twelve_not_fourteen | On the Light and the Dark ...

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On the Light and the Dark ...

“Ben --”

In a such a large structure with conditioners for the volume of systems and subsystems that run the Starkiller Base, it seems like there should have been more ambient noise then there was. Instead, the voice of his father cuts through the air like freshly sharpened vibroblade. It’s in the echo, however, that you can really hear the desperation.

“Han Solo, I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time.” That voice, cold and mechanical with the face Han longed to see so badly hidden behind a helmet. The Millennium Falcon’s captain has to struggle to hold back the tears that seem to want to spill from his eyes.

How you could have been so close, as he stalked behind you and still you didn’t seem to feel him or acknowledge that he was there, the old pilot will always wonder. Han’s first footfall onto the durasteel catwalk not the usual confident step, but a shaky one. He has a bad feeling about what’s about to happen and yet, it’s a feeling he has to ignore for many reasons.

For, perhaps, the most important reasons that any man could ever hope to have.

Han sets his jaw and summons the same courage that allowed for him to skim a little too close to black holes and run hollering into crowded barracks full of Stormtroopers. It shouldn’t take that kind of bravery to face your own son, should it? He supposes not, and for a second or two while he approaches, he tries to pinpoint where it all went wrong. As if it was only one wrong choice that sent them through this hellish cascade and not a series of them made by multiple people.

“Take off that mask.” Han says, a bit of an edge in his voice again. “You don’t need it.”

“What do you think you’ll see if I do?” A pointed response, not quite as glib as the ones his father spouts off, but sort of philosophical. It reminds him of a Skywalker response.

“The face of my son.”

When Kylo Ren disengages the mechanisms that keep his helm in place, and he reveals himself, his father’s eyes seem to soften. The sad truth is that he can recognize you, but the light that he used to see in you - a brilliance that could have dwarfed any star that Han had ever seen, seems so far away.

“Your son is gone. He was weak and foolish like his father. So I destroyed him.”

“That’s what Snoke wants you to believe. When he gets what he wants, he’ll crush you.” Han pauses to look at his son, who seems to recoil at the words. “You know it’s true.”

“It’s too late.” Kylo protests, but he’s struggling with something and Han can see it in his eyes.

“No it’s not.” He says, doubling down on Leia’s insistence that their boy can still be saved, even though in the moment he’s not really sure. The Solo patriarch says it with all the hope in the galaxy though. “Leave here with me. Come home.”

Then, when it seemed like Han was so close to getting his son back, A blaster bolt flies past Han’s arm. It comes so close to hitting him that it singes the leather of his jacket and the smell of burning touches the air.

Han turns, snarling and withdraws his blaster. His hand speed still impressive for a non-force user and he fires three shots in the direction that the bolt seemed to come from. Then more blaster fire starts coming from all directions – from Chewie, Finn and Rey as well as the troopers of the first order who had filtered into the room.

At this point, the only sensible thing that Captain Solo can think to do is to sprint back toward his friends, snap off a few more shots and hope that his son had chosen to follow. He doesn’t hear the pounding of another set of feet behind him, though. The observation makes his heart sink.

Han turns to look back at his son, in the middle of the chaos, only to see the young man pulling the helmet on again.

What Han doesn’t see, in that moment, is the way a bolt threatening to hit him right in the back, changes mid trajectory and flies impotently into the emptiness below him. Did Ben Solo use the force to save his father? Did Kylo Ren only intervene because he still wanted to end his father’s life himself?

The Knight, clad all in black, ignites a scarlet saber that glows angrily amid the trickle of blaster fire in the air.

“Fall back.” He yells to Rey and Fin.

Chewie, doesn’t need orders from Han to know what he wants. The old partners know each other well enough that many things don’t need to be said. Get to the Falcon. Someone has to raise the ramp and ignite the engines.

Still, his Wookiee best friend will lay down some cover fire in the space between father and son, to give the senior member of this band of heroes some time to reconvene with Rey and Finn. Only then will Chewbacca hit the trigger for the detonators and sprint off to the ship. If Solo wants to be mad about that, his copilot thinks to himself, they can argue about it later.

