A/N: Welcome to my Episode 9 rewrite! It's my aim to write it as if it was the novelization of the movie, so it'll cover multiple POVs but mainly focus on Rey, Kylo (Ben), Hux, and my OC (a Knight of Ren).

Needless to say, you all need to pack your passport because we're entering AU territory….I guess that's just the canon-schmanon kind of girl that I am….deal with it! ;)

I plan to update every Wednesday.

Enjoy & I'd love to get your thoughts on the first chapter!

A scavenger, Rey was good at mending broken things. But what if Kylo Ren's pieces got scattered among her own; dark edges bleeding into waning brightness—a mosaic promising to unite their fragments to a dazzling whole. And what choices will the General turned spy and the Knight with her crumbling mask make when their identities are revealed? With the Resistance barely rebuilt and new allies hard to find, what will the Galaxy's fate be now a sinister power rises on Exegol?

CHAPTER 1

AJAN KLOSS – 35 ABY

The jungle around her was a cacophony of exuberant birdsongs and the busy, sibilant buzzing of insects. As varied as the chorus of vibrating wings, humming and twittering was, they were all equally incessant. And loud.

Rey caught her grin before it could curl the corners of her mouth, instead molding her expression back into one more appropriate for a humble scavenger training to become a Jedi.

That reminder alone served to sober her mirth at the lush moon's vociferous inhabitants. Her hands had balled into tight fists on the knees of her crossed legs before she could stop the telling reflex.

Rey clenched her jaw, chiding herself inwardly for having once again arrived at that same, heavy feeling coiling at her center. After almost a standard year of studying the ancient texts and a rigorous schedule of saber practice and meditation she shouldn't still feel this...this unsure.

She stubbornly turned away from the much treaded path to her doubts and willed herself to take a deep breath. After a dozen of these the tenseness in her body eased enough for her to allow room for the Force to flow back in and through her.

"I can do this... I can do this... I can do this..." she muttered in an undertone, adding her own repetitive note to the boisterous calls around her.

She didn't really expect the feverish mantra to have the same effect it had had during her and Finn's escape from Jakku. The chasing TIE fighters and the thrill of the Falcon responding to her very thoughts seemed a lifetime away.

Despite her resolution not to let any aggravation seep back in, a scowl creased her forehead nonetheless. Rey hadn't felt the weight then that came with her awakening powers. She did now.

Focus on the present moment. She warned herself, rather futilely imagining it was either Han's casual advice or Luke's sarcastic remonstrance. Neither were here to help her. That burden had been passed on to Leia.

And now I'm failing her too...

"Breathe..." she commanded herself sternly, recalling that first lesson on Ahch-To. It worked. For one glorious moment it worked. She thought she could feel the salty spray on her face, hear the echoes of a churning ocean, and the squeaks of Porgs. Then those were replaced by the actual sensations of the vast jungle stretching out on all sides.

The air was moist and stifling; the sun filtered down through leaves as big as herself and cast shadows just as large; bushes rustled and berries fell from their branches with the scurrying and passing of animals; the scents of flowers and fruits were their usual rich and exotic perfume that pervaded everything. And there, binding it all together, was the Force—guiding but not necessarily controlling how the vibrancy of the jungle was both quenched and fed by the decaying carcasses of animals and plants alike.

And then the promise of balance shifted—a heat haze distorting the clarity of the horizon she had gleaned.

It started, as it always did, with an eddying current that upset the steady flow of the Force coursing through her; the surface of it wouldn't so much as ripple, but from the deep would come a whisper. Then two. More and more would join until they were a soft, beguiling chant. And weaving through it, like a snake, a voice.

'You will bow before m—'

Rey's eyes shot open, her heart hammering in the region of her throat. Next instant her state of levitation grappled frantically with gravity, the latter winning spectacularly. There was the usual blur of green and then the brown of the jungle floor as it rushed towards her.

For one moment longer she didn't move, one thought resounding in her skull as her body remained sprawled among decomposing leaves, dark soil and flattened ferns.

I know that voice...

Her heart swelled with a powerful, panicky throb against her ribs, the pressure her current position added making it feel even more trapped.

But it couldn't be...

Rey pushed herself to her feet, absentmindedly brushing off soil, leaves, and the occasional centipede—the bulbous-bodied ants luckily always retreated of their own accord. Not without taking a bite though.

It took her a second longer to actually feel the sharp sting on the side of her neck, have her hand reach up and then connect both the pain and the movement to the little insect staining her palm. Ill at ease, perhaps disproportionally so, Rey hastily rubbed her hand clean on her pants.

It had happened again. Those whispers and that voice interrupting her meditation. They had grown more persistent lately too. There was hardly a time anymore in which Rey didn't hear them.

