Chapter Four – Fire and Ruin

It took Rey hours to reach Mustafar, but when she arrived Anakin was already there. Rey sensed his spirit's presence, not at the ruins of Fortress Vader, where he said the holocron was to be found, but at an old mining facility. She steered her way there rather than to their agreed meeting spot and saw the ghost standing on the mining facility's landing pad and staring down at his feet.

After landing the X-Wing near where he was standing, Rey got out and walked over to him. Anakin did not look up once, nor acknowledge Rey's presence in any other way. Rey knew from experience that didn't really mean anything. Anakin no longer saw with eyes or heard with ears. The body he presented to here was just that, presentation. He was aware of her, he could not help but be so. The most that his failure to acknowledge her signified was that he was too lost in thought to consider interacting with her.

"I thought you said it was in your old fortress," Rey said.

"I did," Anakin responded, still not looking up.

"Did you remember something, is it somewhere else?" she asked in confusion.

"No, it is there," Anakin said.

Rey nodded, and looked around, trying to see if the Fortress was visible, which it was not. "So is this facility connected to it somehow? Is there a tunnel? If its air conditioned that would be nice. I don't much like the idea of walking outside. Why can't we…"

"This is where it happened," Anakin said softly.

"Where what…," Rey's question died on her lips as she remembered the story. This is where Luke and Leia's mother confronted Anakin, all those years ago.

"It's where I killed her," Anakin said.

Rey looked at him puzzled. "How could you have killed her here? I thought you never knew Luke and Leia were born, so they must have been born later."

"They were. She didn't die here, but what I did here killed her," Anakin said as he looked up. "I have not returned since I died. I was not prepared…"

After waiting a moment for him to finish and finally realizing that he has simply trailed off, Rey said, "Well I know this is hard for you, so let's get it done quickly. Right? Then we can leave."

"You should have gone to the fortress," Anakin said.

"I was going to but then you were here," Rey said in exasperation.

"I did not mean for you to come here," Anakin said before vanishing.

Rey cursed as she walked back to the X-Wing, cursed as she climbed in it and cursed for a little while as she flew to the ruins of Fortress Vader. She landed on the cliff as close to the ruins as she could given the rubble strewn all around it. As she exited the ship, she saw Anakin standing amongst the ruins. This time he was not wrapped up in his thoughts as she approached and turned to speak to her. Whatever anger he had felt at her intrusion seemed to have vanished.

"You must be cautious. This place was powerful in the Dark Side of the Force long before I ever stepped foot here. No doubt that was why Sidious sent the Separatist leaders here, to make sure I was being influenced by this place when I arrived," Anakin said.

Rey kept to herself the thought that he had already clearly proven his willingness to kill for Palpatine on Coruscant. Instead she asked, "Do you think you can find the holocron again, with the building in this state?" The Fortress had apparently been demolished at some point, or at least most of the upper floors had collapsed.

"Yes," Anakin said as Rey climbed over uneven black stones to get to him. "I placed it in a secure vault below ground. It had every protection I could give it."

"Who were you worried about stealing from you?" Rey said, looking around at the desolate land and lava rivers. Then she imagined the dozens of star destroyers that must have once patrolled this systems, and could not see why anyone would worry about thieves.

"Palpatine," Anakin said. "I never told him I took it from the Temple. In fact I lied and said that the Jedi had destroyed it."

"Really?" Rey asked, suddenly interested because of the prospect that Anakin had been conflicted about his turn to the Dark Side from the beginning.

"I never meant for Palpatine to stay in control. I thought Padme would join me and we would overthrow him. I thought maybe Obi-Wan would come with me, if I had a chance to make him understand. I thought I could find Ahsoka," Anakin said.

"Who was Ahsoka?" Rey asked.

"My Padawan, until she left the order," Anakin said. "She survived the Purge."

"What happened to her?" Rey followed up.

Anakin waited for a long time before answering, "I killed her."

"Oh," Rey said. She thought about asking why but reconsidered it.

"I thought if I could stop the war and break the power of the Separatists, then kill Palpatine, eliminate the corruption in the Republic, reform the Jedi Order, that all the Jedi I killed would be worth that victory. They would have died for a cause, for a reason," Anakin said as the two of them continued to walk through the rubble towards only Anakin knew where. "But then Padme rejected me, Obi-Wan nearly killed me, and Ahsoka joined the rebellion. Helped give birth to it in fact. Everyone but Palpatine turned their back on me. I was alone, just how he wanted me. I didn't see it then, but cutting me off from everyone else is how he made me his tool."

