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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Losing Chewbacca would be among the most painful things Han could imagine, that's absolutely true. He wouldn't leave him behind anywhere, willingly, without talking to him about it and arranging a time and place to meet up again. Though his son doesn't give his father very much credit, because keeping his son's presense hidden is extremely important to him as well.

So to land, dump the kids off and get back into the sky as fast as possible? That seems suspicions. Likely to have someone contact the general and report the news back to her. So he's trying to keep everything casual. Hailing Leia himself, stilted conversation as it was and one that she spent the whole time knowing he was hiding something, was still better than having someone else communicate with her. At least this way, Han could see her reactions and predict what she was going to do in turn.

She was worried, yes, and concerned, but she wasn't going to press or try to chase him down. She had too many things on her plate. That seemed a relative constant in her life since he's known her. And he managed not to slip the info that Ben was alive, though, he didn't try to lie and tell her he was dead, either. All and all, that was about as successful as he could hope for in a talk with his wife.

Then he had to get the frequencies of the next of kin from his Eravana crew. He had a password protected backup of the data stored onto the holonet which he took the time to download onto a portable interface. That didn't take especially long, but he wanted to do it when people werent hanging on him.

Then he arragned to have the ship refuled and then, he said his goodbyes to Rey and Finn.

Once all of that was all set, Han got back onto the ship and they prepared for their departure for the Jakku system.

Once the ship had taken off and left orbit, Kylo Ren reached out with the Force. True to his father's word, he sensed no one else aboard besides the three of them.

He was a little surprised by that, but it's hard to give a man credit when you hardly know him. Even moreso when he's a Resistance sympathizer.

He ventured out, walking through the corridors of the Falcon for a while. If he thought long and hard enough, he could almost remember this ship and how big it seemed to a tiny Ben Solo. The fragments were short and broken - peeking out of a hidden compartment in his father's spare jacket, running into the cockpit, pressing buttons on the Sabacc board without ever learning how to play. It was far easier to remember watching it blast into the sky from the ground below.

(The Supreme Leader liked that memory better. It was one he was allowed to recall more often. So, did that make it more or less real?)

Not feeling especially hungry, he passed the galley on his way to the cockpit. He knew his father and Chewbacca would be there.

"It's just us now." he stated the obvious, but at least his voice had calmed from earlier.

"... What do I call you? Master? Captain?" He meant, 'in public.' He was an apprentice, right? "...um... Father?"

It's not hard to be trusting as much as it is just a philosophy the Knight is not used to living anymore. In Kylo Ren's defense, however, it isn't necessarily the wisest course of action to trust a scoundrel. Lots of double talk, going back on deals and failing to fulfill his end of certain bargains have been linked to the Captain, after all.

"I think that depends on how hidden you want to stay, son." He murmurs, while his hands deftly drift over the various instruments on the Millenium Falcon's control panel. He doesn't seem to need to look at any of the trigger's he's hitting - including the ones overhead - he just knows where they are.

The mystery of what happened to Kylo Ren/Ben Solo is only going to stay a mystery for so long if he's out in public calling him 'dad'.

"But the robes will have to go. You'll never blend in anywhere in that."

The Wookie made a chuckling noise when Han pointed out the obvious. Kylo growled under his breath, but managed to maintain composure. If it hadn't hit home before, it did now. He was on the run, not just from the Republic and the Resistance, but also from the First Order.

He had to blend in.

"Right..." He looked around awkwardly. While Han flipped switches, Kylo just fiddled with his hands. "...Captain. I don't exactly have anything else to wear."

And unless someone over six feet tall (that wasn't a furry walking carpet) happened to leave their spare clothes in some hidden compartment, he didn't know what he was supposed to do about it.

It's not the length of the clothes that would be a problem, were he to grab something of his father's. There's only a difference of an inch or so between the two Solo men. It's the width that would be the problem. Kylo Ren would be swimming in anything that fits Han. Even in his day, when his muscle tone was at it's peak and his body fat was at it's lowest, he likely still had more mass than his kid does right now.

