A/N: Obligatory post-TLJ Reylo fic. Started out as a force bond will-they/won't-they, but then the Knights of Ren showed up and things got epic. All Bastila/Revan shoutouts are intentional (and likely very badly done). Same with the Wookieepedia references. Will try and update as often as I can. Thank you for reading - reviews are love!

"I made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall."

- John Milton, Paradise Lost

CHAPTER 1

The field is red. Blood, he thinks. He wishes, more like. He wants blood, rivers of it. He wants to drink from his uncle's skull. You take everything, he thinks. You always have, and now you've taken this too. The anger roars inside, an electrical current searching for an endless series of conductors. He emerges from the rebel base, past the mutilated doors that held just long enough, past the smear of a distraction that used to be his own flesh and blood.

Hux waits to meet him, his face pinched with smugness, self-preservation the only thing keeping his tongue in check. Kylo reduces his lung capacity by thirty percent and is gratified to see the General double over. He stalks up the ramp, reading the faces of his men. Fear, disappointment, uncertainty. He channels it all into a white-hot beam, burning, twisting through his being and outside of it and into that fucking field of red and the farce of his family legacy. He channels it until he can't see anything else. It takes five seconds before the ground begins to shake.

The expressions of his men change. He feels their panic, feeds off it. The white-hot light burns brighter. When the moment is right, Kylo Ren closes his eyes.

The field vanishes, collapsing into a cavern half a mile wide.

"Let's go," he says to the stunned shuttle pilot.

Hux stumbles aboard, greedily sucking down air, terror and contrition bubbling up in equal measure.

"What orders, my Lord?" his voice sounds like shredded wires.

Kylo deigns to ponder, if only for effect.

"Send for the Knights of Ren."

Rey wakes to screaming. She looks around, ready to fight, only to recognize she is in her bunk aboard the Falcon. The ship orbits a moon, an out of the way fueling station in the Outer Rim that attracts no attention. The remains of the Resistance are holed up close by, but the screams do not belong to them.

She searches her feelings, reaching out the way Luke taught her. She sees Crait, the red salt field now swallowed up by black. She sees the crystal foxes running with no means of escape, sees the bodies of men and women being drowned by the earth. The dead are all screaming, pleading for peace, and Rey covers her eyes and ears, but the images won't stop. She thinks she cannot take anymore, when she is just as suddenly smothered by silence. A caress. She feels it as the room spins, topples, falls in dead space.

Where are you?

No, she thinks. Not now. She tumbles out of her bunk onto the cold metal grate. The voice seeps into her bones, low and seductive.

Are you near? I can feel you.

She grabs for a blanket, coarse against her skin, but the roughness is real. Not this. Not him. She gathers her emotions like a blanket too and pulls them tight around her, shutting him out as she did the Falcon's door in his face. Rey recalls the screams and prays for those who were lost. Leave me alone! Her anger reaches across the galaxy before she can stop it.

A quiet laugh reaches back.

"Did you feel it too?"

She startles, peeking out from beneath her blanket. Leia is kneeling on the grated floor by her side.

"Feel what?" Rey says.

"Don't kid me, kiddo. I've had quieter days when whole planets exploded. You can sense him."

"Who?"

"My disaster of a son." Leia sits down fully and rests her hands on her knees, the casual pose at odds with her formal outfit. "He's not very happy about what happened back there."

"No," Rey says, rubbing a hand across her eyes. "Ben is—"

"Ben?" Leia grabs hold of her wrist, and Rey realizes her mistake. "Do you know each other?"

Rey shakes her head. No, I don't, she thinks. Not like I thought. I don't know anything.

Small, firm hands grip her shoulders. "Rey, what is it? What's wrong?"

Rey keeps shaking her head. There are tears in her eyes. Why must she cry over him? Why must he hurt her as only the people you care about can do?

"Oh, honey." Leia takes her in her arms, and Rey cries in a way she has never let herself since she was small. "You can tell me, you know. Tell me what happened."

Rey does. Every detail. She hides nothing from this woman. The burden feels less, but it also feels greater. Now another person knows and what was theirs has become Ben's mother's as well.

Leia pales, and her arms tremble. She can only be strong for so long. Longer than most, but Rey has the suspicion it is one of the few times someone has truly shocked her.

"I think my heart is breaking," Rey says. "Like the lightsaber we cracked in two. And I don't know how to fix this. What should I do?"