"So when you found out about Luke…," Rey said.

"I had something other than Palpatine," Anakin said, "something I wouldn't let him take. Not again."

Rey nodded but after a moment Anakin continued, "Of course that doesn't change anything. How many died because of the story I told myself? How many suffered because in my pride I thought I could do it all?"

Rey stayed silent, hoping for Anakin to say more. In all the years they had spoken he had never been so forthright about what had happened, and why. Always he had wanted to talk about what Rey was doing, about the future. The past was not a welcome topic.

"Because I was the Chosen One," he continued. "That is what they said. I was the Chosen One, but they didn't want me. So I wanted to show them they were wrong, that Qui-Gon was right. I was sure I had this great destiny."

"Well you did," Rey offered.

"No, my children did. I was not the Chosen One. They were, or they should have been. But that's all gone now too. My family is gone, and all I have left is the grandchild of my enemy, who took my name out of what, pity?" Anakin said.

"Nice being here with you too," Rey shot back caustically. "Any reason you felt like being so self-revelatory?"

"Is that your way of telling me to be quiet?" Anakin asked.

"No, but you haven't spoken about any of this in the years we've been talking," Rey answered.

"Where we are going, what we will be facing…it pays to going in with eyes open, especially when it comes to yourself," Anakin said.

"Stop being so cryptic," Rey insisted. "Where are we going? What do I need to prepare for?"

"The hiding place for the holocron was deep in the fortress. To get there we have to pass by a cave, the cave this place was built around," Anakin said.

"And?"

"You remember the cave on Ahch-To?" Anakin said.

"How in the world do you know about that?" Rey asked.

"I was there," Anakin said nonchalantly.

"What!?" Rey stopped walking and stared at the apparition before her. In all their years of speaking to one another, this fact had never come up.

"Where else would I be, but with my children?" Anakin asked.

"You mean invading my privacy?" Rey said indignantly. The thought that Anakin had been there, seeing her when she could not see him, witnessing all that had happened with Luke, galled her. Had he seen her conversations with Ben?

"You think I was the only one?" Anakin turned to say to her. "Yoda, Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, you think they weren't all interested in watching what Luke did with our last hope? He had cut himself off from the Force, mostly, I think, to get away from us. Maybe it was just to get away from me. I don't know. But we were there. We were always there for him. For Leia. For you."

"What about Ben?" Rey asked with bitterness.

"He made his own choices," Anakin said.

"Like you did," Rey replied.

"Exactly," Anakin said with no hint of emotion.

Rey shook her head in anger at this seeming lack of interest on Anakin's part for his own grandson, but decided it would be better not to get distracted from their purpose there, so she said, "Tell me about this cave."

"It is not as old as the cave on Ahch-To, but it is, in its way, stronger. The cave on Ahch-To was lost to history for thousands of years, but the cave here on Korriban, Sith have been coming here to meditate for a long time. And each one of them left their mark, a bit of themselves, or a copy of themselves maybe, behind. Their hatreds, their fears, their cruelty. You will see things, visions meant to turn you from your course, to pull you down with them. You need to keep clear on why you are here, on what you want, and on who you are," Anakin explained.

"They leave bits of themselves? Does that mean you're down here?" Rey asked.

"Yes," Anakin said.

They descended through rubble Rey had to move aside, along paths that only Anakin knew. After the first few minutes almost the entire journey was underground, in the darkness where Anakin's ghostly form cast the light Rey needed to keep going. As they went further down, Rey could feel the presences Anakin had warned her of. The whole planet had the stink of the Dark Side on it, and it was worse near Vader's palace. But with each step she took the feeling that she was being watched grew stronger. What's more, she could feel what lay behind the eyes, the malevolence, the spiteful envy of all life, the desire to destroy her, to end the life those spirits wanted, so that its presence no longer confronted them with what they could never have.

"Remember, always, that they are afraid of you. The hate, the anger, it is all because they are afraid," Anakin said. Rey ignited her lightsaber, and Anakin said softly, "That will do no good here."

"What will do some good?" Rey asked in frustration.

Anakin did not answer but simply walked forward. After a few seconds he stopped and said, "They are coming." After a moment of waiting Rey was about to ask what he meant when she felt the passage grow cold. Then she heard what sounded at first like whispers, but then, when she listened more closely, sounded like a stone scraping along the floor intermittently. She turned around, her lightsaber still on, as though she would see something moving behind her.

