Chapter 12 – If At First You Don't Succeed…

Rey did not have to wait long to find out the fate of her hopes. After Anakin disappeared through the portal she sat down, crossing her legs as she did so, and meditated. She had no idea how long it would take, and wasn't really sure what that meant in that place. Was one minute there the same was one minute in the timeline Anakin had entered? Was it less? If so what was the ratio? Or was there no regular relationship at all? If not then what determined how long time passed for her while Anakin explored and hopefully changed the past? How long would it take him to change things enough? How would he know when that was? How would he exit the timeline? None of these questions had been answered, for there was no way to answer them.

Time would pass the Father had said, but not physically, only mentally. Were here thoughts the clock for this world? One moment distinguished from the next by the thoughts in her mind? Nothing else seemed to be happening there, no other changes by which the progress of time could be measured, a world in stasis except for her.

So Rey closed her eyes and tried to empty her mind. It was a technique Leia had taught her, which she had in turned learned from Luke. He no doubt had learned it from Yoda, and so it was a method of meditation that reached back into the deep past of the Jedi Order. How many generations had existed, carrying on traditions that would die with her if they were not successful? If she died in this quest would those she trained pass on what they had learned?

No! What always happened had happened again. Her thoughts refused to be still. It seemed to take only one stray idea to set her mind off on a long train of distractions, preventing her from reaching the state of peaceful hollowness she intended. She tried again. And then again. Over and over she tried to achieve a state of calm, of tranquility. And over and over again the noise of her thoughts intruded, starting first as a whisper, before belief and inference piled upon one another to create a cacophony.

But eventually, after a length of time she could not measure, her mind became a quiet place. Then moment no longer followed moment, rather one moment stretched to cover all the moments that might have been. It was in that state of meditative clarity that she heard it. She could not make it out at first, but eventually she could hear Anakin's voice. She caught snippets of conversations, never enough to make out for sure what was happening.

"…I need him!"

"…don't you turn against me!"

"…I hate you!"

Then the voice she recognized as his, despite the change in the sound of it, came into her mind.

"…then you will die."

"…you should not have come back."

"…you are not a Jedi yet."

"…tell your sister…"

Then she was suddenly shocked out of her meditation when she heard a loud thud behind her. She opened her eyes and turned around quickly to see Anakin lying face down, his arms beneath him, his hands clenched tightly. He said nothing, only breathing heavily with this eyes closed.

Rey stood up and then said, "It did not work, did it?"

"No," Anakin forced out through gritted teeth. After a few moments she picked himself up and Rey got a good look at him. He looked tired and defeated.

"I killed her. I killed her again. I did it all again," he said. He swayed unsteadily on his feet and Rey moved to catch him.

"Nothing changed?" Rey asked, looking for some sliver of hope.

"Everything was the same. I was the same," he said. He hung there in Rey's arms for a moment before straightening himself up and weakly pushing her hands away from him. He stumbled a few steps away from her, and Rey left him alone with his thoughts, devoting her time to her own.

When he showed no sign of re-engaging with her Rey finally spoke. "I could hear you." Anakin failed to answer so she walked closer and said, "In the portal, I could hear you."

"What?" Anakin said softly.

"I could hear you speaking," Rey said.

"When?" Anakin asked.

"I'm not sure, but for some of it you sounded like you, and some of it you sounded like…," she trailed off.

"There wasn't a lot of time before I went in the suit. What did you hear?" he asked.

"The last thing was about Leia I think," she said.

"That was…that was at the end," he said. "You heard everything then?"

"Not really, just bits and pieces," Rey said.

"There's a connection though," Anakin said, his voice flat, as though he were barely able to muster the energy to think about what she was telling him.

"What are you thinking?" Rey said.

"I couldn't remember anything. I went to the past and I knew no more than my old self knew," he said.

"And so you did exactly what you did originally," Rey said, understanding.

