spread. When worlds started lining up against them they launched a surprise attack on Coruscant, hoping to force the New Republic to surrender before Corellia was overwhelmed. They were able to catch the Republic fleet unprepared and scattered them, but when they tried to land ground troops to seize the Senate and administrative buildings they were swamped by the people of Coruscant. Their admirals lost their nerve and started bombarding the centers of opposition to protect their soldiers. But they overestimated how much damage the urban structures could take," Anakin said.
"How bad is it?" Rey asked as she started packing up, for no reason she could give.
"There are fires burning many levels down, and the top levels have collapsed in some areas. The Senate building is gone, as is the old Jedi Temple," Anakin said flatly. Then, with noticeable anger, he said, "Padme's apartment building collapsed. They blew it up."
"I have to do something," Rey said, throwing her bag over her shoulder.
"What exactly will you do?" Anakin asked.
"I don't know," Rey said. "Something."
"Something is already being done," Anakin said.
"What do you mean?" Rey asked.
"I think you will see," Anakin said.
Rey turned back to the holoprojector but its image and sound quality were so bad that she decided to go watch the better unit she had seen in the inn's common room. Once there she saw that all the inn's residents, and probably a few locals, had gathered there as well. On screen they could see more images of the utter devastation of Coruscant. The room was silent and all that could be heard was the reporter.
"…after the Corellian fleet departed there was an opportunity for emergency services to begin the process of seeking what they expect to be few survivors in the areas targeted by the bombardment. Initial estimates are of over a billion deaths, mostly concentrated in the densely populated Senatorial district. The bombardment, while brief, appears to have done significant damage to the superstructure of the district, causing massive collapses all the way down to the planet surface. Because the government has never actually known how many people lived in the undercity, officials I have spoken to are saying the current estimates likely represent a significant undercount, but the truth may never be known. It is unlikely that it will be possible to recover remains, though…"
A billion people, Rey thought. She was not sure, but she doubted that many people lived on the entire planet of Chandrilla. The shocked silence carried on for a few more seconds before someone asked, "Why'd they leave? Where they going?"
This caused some grumbling, and Rey could feel the fear building in the room. Chandrilla, given its relatively low population, was of very little strategic significance to the New Republic, but its symbolic importance, given its role in galactic governance in the years after the Battle of Endor, was very high. Certainly some were wondering whether the Correllian fleet was thinking of taking control of a potential source of leadership for the Republic.
"A friend of mine said turn to one of the mid-Rim networks," someone else called out.
The bartender did so and the holographic image changed from the flaming, crumbling world of Coruscant to that of a fleet of Mon Calamari ships. There had to be at least a dozen of the big capital ships, with a far greater number of frigates of various makes surrounding them. A different reporter was speaking, clearly from inside one of the ships of this fleet.
"…for those just tuning in, the Mon Calamari fleet, which we have confirmed was officially adopted back into the New Republic fleet by the Senate in the first hours of the Corellian attack on Coruscant before the Senate building was destroyed with most of its members barricaded inside of it, has arrived above the planet Mandalore after receiving an offer of assistance from the Mandalorian government."
The image on the screen changed to a Mandalorian conclave at the Great Forge. Hundreds of Mandalorians, wearing full Beskar armor, stood and watched as an aged Bo-Katan Kryze walked slowly across the stage. Her face was lined and wrinkled, her red hair long since gone white, but while there were two aids walking behind her seemingly intent on helping her, she made it across the stage herself.
"Seen here are images released by the Mandalorian government showing the speech given by the Mandalore Bo-Katan Kryze that sources say swayed the Conclave, initially set on a policy of neutrality, towards joining the expedition against Corellia.
