The scream echoed out through the cavern's mouth moments before Luke's eyes snapped open. He'd purposely been trying not to open himself up to the influence of the cave, but that also meant he was cut off from Rey. As soon as he reached out, he could feel it: the pulsing beat of the dark side. That . . . wasn't right.

He had been on this island for years—explored every nook can cranny. While he never ventured inside the cave itself, he had felt it before. It had felt like the cave on Dagobah. The dark side was present, but passive. It lay dormant from years of neglect. But this? It felt like the sky itself was darkening. What had he sent the girl into?

With the barest pause to take a deep breath, Skywalker plunged into the darkness of the cave. His boot splashed into a puddle as he heard the tell-tale crack of lightning. He had glanced down to the water only to see the reflection of flames. "No," he whispered, knowing exactly where he was.

There was no cavern. He was on the courtyard plateau of the temple he'd chosen to train a new generation of Jedi. This was where he and his students had practiced sparring. The wind whipped his cloak to the side as if it had been yanked. His head followed the movement to see the temple on fire. It was raining, but the flames seen though the damaged artifice were casting the entire area in flickering gold.

Clenching his hand into a fist, Luke could feel it shaking. Get a hold of yourself, he commanded, you knew what this place would try to do to you. Don't let it win.

The clash of lightsabers pulled him away from his thoughts. With a cry, a black-cloaked figure was hurled out from the main entrance to the temple proper. The armor was familiar, burned into his memory. He killed this man—this Knight of Ren. More noise from the great hall and five figures came into view. One in Jedi garb was dancing between three attackers while a fourth calmly followed behind.

This isn't real, he told himself. You're here to find Rey.

With a flourish of her magenta blade and a powerful Force push, the three Knights of Ren dueling her crumbled to the ground. You can save her, a voice hummed inside his head. It wasn't his own, but a part of him didn't care. It's what he wanted to hear. And there she was. All he had to do was reach her and he could stop everything that happened. He could save Han. He could save everyone. You deserve this, the voice urged.

They were on the other side of the courtyard, so Luke started to run. The rain stung his eyes and he could make out the unintelligible voices of the two combatants. The crimson blade of the final attacker was met every time by the lightning fast purple blade. As he closed the distance, both duelists turned to the newcomer.

Mara Jade frowned. "Luke? What are you doing—"

Ben Solo's blood-shine blade slashed across her back as Luke screamed. The power of it cracked the stone tiles on the ground. The water was briefly held motionless in the air as he took in every excruciating detail. Her emerald eyes a mixture of confusion and pain as she started to fall to the wet ground.

Why didn't you stop him?

Why didn't you save me?

He was pulled away from echoing accusations by a synthesized chuckle. "She put up more of a fight than I had expected." Ben titled his helmet to glance down at the last fallen Jedi from the Academy. "I suppose I should thank you for making it an easy kill, dear Uncle."

Luke's robotic hand curled tighter around his lightsaber. When had he drawn it? The metallic housing groaned from the inhuman strength. Use it, a voice echoed in his mind, make him experience your pain.

"No," Luke whispered.

"If she hadn't seen you, she might not have let her guard down," Ben Solo sneered. "Instead, look at what you've done—what you're responsible for!"

A crack of thunder brought Skywalker's head up in a snap. "You aren't real," he accused.

"Perhaps I should show just how real I am to Mother and Father. After all, they sent me here for you to train me," he raised his arms to encompass the burning temple and his unconscious followers who made it that way. "Look at what a fine job you've done."

"I never taught you this," Luke murmured.

"You taught me what violence accomplishes. You and my parents all built lives on the gravestones of the millions of beings you've murdered." Ben shrugged as he lifted his helmet away, "I'm merely following the family business."

Ben's eyes burned a citrine yellow as he raised a black-gloved hand. Luke was knocked to the floor, the weight on his chest felt like a bantha was crushing it. He felt his ribs flex, just barely to the point of breaking. The pounding in his ears mimicked the footsteps as his nephew strode up to him.