She should tell Leia. She hadn't yet in all their—admittedly dwindling— conversations; the mentor talking, explaining, but also listening as much as the pupil. She should tell her. But she wouldn't.

It was one thing being a disappointment to herself. She couldn't bear to be one to Leia...

"Again," Rey practically bit out to the surrounding jungle, sitting down and rather demonstratively crossing her legs and straightening her back.

She didn't want to know how long it would take her to have the noises of life around her anchor her mid-air. Even less how quick it would be before she came tumbling down again from her floating perch.

THE STEADFAST – 35 ABY

His fingers trembled as they approached the helmet on its pedestal; two empty, dark tunnels drawing him closer to the face of molten steel. He perceived the hesitation as a sign of weakness. It was.

Kylo Ren ground his teeth, pulling at the leather around every digit so he could throw off the glove. Now bare, he reached out a hand once more as if to offer himself a bigger challenge in answer to his failure. He had recoiled from directly touching his grandfather's mask before. It was time he dealt with that particular shortcoming.

Although he didn't tremble now, the crumpled steel was so cold to the touch he nearly withdrew his fingers as they made contact with it. Not that he was sure he could have retreated when the Force flared around his form, bringing with it shreds of images and sounds.

An intense heat brushed against his skin, an orange glow burned in the periphery of his vision.

'I do not fear the dark side!' The voice of a young man snarled. The world of fire whirled away from Kylo before it could fully manifest, a sea of many-colored, whizzing lights taking its place and it was the same voice that spoke, sounding frustrated but insecure.

'I'm not the Jedi I should be. I want...more.'

Something cascaded over his boots and Kylo looked down as they drowned in sand.

'Don't look back.' A woman's voice this time, stern but kind. Final in her regret and regretful in her finality.

The fiery realm returned; a different man cried out in hurt anger, 'You were the Chosen One!' His next words carried the same devastating disillusion. 'You would bring balance to the Force...'

There was a violent gush of lava, then the young man Kylo had heard before retorted with something like venom tinging his tone, 'I see through the lies of the Jedi!'

It felt like the heat started to actually scorch Kylo's skin when it was sucked out of the room, a woman's voice he hadn't hear before sobbing out, 'You're going down a path I can't follow...!'

Kylo clung to his fingertips still latching on to the twisted steel when he could hear the yelping of some kind of creature and he pivoted around to see the sleek walls of his roombeing overrun by brown, coarse material.

'Now...I am...complete...' The older woman again, her voice hoarse and feeble.

The wall morphed back to its normal state, though a grating thunk reverberated against it—like tired steel meeting a ship's opened ramp.

Someone took a desperate, rasping breath. 'You were right... You were right about me.'

Kylo felt a breeze tug at his hair, the scent of trees and earth filling his nostrils.

'It is the name of your true self. You've only forgotten.'

He recognized his uncle's voice at once and he increased his grasp on the helmet as if he could oust him from it.

His resentment didn't get the chance to spread when it was halted by the young man's breaking voice. 'What have I done...?'

The answering sneer made the hair rise in Kylo's neck. 'You are fulfilling your destiny.'

His room lurched again and the young man sounded whole again, cocky but genuine. 'Compassion, which I would describe as unconditional lo—'

Yet another voice tore the sentence apart and it locked Kylo in place, sweat pearling his temples as it reminded him of a cruel master killed and her not taking his hand—the latter perhaps proving the more tenacious tormentor.

'You have...compassion...for h—'

'You're a monster!'

He gasped at the powerful echo of Rey's words that obscured the last of Snoke's. Kylo's free hand grabbed his tunic, feeling again a blaster bolt that had never impacted there.

'It's not too late...' The crackle of a small fire gnawing through driftwood entered his ears, then the glare of the turbolift on the Supremacy made him avert his eyes to the side, her voice sounding so honest and hopeful now as if to make up for the insult that was true. 'I'll help you...'

He thought he could almost see her, standing before him again, her hands cuffed and her eyes shining with a convincing plea. Then the blurred image flickered—shattered into a row of pointed rocks that were thrown into sharp relief because of a silent flash of lightning: jagged, unmoving petals of an ugly flower. Someone moved in the shadows behind the throne and Rey's voice sounded harsh and ensnaring, 'You will bow before me...'

Dread flooded him and he took a staggering step backwards, the tips of his fingers finally being relinquished.

Kylo slammed on the ash coated floor. It billowed from his fallen figure as dead trees crowded around him and a triangle-shaped object rose among them like a bloodred sun while the fading voice of the young man intoned assuringly, 'Let me show you the way...'

Shivering violently, Kylo struggled to raise himself up, not daring to look at the ruin of the mask for a repetition of the confusing vision. He had barely reached out a hand to the wall for support when he did see her.

There, in the middle of his blindingly white room that looked wholly untouched by any of it, sat Rey...