Soon Finn, Rey and Han are scrambling though the snow and trying to lose their pursuers in the dark forest. Considering that he’s more than twice their age, Han thinks he’s doing a serviceable job of keeping up, but a look he’s catching in the female of their party’s eyes tells him someone is nearby.

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Whether Han realized it or not, his son was bred to be angry, groomed toward the darkness from the very beginning. And he was bitter about a great many things.

"Fine!"

He was also downright terrible at planning.

Intimidation, he was better at, and proceeded to march up to the cockpit to tell the others their fate. If they made no mention of his existence, he would let them live. Otherwise, they could rest assured that he would come back and hunt them all down.

It was a strange deal, one Rey and Finn assumed was a bargain made with Han. Kylo Ren insisted they take it.

It's a hard thing to accept. What's happened to Ben and the part he played in it. As if one thing and one thing alone could have allowed his son to be seduced by the darkness. It's not realistic. And he's not the only one who misstepped, either.

Kylo goes off to make his intentions perfectly clear. Meanwhile, Han will take a moment to clean up the cabin and try to make sense of everything that has just happened. Considering all of it ... it's a lot to take in. At least his son is here.

It's not what he imagined out of a reunion, but it was better than him being with the First Order.

Later, he'll be sure to talk to Finn and Rey a little bit and put them slightly more at ease with what's going to happen from here. It's not the most pressing thing on his mind at the moment, though. Mostly he's trying to figure out what his son might want to learn and wonder whether he plans to continue to use the force.

Also on his mind, what the sleeping arrangments are going to be like. He's pretty sure the two young Resistance allies are not going to want to share the tiny cabin with Ben ...

The fact that Kylo didn't outright take the cabin for himself was less of a show of good will and more of a sign of distrust. They were Resistance members, after all, and he was the apprentice to Supreme Leader Snoke himself. Or he was. Was he still?

He eventually found a more secluded part of the ship, and with it, one of the cargo bays he was going to hold himself up on when they reached the outpost. If Han or Chewbacca followed him, he wouldn't attack, but if the other two did, he would pull no punches.

Kylo sat down to meditate, focusing on his pain and through it, the Force.

He couldn't not use the Force. It was a part of his blood, an instinct and a reflex. He wasn't sure what he would gain from this, but maybr his meditation would shed light on it. (A metaphor he cringed just thinking about...) At the very least, perhaps he would learn to be the master of his own destiny.

It's a good thing for everyone else that Kylo Ren didn't decide the only room with any beds in it should be his, then. Of the six beds crammed into the tiny living space, only three get occupied. Rey and Finn looking out for each other was, as far as Han could tell, how they were always going to act around each other. With Finn seemingly devoted to Rey. Both of them so used to modest living spaces, it didn't even seem like the quarters bothered them. They didn't complain anyway.

For Chewie, he'd spent so many years following Solo into who knew what and crashing into one of those beds at the end of the night, that in a strange way ... despite being a much smaller place to stay in than the full sized room he had on Eravana, it was probably more homey. Even as his feet hung off the end of the bed.

Han can probably only count on one hand the number of nights he'd slept a full 6 to 8 hours of sleep. Even if he was more gifted at lying still and keeping his eyes closed, it wasn't realistic for the pilot's life. A few hours here and there and that was it. Too often you had to wake suddenly and adjust course for one reason or another.

He ended up sleeping on the bench near the holochess board. Which wasn't comfortable, but at a certain age, you're never really all that comfortable so it didn't particularly matter where you ended up. It also happens to be between where the cabin is and where his son has ended up. How absolutely coincidental ...

By the time people start to stir again, Han is fixing food. Nothing special, a grain-type hot cereal left over in the pantry from whichever of the owners stocked the ship last. Caff. After all these years Han still isn't much of a cook, but he does alright when he can focus. And it's just cereal.

Half a day gone and nobody's died yet. Ain't this going pretty well?

Edited 2016-06-14 15:16 (UTC)

Other people might have emerged, but Kylo Ren stayed out of sight. It was unusual, seeing as they were his prisoners, not the other way around. But coming out for a family breakfast just seemed... wrong.