She turned to see what was there, finding only darkness. From somewhere behind her she heard Anakin say, "Do not forget Rey, they cannot hurt you. Not unless you let them." When she turned back around his ghost was gone. She was alone. Had he abandoned her? Did something about the cave prevent him from staying? She walked forward, or what she guessed was the way forward. The path they had taken had not seemed to have any turns, so either she was going forward, or she was going backwards and would end up back on the surface of Mustafar. There was nothing to fear, she told herself.

"He was lying to you," a voice called out from the darkness.

Rey turned with her saber in hand, trying to illuminate as much of the cave as she could, but everywhere she turned she saw nothing but the cave walls and the crumbled stone that was strewn about the floor.

"He is gone, he brought you here so he could leave you here," the voice said. Rey tried not to listen, tried to block the voice out and continue walking, but as it became more clear to her whose voice it was, it became more difficult to ignore it.

"You know it's true Rey," his voice said as she tried to run from it. "Why wouldn't he, when his family is dead, and it is all your fault?"

"No," Rey said softly as she ran.

"Of course it is," he said. "Luke died to save you. Leia died to save you. I died to save you."

Rey stopped running, leaned against the wall, and shook her head to stop herself from crying. "Stop it, Ben," she said, almost whimpering.

"Why? I died because of you, at the hands of a Palpatine. Now there are no more Skywalkers. There is just a Palpatine pretending to be one of us," Ben Solo's voice said.

"You aren't Ben," Rey said sadly. "Ben is dead."

"Anakin Skywalker is dead. And yet he is here. He delivered you to us, gave you to us," Ben's voice said.

"Ben never learned the secret, never learned how to return from beyond the veil," Rey said.

"And whose fault was that?" the voice pretending to be Ben asked.

"Mine," Rey said forlornly.

"And now what, you have come here for knowledge? You have come here to find the holocron? What do you think you can learn from it? Does it hold the secret to putting the world back together, the world your family destroyed?" the voice asked, the elements of Ben's voice slowly slipping away.

"I hope so," Rey answered.

"And what good will your hope do for the galaxy?" the voice said, now sounding closer to the voice of Darth Vader, a voice she had only ever heard in recordings. "Your grandfather's taint is on you. You will never wash it away. Change your name as you wish, pretend all you like, you can never leave what you are behind you."

"I know. No one can," Rey said.

"Better you had never existed. Then at least the Palpatine curse would be lifted from the galaxy," Vader's voice said.

"I am not my grandfather," Rey replied.

"No," the voice said, "for he at least was capable of changing the course of the future. The Skywalkers, the family destined to save the galaxy died to save you, so you could carry on their mission, and you allowed the galaxy to fall into ruin."

"I did my best," Rey said quietly, her resolve weakening before this specter uttering the same words she had said to herself over and over again through the years.

"Your best?" the voice asked sarcastically, now sounding like Ben again. "Your best was a Republic in shambles, and a handful of students spread throughout the galaxy, imparting flawed teachings to whomever is foolish enough to think them Jedi? And let us not forget the death. All the billions who have starved, or died from lack of medicine as the trade routes fell apart, because no one was there to protect them."

Then, to Rey's horror, Ben Solo walked out of the darkness and gave her a look of pitiless scorn, "I should have let you die there on Exegol. I thought that I did not want to live without you. But you, it turns out, are not what I thought you were. I thought you were strong. I thought you were brave. If I had lived, I would not have spent my life hiding on a moisture farm on some backwater. I gave everything I had for you, and you were not worth it.

Rey slid down the wall behind her and began to cry. "I know. I know" she said to the phantom before her.

"And you are here now to what? To try to set things right? To undo your sins? It cannot be done. The future can be changed, but the past is written," the voice wearing Ben's form said.

"I have to do something," Rey said as she tried to hold back her tears.

"There is something you can do," it replied, its tone changing from confrontational to soft and soothing. "You can stay here, with us. In the darkness, you can do no more harm. You can lay down the burden. It's too heavy for you Rey. It always was."