"Tell no one," Leia says, her eyes as dark and sad as her son's. "I'll inform the others what they need to know. Enough to get you as far away from him as possible."

A secret shared is twice as dangerous.

Seven years.

Alec Magess, Sui-Marshal of Battala and Confessor of the Knights of Ren, steps down from his shuttle gangplank. He has not traveled from beyond the Outer Rim territories in seven full years. He has not tasted the recycled air of an Imperial-Class star destroyer sailing through a primary system, has not looked upon the bustling worlds of the Old Republic. His life could be reduced to a series of battles, he thinks. Of hard ground and hostile faces. The blistering heat of Kanaa. The plague-filled mud pits of Giedi-Farr. The frozen black of Sardis. Deprivation. Madness. Despair. Endless war and endless bloodshed, all in the name of remaking. All waiting for this day. For an encrypted message sent by an encrypted channel:

The Supreme Leader is dead.

Seven years since the temple burned and the worlds changed, since two padawans plotted to do everything over and to do it right this time, to take scalps and skulls as payment for treachery. To make the galaxy pure. To exact revenge.

Of course, they'd both learned that power did not come easy. It required submission, both to the wise and to the foolish. It required subjugation. It required leading troops who bore the insignia of the First Order, and all the pomp and nonsense that engendered. It required patience.

And endless amounts of concealment.

"Sui-Marshall?"

General Hux stands at the end of a company of black-clad officers. He refuses to use Alec's honorary title of 'Sir.' The man looks shorter than his hologram likeness, Alec thinks, but the sour, insipid quality of his face remains. He falls into step beside him.

"Have the others arrived?" Alec says.

"They are assembled in the royal chamber." Hux rolls his r's for a faux-patrician effect. "We feared you would not make it in time." He does not sound bereaved. Alec imagines his head decorating the end of a pike-staff.

"My men will need quarters."

Hux nods to a smaller black uniform. "Captain Kirss will see to them." A woman raises her eyes, golden-haired and attractive. Alec smiles at her and her pupils dilate. A gentle push with the Force and her pulse quickens, though her cheeks redden of their own volition. Seven years as a Dark Side user has only made his flirting worse.

Hux takes note and is not pleased. Interesting, Alec thinks, and files it away. The young Captain disappears, and they resume their walking.

"Were there losses on Crait?"

"None sustained during the battle," Hux says.

"And after?"

Hux weighs his words. "Two armored transports and half a battalion of troopers." He stops before a set of massive gray doors. "I've never seen anything like it. The ground shook and he made it devour them."

"Who did?" Alec says.

"Your precious leader."

He thinks back two days, to something he had felt in the Force. A great wave of anguish. Sometimes he could sense such things in battle, but this had been different. Was it even possible? He reflects on his readings of the lords of old. Nothing signifies in his memory.

(But then, Ben had always been the better student.)

Alec places a hand on the General's shoulder. Warm and reassuring, and with five stones of extra pressure thanks to the Force. He watches as Hux fails to hide the pain, even if he is too prideful to cry out. "Maybe you're right, General. Maybe we sorcerers do have our uses."

One final squeeze. "Long live the Supreme Leader."

He shuts the door in Hux's face.

The royal hall is a repurposed hangar. A cluster of humans have gathered at the far end. There are no guards, for each man is an army unto himself. It has been years since he has seen them. They all kneel. They all wear black. Some have masks, but those have been removed in the presence of the Supreme Leader.

And then there is the Supreme Leader. He sits on a throne of steel. A metal chair on a metal dais. It is not ornate. There is nothing about this place that is beautiful. It is harsh and it is useful and it is immense.

Much like the man himself, Alec muses. But some things have changed. He is older, far more so than Alec thought possible. Same dark hair cropped carelessly long, but there's a hardness in his features that is unexpected. This man has seen darkness, and knows it well. A long scar bisects his face into uneven halves, and Alec thinks of the mangled features of the lords of old and feels more than a twinge of jealousy. What have you gotten up to without me?

Alec reaches the circle of men and kneels alongside them. He wears no mask, so there is nothing to remove.

"The prodigal returns," a tattooed beast of a man mutters. Alec gives him his most charming smile. The last time he and Malaak had met, sabers had been drawn and the larger man had been bested. Clearly, it still stings.

"Enough," the man on the throne says, and Alec can feel the Force like a weight binding all of them. "Snoke is dead."

"Killed by your own hand?" Malaak says.