Not that, having just gotten his ship back, Han has a lot of his own clothing lying around to offer. There was going to be at least a day or two of throwing away all the previous owner's junk finding out what of his was still around - if anything - and doing a pretty substantial resupply. They'd get him a few things to wear then.

Before that, hopefully, they might be able to find something on his last ship that would fit okay. If the Eravana was still where he left it to find, that is ...

"It's one of a number of concerns I have right now, kid, but if I'm honest, not my priority. We'll figure something out."

Which brings Han's mind to what is weighing most heavily on his conscience right now and that is those next of kin messages. On the one hand' he'd love to get them over with now, but on the other hand ... he wouldn't be doing his due diligence till he got back into the Jakku system and saw if the ship was there.

Perhaps the multiple layers of robes and a generally imposing presence made Kylo feel a bit larger in stature than he really was... Regardless, he unintentionally shrunk back a little when Han spoke.

"You were the one who brought it up. What is your number one priority, then?" He grunted, and his eyes fell back to the ground. "...and what am I supposed to be doing about it?"

He honestly had no idea.

He looked to his father with the same anxious expression that he he often gave the Supreme Leader. The look in his eyes screamed that need for guidance. He needed to be sculpted, made into something, painfully if necessary. It was what he was good for.

"Don't you ever ..." plan outloud? He doesn't finish the sentiment, but that's where he was intending to go with it. Maybe he doesn't. Maybe that's why he wants to spend time around Han because nobody ever taught him how to pursue the things that were important to him. And he doesn't know how ...

"I'm thinking outloud, kid, I do that sometimes." He'll let his son figure out that other people do that by the power of conjecture. "Especially when I'm this chair."

Behind the yoke of the Millenium Falcon is where Captain Solo does his best thinking. Fortunate for him because often, he's put himself in a situation that requires a cunning escape and he has to pull out something clever in a hurry. Sometimes, when he's floating through space with time on his hands he'll feel a certain peace and clarity that he doesn't feel otherwise. He's always been wired that way.

"My last crew is probably all dead, Ben. If they had any family or people that cared for them ..." His voice trails off. It was a concern of a Captain to think about these things and not really his concern or even Chewbacca's for that matter. Besides the fact that Han is distinctly sure that he and Kylo Ren have different views on life and death. Even in the days where Han was at his most gritty, there was a consideration for others.

Edited 2016-06-24 11:04 (UTC)

Planning was the Supreme Leader's role. When Kylo spoke aloud, it was usually reaffirming his convictions, convincing himself he was right, or asking his grandfather's spirit for guidance. In other words, he prayed aloud far more often than he plotted. (It showed.)

He also lacked a certain degree of empathy when it came to Han's real concern. After all, by comparison, how many of his former 'crew' on Starkiller Base just met their end from that explosion? Until now, he hadn't even given it a second thought.

"So?"

Kylo Ren was conditioned to be merciless and to kill without conscience. He was used to masked soldiers, plucked from birth and stripped of everything except their rank and number. Even the ones without masks were expendable as long as the First Order endured. Their deaths could fuel his power if he only let it.

"Why do you care? There are more to take their place."

That was admittedly the kind of conditioning he expected. It dawns on him that the same conditioning that saw Kylo Ren so committed to darkness has to be very much like the troopers themselves received. They were just numbers. Faceless behind white helmets. Their lives had no value but to serve and blah blah blah ...

Why did Ben eat up the rhetoric like candy while someone like Finn resisted it? What made them different? Finn's parents were even more non-present than he and Leia were for their son ...

"Their lives have meaning." The elder Solo insists. He's got no intentions of actively reliving his days in the Imperial Navy any more than his subconscious reminds him of, but he knew what it felt like to be in a helmet. "There are people who are going to wonder what happened to them and there might not be much I can offer them and some people are no doubt going to hate my guts when I offer the news ... but they deserve closure. I could give them at least that."

