No Masters // What's A Jedi To An Empress?

no masters // what's a jedi to an empress?

Rey Palpatine has been raised in the ways of the Sith since childhood by her grandfather’s cultists, the Sith Eternal. When she hears whispers of the true reason she exists — to act as a vessel for the Emperor’s spirit — Rey begins to question everything she ever knew. 

The man sitting cross-legged is not really there. He flickers and blurs around the edges into pure light.

“What are you?” Rey snarls, a hand on her lightsabers.

“A concerned party.”

She pokes him curiously, with the Force. His presence is not really there either, indistinct and fluid, blurring at the edges, like a nebula rather than a star. Something from her teachings comes to mind.

“Jedi trickery.”

“Something like that,” says the man. She’s right.

More Jedi. The Emperor had them all destroyed a long time ago. They shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t be here.

“What do you want from me, Jedi?” Rey spits.

“I tried to reach you on Exegol, but I didn’t think you’d listen, not while you were surrounded by those who serve the Emperor.”

“What would you know about serving the Emperor?”

“More than you know.”

The man’s blue gaze bores into the back of her head. With a jolt, she realizes the gaze is familiar. Those are Luke Skywalker’s eyes. If she imagines what Skywalker looked like in his youth, this is it, more or less — sandy-haired, slightly sun-weathered. But sharper. Crueler. Intensified. If Skywalker is a bonfire, this man is a blaze that turns forests to ash.

So this must be… “Darth Vader?”

He doesn’t deserve that name, the name of a Sith Lord, not after dealing the blow that destroyed the Empire — her Empire. But her fighting style is modeled on Form V, which everyone agrees he mastered. Rey manages to drudge up a speck of respect, for his skill if little else.

“Please sit.” Vader points at the floor opposite him.

She won’t sit on the floor like a peasant, least of all by a Jedi-ghost-thing. She is the Empress, whether the Republic or the Sith Eternal like it or not. She stands, glaring down at Vader and crossing her arms.

“What are you afraid of?” He stares up at her, uncompromising.

Bile rises at the back of her throat. She regrets even coming here. “More Jedi mind tricks!” 

A flick of her wrist, almost without thought, and a lightsaber burns blood-red in front of his throat. Vader does not blink, his steady gaze crueler yet in the red glare. His voice is cold. Unyielding.

“This is a conversation, and not one that you can win with your lightsabers. Put them away.” 

Scowling, she does. 

“You are here because you want to be here; otherwise you would have left. What are you afraid of? Why have you left your castle in Exegol for a Jedi temple, of all places?”

Rey thinks about Coronation Day. About how it feels to have the floor ripped from underneath her feet, and how she wants it to never happen again. How good it would feel to destroy them all, her grandfather included. How badly she yearns for the sweetness of revenge and the warmly of safety. But most of all, she thinks of the yawning emptiness in her that will never be filled.

“I’m afraid of nothing,” she snaps. This is but a temporary setback. She is Empress. She will sit on the throne. She will make them pay.

“You can still come back to the light. There is always a choice.”

“There is no light in me to come back to! There never was!” And she’s proud of it. She doesn’t live in fear, in weakness. Rey is no Jedi, fallen or not. She is nothing like Vader. Where he is weak, she is strong.

“Why are you fighting?”

“I am fighting for my Empire!”

“I said the same, once. What then, once you have your Empire? Will you rule it alone as immortal Empress?”

“Yes.” Rey doesn’t flinch.

“You might win,” says Vader, “but you won’t enjoy it for long.”

“It’s about what is fate, what is right, not enjoyment.”

“No, for you, it’s about suffering.”

“I am not you,” Rey says. “I am not suffering.” Suffering is a pathetic word. She is not a mewing whelp.

“You are suffering, and if you continue down this path, the pain will multiply.”

“Pain makes you strong.”

“Pain makes you weak! There is no need for anyone else to walk this path!” Vader isn’t angry. Jedi aren’t supposed to be angry. Still, something in his voice is… bitter. 

He softens a little, quieter now, but there’s still danger threading through his tone. “There are no good dictators… someone once told me that. You will not be good for your Empire, despite what you have been led to believe. The future you wish to create is one in which everyone suffers.”