Rey did not answer, but rather stared ahead of her into the darkness. It wasn't Ben, she knew that. Ben would not have said these things to her. But in her mind she heard a voice saying, 'He wouldn't have said it, but only to spare your feelings. He would have thought it. He would have thought it because it is true.' The voice was hers, and so it hit her harder than did all the trickery the spirits in this cave could throw at her. It was a voice that she had heard for years, tried to silence for years. But always it defeated such attempts, and it grew stronger with each piece of news about the galaxy she was supposed to protect. As Rey sat there, alone in the dark, she thought to herself that perhaps it would be worth staying, if only that voice would be quiet.

The moment after Rey lost sight of Anakin, it seemed to Anakin that he had stepped out of the cave and into a familiar sight, the villa in the Lake District on Naboo where he had first revealed his feelings to Padme, where they had been married. He stood on the patio looking out over the water and when he brought his hand up to the railing he could actually feel it. He looked down at his hand and saw not the ghostly blue to which he had become accustomed, but his own hand, flesh and blood. It took him a moment to realize that he was looking at the arm Dooku had cut off, something he had not seen for ages.

He knew this place was an illusion. He knew it, but for a moment he did not care. It was an illusion more perfect than any memory. He looked back up to the water and saw a boat with a canopy in the distance. Two children swam in the water around it, splashing each other playfully. In the boat, beneath the canopy stood a figure whose face Anakin could not see. But he did not need to see her to know what the illusion was. Her long brown hair fell all around her, the breeze catching some of it and pulling it across her unseen face. Fingers he knew were long and delicate reached up to gently pull the loose strands behind her ear. She said something he could not hear, and the children swam to the boat and climbed aboard it. Their mother held out towels for them and they scampered about the boat as it turned towards shore, towards him.

Anakin watched in silence as the boat drew near. He knew that the trick being played on him relied on him being taken in by the illusion, on him wanting to be taken in, despite what he knew to be true, but for the moment he did not care about that. He could take a few moments to enjoy it, to feel what might have been, what should have been. When the boat reached the shore the children leapt from it like there was something dangerous on board. They seemed to be running almost before their feet touched the sand. Without thinking Anakin moved towards the steps from the patio to the thick, cool grass that sloped gently down towards the narrow beach. By the time he reached the bottom of the steps the children were almost to him. A little boy with sandy hair like his own, and a little girl with hair and eyes just like her mother's. 'How could I have missed how much she looked like her mother?' Anakin thought. Behind them, moving gracefully up the hill, the rich silk draped across her blowing gently in the breeze, was the mother the child so resembled. Their mother as none of them had gotten to see her, the lines of worry on her face having been overpowered by the smile lines at the edge of her eyes and lips. The pale color of a resident of Coruscant had melted away to a soft golden hue during years of playing outside with the twins. But the soft brown eyes were the same, always the same. In his memories, in his dreams, here in this illusion, the eyes always had that specific shade of brown.

As the children approached they lifted their arms, and he in turn bent to pick them up. But as soon as their small hands reached his they seemed to evaporate before him, and blow away on the breeze like smoke from a dying fire. Anakin closed the hands which had been opened to his children and looked up through the mist created by their passing to see only Padme, standing still as stone, staring at him. The face full of the memories of happiness was gone, replaced by the desolate face of a mother who was never allowed to hold her own children.

Anakin stood up straight and looked at her as long as he could, before the accusations in her eyes forced him to look away. As he cast his gaze over the lake and the mountains beyond them he heard Padme, who he knew was not really Padme, say, "Why do you think they disappeared?"

Anakin focused on the peak of one of the mountains, a point at which he knew, if he were on Naboo in truth he could have seen the valley where he and the real Padme had, decades before, spent a few idyllic days together. He stared at that peak and answered, "Because this is just in my mind, and I don't know what it's like to pick up my children. Because I never did it. And the spirits that are forcing this vision on me, they never learned what it was like either." He paused for a moment and then asked, "Are you one of those spirits, or are you my imagination?"

The vision of Padme said nothing in response to this question but instead followed up on her question from before, "Why didn't you ever hold your children? Why didn't you come here, with your family?"

"The war," Anakin said.

"Was won without you," she said. "When I told you I was pregnant, why didn't you take me here then?"

"Don't say 'I'," Anakin said threateningly. "My wife would not have left the political struggle behind while she could still influence it. She would not have allowed me to take her."

"I suppose you will never know since you never tried; never tried to save her," the vision said. "And then when she tried to save you, when she tried to take you away, maybe take you here…"

Anakin turned around without letting her finish and walked back towards the house, but as he walked up the stairs he saw Padme standing there on the patio, and she finished saying, "What did you do then Ani?"