Han looks over to Chewbacca, the two have been working together for so long, they don't need to vocalize a lot of what they're doing anymore. They just know. Pre-jump checks are done and since there are no problems, it was time to get to hyperspace.

"Alright, Chewie." He murmurs. "Let's make the jump."

Maybe it was like Leia said long ago - that there was too much Vader in him. It was the yardstick by which Kylo Ren measured himself and the First Order gave him the means by which to do that, to be that. More importantly, there was power. People like Finn had nothing to gain. He did. The Supreme Leader promised him everything. Everything.

And yet, he still felt goosebumps when they made the jump to hyperspace...

"You pride yourself on closure. But you still call me by that name..."

Han has said as much himself. 'Too much Vader' in his son, but the words never felt right in his mind when he thought them and they didn't sound right when he said them out loud.

So it begs the question, why would he say it. Maybe it's because Han doesn't like to admit that he sees a lot more of himself in the darkness of the younger Solo than he's comfortable with. The hair-trigger temper, the sudden and drastic shifts of mood - don't such actions ring more true to a particular cocky smuggler than the cold fury of Darth Vader?

Destiny might have been doing a young Han Solo a favor when he was born unable to manipulate the force.

"What name do you mean?" He murmurs, as his eyes drift over a few of the more important displays. By the time you got into hyperspace, you were usually in the clear ... but he always stayed in the cockpit for the first few minutes, just to be sure.

"...Ben."

The name did not flow easily off his tongue. It sounded like a foreign curse, the name of a boy better left for dead, the last taboo of the First Order... Anything but something to go by.

"I told you he was weak and foolish. That I killed him, a long time ago..."

... Vykk Drago, Jav Kabadi, Keil Garris, Jenos Idanian ...

How many false identities had Han had over the years? They had very different reasons for doing so, of course, but that was just another one of those subtle ways the two men were more alike then they realized sometimes.

"I'm always going to think of you as Ben Solo." He says after a moment.

It bothers him more than he'd ever care to admit that his son refuses his given name. The only thing Han has that connects him back to the man and woman who gave birth to him is his name, after all. ~~They were gone before he could even form full memories of them.~~ It's because of that, in his mind, that a birth name is something special.

It takes a long time, seemingly to collect his thoughts and in that time, powerful a telepath that his son is - he might very well have picked up the hurt and rejection that his father is trying to hard not to show, but eventually he makes his point ... "I suppose I get it if you don't want to go by that name, but even if you weren't in hiding, I don't know that Kylo Ren suits you either."

Edited 2016-06-26 22:14 (UTC)

He wanted to chastise his father, and tell him that he was always going to be a weak-minded fool. He should have rejoiced in the feelings of hurt and rejection like a dark oasis. Instead, he merely bit his lip when he felt them swell up inside him. It hurt. It hurt him more than he wanted to admit.

Finally, he spat, "What would you know about either of them?!" before storming out of the cockpit.

(There was the temperamental hot-headedness that made him more Solo than Vader. Along with the crazy notion that, somehow, leaving makes everything infinitely better.)

He went right back to the cargo hold he'd come from, but at least he grabbed a handful of rations from the galley on his way. Eventually, the sounds of enraged screaming and outright destruction would subside too.

Burning skies.

The kid is like him sometimes, though Han thinks even more volatile. Whether he actually is that explosive still or if he just was when he was that age, he's not in a position to judge accurately. What the Captain thinks of himself and how he actually is ... have never completely lined up.

In fact, the phrase 'delusions of grandeur' is not just something he's accused others of.

He gives the kid a little bit of time to cool off. Ben can do a lot more with that burst of anger than Han can and he's proven to have tentative control of his rage at best. He doesn't think the kid would hurt him now, having plenty of chances to have done so already, but that doesn't mean he wants to find out he's wrong ...

So when the worst of his frustration seems passed, he will go in and check on him. Han thinks up about five or six things to potentially say, most of which are glib or advice that he wants to give him that seems like overstepping, so instead he'll ask simply, "are you okay?"

