Chapter Text
Rey Skywalker was out of time.
As the Millennium Falcon soared into the Force-blessed oasis of Ahch-To, several angry indicators blaring that she could usually repair with ease, Rey groaned against the pillows of her bunk, the room she had come to call home over the last few years. Her hands still pressed rags against her gut, crusted with drying blood. At her side, little Grogu had slumped back in exhaustion – now stirring as he, too, felt the promise of the Force surround them. He had tried to heal her. They both had. But their combined efforts had only bought them time to escape, and now Rey could feel the last embers of her strength flowing away, the poison of the beast that had stabbed her on Coruscant beginning to take its final hold.
Voxyn, Tsavong Lah had called the beast when he had demanded her unconditional surrender hours before the battle had begun.
She had refused. Perhaps it was foolishness, thinking that her Force abilities would save her against the Vong as they had all war. Perhaps it was desperation, knowing that the last fleet in the galaxy with the strength to oppose the genocidal invaders orbited the ecumenopolis. The battered remains of the First Order remnants and the Galactic Alliance, the barely three-year-old government that had been cobbled together after Exegol. Two fragmentary militaries forced together out of sheer necessity. They hadn’t stood a damned chance.
Coruscant had burned.
The Force-hunting monster – with claws and teeth that had plagued Rey’s delirious nightmare – had taken her down with ease. They had barely escaped alive.
They wouldn’t be for long.
When the Millennium Falcon came to a shuddering halt on the island, Rey slumped back in defeat, her breathing beginning to shallow. Her lightsaber hung limp at her belt. With a weak hand, she reached over to pat Grogu’s head, her heart breaking when the child let out a sad burble of despair. He was eighty years old, and knew what death looked like.
The door to her room opened, and Din Djarin edged his way inside, as expressionless as ever beneath his Mando helmet. They stared at each other for a long minute, both knowing the fate that laid ahead.
“Won’t be long now,” Rey said, stroking her fingers over Grogu’s ear when he sniffled.
In a moment of long consideration, Din raised his hands to the base of his helmet, lifting off the beskar to reveal peppered hair and a commiserate expression. Rey sucked in a small breath.
“All of my people are dead,” Din said. He blinked back tears, and dug his fingers against the rim of his bucket. “The Darksaber is broken. Mandalore, Concordia, Navarro, they’re all ash. It has been… my honor to fight alongside you, Rey Skywalker. You gave us all hope.”
Rey let out a mirthless laugh, which quickly turned to coughing up blood. “Hope.”
“We had it. Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la.”
The Mando’a death rites ignited what little strength she had remaining. Moaning in pain, Rey forced herself upright, swinging her legs over the side of the bed.
“Help me up,” Rey rasped. Din hurried to wrap her arms around his neck. “We must- We must try one last thing before I go.”
“Where?”
“At the peak. There is a rock overlooking the ocean. I must go there. Grogu will lead the Way.”
With practiced ease, Din nodded once then scooped Rey up into his arms. Grogu leaped from the cot onto his adoptive father’s shoulder. With the urgency of death at their backs, the Mandalorian took off at a light jog, intent to bring the last Jedi to her final resting place before the poison could claim her.
The huts of Ahch-To were unchanged from the war with the First Order. The villagers still milled about, drying their laundry and sweeping at the ancient paths. The porgs still shrieked from the hillsides. When Din raced through the village, they stopped to stare, wondering at their urgency. Rey’s vision began to blur, the sky melting into the sea, beskar and flesh conjoining. She wondered if she would become a Force Ghost, as the Skywalkers before her had. But the Force told her no. There would be no returning from the destruction the Yuuzhan Vong had done, would do, to the fabric of the Force itself. When she went, it would be to nothingness.
By the time Rey found herself lying on the stone altar, she was dying.
“Hello again, little one.”
Slumped back in Din’s lap, Rey stared hazily at Luke Skywalker, younger than she had ever known him. He had close-cropped sandy hair and a youthful complexion, but the sorrow in his gaze was unmistakable. Grogu stirred in recognition, and Din cursed loudly at the sight.
