On the Light and the Dark ...

[twelve_not_fourteen]

“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. 

Comments

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Han cocks his head to the side and regards his son in a way that he hasn't ever before - then again, as fractured as things between father and son have been, it's not as if Ben had ever suggested he could take The Millenium Falcon away from Han Solo. It's easy to picture him in a dingy hive of crooks somewhere with the look on his face and the words 'over my dead body' seem to be right on the tip of his tongue.

But ... he's not in his twenties anymore and truth be told, there's nothing that Captain Solo could really do to stop him, if that was his son's intention.

"I'm not letting anyone take this ship from me again." He murmurs, in his own time. Funny how so much of his stuff was still exactly in the same place despite the ship having changed hands twice at least. It's like they hadn't found at least half of the compartments that Han knew about.

"Besides, you couldn't handle this ship. That ain't a knock on you though, kid, there aren't many people who could."

[forcefullyunstable]

Kylo Ren considered those words for an uncomfortable amount of time. Han could clearly see the wheels turning in his son's mind, but not the direction they'd roll.

"The others will leave peacefully, sworn to silence. or die by my hand. You... You will stay."

He wasn't taking the ship away from Han. Nor was he going to kill him. It was almost as if he was... No, he really was... Kylo Ren was defecting from the First Order. Han succeeded in exactly what Leia had asked him to do.

Then, Kylo added a final condition.

"...if you contact General Organa, tell her that I died in the explosion."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

The flash of bravado or confidence, whatever it was, that Han felt burning in him like the plasma of a star was gone the moment Kylo Ren brought up General Organa. From their son's point of view that seems like a win for the Resistance. It does take one of the First Order's most powerful figures out of their equation - so in that respect, perhaps it is - but that wasn't what Leia asked him to do. She had said "bring him home."

Home was not flying off to who knew where. Bringing him back was not telling his wife their son was dead when he wasn't. It feels like a hollow victory, at best, to the elder Solo.

If he even could even do such a thing convincingly. His ability to pull off a con, once there wasn't someone around to hold him hold him accountable for his failures, was always hit and miss. And lying to Leia he was never especially good at. He has no idea how to even begin to approach that.

"What about Chewie?"

[forcefullyunstable]

Of course, Leia would have felt the death of her son, even that many star systems away. So lying would be difficult, if not impossible. At best, he might be presumed dead or otherwise still missing, but Kylo clearly wanted something far more finite.

At least he wasn't asking for the real thing.

When Han spoke about the Wookie, Kylo Ren lowered his gaze to the floor. He despised the General and all that she stood for. His father was a disappointment that he needed to eliminate. But his memories of Chewie weren't nearly as tainted. Perhaps the Supreme Leader left those untouched as a point of comparison to all the actual people in his life.

"...I think Chewie held me more than you ever did."

He didn't outright say he could stay, but the sentiment was somehow there.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

The General will go on.

In spite of whatever heartbreak she feels in seeing through her scoundrel's lies, she will fight for what she thinks is right and live up to the duties she feels are her's to bear. Sometimes Han loves that about Leia. Sometimes Han can't stand that about Leia. At this point, though, he's known her long enough to know that's just who she is.

"He's the best person I've never known." Han says flatly. It's the only answer that comes to mind that isn't argumentative. He knows his impulse to argue is not likely to earn him any favors with his son, though in this instance, he very much wants to stand up for himself a bit more ...

"Do you want to let me finish this?" He says, gesturing to the medkit still open and in fact, Han still has gauze in his hand. "Or I can leave it and you can clean up how you like."

[forcefullyunstable]

He looked at Han, and then back down at the gauze. He clenched his fists and then let his hands fall at his side. It had been so long since he'd been asked to decide his own fate (if ever), he didn't know what to do. His expression said that loud and clear.

Eventually, Kylo nodded, raising his arms again so Han could bandage his wounds.

"...will you show me what it's like..." He asked hesitantly. "to be your own master?"

To smuggle contraband, to swindle and profit, to escape by the skin of your teeth. To fly fast, live large and be good enough to not die young. It seemed a fitting place to start - a son wanting to be like his father, but not knowing how to ask.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

It was admittedly very short-sighted of them - Han, Leia and to a lesser degree, Luke - to have spent so much energy trying to prepare him for his destiny that they forgot to prepare him for life. The elder Solo didn't grasp that before, but it seemed pretty clear now.

"I'll teach you whatever you want to learn, kid."

Hell, he's always wanted to do that anyway, except Han's not all that sure what he's asking for. Logically he's aware there's plenty of things he's picked up over the years that he could show the young man, but emotionally, the value of the lessons that an old spacer could impart upon a force sensitive still don't seem that important to him.

What a glorious indoctrination of his son into how a scoundrel lives, though - with cold, smelly bacta rubbed into his wounds. He tries not to smirk too much at the thought of it.

[forcefullyunstable]

Kylo Ren wasn't sure what he was asking for either. But there had to be something there - something beyond what Luke or Snoke had been grooming him for. And if there wasn't, he at least had free passage to pretty much any backwater star system where he could hide away and slowly be forgotten by both sides of this damn war.