"Don't call me that," Anakin responded. "You don't know me."

"Don't I?" the image of Padme said as it walked towards him. Her movements, which had been graceful had taken on a seductive appearance. When she reached him her small hand went to his face, lightly dragging her fingers across this skin. "Didn't you come to me many times? Didn't you bare your soul to me?"

"You are not my wife!" Anakin growled.

"No, but you spent far longer with me, with us, than you did with her," the false Padme said.

"Well," Anakin said, "thank you for finally answering my question."

"Unfair a bit, I suppose, given that she was always in your thoughts, even then," the phantom said, looking down at Padme's body. "I can see why it was so difficult to push her out of your mind, as you were trying to do."

Anakin's jaw clenched. If he was being honest, it was this creature, whatever it truly was, commenting on Padme's appearance that truly angered him. It was not for such an unclean thing to even speak her name as far as Anakin was concerned. But rather than insist on such he said, "That was not me. That was Vader."

The false Padme laughed, throwing her head back as she did so in an exaggerated motion that one would have never seen in the genuine article. Her tone as well was harsher and crueler than any that had ever escaped the lips of Padme Amidala, or so Anakin felt sure.

"That old lie? You still trot that out for yourself eh? What? Every time you think of some dark deed you tell yourself it was someone else? Never you, never Anakin Skywalker, hero of the Republic. No, he could not have done those things. He could not have killed those children. He could not have squeezed the life out of this lovely body. He could not have tortured his daughter, killed his only remaining friend and watched as an entire planet was wiped out. No, never him," the spirit said with a mocking smile which matched its tone.

"It's…it's true," Anakin said lamely. He had no better answer now than he had for Rey when she had confronted him with a similar truth.

"Oh it became true, didn't it? In a way. You kept telling yourself that you were this new person, that you hadn't become Darth Vader, but that you had killed Anakin Skywalker," the spirit said. "You came here, and you knelt among us, praying for damnation, so you could make it true. Others came here over the years, the long millennia, seeking the darkness. Some wanted power, some vengeance. Some wanted to live forever, some wanted knowledge. You were the only one trying to hide from yourself. You made Vader for no other reason than convincing yourself that it wasn't really you who did it."

The false Padme walked up to him and pulled his head down to hers, and to his shame, Anakin could not bring himself to stop her. She kissed him full on the lips and then whispered as their lips parted, "You wanted to be able to say that the man she fell in love with didn't kill her, that he didn't kill his child."

"I…I didn't kill my children," Anakin said haltingly.

In response the false Padme tightened her grip around the hair on the back of his head and pulled him down so that she could look down into his eyes. Anakin did not fight back, did not resist in the slightest. He knew it was not real, knew that it was not Padme, but it seemed real. It was what he had spent decades desiring. He had dreamed of it for so long that now, presented with the facsimile, he could not help himself.

"Didn't you though?" the false Padme said. "How did your children die Anakin? Fighting your grandson? The grandson who just wanted to be like you. The grandson fighting to restore the Empire you made possible. Is this some new lie? Some new way of saying that it wasn't all your fault? Some new way to avoid responsibility?" She threw him down after the last question, and he stayed on the ground, with nothing to say and no will to fight.

"But you fail us all eventually, don't you Anakin?" she asked as she walked towards him. "You failed the Jedi. You failed the Sith. You failed those you loved and those who loved you. You are going to fail her now too."

"Who?" Anakin asked weakly.

"Yes, better she be forgotten, weak a thing as she is. Such a disappointment. Her grandfather had his failings of course, thinking the Sith were just a tool to serve his wishes, but at least he was never overpowered by something so trivial as grief," the spirit said.

"Rey?" Anakin asked, remembering his companion again.

Padme's eyes glowed red now, and the beautiful vista of the Lakeland of Naboo was slowly melting away. As the greens and blues turned red and black he watched as the landscape of Mustafar bled through that of Naboo. The vision of Padme took several steps backwards and as she did she too changed. The many layers of diaphanous fabric, in its golds and silvers, was replaced by a black leather dress which left her shoulders and neck exposed, but fell, thickly and heavily to the floor. Her hair, which had been loose before was now tied back in a severe coiled style. The darkness around her eyes contrasted sharply with the ever paler skin. Her deeply red lips parted gently, and she said, "She is nothing. Nothing but a disappointment. Besides, you cannot save her."

