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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Fortunately, it also doesn't take a lot of convincing to get Ben aboard and into one of the bunks to sleep it off. The quiet may or may not do Han a lot of good, but at least there would be time to think, to plan, to weigh the various options.

When morning came, or rather, when the hangover finally abated, they had an appointment with some undesirable folk who specialized in forging new identities.

Ben had one thing going for him - the galaxy knew the mask of Kylo Ren. Even within the First Order, there were fewer than a handful of men who knew what he looked like and even fewer who knew his actual name. The more pressing matter was hiding Force sensitivity or at least masking his Force signature. Surely, there was someone in the underbelly who specialized in that kind of hiding, perhaps someone old enough to have lived through the Empire's purge and the perils of Order 66.

If they could achieve that, perhaps Ben Solo truly would be free.

There had to be people out there. People that had dealt with this particular problem before that could offer their advice on how to stay hidden from those who would seek them out. Certainly, Han would do anything and everything within reason to help his son be free from the darkness that seems drawn to him. They just aren't the kind of people he would associate with. Or perhaps they were right there all along, letting him believe that the force wasn't real. Either way, how would Han know if any of his contacts were hidden Jedi ...

Alternatively, and the only advice that the elder Solo could think to offer is ... don't use the force. Don't use it ever again. Surely the more you wielded it, the more clearly your enemies would see you. But that was the only answer that could make sense to someone like Han. And it may not even work, besides.

The third option and it's one that would never occur to Ben's father, would be to find a Holocron or even several of them. Han wouldn't know what they were, where to begin searching for them or even if he was looking right at one.

Such advice would be scoffed at. It was like asking someone with eyes to willingly close them and walk around in the dark. The Force was everything that Ben was, a sense with which he navigated the world. He couldn't just turn it off. He didn't want to turn it off.

Have it turned off, however... He couldn't bear to admit it out loud, but that might be necessary.

First things first - a new set of clothes and Ben didn't even recognize himself anymore. They carved variety of identities out, each with a different past on a different planet. Han was an expert at this. Ben just kept his head down, buried in the scarf he insisted upon getting.

Then, the more pressing matter. Together they framed the story in smuggling a Force-sensitive client through First Order space without attracting the attention of Kylo Ren. At first, they were laughed off, saying that no amount of credits were worth those kind of odds. Others haggled with Han for more protective measures for himself, such as a force suppression collar and poisons designed to incapacitate even a Jedi. It took every single ounce of restraint for Ben to hold his tongue. A purchase was made, mostly to avoid suspicion.

Aside from that it was dead end after dead end until an old friend of Han's stepped out of the shadows. A survivor from the assault on Takodana - Maz Kanata.

The scarf. The kid seems very attached to the idea of covering his face. What had happened in his son's life that had made him feel that he had to hide, he wondered. And then, he actually considered the question for a while and suddenly it seemed almost as if 'what hadn't happened to Ben Solo that made him want to hide his face' was the better question.

Some of this work that they were doing for the sake of his son he had to wonder if he ought to do for himself. After all, you can be a former rebel general, former starship racer and infamous smuggler and keep a low profile. But. For as many doors that closed for him, because of who he was, a number of them also opened.

And if he'd gone through the trouble of changing his face, well then ... he might have completely missed this little lady entirely.

"Huh." Han says simply upon seeing the alien again. "Good to see you made it off Takodana okay."

The female alien's expression is unreadable to Han. He can't tell if the woman is mad, frustrated or simply troubled, but perhaps it's all three. Then again, you don't get to live a life as long as Maz Kanata does without being resourceful.

Han adds, "I'm sorry about the castle."

There's a long silence while she looks at Han and then, over at his son. She seems to be lost in her thoughts for a while before she spit's out a few words in a language Captain Solo can't translate.

"No building is meant to stand forever." She then says in basic. "Trouble always seems to be in your wake, Han Solo."

Ben glanced down at the strange alien woman. The assault on Takodana was somewhat fresh on his mind. While he couldn't understand exactly what she said, it seemed to resonate with him and he could sense something about her that his father couldn't. Immediately, there were the seeds of distrust. He couldn't help that.

He also couldn't help that he was also a big part of that 'trouble.'

Strange alien is right. Maz is so old and so unique, that Han often wonders when he's looking at her, if she's the last of her kind. All the worlds that he's been too, all the dives full of sentients from around the vast expanse of known space - he's never seen another like this one.

Glancing back to Ben, Han beings the introduction part.