"And now, like all the Jedi before, it's time to end you." Ben gave a low chuckle as he started to push downward with the Force.

No, a new voice sliced through Luke's mind like razor. You must reach the girl.

It sounded familiar, but too distorted to truly distinguish beyond the words themselves. It didn't matter, the voice was right. Skywalker drew a shuddering breath and pulled his own power around himself, a cocoon of the Force that he hadn't touched in such a way for years.

"Stop," Ben demanded, "you cannot win."

"Are—are you trying to convince me," Luke grimaced, "or yourself?"

With needle-like precision, Skywalker shaped his gathered power into a blade to slice through the illusion. The smell of smoke was replaced with the musty sea foam that ought to be here. The Ben Solo construct snarled as it moved to ignite his lightsaber only to collapse into dust before he could thumb the activation switch.

More screams echoed around him as he pulled himself up out of a tide pool he'd collapsed into. It wasn't difficult to follow the sounds to their source. Flashes of iridescent purple crackled along the wet walls.

Dripping robes dragged him down as he stumbled along the tunnel towards Rey's cries. The cavern sprawled into a grand opening. Inside, Luke froze at what he saw. The violet flashed subsided, though it was clear now what it was: Force Lightning. Rey was curled around herself beside a jagged rock, her clothing smoking from the attack. Towering above her, like a nightmare torn from his own past, was the Emperor.

"It appears we have an uninvited guest," the Sith drawled casually, flicking a bony finger as Rey was thrown aside. Turning away from his victim, Sidious appraised the Jedi Master. His yellow eyes raked over the disheveled robes with disdain. "You look tired, Skywalker."

"You're not real, either." Luke growled.

"Am I not? You think because you've mastered Jedi teachings that you know all the secrets of the Force?" Palpatine's bloodless lips curled into a sneer. "Still so very naïve."

Flickers of electricity danced towards the Sith as he drew power from the cavern itself. As energy wrapped itself around him like serpents, lightning shot from his clawed hands towards Skywalker. Luke moved to slice through this illusion as he had the previous one, only to have the electric attack slam into his chest. Whatever this was—it wasn't an illusion.

Cackling echoed around them as the lightning subsided. It felt just as bad as what he'd experienced aboard the second Death Star. The familiar spasms prevented Luke from being able to take a deep breath or close his hand into a fist.

"That is where you belong," the Emperor seethed, "at my feet. Such is the fate of all Jedi—the last of the Jedi. When your light is gone, only night will remain—only the dark side—only me."

As he raised his hands to deliver another round of torture, a battle cry from behind drew the attention of both Force masters. Rey had gathered her strength and lunged forward with her lightsaber. For the briefed moment, it appeared the blade would rend the Sith apparition asunder—until his withered hand snapped up in a flash. The shimmering blade stopped centimeters from contact, held swiftly in the Sith's power.

The lightsaber flickered and shut itself off, leaving Rey staring down a desiccated hand sparking with Sith lightning. "Fear not, child," the Sith cooed. "I have no intention of doing irrevocable damage to my future vessel. If you insist on being troublesome, however, you will need to be suitably shown the error or your ways."

What happened next was a blur to Skywalker. The bolt of electricity slammed into a shield of pure Force energy, showering the entire room in blinding light. When it dimmed, Rey and Sidious were thrown to opposite corners. Where the shield had been stood a woman.

Luke felt his heart race—it couldn't be.

"No more," she said, fiery red hair blading with power. Her emerald eyes bore into the crumbled Sith. "You don't get to have them."

"And how are you going to stop me, child?" With a wheezing laugh Palpatine rose to his feet far too steadily for how he'd been thrown. "You are not strong enough to stop me. You weren't in life—and certainly not now in death."

Mara smirked; the same confident smile Luke remembered when she used to tell him things were going to happen exactly how she wanted them. "Maybe not alone," she agreed, "but I'm not alone anymore, am I?"