Their leader ignores the question. "The government must not falter. There must be no insurgence. What of the territories?"

Pular speaks first. He is a delicately-boned boy of twenty-one, the structure belying his ruthlessness underneath. "The Guild systems are subdued. They want peace because it means their prosperity."

"And the colonies?"

Ersn, a young man with dark skin and pale eyes answers. "They will give us no trouble." Alec remembers his mind-reading abilities that far surpassed any of Luke's other students.

"The Mid Rim as well," a knight named Vadanav says. "A brief rebellion was stamped out."

"And the Outer Rim?" the Supreme Leader looks to Alec.

"Most of the rebels were in hiding there. They have all been destroyed. Some tried to send help to Leia Organa's distress signal on Crait, but I took care of it."

"Good. What remains of the rebels escaped in Han Solo's ship. I want them hunted down. Nothing must remain of the Resistance. I will give each of you a list of names. They are to be killed on sight."

"Even your mother?" Pular asks.

"Especially my mother."

"And what of the girl?" Malaak says. "The one who was training with Luke. Who is hunting her?"

Alec smirks. "You think you deserve the honor?"

"It's more interesting than babysitting a useless star system—"

"No one is hunting the girl," the Supreme Leader says. "She is not on the list. If she is found, I want her brought directly to me. Unharmed."

A quiet falls over the men.

"You would spare a Jedi?" It is Malaak who gives voice to their thoughts.

The Supreme Leader stands, and the other knights stand too. Even without the dais he's still a head taller than every other man, save for Alec. "The girl shall not be harmed. Anyone who does so will answer to me." He steps onto the floor. "My Knights, I need you to maintain order in the galaxy. Return to your posts; I appoint you as their governors. You will rule each in my name."

"You would reestablish the oversectors?" Ersn fairly quivers with excitement.

"For the time being. It is the easiest way to maintain order. This is what I ask of you. Do you accept?"

"Yes, my Master," Alec answers first, reverting to the old form of address. He kneels again to show his submission. One by one, the other men follow, even Malaak.

"My Lord," Pular says, "what shall we call you now?"

Alec responds on his behalf. "You shall call him what he is. Call him 'Emperor.'"

A faint smile flickers across the newly anointed Emperor's face. "Very well. Now go and do your emperor's bidding."

The men begin to file out.

"But the Confessor shall stay."

Pular and Ersn give Alec a parting look of fear; Malaak one of ill-concealed delight. Vadanav is unbothered. Soon just Alec and the Emperor remain. Alec comes closer. He gestures to the Emperor's face.

"I hope the other guy looks worse."

Kylo closes his eyes in exasperation. "It's good to see you, too."

"There are stories about you, brother."

"You always did love gossip."

Alec smiles. "Father-killer. Attempted mother-killer. Killer of the Supreme Leader—"

"—To speak of that is treason."

"If it were true."

"What do they say?"

Alec considers. "They are glad he is dead. He was a glutton and a charlatan. Not worthy of the dark power he possessed. All that's left is his rabid lapdog."

"No one touches Hux," Kylo says. "Not yet. I still need the military's support."

"I won't do anything rash. But I should stay near him. Keep close watch."

"Agreed."

"There are stories about the girl, too."

Dark eyes snap up. A warning washes over Alec like newly spilled blood. "What have you heard?"

"That she came to you. That she bears the blame for Snoke's death. The rest is shrouded in mystery. Purposefully, it seems."

Kylo is silent for a long time. "I hardly know how to explain it," he says so quietly. "Around her my powers are… magnified. Focus and clarity the likes of which I've never seen."

"Don't tell me you're planning to turn back to the Light."

The push Alec receives is not pleasant. He lands on his ass a dozen feet away. "She needs to be with me." Kylo's voice is loud enough to echo off the walls. "With us."

Realization dawns as Alec pulls himself to standing. "You'd turn her?"

"Having her is what's important. Do you understand?"

Ben was the intellectual, the more detached of the two (notwithstanding the occasional fits of rage, one of many gifts from his grandfather). This is something new.

"You think she'd be helpful," Alec says.

"I think she is essential."

"All right then." He smiles. "In the Emperor we trust." He shakes his head, smile stretching into a grin. "I still can't believe this day has come."

"We will remake the galaxy," Kylo says. "Just as we promised."

"A golden age," Alec says. "The age of the Sith."

He does not see the shadow that crosses his old friend's face.