“Kriffing hells,” Din said. “You weren’t kidding about the ghosts.”
Rey managed a weak smile. “Master Luke.”
The ghost of Luke Skywalker smiled grimly in return, and walked over to sit beside her on the stone altar. He reached out to place an ephemeral hand on her head, and Rey knew she was fading, because she could feel it.
“I’m sorry, kid,” Luke murmured. “I’ve failed you. I’ve failed the galaxy. You should have been prepared, you should have been taught. I threw away my life on Crait, and I- I would never had done that if I’d known what was coming next.”
“It’s not your fault, Master.”
“It is. Oh, but it is. More than you could know.”
“I- I have-” Coughing wracked her failing body, and Rey could feel herself losing the ability to keep her lungs clear. “I have an idea. One last plan.”
Luke bowed his head gravely. “I’m dead,” he whispered. “Kid… I’m dead. I’ve failed everyone. I can’t ask you to-”
“Give our lives for you?”
Grogu warbled in agreement, and Din clutched the two of them even closer.
“I read the ancient Jedi texts,” Rey wheezed, clutching to Din. “All things- are possible in the Force. The galaxy is beyond saving, and the Force is- is hurt- It’s screaming, Master. It wants- It wants to help. There’s no future here. But we can stop it. We can go back. You can go back.”
Din made a choked noise, but didn’t argue.
The outlines of the Force Ghost wavered. “The past… It was supposed to die.”
“But when it died, it killed the future too,” Rey whispered.
Luke remained silent, for they all knew it was true.
The rhythmic rush of the ocean beat against the cliffs far below. A breeze curled around them as the sun set over the distant horizon. Rey reached out a trembling hand to her Master, the man she had taken as an adoptive father, and wished he could have been that in life too.
“We have one chance,” Rey said, summoning the last of her strength. “One chance to stop the Vong. The First Order. It can’t be any of us. Grogu and I are both too young. Din isn’t force-sensitive. You’re already within the Living Force, Master. One last sacrifice. Let me sacrifice for you, like you sacrificed for me. Two lives are a small price to pay for the survival of quadrillions.”
Luke closed his eyes for a long moment. “When?”
“Right after Endor.” Rey coughed, blood gurgling in her lungs. “Tell- Leia. Han. Whoever you can trust. Don’t let them demilitarize. Stop Operation Cinder. Kill Gallius Rex. Find Grogu. Don’t let them-” Another desperate cough. “-Ilum. Save Ilum. Destroy Exegol. Start the new order immediately. Let the past- stay dead. Something new. Ben won’t fall, I trust you. Ahsoka. Ezra Bridger. You don’t- start from- nothing.”
As her strength began to fail, Din set his jaw and stepped in. “You need to stop Mandalore’s destruction,” he said with purpose. “The bombardment began nineteen days after the Battle of Endor. Find Bo-Katan and tell her everything. She’ll know how to find Sabine Wren, Syndulla’s ally. I don’t know how they found Ezra, but Sabine vanished when Ezra returned. It’s not worth saving Ezra if Thrawn comes back, though maybe if you tell him how the Vong massacred his people he’ll switch sides. You need to go dig Boba Fett out of the Sarlaac pit, too. Save my people, Skywalker, and we will fight to the last breath against the invaders. Kill the Jedi Order, and make your kind something that the Mand’alor will respect. We need warriors, not monks and fools.”
Grogu reached out a hand, and projected a single image: his location after the Battle of Endor. Excarga, he whispered sadly, then fell silent.
Luke blinked in disbelief. “Where in the hell is Excarga?” he said, then shook his head. “Never mind that, I’ll figure it out. Kids-”
“We don’t have time, Luke,” Rey whispered sadly. “I want- I want to- to help you. But it has to be now. I’m close. I have to go.”
“Rey-”
Rey sniffled, then choked on her own blood some more. “I- I took your name,” she gasped, trying to reach for him. Luke hurried to her side. “I- I wanted- I really wanted you to-”
“It’s okay,” Luke said in a broken tone. “I’m sorry, little one.”