"I can't do that again. I can't do that to her…," Anakin said sadly before his voice dropped away. Rey felt great pity for him in that moment. He sounded much like his old self, the version of Anakin she was used to. She understood now the change in his demeanor after they entered Mortis. He had been so long without hope, then she had given it to him, much as he had tried to talk her down. He had wanted to see Padme again, had wanted his chance to do it all over again. And now those hopes were dead again.

"What choice do we have?" she asked.

"What do you mean?" he replied.

"Do you want to leave? Do you know how we do that?"

"I don't know how to leave. I don't know what we can do if we stay," Anakin said.

"I don't think there is any way home. I thought when we arrived at Mortis, I thought you had acquired a body. You felt real. You seemed as real as me. But now that I think about it, where is my body?" Rey said.

"What are you talking about?" Anakin said, genuinely confused.

"They said I could not travel through time, that I could not go to a time where I did not exist in the first place, but I already did. I did when we traveled through time to Mortis," Rey said. "Except, they weren't lying. I know that. I know she was telling the truth."

"Who?" Anakin asked.

"The Daughter," Rey said. "She wasn't lying to me. I don't know how I know, but I know. I can't travel into the past, and so I didn't. Not really."

"But we did Rey. We made it there. We made it here," Anakin said.

"I think part of us did. Part of me did. Maybe all of you. You were a spirit without a body. I think…I think I am too now," Rey said softly.

Anakin, finally realizing what she was saying, stopped protesting. He wanted to comfort her but did not know how.

"I think I died. I think I died when we came here," Rey said.

"You don't know that. We can't know much of anything about this place, and what's true," Anakin said.

"What would it matter Anakin?" Rey asked.

"What?" he responded.

"What would it matter if I were wrong? The whole point of this is that there isn't anything left for me to go back to. There's no happy ending waiting for me through one of those portals. I am committed to this. We have to succeed. I know what I am asking of you, I know how hard it must be to lose her again, to watch it all happen again, but we have to figure out a way," Rey said.

Anakin looked at the stars in the distance for a while without answering. Then he turned his gaze back to her and nodded. A thought came to Rey's mind. His power is to endure what others could not. It felt like a memory but she could not quite place it. But it didn't matter, she thought, because it was true.

"So what do we do?" Anakin asked her.

"I'm not sure. But maybe if I can hear you in here, you can hear me too?" Rey said with hope.

"Alright," he said, nodding slowly.

"I was meditating when I heard you. What if you don't go until I am in deep meditation again?" Rey suggested.

"And what will you tell me?" Anakin asked.

"I guess that depends on where you go back to. You picked the day you fell," Rey said. "What could I tell you on that day that would make a difference?"

"I don't know, I don't know whether I will hear you, or what it will feel like," Anakin said.

"What mattered most to you on that day? What's the one thing you needed to know?" Rey said, frustration creeping into her voice.

Anakin thought about it for a while before saying, "Tell me Padme is going to be ok. If you can convince me of that, then I can stay strong."

And so they tried that, and failed again. When Anakin returned he was in even worse emotional shape than after the first attempt. When she finally got him speaking again, he told Rey that he could remember hearing a voice telling him that Padme was safe, that Palpatine was tricking him, but remembered also disregarding it. For a while after that Anakin wandered the paths of the strange world they were in. When he eventually came back he seemed even more resolved. They would try again. They would, he said, fight until they won. While she admired his determination, she could sense in him a different motivation besides saving their galaxy. There was a part of him, she knew, that simply believed he deserved the punishment of watching himself fail time after time. There was also, she was sure, a part of him that was willing to suffer a thousand times over just for the chance to see Padme again.

Rey had been doing some thinking of her own while Anakin had been walking alone. If Anakin would not trust a voice trying to make him go against his overpowering inclination to go Palpatine, what if she pushed him towards it, but in a way that might make things different. If his fear of losing Padme was such that he was going to the Senate building one way or another, how might that decision be changed so as to avoid the future they knew had followed from it? They spoke for a long time, going over Anakin's memories of that day, Rey pushing him to remember more so that she could find the key detail she was sure would unlock everything.

At last she felt she had found it. Anakin had taken some convincing, and she was not sure he really believed in the plan as she sat down to enter her trance. But they would find out together.