Instead, he went about his training exercises. A few of the sounds filtered through the ship - bumps, thumps, the occasional grunt and groan.

On the Finalizer, no one would dare interrupt a Knight of Ren while they were training. But this was the Millennium Falcon, and he could feel his father coming closer. Kylo wasn't sure what might happen next.

A very loose interpretation of family breakfast as it is, it doesn't really surprise Han that Kylo doesn't come out for it. And frankly, probably for the best, at least until they drop off Rey and Finn.

Han tells himself that he should go and see what all that banging around is. Because, for some reason, he still needs to rationalize a reason for him to be close to his son. As if just wanting to around him wasn't enough. The thought, when he realizes it, makes him kind of sad. Not to mention slightly more aware of how fractured the relationship between them is.

Though ... his son has been strong in the force since before he was even born and has been getting lessons on how to use it from his Uncle pretty early on, it's not as if the elder Solo has seen him put his talent on display much. He's actually interested just to watch.

Hopefully, there was nothing of actual importance in that cargo hold. At some point, Kylo found something mechanical and completely slashed it apart. He was using the broken pieces as makeshift training droids: throwing them, catching them with the Force, holding them in mid-air and then striking. At first it was with his hands, but by the time Han got there, he'd switched to his lightsaber.

Han was greeted by a quick display of the weapon in action.

In action, the blade was nothing like Luke, Obi-Wan or even Darth Vader's had been. It crackled and sparked, just like before. And the crossguard vents made all of Kylo's swings into wide arcs. The extra momentum made them stronger, but the tradeoff was speed, stealth and any kind of surprise. You could see that kind of attack coming a mile away!

When he threw the next broken scrap, Han got a good glimpse of how he closed that gap. Telekinesis - at a level that might have even bested Luke.

"Are you here to scold me for making a mess, or just out of morbid curiosity?" He turned toward his father, lightsaber still active.

Considering that Han had not been the owner of the ship in more than a decade, most of the stuff in the stern is unrecognizable to him. Which means the Captain of this ship would give you permission to smash to your heart's content, Kylo, if you had bothered to ask for it. So long as there was no smashing of the ship itself.

He's seen what Luke could do with a lightsaber and ultimately his son's display with the same sort of weapon registers to him as formidable, but not quite as impressive. It's the telekinesis that catches his eye. Someday, perhaps he'll see the way his son can stop a blaster bolt in mid-air, which will make quite the impression on him because he's seen it in dreams of his own.

"Always wanted to see what you could do." He says with a slight shrug. Which, if he had to be in one of the two options he'd outlined, he supposes it would be the later. "It's impressive what you can do with that power."

He stared at his father, hunting for an ulterior motive that he couldn't find.

"You want to see what I can do?" he repeated, hesitantly. It had been many years, but he still remembered his father always having pride in the blaster by his side. Far more pride in that than in some 'hokey religion.' "Shoot me. Or at least try."

It's not surprising that Father and Son have never had all that many conversations or encounters that deal with 'The Force'. By now, Han has seen enough of the mystical energy field at work to know that he can't deny it, but really, what could he add to a discussion about it? 'I've seen your Uncle do this before ...' or 'your mother once described to me ...'. The best he could ever hope to contribute is the point of view of what it's like to not be a force user to someone who is.

So it was just easier to tell himself that he didn't belong in that part of the younger Solo's life and the few times they did have the opportunity to be together, talk about other things. Doesn't mean he didn't spend time wondering about the 'impossible' things that he could do.

Doesn't mean he wouldn't have found it interesting to watch like he is right now.

"Shoot at you?" He says, puzzled. "Why?"

"You wanted to see what I'm capable of, didn't you?" He scowled. His tone was overconfident, and in stark contrast to a torso wrapped in blood-dotted bandages. "These aren't the piddly things I learned from Skywaker."

That was only partially true. He showed a gift for telekinetic abilities when he was just a child, moving toys with his mind or stacking pebbles at his Uncle's side. But his control and mastery over such things was born out of the dark side. Rey would likely testify to that at length.