Bo-Katan Kryze lifted the Darksaber hilt high above her head and activated it. The black shimmering blade slid into the air and she began to speak, her voice crackling from the decades of battlefield shouts and screams. "You all know what has happened. Many of you are too young to have seen such things. But I know what it is like to see a planet destroyed by enemies from space. I was here when Mandalore was destroyed. I watched as the Empire bombed Sundari, slaughtering our people by the hundreds and thousands. Those ships bore different insignia from the ones that staged a cowardly assault on Coruscant, but they were made in the same place. Corellia, a planet of collaborators, a people who constantly build weapons but never face an enemy honorably in battle. They either give those weapons to others to do the fighting, or they do what they have done to Coruscant, kill the unarmed from space. What they have done today, the murders they are committing right now, it is worse than the Empire, worse than the Death Star, worse than the Great Purge. Once Mandalore stood by as such things were done to others. We abandoned the Way, and sought peace even when we saw the threats rising, our future enemies growing stronger. And in return for our peaceful ways? Genocide, and decades of wandering, a broken people without purpose. I did not knit the Mandalorians back together simply to watch it all happen again, to watch another power rise that sees fit to kill the defenseless to prove its own power. Well we are not defenseless. Not anymore. Never again. And I will not wait to die as another Empire rises."
An armored man walked towards Kryze as she spoke and handed her a helmet, the insignia of the Night Owls on its side, which she put on. "I am going to Corellia. I am going to snuff out their fire before it spreads from Coruscant to the other planets of the New Republic. And if none will join me I will go alone. I will stand with others who learned the lessons the Clone Wars and the Age of Empire taught. The Mon Calamari are coming. I am going with them, for the last fight I'll ever know. As I said I will go alone if I must, but I want you with me. I want my people with me. I want to show the galaxy who we are. Who we can be. I want the Corellians to know who we are. I want everyone who thinks of doing as they have done to know, so that what was done to Alderaan, to Mandalore, to Coruscant, will never happen again. I want this furious, terrible chapter in the galaxy's history behind us. I want the galaxy to know what it is to live without fear. And I want Mandalorians, my Mandalorians, to show the galaxy the way."
The image shifted again, now to that of hundreds of small craft flying from the surface to Mandalore to join the Mon Calamari ships. This elicited cheers from the crowd in the common room. There seemed to be universal support for the attack that seemed to be shaping up, which Rey thought was madness.
"But the Corellians already left Coruscant. They will be back at Corellia before the Mandalorians and Mon Calamari can get there," Rey said to the person standing next to her.
He took a break from shouting his support to give her an annoyed look, "The report from Coruscant was live. The report from Mandalore was hours ago. They've been playing it on a loop. The reporter is in hyperspace with 'em now. Not going to file a new report till they jump out."
Rey could not understand the reaction these people were having. If the Mon Cals and the Mandalorians got to Corellia before their fleet returned home it would be a bloodbath. Corellia was not as densely populated as Coruscant of course, but there was every chance the tragedy they had all just witnessed would happen again. While she looked around to see whether anyone in the inn showed any signs of trepidation or sadness she was overcome again with the same feeling that had greeted her upon waking up in the X-Wing. She felt unsteady and had to find an open stool to sit down. If she had just gone with them, she thought, they wouldn't have gone after Temiri Blagg, and they wouldn't have been captured, wouldn't have been killed, and a billion people would be alive tonight. And a billion more wouldn't be about to die. And she was sure they would. She realized then what had caused her feeling of unease in the X-Wing. It had been the beginning of the bombardment of Coruscant She had felt the dying begin, and how she was feeling it again. She looked up at the holoprojector and saw only the same clips of the Mon Cal fleet and Bo-Katan's speech playing again. But she kept watching, sure that something was about to happen.
She only had to wait a few minutes. Midway through the speech on Mandalore the feed cut to a video taken from the hangar of a ship in low orbit. The clouded surface of Corellia could be seen out of the hangar doors. Rey could see what appeared to be dozens of New Republic fighters streaking towards Coronet city, with just as many Mandalorian personnel carriers in view as well. And all around them were hundreds of Mandalorians in their distinctive armor, flames flying from their backpacks.
Whoever had the camera had apparently jumped out of the hangar as well, so she assumed it was a Mandalorian. This gave the audience, whose attention was completely absorbed by what they were seeing, the view of the descent through the clouds and then Coronet City opening up before them. Rey watched as the buildings of the city went from indistinct little humps to the huge structures she knew them to be, and then she watched as the ships unloaded their ordinance and the buildings exploded.
