thatwaslucky | Ajan Kloss- Saturday morning

The message from the spy took some time to decode. Rey had been a little surprised that she'd been called to the briefing until she got there and found that everyone was gathered under the Tantive IV. It was also pretty hard to miss the mood coming off of everyone who knew already. It was… solemn. Dire.

"We've decoded the intel from the First Order spy, and we've confirmed the worst," Poe began, taking a deep breath. "Somehow, Palpatine has returned."

Rey felt like all the noise faded around her, and she thought she might be sick.

She knew. She instantly knew how.

For years she'd had information she couldn't share with anyone but Leia. Palpatine had cloned Fandom's Anakin, and had been obsessed with living forever. Rey didn't need to question how Palpatine himself could be alive now when she could jump to a conclusion.

She was leaving her thoughts there. She steadfastly refused to think any deeper than that.

She glanced over at Leia, and saw that Leia was watching her, too.

"Do we believe this?" Rose asked, above the shocked gasps and murmurs of the crowd.

"It cannot be," Aftab Ackbar argued. "He's been dead for years!"

"Dark science, cloning… secrets only the Sith knew." Beaumont was a historian, he probably knew something about that. Rey almost wished she'd asked him about that before, but at the moment it didn't matter.

"He's been planning his revenge," Poe continued over the crowd. "His followers have been building something for years. He calls it the Final Order. Soon, attacks on all free worlds will begin."

Chewie warbled a question.

"In the Unknown Regions," Poe answered. "The Emperor and his fleet have been hiding there, on a planet called Exogol."

Rey's eyes widened. She knew that name. Immediately, she made her way back through the crowd and up to her little workshop in the nook overlooking the ships. She'd come across that name dozens of times while going over the texts. All she had to do was go into the crate where she'd stored them and shuffle through to find the right one. She could still hear some of the voices below, but she knew this was important right now.

She made her way back down to the group. She didn't think anyone had even noticed she was gone. Aside from Finn. He always noticed. "General," she said. "May I speak with you?"

There were different murmurs now, but Leia nodded and held up a hand to keep everyone there. She then led Rey off to her quarters, where Rey could find the exact right place in the book to show her.

"I know how to get to Exegol," Rey said. "Your brother wrote about it in the Jedi texts."

Leia perked up. "Tell me."

"Luke searched for it. He nearly found it," she said, finger underlining the passage. "There are ciphers here I can't read but he said get there you need one of these. A Sith wayfinder." She pointed to a drawing of a pyramidal object and looked up at Leia. "They lead the way to Exegol. If we're to find this fleet, to stop what we both feel is coming, I need to finish what Luke started. Find Exegol. Find the Emperor."

It was both a surprise and not a surprise at all when Leia said, "No."

Rey had gotten hurt and Leia had gotten protective, and she hadn't actually been training that long, really. Of course Leia was worried. And she couldn't even know why this was so terrifying to Rey.

And Rey respected her concerns. She didn't blindly follow Leia, but she knew that her Master knew more than she did, that she saw things about her that Rey couldn't see in herself. She'd gone along with being taken off missions even though she hated it because Leia had said she wasn't ready, and she respected that. She'd spent months defending the decision even though she hated it because Leia knew best.

But.

Rey knew she had to do this. She knew why she had to do this. It didn't even matter if she didn't feel ready, because there was no one else who could do it, and she'd outgrown hoping someone else would take up the mantle. This was exactly what she'd been training for.

"I don't want to go without your blessing," Rey said firmly. "But I will. I will. It's what you would do."

*****

Rose had worked miracles in getting the Falcon back in flying condition. Once she'd gotten things together, Rey had gone to help, and in all honesty, she was itching to get back behind the controls of her ship again. It had been months, and she missed it.

On one of her trips back to the ship she found Poe heading toward her from the opposite direction. "You were right before," she told him. "I can't stay. I'm going to pick up Luke's search for Exegol."

"Yeah, I know," Poe said. "We're going with you. Chewie, did you get that compressor fixed?"

Chewie roared an affirmative. Rose had helped with that, too.

Rey stood, mouth agape, as Poe grabbed a crate of supplies and started helping Chewie load the ship. Then she noticed Finn, too.

"I need to go alone!" she said.

He nodded. "Alone with your friends."

"No. It's too dangerous, Finn."

Poe and Chewie stepped closer. BB-8 rolled after them. Finn lifted his chin towards them. "We go together."

Chewie responded with an affirmative, too.

Rey looked around at them. Sometimes she felt like her heart could just burst because of these people. She was terrified for them. But she couldn't keep herself from smiling.

****

Everyone was saying their goodbyes, which made this feel different. Usually when someone was called for a mission, there wasn't fanfare to it.

But then, they hadn't been dealing with Palpatine.

Actually, no, they had. They just hadn't known it.

There was a finality to all of it that Rey didn't like, and she knew there was a call she needed to make. She probably needed to make more than the one, but she didn't want to involve others in this, and there honestly wasn't time.