“Find me?” Rey whispered pitifully. “Don’t let- Don’t let me stay on Jakku. Tell me you’ll-”
“I will. I promise.”
“It hurts.”
“I know. If we do this, it has to happen now. You and Grogu have to do it now.”
Grogu and Rey both looked to Din, who gave a single grim nod.
The Force rose around them. The winds began to stir. Somewhere deep below the island, the chained beast of the Dark Side rose from its prison and bled into the Light, circling around the altar until the stone cracked beneath them, and there was only the Force. For a moment, they were surrounded by the echoes of uncountable screams, a torment of newly slaughtered souls pushing outward in agony. Orbital bombardment smelled like burnt flesh in the Force. Grogu clung to Rey’s chest as they both thrust themselves deep into the Force, the last two beacons in an ocean of nothingness, forcing out of their physical forms to surround and gather Luke. They were luminous beings.
The Living Force took them with purpose.
Bloody rags and a little Jedi sack floated to the empty altar. Din Djarin let out a terrible sob as he watched his son and his sworn leader disappear. There was a great cracking in the world, from the top of the galaxy to the bottom, that tore reality asunder. His grief would last but a moment.
Luke Skywalker screamed as he was ripped away from the Living Force, forcibly thrust back into embodiment. The Force signatures of the pure souls who had sacrificed themselves for him began to dissolve into nothingness, and selfishly, he could not let them go. He could not hold them both. He chose the younger one. She was unmaking herself, but he clung to her. He could not fail her again. He would not fail her again.
The Force did not go gently.
Leia Organa was having complicated feelings about her sperm donor.
When Luke had insisted upon building a pyre for Darth Vader, her first and only thought had been to stay the hell away from it. Away from him. The man who had tortured her. The man who had blown up her homeworld, her parents, and made her watch. It didn’t matter what Luke said about how there was still good in the man, still Anakin Skywalker. Leia knew the truth. Darth Vader was a monster, an evil, unredeemable bastard, and he deserved to rot in an asteroid field, just like her parents were. Luke could be her brother. But that thing would never be her father.
Leia wasn’t sure what had compelled her to drift off toward the pyre. Han had kissed her, and oh did she like that. It was a feeling. A tickling sense of need, one that had swelled over the past few minutes. It felt like Luke. It felt like the calm before a storm, like the ozone in the air before the lightning crashed down over the valleys of Alderaan.
Was this the Force?
It had to be, Leia realized worriedly, when the feeling kept swelling and didn’t stop.
Across the treetop platform, Luke had gone rigid and pale by the pyre. Leia pulled herself away from Han and started to walk over, her sharp gaze flicking between her brother and Vader’s mechanical corpse.
“Luke?” Leia called, bracing herself against the rope bridge. “Luke, what’s happening?”
A great wind carried through the forest. Ewoks began to shriek as sparks carried off the bonfire, falling ineffectually against the damp foliage.
Luke Skywalker began to glow electric blue.
“Is this some kind of Jedi trick?” Han asked, gripping tightly to Leia’s shoulder.
Leia swallowed and stumbled back against his broad chest.
The Force swelled and wailed, an unearthly shriek that made Leia cry out in terror. From his confusion, it was clear that Han couldn’t hear it. She hadn’t heard that noise since Alderaan. Across the clearing, a great ball of light began to form in Luke’s arms, glowing like a miniature sun, and the Force’s tone shifted fast enough to give her mental whiplash. It was in unspeakable pain, yet happy? She felt too much of it. Was this one of Vader’s plots? Had the Emperor come back from the grave to kill her brother?
It was so loud for a moment that Leia was utterly certain they were all going to die.
Then it went silence, and the glow dissipated.
“What,” Han said dumbly. “What. Is that.”
Leia stared at disbelief at the sight of a baby girl in her brother’s arms, so tiny that it was hard to picture her outside of a hospital room. The girl opened her eyes, then let out a feeble cry.
Luke blinked.