Anakin stood up slowly, looking at the image of his wife and seeing clearly that for all her beauty, it was not Padme's beauty. It was someone, or something trying to give him what he wanted, and not understanding what that was. It was giving him an object of sensuous lust, when his dreams were of the girl on Tatooine and the woman on Naboo. There was none of her grace in this thing before him, and that is what broke the spell the spirit behind this phantasm had placed him under. "I will save her," Anakin said firmly.

"Save her? You have never saved anyone. And besides, you cannot save her from herself. No one can be saved from their true nature," she said. As she looked at him, red eyes ablaze, the spirit seemed to realize it had failed to trap him. The mask of Padme was still on, but it did not fit well. Anakin had known from the beginning that it was not his wife he was speaking to, but the joy he got from the illusion had overwhelmed his reason. Now, as the spirit trying to tempt him strayed further and further from the real woman, there was no joy to be taken, only anger. Anger that this thing would dare to use her for its purposes, that it would pollute her memory by forcing these cruelties from her lips. Anakin stood, looking around as the world of his dreams burned around him, replaced by the world of his nightmares, the world where he had lived for decades. Those decades gave him now the key to free himself of this nightmare.

"I know you now," Anakin said as he locked eyes with the spirit before him. "You aren't one of the old Sith spirits that haunt this cave, you know too much, about me, about what I longed for in those years alone."

Anakin walked towards the false Padme, who stared at him with a mixture of hatred and desire. Upon reaching her he put his hand up to the side of her face, holding her cheek and chin in his hand, and as if to make the fundamental falseness clear, the creature opened its mouth as if to seductively bite him.

"But you aren't a figment of my imagination, not some dream made real, for you have a goal, which is to turn me from mine. You are afraid we will succeed, and I am long past fear. I lost everything. I lost my love, my children, my friends," Anakin said as he put his other hand up under her chin. The wicked smile that played across her face, the mad look of lust which marked the spirit's desperation, convinced him of what to do next.

"I had thought you were gone, but you lingered here. The lie that I told myself, imprinted on this place. An echo of a lie, the shadow of a mask," he continued as he closed his hands around the lovely, delicate throat, before finally saying, "Vader."

As he said this the vision of Mustafar too melted away. He was in the cave again, his blue translucent hands holding in them a faint red glow. It bounced around furiously, that trace of the man he had been, trying to escape his grasp, but over such a thing as this Anakin's power was complete. He closed his fist around it, and the red light shone forth through the gaps between his fingers. Slowly the light died and when he opened his own ghostly hand, the ghost of Vader was gone. All his time spent meditating there, trying to purify himself, to kill the light within, it had created the thing which had known him so intimately. Then Anakin thought to himself that there was someone else who joined him in this place, on more than one occasion, and who had clearly known of the Dark Side power of this cave. He had known it when he sent the Separatist leaders to Mustafar, knowing that when Anakin was sent to them, the cave would strengthen the Dark Side's hold over him. And if the trace of Vader had tried to set him off course, what would that far more subtle and strategic spirit do to Rey?

He turned around to see that Rey had fallen away from him at some point. She was somewhere farther down the passage, alone. Alone but with him. Anakin expanded his awareness along the pathways in the cave, searching for his only remaining friend, his last hope for redemption, hoping she had not yet fallen.

As Anakin faced his demon, Rey sat and listened as first Ben, then Luke, and then Leia seemed to arrive to blame her for making their sacrifices, their whole lives, all have come to nothing. She listened but did not respond. What was the point? After all, she agreed with them. It had come back around to Ben, who this time was far more animated, on the brink of rage. Rey kept telling herself that he wasn't real as he half yelled at her.

"You could have stepped in to lead the New Republic! They needed you to lead them! Instead you gave it to those little fools, and all the squabbling, corrupt politicians. The same people too blind and stupid to listen to my mother. And now there is no Republic, just some idiots pretending there is. No Jedi, no Sith. No one to carry on the traditions of the Force," he said.

Rey, unable to contain her response said, "Ben wanted old things to die."

"And be replaced by something new!" the apparition yelled back. "But there is nothing in their place now. All those discoveries, all that knowledge, lost! Because you weren't strong enough. You couldn't see past childish stories about the past. You could not see the future."