“I will bring peace.”

“You started a war,” Vader says, bitterly. 

“To undo your mistake! If you want to blame anyone for this war, blame yourself!”

“Destroying Palpatine was the first good thing I did in my life for a very long time. But yes, you are right, this war is my mistake. I was the one who allowed Palpatine to rise. I could have strangled the Empire in its crib.” His voice grows to a crescendo, gaze burning, blue fire. “And the best I can do now is to try to stave off the darkness.”

“You will try,” says Rey coldly, drawing herself up to her full height. The and fail is implied. 

With that, she turns and stalks out of the temple atrium.

“We will meet again, Empress!” calls Vader, matching her cold, imperious tone. It is a threat. 

She ignores it.

Padmé the girl. Queen Amidala the head of state. Padmé Naberrie the woman. Padmé Amidala the diplomat. Lady Liberty, the personification of freedom and democracy.

ahhhhhhhh

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ꪖ ᥴꪮꪑꪑꪮꪀ ꪖᦔꪜꫀ᥅ᦓꪖ᥅ꪗ

⋘ 𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎… ⋙ █▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ ↺1%

The Hospital Wing, white, clean, and scented with fresh linens and morning air, was nearly empty. It was a peaceful scene, the soft breeze blowing at the white, floor-sweeping curtains, the pale light twinkling on the shiny marble tiles.

A voice rang out, disturbing the halcyon atmosphere.

“Why are you still here?”

“I haven’t got anything better to do,” T. M. Riddle pointed out, a large grimoire propped open in his hands, and balanced precariously on his foot, which was crossed over his knee. His plain black robes gave him a scholarly air, accentuated by his habit of irritatedly pushing away the obsidian lock of hair that kept falling into his pale face and distracting him from his reading.

Ruby Potter turned her head, and glared. If she could, she would have made a rude hand gesture, but her fingers were still sore from the burns, peeling and flaking. Most disturbingly, the flesh there was turning crimson, as if her hands had been permanently stained.

“I wish,” she said, to no one in particular, “that you would go away.”

To tell the truth, she was sick of seeing his face in her dreams. They were not nice dreams, although Ruby thought it might be even more unsettling if they were.

“Life isn’t about getting what you want,” Tee responded almost instantly. “To answer your first question:  I’ve been in that room all year and I’m tired of it, I can’t read in the library, because Remus Lupin’s glowering and passive-aggressive shelf-stocking is distracting, I don’t fancy the dungeons, and the Hospital Wing has the best light.”

He clicked his tongue, his face a mask of displeasure. “Satisfied?”

Both looked up as the door to the Hospital Wing swung open, two sets of footsteps ringing out across the floor. The first set belonged to a tall, elderly wizard in bright purple robes patterned all over with constellations, with a pair of half-moon spectacles perched on his long, crooked nose. The second also belonged to a bespectacled wizard, this one with hair that stuck out at all angles; notably, his school robes were too short for him and needed to be let out, since he had recently grown quite considerably.

“I hope Harry and I are not interrupting?” called Albus Dumbledore, his serene voice seeming to float in the air. 

Tee had grown even paler. He shut his book with a loud snap, sending up a visible plume of dust, and scrambled to his feet.

“Of course not. I was just leaving.”

Dumbledore laid a hand on Tee’s shoulder, causing him to flinch. “Do stay, Tom. I wished to speak to you as well.”

⋘ 𝑃𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑤𝑎𝑖𝑡… ⋙

I love when people characterise Albus as the angry angsty 14 year old he is. That boy is going through puberty. He is battling acne and bullys and an overbearing dad who means well, but Albus has too many emotions to realise that.

Because like... Albus feels things 10x stronger than other people. He can't just "get over" something the way Harry might be able to. It's why he so easily holds grudges. It's ALSO why he finds it so hard to trust people, because he's forced himself into this pessimistic view that everyone is judging him or just sees him as his dad, which means he usually just gets gut feelings about people and sticks to that version of them he has built in his head. And the fact that Albus is DISGUSTED by the idea of people actually perceiving him doesn't help

TIL there is a Chinese translation of my Gin n'Tonic QLFC fic on a webnovel site