“I…” Leia said uncertainly. “I think that’s a baby.”
That earned her an unsteady laugh from the love of her life. “Well, good job, your Highness, no shit.”
On the opposite side of the galaxy, Ahsoka Tano jerked out of her sleep, gasping at the worst shock she had felt in the Force since the Jedi Purge.
Coming back from the dead was not a pleasant experience, but Luke supposed it was fortunate that it had been a quiet one. He came to with slow horror, staring in muted disbelief at the sight of Darth Vader’s mask on the funeral pyre. I need to do a better job at destroying that, he thought. My nephew has quite enough ideas in his head. For a moment, it was the only thing he could think of; then slow awareness of his body, sturdy, young, began to return to him. People were trying to talk to him. There were hands on his shoulder and back, and a warm little something in his arms.
Luke stared down at the newborn form of Rey Skywalker in numb disbelief, struggling to reconcile the dying Jedi warrior, last of her kind, with the tiny mewling thing that was wailing against his black robes.
He reached out to her in the Force, and drew in a sharp breath at her familiar signature.
“-uke? Luke? Luke! Luke, are you- What the hell happened?”
It took a moment to remember how bodies worked. Luke turned his head and blinked at the sight of his sister, as he hadn’t seen her in over three decades. Had Leia always looked that young? Of course she hadn’t, or had, or-
“Leia,” Luke whispered. He had felt her pass into the Force. She hadn’t stayed. He had.
She hadn’t been there to witness the calamity.
“He doesn’t seem like he’s all there, Princess,” Han said, and Luke drank in the sight of his closest friend with greedy awe.
Leia scowled and gripped Luke’s cheek, jerking him out of his dazed thoughts.
“Hey, look at me,” Leia ordered. Luke complied. “What in the absolute kriffing hells was that, Luke Skywalker? You are holding an infant. Where did you get an infant? Why did it feel like- Like-”
“Her name is Rey,” Luke mumbled. “Rey Skywalker.”
Silence fell over the nearby rebels. Leia sank down onto the log bench by his side in disbelief, her hands clasping against nothing in her lap. She was still wearing those awful jungle camos, the ones they had ridden speeder bikes on; it made her look like a soldier, not a general. Han stared at him with trademark skepticism. The Endor night thickened around them.
In the absence of reaction, Luke slowly began to take in his surroundings. He had traveled thirty-four years back in time. Thirty-five. Endor was a blur of alcohol and grief, quickly interrupted as the violence of the Galactic Civil War churned onward for another year. He barely remembered the other rebels who had wandered over, confused by the light show. They weren’t safe. None of them were safe, not with a truth so immense, so dangerous.
Luke stood up and swayed.
“Woah!” Han exclaimed, rushing to steady him.
“Luke Skywalker!” Leia exclaimed. “You cannot sit there and- and- and materialize a baby and expect us to walk away without-!”
“Not here.”
Leia and Han fell silent, sharing a look of bewilderment.
“Who heard that?” Luke demanded, closing his eyes. “Who heard her name?”
“I don’t know,” Leia said, “but I don’t see what that’s-”
With a sharp shake of his head, Luke took one final look at the father he had finished mourning decades ago, then turned away from the pyre. “Not here,” he repeated, locking eyes with his sister. “We need to go to the Falcon. Now. Han, go and find Chewie and R2. Leia, take me to the Falcon. I don’t know where it is.”
“Hey, what about the party-”
“Luke, what in the stars-”
“Now,” Luke said, tucking Rey against his chest in a futile attempt to hide her from curious eyes. His sister and brother-in-law shared another bewildered look. Leia’s confusion melted into grave solemnity as she realized the intent behind his words.
“Do what he says, Han,” Leia commanded slowly, her gaze trailing from the infant back to Luke.
Han opened his mouth, flabbergasted. “But- But we blew up the Death Star- The party-”
“We don’t have time to party,” Luke said darkly. “We need to go. I’ve had… The Force has given me a vision, Leia. A terrible, terrible vision. We don’t have much time to act.”
Leia’s face grew stonier. Han whimpered.