Instead, while everyone moved around behind her, Rey stood at the edge of the jungle, looking out into the green. It wasn't that long ago that she hadn't thought this much green existed and now she didn't know how to leave it. This place had been home here for a while now, and she had a feeling she would never see it again. Strange ho be heartsick over a place you hadn't left.

"We should get going," came Poe's voice, and when he noticed her staring off into space, he added, "What is it?"

"Nothing," she lied.

"Rey?"

Rey turned towards the voice, and there was Leia. She hurried over, still not knowing what to say, so it was fitting that what came out of her mouth was, "There's so much I want to tell you."

She should have told Leia the truth about her visions before now. She should say how much Leia's training had meant to her. Thank her for giving her a place with the Resistance and letting her make the Falcon her own. Tell her how much she admired-

"Tell me when you get back," Leia said simply.

She reached out to hug her the same moment Leia did, and Leia wasn't playing with this hug. It was like she didn't want to let Rey go any more than Rey wanted to be let go of.

"Never be afraid of who you are," Leia said quietly, and that was the thing to finally make Rey cry, because if Leia only knew who she was talking to, she wouldn't be saying that.

She pulled away, wiping at her eye, and while the others said goodbye to Leia, Rey snuck around to the other side of the ship to make a call.

[Parts taken from The Rise of Skywalker novelization by Rae Carson. For the recipient of the phone call!]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Anakin was on his way to pick up the new students when his comlink went off. "Skywalker," he said.

"It's Rey," she said, sounding maybe a little serious.

"Hi!" Anakin said. "I meant to call you yesterday when you weren't at the warehouse. How are you?"

There was the briefest of pauses before she said, "I'm going on a mission and you're not going to like it."

"Why am I not going to like it?" Anakin asked, switching lanes with the bus and going entirely too fast.

"Palpatine's back."

Don't crash.

"Fucking what?!" Anakin yelled over the sound of squealing tires and honking horns. "I electrocuted the kriff out him!"

"...Are you okay?" Rey asked, hearing the background.

"No one's dead," Anakin said, which wasn't entirely reassuring.

"...including Palpatine."

So no. Not okay, Rey.

"I have my theories on how, but they're not important right now," she said. "I'm going after him."

This must be the part he wasn't going to like, and that was stating it quite mildly.

"ALONE?!"

See, she thought the Palpatine part was the part he wouldn't like.

She hadn't accounted for there being several things he would not like.

"I tried," she admitted. "My friends insisted on coming with me."

"Heavily armed friends ready to shoot him into a sun?" Anakin asked. "Where are you? Maybe I can catch a portal."

And chop the guy into little bitty pieces this time. The fucker.

"We're leaving now, there's not time," Rey told him. And honestly she was a little worried about putting Anakin in front of Palpatine again. She didn't want to do that to him. "I'm ready."

She was not. But as Silver would say, fake it till you make it.

"Remember your training," Anakin said, "especially the part where Sith are not to be trusted. He will lie, cheat, and murder. He will manipulate. He will try to make you turn to the Dark Side. He is cunning."

And fucking alive. Anakin needed a minute.

"I know," she said. "You and Leia trained me well."

How much of that training was going to go out the window today? Well.

"Remember your training," Anakin said, driving basically on auto-pilot right now. "Stay calm. Do not give into self-doubt. You're ready. You're Jedi."

She still didn't feel ready to call herself that, but this was not the time to get into that.

"I'll call when it's done," she said, even though she knew very well this might be the last time she talked to him.

"Is Kylo Ren with him?" Anakin asked after a small pause. "They like to work in pairs."

"I don't think so. I don't see him doing that." He'd killed Snoke and taken over, as a Vader fanboy he probably wouldn't take up with this particular worse option. "I'm not worrying about him right now."

Anakin hummed, less convinced. "What will your friends be doing against Palpatine?"

Hopefully not dying horribly?

"If I have anything to say about it, dropping me off and leaving," she said.

Anakin snorted. "That seems unlikely. I've met them. Is Leia with you, too?"

"No. She's handling things from here," Rey said. "I just talked to her."

It felt weird to say she'd said goodbye to her.

"How's she taking this?"

Palpatine had been behind the Death Stars, after all. And the plunging the galaxy into darkness and fascism thing.

"Like Leia," Rey said with a small smile. "She didn't want me to go. But."

She probably didn't curse profusely and almost cause traffic wrecks. Whoops.

"So you're ungrounded or you just didn't care?" Anakin asked.

"I said I was going anyway and she gave me her blessing," Rey said.

Anakin smiled a little ruefully. "She was always smarter than I am."

"I'd go if you said no, too," Rey said lightly.

And in fact, Poe was calling for her in the background.

"I've got to go."

Anakin had about seven thousand things left to say but he swallowed them all down. "The Force will be with you," he said instead.

"And with you," Rey said. "Bye, Master Skywalker."

It was fine. This was fine.

This was absolutely not fine but Anakin didn't crash the bus going the rest of the way to the airport, and that should be celebrated.

Ajan Kloss- Saturday morning

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