"Shooting at my son 's not what I had in mind."

He's got the saber out and Han presumes that this is another force-sensitive batting away a blaster bolt with a with a lightsaber demo (despite Kylo's instance against as much). Of course, the kid could do that too. Probably could do it with his eyes closed. Probably has done it a thousand times.

Not as if Captain Solo hadn't noticed by now his boy seems to have a little trouble with empathy, but he must realize on some level it's uncomfortable to hear your son ask you to shoot at him. He takes a breath in and a breath out ... "It's coming at your shoulder."

That way, if something went wrong, it's a non-lethal shot. It's the only compromise that he can think of that will make both Solo's reasonably happy.

For all the things that Han can't do, in his day, he was very good at the quick draw. It was a stupid, foolhardy way to prove your nerve and your skill, but it didn't stop him from having done it several times. He loosens the security strap on the holster and then lets his fingertips dangle by the butt of his old standby. A Blastech DL-44 that he'd modified himself.

His hand moves fast. Fast for a human and non-force sensitive alone and when you factor how old his is, it's that much more impressive. What's special about Han's draw is that the movement is very well managed. Very little unnecessary movement in it from so many years of practice and of course, he snaps the shot off at hip height, rather than taking the time to raise his arm all the way up.

A scarlet bolt goes exactly where he intended to place it. It's coming right at his son's shoulder.

He was so fast. Kylo was surprised, and barely reacted in time. Still, his hand clenched, and the bolt stopped in mid air- just a little closer than he would have liked.

He took a moment to better compose himself as he walked around it, toward his father. Another flick of his arm and Han would find own arm pinned at his side, unable to lift his blaster again.

"Given the stories you used to tell..." And he did remember a few of them, "this may prove useful in certain unfavorable circumstances."

He strode over to his father, pointing his blade precariously close to his neck and shoulder, and then deactivating it entirely. He didn't, however, release Han or the blaster bolt yet.

It says something that Kylo Ren would use the force to freeze his arm in place after that. It's not as if Han even wanted to blast at him the first time, so he would have gladly put the weapon away if he just asked. Would have, likely, even if he didn't.

But the kid is ... trying to threaten him? Or intimidate him, perhaps? Using fear anyway. Likely, if Kylo was going to hurt him, he already would have. It's just that hasn't had the force used against him like this since that day on Cloud City and the memory of that, more than anything else, is what makes Han uncomfortable.

"It's ..." Han struggles to find the words to complete the thought. When does Han ever struggle for words? "... quite a display, son ..."

Edited 2016-06-18 02:06 (UTC)

Kylo wasn't entirely sure what he was looking for in his father's expression. Part of him desired fear as he proved he could take what he wanted, when he wanted. It was a feeling he was used to. But another part of him wanted something far more basic. When he approached, you could almost hear a little Ben Solo shouting, 'Watch me! Look what I can do! I'm useful! Notice me!'

And then the lightsaber powered down.

"It never mattered to you before, I don't know why I thought it would now..."

He wanted to force push Han right back out of that cargo hold. He nearly did. But instead, he just released his hold. The blaster bolt scorched the wall. Han was free to move his arm.

Were he not a little bit rattled by the use of the Force on his person, he likely would have had a more enthused reaction. Perhaps even shared the dreams he's very infrequently had of the Force. That he'd imagined what it would feel like to freeze a blaster bolt in place, just like he did.

Instead, he's just trying to keep his composure.

Kylo Ren's father was afraid of almost nothing. No phobias. No nerves in the face of mortal peril. He was afraid of Darth Vader, though. The man was cruel and cold. He had no problem torturing Han for the hell of it and then, testing out carbonite freezing on him - knowing full well how he and Leia felt about each other ...

"I'm sorry." He murmurs. Not even hearing his son's words, just the tone. He was feeling embittered about something and Han just wants to get his moment behind him.

He desperately wants to stuff down all the things that the kid knocked loose in his head.

Unfortunately for Han, Kylo Ren was often just as cold and cruel as Darth Vader. And sensing an inkling of a comparison between them should have made him proud. It was what he wanted most!