“I was promised a party…”
“Han.”
There was no more time wasted on banter after that.
After a nerve-wrecked half hour later, they had assembled the entire crew together in the main bay of the Falcon. There was no baby formula on the ship, because of course there wasn’t, and Luke could feel in the Force that Rey was getting hungry. He sat rigid at the edge of the booths, clutching to the little one, unable to rip the image of Rey dying from his mind. Leia paced back and forth across the length of the room. Han leaned against the wall by the cockpit. Chewbacca sat at the other end of the booth, staring at Luke in confusion. R2-D2 wobbled back and forth near the on-ramp. Wicket chewed on a stick, happily leaning against a maintenance panel.
“Han,” Luke said tightly. “Can you please send the Ewok back to the party?”
Wicket jumped to his feet and chittered something, then toddled off the Falcon. The ramp closed shut behind him.
“I like the Ewoks…” Han mumbled, staring longingly at the flickering bonfires out the cockpit windows.
/Do we need to go get C-3P0 and the bad pilot?/ R2-D2 whistled in binary. Luke smiled gratefully at the droid, who hadn’t changed a single bit in all the time he’d known him. He had only realized how much he regretted not bringing him to Ahch-To after his death.
“No,” Luke said. “Let Threepio soak in the attention, he deserves it. And Lando will make sure that the Ewoks don’t keep him as their idol forever. I don’t- Well, frankly, I don’t trust Threepio to keep his trap shut.”
Chewbacca roared a laugh, and Leia scowled. “Does that mean we get answers now? I was also looking forward to the party tonight, so this better be good.”
Luke grimaced. “You won’t believe me.”
“I just watched a baby appear out of thin air,” Leia retorted. “Try me.”
Rey made a needy little sound, and Luke groaned, cradling her closer to his chest. They wouldn’t have much time before they needed to take off back to Home One.
“I lied about the vision,” Luke said bluntly. “There was no vision. I didn’t see the future, I lived it. In about thirty years, I died and passed on into the Force, just like Obi-Wan did. About four years after my death, my last apprentice was murdered in a war against extra-galactic invaders, a few days after the Battle of Coruscant effectively destroyed the planet. The governments had fallen, the fleets were gone. The Yuuzhan Vong had destroyed the Force in their home galaxy, and now that it had stood against them, they fully intended to destroy it here too. My apprentice and her only surviving youngling fled to the planet Ahch-To, where the first Jedi temple still stands. They both sacrificed their lives, and our entire timeline, to send me back to the day we killed the Emperor to try and prepare the galaxy for the war that destroyed us. The Yuuzhan Vong will arrive in thirty-four years, and if we aren’t ready, we’re all going to die. Painfully.”
Dead silence filled the Millennium Falcon. Leia stared at Luke in utter disbelief. Han sank down to the floor, covering his face in his hands. Chewbacca was motionless.
/Fuck,/ said R2-D2.
“Please tell me you’re joking,” Leia said. “Please tell me this is a joke, Luke.”
Luke grimly shook his head. “I’m not,” he said. “Leia, I swear by Alderaan, nothing I just said is a joke. I know that this must come as a shock to all of you. I am… probably in shock. I haven’t had a body in years. I just watched my- Two of my-” He closed his eyes and clutched Rey tighter. “A lot of people died to get me here. So many people are dead. I can’t celebrate right now, Han, and even if I wanted to, we don’t have time.”
He saw the exact moment that Leia slipped into general mode. “Explain.”
“Palpatine has contingencies,” Luke said quietly. “Horrible, horrible contingency plans. He is dead right now, but if we let him follow them, he won’t be. More importantly, though, the moment that news of his death reaches Imperial ears, it will activate Operation Cinder, and we need to stop it. The more we can act on the knowledge I bring you, the stronger the foundation for the New Republic will become.”
“What is that?” Leia said.
“Orbital bombardment campaign. I have planets. Leaders. Involved battalions. Conscientious objectors. It’s going to target too many planets to stop all of it.” Luke set his lips to a grim line. “We need to do what we can. Some planets did more damage than others.”
