"I haven't come to lead the Sith," Rey declared. "I've come to end them."

"As a Jedi?" Palpatine asked, his voice mocking.

"Yes," Ray replied, simply.

"No," Palpatine said, just as sure. "Your hatred. Your anger. You want to kill me. That is what I want. Kill me and my spirit will pass into you, as all the Sith live in me. You will be empress. We will be one."

Rey stared at him for a moment, then began to laugh.

It was a relieved sound, pure and clean, and the Emperor scowled.

"Why are you laughing?" he demanded.

"Because you're lying," Rey replied. "That's why. I'm laughing at myself, because I'd actually forgotten that a Sith could lie… but now I've remembered it, because you told such a ridiculous lie."

Palpatine frowned, his earlier triumph shifting.

"What are you talking about?" he demanded.

"You just said that, if I kill you, then your spirit passes into me," Rey explained. "But that's not how it works. It can't be how it works."

"It is how it works!" the Emperor insisted.

"Then why didn't it happen already?" Rey asked. "If you really are Emperor Palpatine, that is – and I have to admit, now I think about it I do actually doubt that – you died decades ago. You got thrown into a reactor shaft by Anakin Skywalker, and you either died because of that or you died from the subsequent explosion when Wedge Antilles and Lando Calrissian blew up the Second Death Star."

She folded her arms. "And you're not any of those people."

Palpatine laughed. "You have such a linear view of things, granddaughter!"

"Yeah, I was going to get to that, but I'm not there yet," Rey muttered. "But if it didn't activate then, why would it activate this time?"

"Because I am planning on taking you over!" Palpatine snapped. "Because I did not want to possess Darth Vader, he was badly wounded and about to die!"

"...so?" Rey asked. "You just claimed you literally came back from exploding – and taking over Anakin wouldn't have had any downside if you can do that."

Palpatine simmered.

"You could never understand!" he said. "It's a Sith thing. It's not something the Jedi would have told you."

"Do you use that line on everyone?" Rey asked. "It sounds like it."

"Enough of this!" Palpatine declared. "You will kill me, or your friends will die! Your new family will die! You have led them here, granddaughter-"

"Okay, I actually trust my friends to do their thing," Rey interrupted. "And you keep making this point, so I'm going to emphasize it. Sith lie. Why should I trust you about who my parents were, over a force vision which told me they were nobodies who sold me for drug money?"

She made a face. "Which, admittedly, not especially pleasant, but your version – Ben's version – makes no sense if you ask me."

"I didn't," Palpatine grumbled.

"Well, tough, because I'm doing it anyway," Rey said. "You're asking me to accept a version of events where my parents were, simultaneously, actively able to access the wealth and good living available to the child of the ruler of the galaxy for two decades and who rejected it, and also so hard up for cash that they literally sold their child for drug money… because, generally speaking, chancers tend to gravitate towards a place they can have a big score. Personally I'm inclined to believe you're just lying."

Palpatine simmered.

"Believe what you want, but I am not lying about this!" he said, raising his hands, and the roof of the temple cracked open.

A battle became visible overhead, and Rey looked up – seeing dozens of Star Destroyers, and hundreds of fighters, and the scant few craft of the Resistance flying around trying their level best to last another few seconds.

She closed her eyes, for a moment, and reached for the Force. And found it.

The books said that a Jedi would let their emotions go into the Force, but that wasn't what Rey did. Instead, she let her emotions drift away from her, a little, then reclaimed them. Understanding them. Recognizing them.

Distinguishing them, from objective fact.

"So, let's say you want me to kill you," she said, a moment later. "You want me to strike you down, with all of my hatred, to save my friends."

"Yes!" the Emperor said. "Give in to your anger!"

"I'm angry," Rey agreed, fiddling with her commlink with her off hand. "And anger leads to hate… but that I want to do something doesn't prevent it from being the right thing sometimes. Just because I want to kill you, doesn't mean that the Jedi thing to do is to let you live."

Palpatine laughed. "But it makes all the difference to the Force!"

Rey smiled. "And, speaking of lies, that's not a separate fleet. That's the First Order fleet, I recognize the Star Destroyer models, especially because you couldn't have a huge fleet concealed in here for literally decades and nor would you have a reason to – not if they could conquer or destroy the galaxy by themselves. Upgrading the First Order fleet to have new weapons, that's a bit more like it. And opening the throne room to the sky, so I could see… was a mistake."

Then she tuned, diving for cover, and Poe's X-Wing bottomed out two metres over the crack in the throne room roof.

His proton torpedoes didn't.

"Rey!" Ben called. "Are you-"

He stopped, looking at the huge blast crater with the remains of a throne in it.

"What happened?"

"Airstrike," Rey replied. "Now, Supreme Leader, are you going to tell your forces to surrender? Because if not then I might need to improvise again."

Ben blinked.

"...actually, that might work," he admitted. "They are supposed to obey me…"

He reached for his commlink, then stopped.

"You didn't get possessed, did you?"

"I'm pretty sure he was lying about that," Rey explained. "Also about a lot of other things. It's sort of a Sith thing…"

AN:

Technically this isn't Rey solving the problem by adding lightsabers.