Ya'll want to chuck on the playlist that has been fuelling me while I write these last chapters? Find 'Samuel Kim Music', and throw up 'Duel of the Fates.' John Williams is the OG but this shit is GLORIOUS! Oh and... Enjoy...

Ben's breath caught in his throat.

Could one forget how to breathe? Moments of silence filled the space between them, before he composed his expression, his shield within the force, and remembered to inhale.

Could it be?

"You're a liar." Rey stated, composing herself. Lack of belief filled her mind, but Ben felt something else.

Was it denial?

"There is no deceit in my words. Though, a child abandoned would no doubt learn to distrust the words of a stranger." He took a step closer, the corner of his lips drawing upwards into the remnants of a smile.

The muscles were twisted now, a phantom memory of what once was there. All Ben saw was the contortion of melted skin as he took another footfall in Rey's direction.

"Feel my mind. I assure you there is no deceit." Palpatine opened his mind to Rey, and Ben grabbed the chance to glean it too.

An image of a child, barely several years old, filled his mind. He looked upon her, seeing the same amber eyes that Ben had become so familiar.

Her face moved into the crook of someone's neck as they held her, hiding from sight.

The image shifted to another, the vision of a shuttle's engine failing within the atmosphere of an unknown planet, exploding behind their eyes.

"Your parents and grandparents passed tragically, but you survived. I have been looking for you for years, my child. It is only you and I who remain" Another step closer.

Ben glanced to Rey's face from the corner of his eye, and for a moment he saw and felt the way she almost believed the images he gave her.

But there were many details he was holding back, and Ben could feel it stirring silently underneath.

Rey, I know what you feel. You know I do. But understand his words are false. Feel further. Feel deeper, underneath. Ben needed to shake her from the reverie that held her, that told her she was not intentionally abandoned.

But she held tighter to them, a dream that hurt far less than memories she was still desperately trying to drown under the current.

Rey. Please trust me, Ben murmured, holding onto the love he held for her, the fear of what Palpatine was showing them both. They swirled together fluidly, and he gave all her the grey he felt, a lifeline in the ocean.

But she knew that as soon she reached for the lifeline, those memories would swell and rise, grasping the opportunity to drown her instead.

I can't, Rey begged, and forcing a broken sob to stay within her chest.

Do you remember the way I felt as though the lifeline you gave me once would drown me? I trusted you, and I survived. I know that you can do this, Rey. I believe in you with every ounce of my being. Ben offered her this, and she turned slightly to face him, her tear brimmed eyes unsteady with the waves that were just moments from drowning her.

He nodded slowly, imploring her with every ounce of his being.

He offered her his love and his trust completely, unshakably, unquestionably.

Rey inhaled deeply, and gripped desperately to the lifeline he had thrown her.

Stirring from the fantasy, Rey turned back on the Sith Lord before them. She hardened her resolve quickly, and they delved further together, their combined intrusion taking Palpatine by surprise for just a moment.

It was more than enough to see what he was hiding.

"Pathetic!" His voice raised with as much anger as were physically possible in his condition. The vision of the vessel self-combusting before his eyes flashed across his mind, pulling more curses from his decrepit lips.

"How dare they refuse me what I am owed! What, by rights, is mine!" Darkness and electricity coursed at the ends of his fingertips, but it was a flicker of his full strength.

His body was failing.

"I will search the entirety of this galaxy to find that wretched offspring and pull it's lifeforce for my own!"

Rey's sharp intake of air tore Ben back to the present. The rage that had filled Rey before, was nothing compared to the white-hot fury that begun to build within her chest now.

"You… You killed them?" Rey bit out through clenched teeth.

Palpatine realised the illusion had been shattered, and the yellow of his eyes seemed to radiate something Ben hadn't quite understood or seen before.

The façade had fallen, and only one thing remained.

It was pure evil.

"No. My son and his beloved believed they could hide you from me. They killed themselves to keep you hidden, and for what? I still found you." The flesh at his mouth lifted to reveal yellow teeth sitting precariously in black gums, a menacing sneer as he spat the words.

"And my mother? My father?" Rey shouted, steeling herself for the answer.

Ben could see her imagining impaling him with her saber, and it took all she had to stay herself to finally learn the answers she had spent years longing to know.

Palpatine scoffed, and Ben knew what his words would be before they became tangible in the air.

"My granddaughter and her pathetic lover were inconsequential the moment they decided they would take you away from me." An image crossed his mind, purposely, an attempt to draw Rey into the open.

The lifeless faces of Rey's parents filled their minds, discarded to the vacuum of space.

"NO!" Rey screamed, launching herself at Palpatine from where they stood. Even with the split-second warning, Ben was hard-pressed to grab her as she threw herself beyond him. Ben's long arms and large hands managed to grab her waist by only his fingertips, pulling her back into him as she fought to destroy Palpatine.

Fury and vengeance tore from Rey's body like he had never felt before, and it took all Ben had to pull her back and not give into the darkness on her behalf.

Rey, this is what they want, he warned in his attempt to hold her from harm, but as the words crossed his mind to hers, he knew they were wrong.