"This is Maz Kanata. She's a family friend."

Han's hazel eyes flick back to the force sensitive elder. "Maz this is ..."

That's when the alien shushes him. As if Han, even with the ache of age in his bones and the full head of white hair, ought to be handled like a toddler. From just about anyone else, the Corellian would felt that contrarian fire in him. That drive that he has to not do what people insists that he should still burns within him. Sometimes hotly.

But something about Maz always puts on better behavior than normal and he simply rolls his eyes. He even stays quiet.

"I know who this is."

Then she starts approaching Ben. Getting real close, which, the younger Solo had always taken so well. "Let me look into your eyes, child."

When Maz approached him, he backed away. It wasn't until she deliberately asked that Ben stopped. He kept his eyes at her feet, but she could likely feel the way he pulled the Force around him to shield himself. He was preparing for an interrogation, if not an outright assault.

"And if I say no, are you going to force your way inside anyway?"

He was no stranger to that, unfortunately. On the giving end and the receiving end.

It's a shame that the kind of life that Ben Solo had lived made him feel that way; that the only reason someone would want to look at him was to force information out of him or torture him. Neither Maz nor Han are all that surprised by the response, but the elder Solo has to look away. The thought of something clearly bothering him.

"That is not my way." The alien responds.

The tone of her answer is not a coddling one, not meant to soothe his worries as much as it is a statement of fact. Though she does seem to be adjusting the lenses in front of her eyes anyway. If he denies her, she's at least going to see what she can see from there.

"A traveler without observation is like a bird without wings, Kylo Ren. Seeing you clearly helps me to think."

That name... his past was as inescapable as the Supreme Leader himself.

When his eyes finally lifted, it wasn't in Maz's direction. Instead, he warily looked to his father, seeking some kind of confirmation that it would be all right. That he wasn't about to be tortured. The timid expression made him look smaller than he was. Han might even picture a tiny Ben Solo with a skinned knee, wondering if his fist bacta patch is going to hurt.

Those strange metaphors never fail to get a reaction out of Captain Solo. In these moments, Maz kinda reminds him of the way Obi-wan sounded so many years ago. Those vagueries played off like they were some kind of wisdom.

A face is definitely being made by Han. It hangs around for a moment too, till Han realizes they're both waiting for a response from him. He takes a deep breath, one big enough to see his chest rise and fall even underneath that leather jacket.

"Ben." There always seems to be some kind of heaviness in the way that the name comes out when Han says it. It might be a message for the alien, though. "I trust her."

He considered this for an awkwardly long stretch of time. But eventually, he nodded to his father. Hesitantly, he crouched down and turned to look at Maz Kanata.

You have made a short brown alien very pleased, Ben Solo.

With permission given to her, she doesn't hesitate to get right into the young man's face. As Maz focus the lenses around her eyes, her mind cards through all the various sentients that she's met in her long life.

The former jedi turned sith will notice that she does not draw upon the force to investigate him. She is simply looking. Though, it's not exactly the most comfortable thing to have someone peering into your eyes that deeply. When she's satisfied, she takes a few steps backward, making the distance more comfortable between them again.

"I know what your father wants." A touch of a wry smile turns up the leathery corners of her lips at the thought. "What is it that you want?"

"Wh..what I want?" He stuttered, just as uncomfortable with the closeness as he was the sudden lack of it.

A few awkwardly long moments passed before Ben shook himself out of this apparent trance and rose to his feet. He felt a little stronger looking down at Maz than the other way around. But her question burned through his mind so intensely that it hurt.

"What I want? What I want is for people to stop asking me what I want!" He snapped. "I don't have wants! I have the Force!"

And yet, his mind was screaming, 'I want to run. I want to disappear. I want to be free of this pain.'

Even if you were trying to guess the kind of thing Ben Solo might have wanted by the previous choices that he made, it'd be a hard thing to do. So few of them seemed to come from him as much at the influence of the people around him.

In that sense, it almost seemed as if he was doomed to serve someone else's vision. Even the effort of trying to tread his grandfather's path was still him trying to follow something.

Maz clasped her hands behind her back. His anger doesn't seem to disturb the alien woman the way it does for the Elder Solo, so she looks at him unphased. "You need to learn the buried presence. Relax your mind and focus on making your connection with the force narrow."

Ben stared at the alien woman. "I need to what?!

Clearly, that was something neither Luke nor Snoke had taught him. It hadn't even garnered a mention.

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On the Light and the Dark ...

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