Stepping out from nothing, dozens of shimmering Jedi gathered around her with their lightsabers drawn. Faces Luke recognized from the fall of the Republic—Jedi whose deaths Palpatine had orchestrated—looked ready for war.

Sidious let out a low chuckle, not nearly as gleeful as it had been moments earlier. It rattled in his chest like a dying star. "It took hundreds of you to keep me this long. It's only a matter of time before someone else scratches the dark corners of the ether again—and you can't stop all of us from breaking through."

"To the void, return you will," the ghostly image of Grand Master Yoda demanded.

"If you can make me, Jedi," the Emperor laughed, the cruel mirth making its way back into his eyes. Drawing a pair of electrum lightsabers from the shadows of his cloak, the Sith Lord's electric cackle surrounded them as he lunged at the collection of Jedi. They, too, moved to engage—their lightsabers drawn for battle. Sabers clashed and flashes of light consumed the fight as the ghostly images faded to nothingness.

All that was left was one. Mara crouched before Rey first, checking her for injuries. "You'll be fine, young one." She said gently, pushing her off to slumber. "You just need rest and a good long sleep."

Luke stared at her, unable to move more from shock than anything else. Mara came over to him and performed a similar assessment. "You never did take care of yourself as well as I would have liked," she murmured softly.

"You—you came back," he choked.

Her eyes snapped up to him. The barest hint of a melancholy smile touched her lips. "I never left, Farmboy."

Skywalker tentatively reached out his hand to touch her arm, knowing that she wasn't really there but irrationally hoping he would still feel her. Before he could get there, Mara clasped her fingers around his, warm and strong—real, so very real. Luke blinked back his tears. "I tried so hard to reach you," he said.

"I know," she soothed, "I know. I tried to reach back—in so many ways. There was never enough to truly get through.

"And I saw how much it hurt you," she admitted quietly, almost guiltily, "so I stopped."

Realization hit Luke like a mountain. It had been her—her all along. "But you're here now," he said intently, knowing what he was asking was wrong. "Stay?"

"I wish I could," Mara pulled him to her, the crack in her voice was very nearly imperceptible, "but you know that isn't how things work."

"I don't know how to go on without you," he spoke into her shoulder. "I don't know how to be me without us."

Fixing him with a patient look, she stood, pulling him with her. "You always took too much on your shoulders, Farmboy," she mused. "For now, you still have things you have to do. You need to help the girl."

"How? The last time I tried to train a Jedi it cost me everything."

"Master Yoda told you to pass on what you've learned. That includes failure. You need to prepare her for her own journey." Mara ran her fingers through his matted hair. "When you're finished, I'll be waiting."

She moved to pull away, but Luke gripped her tighter. "Don't leave."

"I told you: I'll never leave you," she chided as she stepped back, her once more incorporeal form moving though his arms. Luke was rooted to the floor where he stood. Coward that he was, he closed his eyes—unable watch her go again, though he couldn't quite bring himself from not feeling for her.

Her touch, light and uplifting as a breeze, left and took with it the surfeit of the dark side. Instead of the miasma that had shrouded the cavern as long as he'd been here was gone. In its place was emptiness. It didn't feel like the rest of the island, but it didn't feel like it had before. It was as if the power had been drained. A void.

Rey's ragged breathing forced his eyes open. He couldn't fall apart here. Whatever had happened, Luke knew he needed to get her back to his home. The after effects of Sith Lightning were hell on someone who wasn't prepared for them. Then—then he would need to think long and hard about what he was going to do next.

As he curled his hand into a fist, Luke could feel the residual warmth lingering. It was something he hadn't felt in a long time. More than that, he felt something else that he had been missing—hope.

The swirling vortex of dark power collapsed in on itself, resolving around a husk of a man. The throne room was in shambles. Dozens of crimson-clad guards and black-robed mystics lay dead on the floor—drained of what Force power and life they possessed.