Rey sat, with her knees pulled towards her chest, her arms crossed with her elbows resting on her knees, and her head resting on her forearms, looking down at the floor of the cave. Anakin had told her about this place, about how Vader and Palpatine would come here sometimes to meditate, how Sith of the past had done something similar. They left traces of themselves behind. He had described it as patterns being left in the Dark Side energies that filled the place. Patterns which perpetuated themselves. The closest thing the Sith had gotten to the kind of immortality the Jedi had discovered, though not the kind of immortality that Palpatine had sought after. Had Ben come here, she wondered. Was this thing spewing hatred and recrimination at her the last trace of Ben Solo left in the world? Were these the sentiments he would have felt upon considering what she had done with the gift he had given her?

While she was wondering these things the image and voice of Ben Solo continued to berate her until, all of a sudden, he stopped. Rey looked up and saw the face of Ben Solo looking down, surprised, at the blue, translucent hand which was protruding from his chest. Rey stood up slowly as Ben's body seemed to transform into a red light and collapse towards the open hand. As his body dissolved the ghostly form of Anakin Skywalker appeared behind him, and when all the red light was contained in his hand, he closed it firmly, until all the light was gone.

"I think that was the last of him," Anakin said.

"Of who?" Rey asked weakly. "Ben?"

"No," Anakin said, shaking his head vigorously, "Palpatine. I don't think he visited many other Sith shrines, except for the one on Exegol. Ben would never have come here, at least not to do the kinds of things you had to do in order to leave a bit of yourself behind."

"Like you did," Rey said.

"Yes, like I did," Anakin answered. Neither commented on the fact that he had referred to the actions of Vader in the first person, but neither missed that he had done so.

Rey got unsteadily to her feet and Anakin said to her, "You should not listen to anything he said Rey. It was all lies. Whatever it was, it was lies. It's all he's ever did, is lie."

"How did you do that?" Rey asked.

"Do what?" Anakin replied.

"Hurt them, destroy them, whatever it was," she answered.

"I am a spirit, nothing but the energy of the Force given form, just like them," Anakin said. "We can interact with each other in a way you cannot interact with us. In a way we cannot interact with the world."

"But Luke, he lifted the X-Wing," Rey said.

"No, you did. Or rather your power did. Luke was able to use it to move the X-Wing," Anakin explained as Rey began to haltingly walk again in the direction in which they had been headed.

"How did he do that?" she asked. "Did he take control of me? I didn't notice that."

"Say rather that his spirit spoke to yours. He could not have done anything you fundamentally did not want him to. You were, I would guess, in a somewhat fraught emotional position when this happened," Anakin said.

"Yes," Rey said, remembering the events that had taken her back to Ahch-To.

"It is easier to do it then, when you are confused, when your true wishes are obscured, hidden even from you," Anakin explained as he took began to walk. He could have moved immediately to the holocron, but he did not want to leave Rey alone, and for the very reasons he was explaining to her now, he was unable to retrieve it on his own.

Rey did not answer, but merely trudged along. She was not injured of course, not physically. But Anakin knew that wounds of the mind and of the spirit could still bite deeply. "It is important that you pay them no mind," he reminded her.

"Let's just get on with this," she said.

They walked along together until they eventually found the vault Vader had hidden away so long ago. With Anakin's instructions Rey was able to open it. When she asked him why he did not just co-opt her power, as Luke had been able to do he answered, "It requires a kind of implicit trust Rey. You trusted Luke, just as Luke had trusted Yoda, who I believe taught him that little trick."

"I trust you," Rey said solemnly.

"You do?" Anakin said with a mixture of hope and skepticism.

"Well, I knew if I could just outlast them, you would come back for me," she said. Shortly after saying this, the door to the vault opened, and Rey beheld the riches of Darth Vader. Contained within this vault were all those items he meant to keep hidden from Palpatine. Some were, like the holocron, items from the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Others were, Anakin explained to her, items from the deep past rumored to have some kind of connection to the Force. And then there were those items which spoke to the spark of Anakin behind the mask of Darth Vader. Items from Naboo, from Tatooine, from the apartment of Padme Amidala on Coruscant. The holocron was not given any pride of place. It was one item among others, and one without any particular importance for Anakin, and even less for Vader. It sat upon a high shelf towards the back of the vault.

"You brought Palpatine down to that cave, when this vault was so nearby?" Rey asked, incredulous.

"The cave itself helped hide all the objects here. Some of them have enough resonance with the Force that a trained Jedi or Sith would be able to sense them, but not with how strong that cave was in the Dark Side," Anakin answered.