AJAN KLOSS/THE STEADFAST – 35 ABY

"You again?" Rey remarked in mock annoyance as she leaned back from her work, one leg pulled up, the other bent and dipped to the side. Elbow planted on a knee, she twisted the servodriver idly in her hand and looked back into two bulgy eyes, one directed at the sky, the other at her.

"It's still not an ant-riddled branch—" she stopped herself at spotting a myriad of many-legged insects crawling over her staff. "It's still not a branch," she duly corrected herself, lifting her self-crafted weapon from the tree stump—faulty, self-crafted weapon, that was.

She had shortened the midsection of her staff and, after extensively consulting the entries on Kyber crystals, divided the broken halves over each end. She had never failed in repairing anything before, but the tendency of her blue sabers to sputter and disintegrate at the most inopportune moments still baffled her after all these months. It didn't do wonders for her doubts either.

"Go on. Back where you belong," she coaxed the Zymod balancing on the tip of her staff as she held it to the side. She poked a finger gently against his leathery hide that had assumed its exact color and texture, down to every scratch and speck of rust—only his eyes had once again given him away. Slowly, jarringly, the lizard moved its webbed hands and feet, its long tail curling around her staff for anchorage as it was finally exchanged for the sturdy fern.

Grateful for the animal's inadvertent distraction from her fruitless efforts, the smile never made it to her lips. Instead of turning a bright green, blotches a pristine white spread over its hide.

Rey frowned, grabbing a tighter hold of her staff and raising the servodriver in her other hand even before she felt something prickle in the back of her neck.

She sucked in a shocked breath as she recognized the tell-tale surge that always preceded it. Sounds became dulled and sharpened at the same time, as if the galaxy was holding its collective breath. And then she sensed his presence.

Kylo watched as the creature placed its first limb on the floor of his room. Then the second. And the next. It hadn't yet uncoiled its tail from her make-shift saber-staff when its skin painted itself the same color as the surface it had touched from light-years away. It vanished at the same time Rey's entire body stiffened in apprehension and he knew she had become aware of their reactivated bond.

She jumped to her feet, agile and quick, the Zymod belatedly disappearing among the green of the ferns next to her now its white hide adjusted to his true environment. The sabers erupted from the ends of her weapon as she swiveled around. He was there. Kylo Ren. A tall, black, looming figure in a jungle that twittered and buzzed on unperturbed.

Why?! Rey thought with something close to despair. She dug her heels in the warm soil regardless, not of a mind to give way to the specter that had haunted her steps all those months ago.

Kylo felt irritated at the way her body was poised to either guard against an expected attack, or to deliver one. He let his gaze roam over the staff in her hand, a subtle flicker running through the azure blades.

The crystals...

"Still broken then?" he derided as he took a step towards her. He repressed the pang of hurt that came with the taunt. Continuing to shiver in the aftermath of the vision, he didn't need to also relive the moment Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber had been torn apart in their fight over it.

"Like you," Rey bit back, anger and sorrow mingling in her fierce expression. She angled her staff in such a way that told him not to take another step. He did halt. But she wasn't sure if it had been her doing. His face was wan, the dark brown of his eyes glinting with both scorn and fear.

Kylo saw something in her wary posture change. She must have picked up on how unsettled he was. It was a strange blessing that he still didn't seem able to hide even as much as that from her. Above all, he cursed the Force for timing their reestablished connection this badly.

"Did you do thi—"

"No," he cut her question short, following it up with one of his own. "Why didn't you kill me?"

She shifted her weight uneasily but her eyes didn't leave his, the destroyed Throne Room an almost tangible presence between them. Rey recalled his unconscious figure crumpled among the debris as it rained fire around them. One stroke...one stroke and I could have ended this.

"I don't know," she eventually admitted, the realization like a restless pulse in her being.

Kylo felt rankled by her honesty, though he wasn't sure what else he had wanted to hear—what else he had expected her to say.

"Maybe you should have," he snarled, knowing she wasn't likely to take the bait.

She narrowed her eyes at him, any remnants of pity deeply buried. "It would have spared the galaxy a tyrant."

"And you will be its savior?" he scoffed.

A shadow crossed her face, he could trace it perfectly from the rapid flutter of her lashes to her jaw moving as she willed it to pass.

Rey studied the derision in the lines of his face, the hair that framed it strangely softening their sharpness. She couldn't see the monster anymore no matter how much she wanted. She still saw conflict and something far less identifiable.

She lowered her staff an inch, curiosity and the longing to get an answer to a question she had denied keeping alive all these months winning out over reticence. "Why kill Snoke if it wasn't because you chose me?"

Kylo felt puzzled at the question that wasn't one, his hostility wavering for a heartbeat. "I did choose you," he told her, even as Rey's edges began to fade.

Then she dissolved and he was alone again.