"Do you have a... a job lined up?" he wasn't sure what terminology to use. "Somewhere to go after we've rid ourselves of the scavenger and the traitor? Somewhere that is not a Resistance stronghold."

Icon props.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Han makes a face at his son's mention of a job.

Of course, Captain Solo and his partner had a good thing going with their shipping operation up until the time that they had decided to take up that dangerous job for King Prana. As much as he'd like to have blamed Rey and Finn for their unscheduled appearance on the Eravana, hauling those Rathtars had gone to hell long before they had showed up. Most of the crew on the ship had died just trying to wrangle them.

That was going to make lining up the next job that much more difficult. Besides that, he owed a few next of kin some messages about the fate of their family members.

"The last one went bad." Understatement of the decade, probably. "There's a few loose ends I'm going to have to tie up, besides wanting to see if the Eravana is still where we left it. It's in the Jakku system."

Ty

[forcefullyunstable]

"Describe loose ends." He huffed, hissing as his father tightened the bandages. The bacta, or at least what he'd let Han apply, was working. He hardly felt the pain from at least half of the gashes.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Bacta is a wonderful thing. A shame the Captain that Han had grown up serving was so stingy with it. It's expensive to buy, after all.

At any rate, one thing Han's son may or may not have noticed is the sureness of his hands. They have no right to be so nimble at his age and yet, they are. They are also rough as all get out. Even with gauze and bandages between any direct touching, it is very clear that Solo's hands were hardened by his life.

"We missed the drop. The cargo is likely dead. Lost five crew members." He pauses, was that it or was he forgetting something ... "And by now there's probably a bounty on me again."

Hell of a time to decide to throw in with Captain Solo, kid.

[forcefullyunstable]

Still a better time than facing the Supreme Leader after the destruction of Starkiller Base and what is, for all intents and purposes, a willful defection.

Kylo was hardened, but in an entirely different way. It was his mind that was roughest around the edges. He was a dark side adept, after all. Should bounty hunters come, he didn't even have to touch them to make them wish they'd never been born.

"I'm all for leaving the scavenger and the trigger-happy wayward stormtrooper to rot in the deserts of Jakku, but I'm guessing you have other plans." If it wasn't a neutral location, he would protest. The less time he had to spend anywhere near Resistance-controlled outposts, the better.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"I want to leave them with the Resistance." Not even necessarily the base on D'Qar, but one of their known substations at least. In his mind, perhaps, he pictures Rey and Finn ultimately leaving in a small vessel of some kind to find Luke. Whatever the case, father and son are of the same mind that the two of them don't belong on The Falcon right now.

"And I'm sure your mother is going to expect me to check in somehow. I suppose that could be in the form of a message."

As big as the galaxy is, it's unrealistic to expect that Han Solo and Leia Organa are not going to cross paths again. In spite of all the ways they make a something of a dysfunctional couple, the two of them are now and always, drawn to each other.

[forcefullyunstable]

He glared daggers at Han. If there was a hidden compartment on the Falcon he could squeeze himself in while they were departing and his father was going about his business he would.

"It this turns out to be a trick, I will show you why you should fear the power of the dark side." He growled. "If they speak..."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"Try to stop yourself from being angry long enough to think this through." He says with a tired look in his eyes. "Leia sent myself, Chewbacca and Finn to the Starkiller base. Without someone she trusts telling her we didn't make it, if not a single one of us checked in afterward ... she'd know something was up."

Chances are, even if someone she trusts did tell them they didn't make it and she didn't feel it, that wouldn't fool her either ...

"We can drop you off on Kashyyyk for a few days if you don't want to be around for that. Chewie's family would put you up. I'm sure he'd even stay with you if that's what you wanted."

[forcefullyunstable]

Asking Kylo Ren not to be angry was like asking the twin suns of Tatooine not to shine. He wasn't happy with any of the situations, really. He's trying to trust Han, but he's nearly at his limits of that.

"How do I know you're not just trying to get rid of me all over again?!"

Kylo was on edge. If there were stormtroopers nearby, they'd be turning around to go the other way. He was unpredictable when he was angry, save for being predictably violent.

"I'll stay in the cargo hold. If you stay too long, pull anything funny, this ship is mine and I'm the one leaving YOU behind!"

[twelve_not_fourteen]

You can't be mad at the kid for feeling that way. He has to stop and tell himself. It's an oversimplification and it borders on being a little unfair, but the accusation stings because there's just enough truth in it to be hurtful. His son is so angry ...

It's probably going to be like this for a while too, so, might as well get used to weathering the storm. The hope is for an eventual change, of course, but nothing like that ever happens quickly.

"Sure, you stay in the hold. It's a good plan."

It's a terrible plan - if the plan is to go back to the main base on D'Qar, but it's what Kylo Ren wants so that tips the scales back toward 'good', Solo figures. It isn't as if Han has control here. He's just playing the cards that he's been dealt.

"I don't think we should drop them at D'qar." He says after a moment of thought. "What if we left them on Kaal? I think there's an outpost there and it puts us about a day or so out from Jakku."

[forcefullyunstable]

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.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

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 ...

[forcefullyunstable]

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.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

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?

[forcefullyunstable]

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.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

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.

[forcefullyunstable]

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.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

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."