The Supreme Leader of the First Order gingerly ran a hand along the side of his face, feeling some of the bone beneath his aging skin crumble at the barest touch. How foolish he'd been—how overconfident! And he—he who should know better than any living being the dangers of reaching into the deep well of the ether nearly suffered the ultimate fate for his miscalculation—his hubris.

Death was not the end for those strong in the Force. When the profane world was torn away from you, the conflict of eternity raged. Sith and Jedi—dark and the light—forever at war for the balance of the Force itself. There was such raw, untamed power there—power that he had used before to ensnare the Solo child. A conduit between the living and the dead—a world between—bridged through one's own iron grasp of the Force itself.

And when he sensed Skywalker and the girl enter a wound in the Force, the temptation to snuff out the light was greater than prudent caution would have allowed. He drew on the void itself to attack them, only to find himself pulled under the quicksand of the dark. The dead never wanted to stay that way—as he well knew. The danger of venturing into the void was that it sometimes looked back. Familiar and knowing eyes always watching.

Flexing his throbbing hand, the Supreme Leader couldn't help but grin. Snoke had been such an unwary traveler. More power than sense, walking alone on a road he shouldn't have been on. And so Plagueis took him—became him. Freed himself of the tethers of the void and clawed his way back to the realm of the living.

Snoke's body was ill-suited to holding Plagueis' power, which resulted in ongoing deformity. It wouldn't matter. He would have a new host soon enough. One strong enough to house the precious mind of the last Lord of the Sith. Kylo Ren merely needed to reach his full potential before serving his final purpose—his destiny.

Even with all that, Plagueis had grown overconfident and sloppy. He saw a chance to end the Skywalker disease that haunted him from before the fall of the Republic and seized the opportunity. But he drew too deeply from the abyss and his apprentice struck from beyond the grave. Sidious was always too clever by half—dangerous and treacherous in ways that Plagueis never imagined.

That was one of the reasons Plagueis remained in exile for so long. His apprentice knew him all too well and with the power of an entire galaxy behind him, he was a formidable opponent indeed. But that familiarity—that intimacy—worked both ways. For all his strengths, Sidious' greatest weakness was his own overconfidence. It was only a matter of time before one of his apprentice's Machiavellian schemes, complex to the point of frivolity, blew up in his face. Then, without any threat to his supremacy, Plagueis was able to return to the galaxy proper with the ruins of Sidious' own Empire to shape the remnants into his image.

Still, today nearly ended that dream is such spectacular fashion. Sidious has been able to trap Plagueis' mind and draw upon his body like a power core to sustain his convalescence. The guards and mystics were quickly run dry, but Snoke's body still possessed enough raw Force potential that he'd survived. Ironic that Plagueis should owe his continued life to Skywalker for defeating his apprentice yet again.

A soft light puled on the control panel recessed into his throne's arm. Jabbing the button sharply, Plagueis snapped. "What is it?"

"Supreme Leader, Kylo Ren is here."

Ah, the pupil comes for another lesson. A wave of his hand sent the bodies across the floor to be dissolved in one of Plagueis' alchemy devices. "Send him in."

Skywalker lived—as did the girl—but it did not matter. Plagueis had learned his lesson from Sidious well. Apprentices were more trouble than they were worth.

Author's Note: And this concludes this story for good. What started out as a one-shot grew a lot more than I had expected. I have actually been working on finishing this for a while now. Funny enough, the teaser trailer for The Rise of Skywalker came out recently and inspired me to wrap this up for good. It appears my powers of precognition are still pretty good. I had the idea of bringing Palpatine back as a final test long before the trailer.

But to wrap this up, I left it open-ended so Luke could either help Rey or just finish her training. And I threw in the Plagueis part because at this point it's an AU anyway, so why not make it how I want? I had Plagueis take over Snoke's body so as to explain why he isn't a Muun.