"That sounds familiar," Rey said, trying to place where she had heard a similar story as she reached out with the Force to pull the holocron down. "Where have I heard that before?"

"It is the same tactic that Master Yoda used to hide himself from Palpatine and Va…myself," Anakin said.

"Strange, you two thinking of the same thing at the same time," Rey said as the holocron landed gently in her grasp.

"Well we were both hiding something from the same person, and it was the best tactic available," Anakin said.

"Is that why you made your home on this world?" Rey asked as she placed the holocron in her bag and hoisted it on to her back.

"No," Anakin said cryptically as he turned to lead the way back to the surface.

"Wait, is there anything else here we might need?" Rey asked. As she looked around she saw quite a few things that she could imagine no real use for. There were a great number of dresses and pieces of furniture each of them elegant and beautiful, but which would have fit poorly in the Lars homestead back on Tatooine. There were plenty of Jedi artifacts which Rey recognized from the ancient Jedi texts, and a few that seemed like they were of the Jedi, though they had not found their way into the texts, likely from being too modern. Present too were objects that Rey was equally sure were of Sith origin. She could not pinpoint what about them seemed like they were Sith. They simply felt wrong. But a few had sufficient resonance with the force to stand out amongst all the rest, but did not feel entirely light or dark. There was a mask that looked of Mandalorian make, though of a style that made it seem incredibly old. It was silver above the visor, but dark red beneath it, and pointed at the bottom, rather than flat or rounded as Mandalorian helmets so often were.

"Like what?" Anakin asked.

"Like that," Rey said, pointing at the mask.

"We don't need that," Anakin said after looking at the mask for a second.

"It feels powerful, but not evil," Rey said.

"It doesn't quite feel good though, does it?" Anakin asked.

"No," Rey answered, fighting the urge to reach out to touch it.

"There is no power in that mask. The power you feel is an echo of the man who wore it," Anakin said. "Revan. Have you heard of him?"

"No, he's not in the books," Rey said.

"Well he lived a long time ago, but not long enough ago to make it into those books," Anakin said. "The holocron will likely have something to say about him. More than a few things, I would expect."

"Who was he?" she asked.

"Almost the Chosen One," Anakin said. "A Jedi who became a Sith during a time of war, and then almost destroyed them both. He used the dark and the light, but was never wholly one or the other. There was a time when I thought I would become something like him, when I thought I would do what he could not quite manage."

"Well you did," Rey said.

"Not the way I intended," Anakin said. "I tried to reject Palpatine, to overthrow him, a few times. Each time he slapped me down harder. Eventually I just gave in, became what he wanted me to be. It was easier than constantly fighting, and the more I gave in, the easier it was to deal with it."

"With what?" Rey asked.

"The guilt," Anakin answered. "There is nothing in here we will need for your plan. And if your plan doesn't work and somehow you live through the failure, you can always come back."

"I don't think I want to face that cave anymore," Rey said.

"The cave is just a cave now," Anakin said. "We cleansed it."

"You cleansed it, you mean," Rey said with chagrin.

"I would not have done it, if it were not for you. I would not have come here, I would not have stayed and fought," he said.

Rey looked at the Force Ghost and nodded. "Are you sure you don't want anything…of hers?" she asked.

"What would I do with them?" Anakin asked sadly.

"I don't know. I know you can come here anytime you want, to look at them. I just thought…you might want them to be somewhere else, to not leave her things in this place," she said.

"They aren't her. They are just things I kept around to torture myself with. She's gone, and things won't bring her back," Anakin said before turning to walk away.

Rey took one last look at the collection of objects in the vault before turning to follow Anakin. They walked back out of the ruins of Vader's palace in silence. When they passed the cave Rey thought she could still feel an unnatural, given that they were on Mustafar, chill in the air, but no force specters haunted their steps.

When Rey reached the X-Wing she turned to Anakin and said, "I will see you on Tatooine?" Anakin did not answer and so Rey said, "I need you. I can't do this alone."

"I still think you probably shouldn't," Anakin replied.

"Show me another way then," Rey said softly.

"Just carry on," Anakin said. "The risks of what you are going to try…even the risks we know, they are terrifying. And I don't think we even have an idea of how many risks there are that we haven't thought of."

"I know. But you'll come?" she asked hopefully.

"Yes," Anakin said as he disappeared.