Leia closed her eyes, swaying in place. She took an unsteady breath.
“It took another year for the Galactic Civil War to end in my time,” Luke whispered. “If we intend to change things, we’re going to have to fight for longer.”
“Okay,” Leia said. “Okay. Okay. We just lost a lot of ships.”
“We managed last time.”
“Okay.”
“I was given a list of urgent tasks,” Luke said. “First, we need to go back to Tatooine and cut Boba Fett out of the Sarlaac pit. Then we need to find a planet called Excarga to retrieve a Jedi youngling from hiding. I have a large amount of intelligence I need to share with Rebel High Command before we leave to do any of that. Then, we need to go to Mandalore, and I need to track down the Mand’alor and Sabine Wren and convince them about everything I just told you before the Empire attempts to glass the planet in nineteen days. We’ll have to split up – Leia, you’ll have to go to Naboo and organize a planetary defense there too. The Empire will be using atmospheric satellites to destroy the climate, but they have fusion bombs if that doesn’t work. You’ll need to tell them-”
“Woah, woah, woah, woah, hey!” Han shoved his way to his feet and stomped to the middle of the room, laying a steadying hand on Leia’s shoulder. Leia looked ready to faint. “Slow down, kid. What in the- Mandalore? Naboo? Boba Fett?!”
“I’m going to be sick,” Leia announced, then walked into the fresher and puked.
Luke fell silent and waited for her to return.
Chewbacca roared something, and Han said, “I know, Chewie. I know.”
It took a very long time for Leia to return from the fresher. When she did, it was with a stony determination that made Luke gulp out of habit.
“Okay,” Leia said in a calm tone that didn’t sound particularly calm. “Luke Skywalker. My brother. I am tentatively accepting that you time traveled over thirty years, and that you clearly are in as much grief and shock as the rest of us. I need you to remember that our Rebellion just fought the biggest battle of our life, one which killed both the Emperor and- and Vader. Who you have just told me is also my father. And dead. Our fleet is in shambles, the Death Star is gone, and our men desperately needed this victory. If you tell them tonight that they have to get up and fight on an entirely new front on the opposite side of the galaxy based on intelligence gained from time travel, there will be a mutiny. Do you understand that?”
“I do,” Luke said.
“Our people need the New Republic to exist,” Leia said. “I have had about three hours to process the fact that the Empire has fallen. They are going to need me to tell them that the New Republic will exist, and that today we have founded it. I cannot go out to our people and tell them that in thirty years, this… Vong thing is going to destroy everything they have spent the last two decades sacrificing their entire lives for. You understand that?”
Luke nodded mutely.
“I am not minimizing the urgency of what you’ve just told us. But I am ordering you to take tonight off to rest. You will not fly the Falcon off to Tatooine. You will not call a full council briefing. You are going to stay in your bunk and rest, on the fleet if not on Endor.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I will call a briefing for tomorrow morning,” Leia said.
“Make sure you add Fulcrum to the list,” Luke said. “I need Ahsoka there. Hera Syndulla too.”
“Fine.”
“Our mother was Padmé Amidala, the former queen and Republic senator of Naboo. Pooja Nabierre is our first cousin, and a future New Republic senator. We need her in the fold as soon as possible.”
Leia sucked in a sharp breath, swaying for a long moment. “That is… also fine,” she said, strangled. “Sure. Tomorrow we can discuss our… mother.”
“Okay.”
“Do you have any more world-shattering revelations that can’t wait until morning?”
“No.”
“Great,” Han broke in, jerkily moving to place himself between Leia and Luke. “Perfect. Wonderful. If you’re quite done, then I have a question – who is the baby, and how did she get here?”
Luke stared down at Rey’s infant face, and Rey promptly burst into tears.
“Her name is Rey,” Luke said, raising his voice over the wailing. “She’s the apprentice who sacrificed herself to send me back in time. Now can we please go back to the fleet? The Falcon doesn’t have any baby formula, and I’m pretty sure she’s hungry.”