The cargo hold is in shambles. Scorch marks covered the floor, the walls, the ceiling alike. If anything in those crates had value, it was worthless, smoldering space junk now. And in the middle of the destruction knelt Kylo Ren, head in his hands.

"No, I'm not okay! I've never been okay!" he screamed, angry and raw. Then came a sniffle, as though he'd been crying through it all. "I'm being torn apart!"

It wasn't just between the light side and the dark side. Kylo was questioning the very fabric of who and what he was. Nothing made sense. Nothing felt right. He was riddled with questions that had no easy answers.

He was in pain, and for the first time in years, he actually wanted to be free of it.

His poor ship is nearly a century old and still very much beloved by Han. He's becoming concerned about exactly how many tantrums that it's going to be able to withstand before his son starts doing some significant structural damage. Not as if the ship is his chief concern right now, but he can't help but see all the scoring and cringe a little on the inside.

Han runs a hand through his scruffy hair as if doing so might knock loose a solution. A solution to a problem the kid has had for nearly his entire life. A problem that he can only partially understand; not feeling a pull from any side to speak of ...

Hell, he doesn't know what he can say to give the young man any solace.

"I don't know what you're going through." He begins. "I just know that there was a destiny that you got shoved into because of who you are and we didn't get you ready the way we should have."

A concern shared by a certain General of the Finalizer, actually. But at least, for now, the lightsaber had been deactivated.

"The Supreme Leader was... Did... He was supposed to..." The First Order had all the answers. Easy answers. They always did, but Kylo wasn't so sure, now. "When I finally learned the truth, that Darth Vader... That his power was my power... That WAS my destiny!! I am Kylo Ren!! I am supposed to finish what my grandfather started!"

The way that he and Leia had handled the reveal of Darth Vader's connection to their family was probably the biggest transgression in all of the missteps. The kid deserved to know far earlier than he did who his grandfather was and he definitely shouldn't have found out through the holonet.

It always felt to him more of a thing Leia should have talked with their son about, but in hindsight, it seems like should have stepped in and said something before that story leaked ...

"I don't think you feel that way." For all the 'you don't know me' shade his son likes to throw at Han, he knows what Ben's voice sounds like when it says something in conviction and when it isn't. "You always speak as if we're on the same side and it's a struggle to work against it."

It always struck the Elder Solo as another one of those cruel twists of fate that his son idolized the man who showed Han the true meaning of pain. Not as if his life hadn't been full of it, but Devaronian blood-poison suddenly seemed like a walk in the park after cloud city.

He'd be dead or worse, kept in stasis and on display in Jabba the Hutt's place, if it had been up to Darth Vader. And if Han had been killed or left in some sort of hell between death and life, there certainly would have been no Kylo Ren to worship the Dark Lord of the Sith.

"You come from power on my side too."

The Solo's, only a generation or so before Han, had been one of the wealthiest families on one of the wealthiest planets in the whole galaxy. His line could be traced back to the last monarch of Corellia and to nobleman pilots who were known to be among the greatest in their day. And, also in his line, the most savage pirate ever. ~~Or you know, maybe none of that because new canon.~~

"The Solo legacy, which is just as much a part of you as anything you get from the other side, is full of people who didn't let anybody push them around. They were people who made their fate themselves. They let their actions speak louder than words."

Edited 2016-06-28 00:14 (UTC)

Kylo looked up at his father with desperation in his eyes. Born with abilities that always felt an inch outside his control, shuffled around until he didn't feel he belonged anywhere and then manipulated into feeling that he did. Deep down, he knew Han was telling the truth, but he still didn't want to admit it.

He clasped his arms around himself, clawing into his skin until it bled. However, even that wasn't enough to stop the tears from falling. The pain wasn't making him stronger, even though the Supreme Leader said that it should.

And now this? This... different legacy. A new destiny and a power besides the Force? No, stronger than the Force, because they were not slaves to the Force... But could he take that? Could he actually make that his own?