"Get 'em Mandos!" yelled the man who had spoken to her earlier at the bar. She could the Mandalorians doing exactly that, flying low and taking out the Corellians operating the anti-aircraft guns, strafing the police and security forces on the ground who had no chance of standing up the onslaught coming their way.
Another cheer went up from the crowd as the capitol building of Corellia was consumed by a fireball. "For the Generals!" someone from the crowd yelled as they watched a skyscraper collapse due to the explosive blasts at its base. Rey thought about Poe and Finn, and the fact that this was being done in their name. They would have thought this an obscenity and to have this be any part of how they would be remembered triggered Rey's rage in a way few other things could have.
"They would not want this!" she screamed loudly enough for all eyes to briefly leave the screen and lock onto her. The jeers and insults hit her only a moment after their angry looks. Some yelled "what do you know?", while others accused her of treason. Most simply called her sexually explicit names. If the crowd had left things there, they would have been fine. But a few drunk patrons decided Rey's dissent merited a beating. They reached out to grab her, to push her, to strike her, seemingly from all sides. Rey spun and dodged slower than she ordinarily would have; the events of the night had left her emotionally battered. When one of them made contact with the side of her head she lashed out.
"Enough!" she shouted, and flung every person in the bar to the nearest wall, pinning them there, most of them with their feet floating above the floor. This she did mostly without even thinking about it, and when she looked up the sight of their panic stricken faces shocked her into letting them down.
"It's a Jedi," she heard several people whisper.
"It's her," said others.
"Rey," a few more in the know said confidently.
Rey could see the terror had not left their faces and ran back to her room, picked up her bag, and left through a back door. She ran towards the hangar with her X-Wing in it, tears in her eyes, desperate to get anywhere else. On the way she ran into the owner of the spaceport. He yelled at her that he was going home and would not be unlocking the hangar for her. She ran past him without a word. As she approached the port she thought of all the drugs, and probably people, that were smuggled through there and felt no compunction as she ripped the door off the hangar containing her ship. She had to go, she felt. She had to leave immediately. She had to find something, something to make what was happening better. She had to find some kind of hope. Then, all of a sudden, she knew who she had to go see.
She hopped into the cockpit and fired up the engine. Her ship shot out of the hangar like a bolt leaving a blaster. She climbed quickly, the g-force temporarily overwhelming the gravity stabilizers of her ship, pushing her backwards into the cockpit seat. When she had reached sufficient altitude she received the hail from Hanna City air defense, demanding to know her identity. She sent back the automated reply pre-programmed into the X-Wing.
"Sorry commander, we didn't know you would be coming," the air controller said. "It's a tense night here. We have a berth for you at the Hanna City starport."
"I want to dock at a private residence," she answered.
"Um…there's only one residence that can accept anything but small shuttles…," the controller started to say before Rey cut him off.
"I know, that's who I want to see," she said.
"I don't think Lady Mothma is receiving visitors at this hour," he said tersely. The well-being of Chandrilla's most famous and most respected citizen was guarded zealously.
"I'm landing. Shoot me down if you want," Rey said flatly. The air controller pushed the microphone away from his face, but Rey could still hear the curse he uttered. She was descending into the city center and knew that there was nothing they could do about it anyway. She pulled up next to a wide cylindrical building with a tall narrow tower emerging from the middle of it. Along the circumference of the building there were several docking stations, a holdover from the time when Mon Mothma had been at the center of galactic politics, receiving multiple high status guests each day. Now, nearing 100 years of age and long retired from government, she had been spared the death that had found the rest of the New Republic government on Hosnian Prime. Leia had kept in touch with her even after the Hosnian Cataclysm. Rey had spoken with her a few times after the war had ended and knew that, despite her age, her mind was still sharp.