He could turn on the man, show him what real torture was like, how the Force could crack open the mind like an egg and slowly cook it over hellfire. But that... That suddenly didn't hold his interest the way it should have. The light... He could feel it calling to him.

"Sorry?!" He exclaimed, clinging to his anger before he lost it completely. "You... you were afraid of me then, too. Was that it? Was that why you stayed away? Was that why you just got rid of me?!"

Han, sensing that he can use his arm again, puts the blaster away. He never should have had it out in the first place. Coming back here to the large open space of the stern while his son was using the very powers that twisted him into darkness was a bad idea, clearly. Then again it is very much like Han to be the Captain of Bad Ideas. That the worked out for him as often as they did wasn the only surpising aspect.

"That's not true, Ben." He murmurs, the defense that the old man usually had against things he didn't want talk about or admit too was down. As if his son had broken it in his actions and with the memories Han had always tried to keep from everyone. "I wanted you at my side more than anything."

Not as if the kid needs to look as his mind to know he's telling the truth, his tone is a bit unsteady but it's definitely an honest one. "I just convinced myself that anything you could have learned from me was less important ..."

Edited 2016-06-18 12:02 (UTC)

"You're lying!" He shouted, but even Kylo didn't believe his own words. He could sense Han's sincerity, even as it flew in the face of everything the Supreme Leader confirmed to be true. "You... You have to be lying... The Supreme Leader is wise... And you... You..."

He activated his lightsaber again, growling with years of angry betrayal. He lunged, not for Han, but for the crates that dotted the room. The ones closest to him were literally hacked to pieces until his eyes started to fill with tears.

His fury eventually spent, he fell to his knees.

"You... You w..wanted me?"

Han's son had been seduced by a man who had told him all kinds of lies. Han knows as much. He even suspects his son probably does too. He wasn't around enough to remind the kid of the truth, though. Traditions of Jedi training be damned - he should have been. It was easy to see that now.

Once again he calls upon courage to approach. Maybe, with some work, it won't take so much of it for him to be near his own kid. It's not like the old man to be a hugger. There wasn't a lot of that in his childhood and though with his own missightedness there probably wasn't that much more in Kylo's, but to put his hand in the kids hair and ruffle the dark strands is the gesture of affection that he was comfortable with.

Chalk it up to being nurtured by a kind Wookiee in his teenaged years.

"I still do." He murmurs quietly and offers him this memory, "you know, when you were young, your mother used to get all glib with me about holding you so much. Teased me about being a scoundrel going soft, but she'd be lying if she said anything other the fact that she loved watching the two of us together. You could see it in her eyes how happy she was ... we both were."

"Sometimes, when your mom was on Coruscant trying to keep the senate from dissolving all over again and you were off with your uncle, which always seemed like the best place for you with how powerful we could all see you were going to be, I'd be convincing myself that we were doing the right thing."

Han clears his throat, his own eyes misty, and continues "Looking back almost every decision I ever had to make - what I wanted was easy and what was right was the hard thing. Being apart from you was so hard, I believed I was doing something good."

Edited 2016-06-20 15:36 (UTC)

By the time Han approached, the lightsaber had deactivated. Though, had he wished, Kylo could have easily reignited it again and cut both of his father's legs off a the knee. He could almost hear a voice in his head ordering him to, and he wasn't sure whether it was his master's or his own.

Tears were streaming down his face as he tried to remember being held, his mother smiling and Chewie rustling his hair the same way... Those thoughts were just tiny fragments between long stretches of lying awake at night frightened of the monster that never seemed to go away or the Wookie's sad attempt at helping him drown out the sound of his parents fighting. The loneliness he felt with Luke was no better. Every time he saw a shooting star over some ancient decaying temple, he felt a morbid sense of camaraderie that maybe someone, somewhere, had just been shot out of the sky and wasn't ever going to see home again either.

Kylo crumpled in on himself, clutching his head in both hands.

"I... I don't know what's real anymore..."