If they had wanted them dead, there would have been more than enough time to have executed them.

They could have obliterated the entire planet from the galaxy, another inconsequential part of their reign.

Why?

Ben's mind quickly flittered back to Hux's words aboard the dreadnaught, and the words from Palpatine's memory.

"I will pull it's lifeforce for my own."

His blood seemed to freeze within his veins as he begun to pull piece by piece together.

Could it be?

"You searched for her all these years so that you could take her lifeforce. How?" Ben did not need to ask why he had pursued something short of a fable for decades. The rotting flesh at his mouth gave that answer away far too clearly.

Palpatine's eyes finally cast to Ben's, the expression within them emanating something that Ben had seen far too often from Snoke. From Luke.

"Oh, child," he spat, chuckling lowly, his back heaving with the exertion. "I no longer needed to search for her. Not when I discovered your existence." He laughed again, bordering manic, a pride inflating his hollow chest.

He opened his mind fully then, allowing Rey and Ben to see into the decaying core of himself.

"She is a dyad in the force, half of a whole that contain a power so pure and so balanced, it can channel life itself." Palpatine was helped into the remnants of a throne by a faceless figure, retreating as another took their place.

Snoke emerged from the shadows, kneeling before the Emperor.

"And the other half?"

Palpatine coughed then, bile running from his lips.

"The other half is none other than the weakling offspring of Darth Vader's lineage. My eyes have never strayed from Luke Skywalker," he spat the words, spittle casting across the floor before him, "waiting for the moment I will have the strength to defeat him with my own hands. Oh, the irony to see his nephew for the first time, the way I finally felt the other half of the dyad, and how I knew then I could use his kin to defeat him, just as he used his kin to cripple me."

"Tell me what you desire, Emperor." Snoke commanded, eyes firm on the shadows beneath Palpatine's hood.

"Together we will lure that urchin to the dark side. A manipulation in a child's mind will barely be the lifting a finger. An imbalance between a duality will never be tolerated by the force. It will only be a matter of time until my descendant is drawn to him, unknowingly thrown into the open to create 'balance.'"

Rey had stopped fighting his restraint, falling silent as she watched the memory behind her eyelids.

A dyad? Is this what they had been missing all along, this piece of information that confirmed what they had both felt? The unknown elements of their connection, how it grew and strengthened with so much power that Rey had been able to pull him through the connection, to heal him of his mortal wounds?

Then, like the crushing debris of a dreadnaught, every aspect of Palpatine's memory hit him.

Ben's past, steeped in anxiety and fear, coursed through him.

The inklings of anger that begun to seed in his stomach, as though from nowhere, shifting his personality into something that concerned his mother, his father.

The feelings at the back of his mind, telling Ben that his parents were abandoning him, betraying him as they sent him to Luke, unsure of what else they could do for their son.

The darkness that seeped into his chest, telling him that he wasn't good enough, that his abilities would never live up to the expectations of those around him.

The voices that had never seemed to stop overwhelming his waking thoughts and his sleeping consciousness, until he believed there was something wrong with him.

Until he believed that he was evil.

"You… It was you? The voices in my head, that… It was you?" Ben's rage swelled dangerously within his chest, threatening to erupt. His hands moved from Rey's waist, and he squared himself up to Palpatine as he rolled his lightsaber within his palm, ready.

"I have been every voice you've ever heard inside your head." His yellow eyes pierced him, taunting.

Gloating.

This creature had poisoned him before he had even begun to live. He had twisted and contorted his thoughts, his hopes and his dreams, until he was someone and something that he no longer recognised.

This creature had manipulated him into every despicable act he had ever committed. He had been rotting him from the inside out.

This creature before them had torn apart his family.

He had torn apart Rey's family.

Ben would not let him leave here alive.

He took a step forward and Rey followed his lead willingly, thoughts of impaling Palpatine exploding within her mind alongside the blazing fury of revenge.

But something shifted within the air around them.

Palpatine gleaned the intention at the same moment Ben did, a momentary lapse in concentration, as an urgent want, a burning need for power shuddered through the force.

Palpatine's hollowed eyes widened and he turned with just enough time to see Cardo forcing a saber through his stomach and up through the remnants of his rib cage.

wuuuuh oh!

sorry ya'll, I'm about to leave you on another cliff hanger, and this one may last for the next week... I'll be busy until Tuesday or Wednesday, and won't have time to perfect the next chapter until after that point.

I'll elaborate more on the creative choices of the plot thus far after the next chapter or two, so that I don't give anything away!

Thanks again for the reviews RedPandaJoy, pam48 and BrokenMentality! Oooh, thank you so much for the information BrokenMentality, I hadn't read that before! That certainly makes more sense to me, haha! I think for the sake of this story, we will just assume he had some uh, adventures in the bedroom before his rise to power, and kept tabs on his child without being involved in their life. Well, until he found out Rey was a dyad, and then decided to destroy the lives of his entire lineage. Typical palps move. Anyway, thanks again! Sending you all my love and see you next week with a new chapter xxxx