After she disembarked Rey walked briskly towards the tower and took the elevator up to the top floors, where Mothma's apartments were located. They were fairly large for a single woman whose husband was long dead. Rey supposed it was to entertain her adult grandchildren and their families. Or perhaps it was just a sign of respect for the last surviving Senator of the Old Republic and leader of the Rebel Alliance. When the elevator doors opened Rey made her way to the balcony and found Mon reclining in a chaise lounge in the open air. There were two droids nearby, a medical droid and something that looked like an HK droid. The sight stopped Rey in her tracks for a moment.
"Fear not citizen," the droid said in a voice more appropriate for a standard protocol droid. "While I am equipped to provide security for Chancellor Mothma, my primary functions are related to serving more pedestrian needs."
"He's a waiter," came the ragged voice of Mon Mothma, who spoke to Rey without turning her head. She lifted a thin arm and pointed a wrinkled hand at a chair set in front of her, saying, "Please come around."
Rey did so, taking a seat opposite the aged leader. Mon Mothma gingerly picked up a cup and brought it to her lips where she took a small sip while not breaking eye contact with Rey.
"Rey Skywalker," she said after handing the cup to the HK droid. "Skywalker."
"Yes," Rey said, nodding. It had been a long time since she had been in awe, but Mon Mothma was the only person she had ever known to intimidate Leia Organa, and the stories about her had left no mysteries about why. She had created the Rebellion right under the Emperor's nose, taking incredible personal risks and braving many dangers. And she had won. She and a small group of spies had decided to take on the most powerful Sith Lord in history, who had a massive military behind him, and they had won. If anyone could answer Rey's questions it was her.
"I understand I suppose," Mon said, and as she spoke more her voice began to grow smoother. It was clear it had only been so rough sounding due to a long period of disuse. "It wouldn't do to go around identifying yourself as Rey Palpatine. But I found it strange when Poe Dameron told me you had chosen to go by Rey Skywalker."
"I wanted to honor my teachers," Rey said, somewhat defensively.
"I knew Anakin Skywalker you know. Not well of course. And I don't mean Vader, I mean I met the Jedi Knight. I was friends with his wife, though none of us knew that's what she was, not at the time. He was always around her. A strange thing for a Jedi Knight to do. They said they were childhood friends, and I suppose we all accepted it. I was never that impressed with him. He was a powerful Jedi, and a great soldier. I knew that of course. But as a man, he seemed wanting. When Bail told me that Padme had been married to him, I wondered what she saw in him. It's not like my own husband was any great prize, but I was stuck with Perrin. She chose Anakin Skywalker. Their relationship was something she fought for, and I never really understood why," she said.
"Chancellor, I…," Rey began to say.
"Now Luke, he was a great deal like his father. Powerful, a great warrior. I honored his achievements in fighting for the Rebellion. He was a better man than his father of course, but then again, with who his father turned out to be, that isn't saying much. But still, he didn't impress me the way he did others. All naivete and foolish optimism. We didn't build the Rebellion on such things. Now Leia, when I found out she was Padme's daughter I felt like a fool for not seeing it before. They were so alike, right down to the inexplicable taste in men. She was smart, determined. No running away when things got hard for Leia. She stuck with it, she built the Resistance from nothing, and not using some Jedi inheritance from her biological father, but the mind she got from her mother and the good sense she got from the Organas. But you didn't call yourself Rey Organa, or Rey Amidala did you? No you had to be Rey Skywalker. You chose to name yourself after the Emperor's butcher and the boy who ran away when things got hard," Mon continued.
"That's not fair!" Rey all but shouted, drawing the attention of the HK droid. At the far end of the balcony she could see the faint blue shimmer of Anakin Skywalker's Force Ghost. He was here too, listening to what this woman, a woman who had been his wife's friend, who had beaten him and his master, had to say about him.
"My dear, when you are as old as I am you learn to stop caring about what is fair, and only about what's true," Mon Mothma said. "Luke fought well, right to the end. He gave his life to save his sister and her people. But they were in that mess because of him. You see that, don't you?"
"What Ben Solo did was not Luke's fault," Rey insisted.