"I've failed." He muttered, quietly at first, but finally, he just let it out. For the first time in decades, Kylo Ren (Ben Solo?) was honest with himself. "I've failed Luke. I've failed the Supreme Leader. And I've failed them too. I've failed everyone..."

For all the ways the eldest Solo hadn't changed throughout the years, there were plenty of ways in which he had. His aptitude for observing people became empathy. His experiences - frequently told over drinks with young pilots, smugglers, racers and soldiers - were offered to the next generation to learn from. He learned the things he needed to do to make it easier to look in the mirror. And then he did ... most of them.

"Ben, if a man's life was about only the things he did before he was thirty, I think most people's would be pretty different." Yet another parallel between father and son was the late twenties and early thirties being a time for dramatic change in both of them. Han turned his ship around to join in The Battle of Yavin even though he had all the credits he needed to pay off Jabba.

Turned out that there was something more that he loved besides money.

"You haven't even hit your stride, kid." If that turns out be the truth or a lie is based entirely upon his son's actions going forward, but the words come from a place of belief and hope. "I think the best version of yourself we won't see until you're fighting for what you want."

Edited 2016-06-28 18:34 (UTC)

Aside from an easy answer and a place to belong, he wasn't entirely sure what he wanted. He wasn't even sure of who he was, which memories were real and which were manipulated. (He was trained to use the Force to tear through people's minds, which meant his had been ransacked quite a few times - as both an example and as punishment for having the wrong thoughts.)

Eventually, he nodded, wiping his face with a bandaged arm.

"...When we get to your other ship, what do you want me to do?"

Small steps for the young Solo. Even the small ones are better than staying still or moving back. And you can't entirely blame Ben for looking to Han in this instance, this is his ship and his job they were trying to resolve ... but it can't keep being about his son looking to someone else to make all his choices for him still.

Trading one master for another, clearly, didn't work out the first time.

"I want to sit." He says frankly. He's in great shape for his age, better perhaps than any ordinary human had any right to be considering what he's been through, but he's still seventy. Besides, he's not loving seeing all the wanton destruction of his ship in the corner of his eyes. "Come on, lets go to the galley."

And while they're walking he can tell him this ...

"Tell me about The Force." His father says with a thoughtful look on his features. "Specifically, what it does to you, how you feel about it right now and what you can do with it? I understand that it's different for all the people who have it."

Edited 2016-06-29 15:15 (UTC)

For all the insight that the Force had given him, Ben Solo didn't really know how to look within for the answers he sought. Even Kylo Ren begged his grandfather's spirit to show him the meaning of the dark side as much as he asked the Supreme Leader for guidance.

That much was obvious, and only proven once again when he struggled at first to answer the question. But instead of simply shouting back, or claiming that someone like Han would never understand, he thought about it. He seriously thought about it.

They were both sitting in the galley by the time he answered. "...it's an extension of my body. And my senses."

It made him feel special and powerful, but at the end of the day, it was a tool that he wielded more than anything else. He never felt the peaceful connection to the universe that Luke rambled about, and even under the Supreme Leader's tutelage his hatred was far from bottomless. To him, the Force was more practical - he used it in the same ways it had been used on him.

"I used to think it was some kind of nightmare. Hearing things, feeling things. It actually hurt. I remember... I was terrified of it when I was little." He confessed. "Luke always said it bound and penetrated us, and I guess he was half right. The Force is a weapon. I just... have to do more damage than gets done to me."

[[I thought about it after the fact and I think TFA Han is probably closer to mid-sixties, even though his actor is older than that.]]

Ben's answer is somewhat helpful to his father. He might be accepting of the The Force at this point in his life, but it's not as if people ever talk about it at great length with him. His knowledge is so rudimentary that even the little of what his son had told him is expanding what he knows ...

"Well, by that discripton I'd think that you might be able to sweep through the ship and find anything living." He says, more comfortable now that that he's parked in the bench that wraps around the holochess board. "Is that right?"

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