The dark sider's breakdown, fortunately or unfortunately, was interrupted by a comlink. It was Rey. 'Coming out of light-speed. We'll be entering the atmosphere in ten minutes.'

Kylo Ren could have killed him at almost any time. If Han let himself be intimidated by that fact, he'd never have approached him at all. It be nice if they could get to a point where he didn't feel like that was a lingering possibility between them. He's not much of a hopeful guy, not the way the Skywalkers tended to be, but he's certainly hopeful of that.

Regarding the fights between he and Leia, well, he would insist that they bickered with each other more than fought. That said, both of Ben's parents have strong personalities and while they're in accord on most things, occasionally they ran into subjects that they didn't see eye to eye on - everyone who ends up married, does end up having the occasional conflict. When the two of them argued, really argued, it was with all the passion the two them had. No doubt those were among the more unpleasent days to be the youngest Solo.

For what it's worth, Han and Leia do tend to make up pretty quickly.

The comlink's timing, ultimately, isn't really going to keep Captain Solo from saying anything. He'd said what he wanted to say. Actually sharing what he was thinking rather than have the kid pick up on it by intuition or proximity and the force. It's kind of a significant thing with him, because for all the talking Han Solo likes to do about his skill in the cockpit or the way he outwitted someone, he doesn't like to talk about himself or his past ...

"There ain't much in the galley, kid, but you should probably eat something." He murmurs, his hand removed from his son's hair offered him a squeeze of his shoulder. "I need to be up in the cockpit when we land. I'm still trying to figure out what those Rork ranchers have done to my ship ..."

With that, unless he hears some protesting from Kylo not to go, which ... he ain't going to hold his breath for, he's gonna to go up where a Captain/pilot belongs when a ship is about to land.

Edited 2016-06-21 11:29 (UTC)

He watched Han go, and he legitimately wanted to go with him. But he couldn't chance being seen, or even felt, so he sunk farther back into the cargo hold.

"Get yourself together..." he berated himself with a few deliberate punches to his own wounds. He needed some kind of pain to draw the darkness back around him, to cloak himself in its shadow and minimize his force signature. At least until they'd landed and taken off again.

Then, maybe, he'd come out.

Han largely leaves the act of guiding the ship to Chewbacca's experience and Rey's impressive reflexes. Which he's noticed, much to his dismay, are likely to surpass his own. Their destination being in the Ileenium it always seemed like you had to traverse through plenty of asteroid fields - both charted and uncharted - to get to any of the planets.

Hard to miss what a good team the two of them make. There's a touch of regret that he has to dump Finn and Rey off that he's feeling right now, but if the choice is between these two kids and his own son? Well, it ain't no choice at all, really. Even though they haven't spent more than a few days together, they made a good little team. The mood in the cockpit is heavy and a bit sad.

Han talks to the on planet transit authorities when the get into the planet's atmosphere and clearance to enter the airspace is grated. They then need to find the Resistance base on planet, which is no easy feat, even for the scanners on the Millenium Falcon. Eventually, Han, with more time to study of the readouts on the displays and actually look at the topography of the land, figures out where it is.

He has no trouble getting clearance to land the old YT-1300 at the base. At this point, the ship is nearly a century old (so there are hardly any in service) and with that familiar voice on the comm, the resistance fighters on this satellite base are all eager to receive the Millenium Falcon and welcome Han Solo, even though neither name is dropped during transmission. They frankly don't have to be.

Kylo will have to sit tight for almost an hour.

It's Han's idea to have Chewie stay behind, essentially, to keep people away from his son if anyone should come on board while he's tending to a few matters here.

Edited 2016-06-22 12:06 (UTC)

Dark siders aren't necessarily known for their patience, but Kylo Ren had enough of it to sit in that cargo bay. He didn't dare reach out with the Force to make his presence known, but in the back of his mind, he could feel Chewbacca on the ship with him, even after Finn, Rey and Han left. His father would be back, eventually. If, for no other reason, because he would never leave Chewbacca behind.

The longer he was here, the more agitated he seemed to get, though.

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Ben can sense the thoughts if you want him to? He's not likely to bring them up, though.

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