"Maybe, maybe not. We were neither of us there. Of course we could just take Luke's word for it that he was, Rey Skywalker," Mon Mothma said. "But you didn't come her to talk about your…what shall we call it, adoptive family? And you certainly don't want to talk to me about your real one. So what made you barge into my house in the middle of this terrible night?"
"I…," Rey paused before continuing, not having been prepared for the cold and somewhat cruel nature of Mon Mothma's words. "I need to know how all this will end."
"You mean Corellia and Coruscant?" Mon Mothma said.
"Yes," Rey answered.
"Aren't you a Jedi, can't you see the future?" Mon asked. "No I suppose not. All the Jedi of the Old Republic couldn't see Order 66 coming. So you are here to rely on an old, powerless woman's insight?"
"Yes," Rey said simply.
"I have no certainty for you Rey, only guesses," Mon said, sounding very tired.
"I will take your guesses over visions right now," Rey replied.
Mon Mothma nodded at her, a slight sign of respect. "The Corellians could be back in their home system in a few hours, if they wanted, but that's not where they are going. The Mandalorians will have ever major city on Corellia under control before then, at least enough to take over the ground to space defense systems or install the ones they likely brought with them. And the Mon Calamari in that fleet were trained by Admiral Ackbar, so they won't run, they won't lose cohesion, and they will know exactly how to fight with a planetary defense system at their backs. The Corellian admirals will know this, and they will know that there is nothing they can do for their home world. But they won't surrender either, not after what they did to Coruscant. They know that there won't be any mercy. People didn't like them before this, and now? Now anyone of Corellian descent is getting on a shuttle to take them to a new world where they will hope their accent won't give them away, so they can start a new life. And in a few days the ships of the Corellian fleet are going to start needing fuel, and food, and parts. Some will sign on with the Hutts, or some other crime syndicate, and some will go into business for themselves. But the fleet with the largest, most powerful ships in the galaxy is going to become ever so many little pirate fleets, and they will bring the fires of Coruscant and Corellia with them to the Outer Rim. Trade routes will break down and across thousands of worlds, worlds just like Jakku and Tatooine, people will begin to starve."
"There's no hope for the New Republic?" Rey asked desperately.
"There wasn't any hope for the New Republic before this, how could there be more now?" Mon Mothma replied. "It's over."
Rey put her head in her hands and tried to hold back the tears. She had been hoping that Mon Mothma, who had found a way to succeed against all the odds before, would be the one to see a path forward despite all of what was happening. Hearing the hopeless tone of Mon's voice was not something Rey was prepared for.
"What is it Rey?" Mon Mothma asked.
"It's my fault!" Rey said, her agony clear in her voice. "If I had just gone with Poe and Finn…,"
"It would have changed nothing," Mon Mothma said. "You think this is happening because you did not accede to their last minute prayer? No, Rey. This, or something like it was made inevitable years ago. You decided that you would not risk a Jedi going over to the dark side. You were worried about another Ben Solo. You were fighting the last war, after you had already won it. But what you neglected to consider, what the Jedi always neglect to consider, is that even for those of us without your gifts there is a conflict between the light and the dark. And while one of us is nothing, a billion of us, a trillion of us, a hundred trillion of us, that is a tide not all the Jedi to ever live could hold back. And the thing that keeps them from breaking the wrong way, from falling to the darkness, aren't prophecies or the Force or even battles and armies or men with guns. They are institutions, symbols. Things they can believe in, things they can convince themselves to hope for, so they make the sacrifices necessary to keep each other good. The New Republic was supposed to be that symbol. A story that people could tell themselves, that the old times were coming back. One false start they could handle, and still tell themselves that a day would come where there would be law without tyranny, without oppression, because the New Republic would be strong, and it would be just, and it would be open to all. And you made it weak. Everyone knew that the New Republic would have no Jedi Order, that it would not be like the old days again. If you want to blame yourself for something, blame yourself for that. Better yet don't. You didn't help in the way you were best able to do so, but there is no reason to think it would have changed anything. Jedi always think that they can change the fate of the galaxy. But you can't. My New Republic didn't really have a chance. Poe's New Republic didn't really have a chance. We were trying to rebuild a house while standing on quicksand. Everything that killed the Old Republic, everything that Palpatine took advantage of, it was all still there."
