The Bond Between Us

eight seven

The nightmares were terrorizing you. The nightmares started not long after Luke's death and the Resistance's escape almost a year ago. It was the Emperor: his laughs, the Force lightning, his voice. The Emperor was haunting you and you weren't able to stop it. You would wake up with your heart beating out of your chest and sweat lining your skin. You weren't ever able to fall back asleep after waking up. Due to that, you would often find yourself deep in the jungle of Ajan Kloss, where the Resistance had found a place to hide. You meditated and practiced working with your two sabers.

Rey would often find you out there and join you. Both you and Leia had teamed up to continue her training, each of you having something different to teach her. Recently, you were having her work on connecting with the Jedi of the past. You had felt the need for her to work on that, while also working on yourself. Besides your connection with Obi-Wan, neither of you was having much success.

Your goal tonight though was to sleep through the whole night. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. You fell asleep and found yourself in a dark and dreary place. There were glass cases of strange-looking bodies tangled up together. Curious, you slowly walked closer. You were surprised to see that there were multiple bodies of Snoke, who was now dead.

You walked over to the next glass case to see multiple copies of a different body. A younger man, who looked more normal than Snoke. Before you could move to the next one, a familiar dark laugh echoed through the area. You turned around, searching for where the sound was coming from.

"You are too late," Palpatine's rough voice bounced off the walls. "I will rise and be more powerful than before. No one, not even you—the supposed Chosen One—can stop me."

You gasped as you sat up quickly, waking up. You hid your face in your hands as you tried to catch your breath. Feeling a presence in the room, you summoned your saber to your hand, ignited it, and pointed it at the figure. Luke gave you an 'are you serious', the yellow blade going through his Force ghost formed.

"Luke," you breathed out, turning off your weapon. "What are you doing here?"

"You're having dreams about Palpatine, aren't you?" He said. You looked away from him. Luke sighed as he sat down on your bed. "Cloning."

"What?" You looked at your nephew.

"That's how he survived. For years, Palpatine studied cloning as a means of possible immortality. He had figured out how his consciousness could survive and transfer to another body, making him almost unstoppable. We obviously never knew this."

"The Clones... That's why he had the Clone army made. He was using it as a test..."

"He had multiple clones ready for him... When Vader—when my father threw the Emperor down the central core, his consciousness jumped into one of the clones."

"The clones should have their own consciousness though."

"When Palpatine jumped into clones, the clone's own consciousness was shoved away... Rey is a Palpatine."

"I know."

"Yes, but not in the way you think... Over the years, Palpatine produced clones that he deemed as failures. Most of the time there wasn't anything wrong with them. Which is how one of them went rogue and had a daughter."

"Rey."

"Exactly."

"How do you know all of this?"

Luke smirked. "You learn a lot when you become one with the Force."

You nodded, thinking everything over. "He needs Rey, doesn't he? None of the clones had the full capability to wield the amount of Force that Palpatine was after... Rey does."