"So you're saying that even now, I can't change anything?" Rey asked.
"Can you make good people from different worlds, with different faiths, different cultures, trust each other? Can you make people see past their immediate interests and divisions and think of their long term interest in agreement and harmony? Can you calm their fears? No. All you can do is make the wicked afraid. But what you are seeing tonight, that isn't wickedness. It is evil, but it is evil caused by stupidity and short-sightedness. The Corellians didn't set out to kill Poe and Finn. They just wanted them as hostages. They didn't set out to burn down Coruscant, they just lost control of the situation and weren't prepared to deal with that fact. And the Mandalorians and the Mon Calamari can't see past their old resentments enough to see that the galaxy is going to be worse with Corellia destroyed. You can't fix those flaws in people with the Force Rey. The Jedi never really fixed those flaws in themselves. The Republic held the forces of mistrust and greed back for millennia, but even it failed in the end," Mon Mothma said.
"You are saying there is no hope. You're saying there was never hope? The Republic and the Jedi were doomed to fail?" Rey asked. Her indignancy at what Mon Mothma was saying was matched by a hopelessness that came from recognizing the truth in her words.
"How would I know? I can't see what would have been," Mon said.
"I will settle for what might have been," Rey said.
"Many things might have been. Could the Republic have been saved, been revitalized? I suppose. There were movements towards reform afoot in the years before the Clone Wars. Dooku spoke the language of the reformers for a long time before he started the war. Maybe if Palpatine had failed, all his supporters could have been arrested or turned out of office and the real reforms could have happened. Or maybe the Separatists would have won the war and the Republic would have splintered and we would be right back where we are now. If the war had never happened at all, maybe then? But who knows if there would have been any urgency to change things without the war? I don't know Rey. There was no easy solution then, just like there was no easy solution for you after Exegol," Mothma said.
When she saw Rey's desolate expression, Mon said, "Don't take this all too much to heart young lady. I am just an old woman who has lived long enough to see all her dreams die and knows she won't be alive to see anything get better. You are still young, though I know it doesn't feel that way on a night like to tonight. Might as well have some hope."
"Hope you can't see?" Rey asked.
"No, but I am nearly blind by now anyway," Mon Mothma said.
Rey stood up slowly, feeling none of the youth the former Chancellor of the Republic spoke of. She bowed her head slightly to Mon Mothma and said, "Thank you for your time. I am sorry we didn't get a chance to meet before this."
"One of the really annoying parts of getting old is that everyone thinks you are about to die, and they are insufferably polite to you. You have every right to be angry at me for what I have said. But if you didn't want honesty, you wouldn't have come here," Mon said. "I know you have some hard years in front of you though, and I wish you luck, Rey Skywalker." She said the last word without the condescension she had laced the name with earlier in their discussion, and Rey managed a weak smile in response before walking away.
When she exited the elevator on the level where the X-Wing was docked she saw Anakin's ghost standing by the ship, looking out over Hanna City. She walked slowly towards him, Mon Mothma's words having drained her of energy. For all their bitterness, though, her analysis of the situation had put to rest any thoughts Rey had been entertaining about heeding the First Jedi's advice. She could not leave things this way.
"You heard all that then?" Rey asked as she placed her hands on the ladder to the cockpit. She paused for a moment to collect her thoughts and achieve some level of calm before her trip to Lothal.
"I did," he said.
"And what do you think?" Rey asked.
"She isn't wrong about how bad things are. And she is right that things are going to get worse. But she is wrong that this is your fault, or some inevitability because of the weaknesses of the Old Republic. You should ignore all of that," Anakin said.
"I am the Last Jedi. If it's not my fault, whose is it?" Rey asked.
"Mine. The Republic didn't fall under its own weight, or because of its own failures. It fell because I didn't save it."