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

[forcefullyunstable]

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.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

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?"

[forcefullyunstable]

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.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

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."

[forcefullyunstable]

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!"

[twelve_not_fourteen]

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."

[forcefullyunstable]

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..."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

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."

[forcefullyunstable]

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?"

[twelve_not_fourteen]

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."

[forcefullyunstable]

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."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

[[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?"

[forcefullyunstable]

He'd sought out survivors before, as part of First Order raids. That wasn't difficult. Panic was surprisingly easy to sense. Force sensitive individuals, even more so.

"I can do that." He nodded. "If I can get close enough, I can dig deeper. What do you want to know?"

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Cue the internal sigh.

For a while, while children are small, they have a tendency to trust implicitly trust their parents and hold them in high esteem. It's ingrained as far as he can tell, though, he can't really verify that on his own experience. Something tells him that Ben fell out of those feelings a bit younger than most kids, if he ever felt it at all.

On some level, he has to know that the word father and disappointment in Ben's mind. And now he's gotta fess up about how sideways his latest run has gone.

"Well, when we left the Eravana behind there were some people still alive and at least two Rathars onboard. If it's there for us to find again, I was thinking what you can do would help us search the ship more efficiently." His father and Chewie searching the ship alone for survivors would take hours. Not to mention being surprised by one of those kryffing beasts as a possibility. "But you're the expert on what you can do, so I'm open to suggestions."

[forcefullyunstable]

"I can find people if they're still alive." He huffed. But lesser creatures were another story. "The rathtars, maybe. I don't know. The Supreme Leader trained me to hunt people, not beasts."

At least he was being honest.

He was decent enough with his senses, but it was telekinesis that was his true gift. But his boasts would be put to the test the closer they got to the system around Jakku.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"At least Rathars aren't known for being sneaky."

Should they even bother trying to capture the other two rathtars if they haven't died yet? King Prana is probably going to be furious if he did show up days after the fact with two of the three creatures. And likely there's probably already a bounty on his head for it. To even try would be going into a den full of cooked people who want to see him dead.

Yeah, he'll pass on that.

"So, is there something you want to do when I've tided up the loose ends of my last run ..."

[forcefullyunstable]

There were a lot of things he didn't want to do.

He didn't want to face the Supreme Leader, get caught by the First Order or assassinated by his own knights. (For all he knew, the order had already gone out. Han might be able to hide from bounty hunters, but the Supreme Leader was everywhere...) He also didn't want to go home, face his mother, be tried or executed by what was left of the Republic.

He drew a deep breath. "...Try and help you on the next run, whatever that is. If you still want me."

He chanced looking his father in the eyes.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Han is a good man to be on the run with. He'd lived under and changed aliases often enough that he knew exactly how to do it for his son. Depending on how badly the kid wanted to disappear, he could probably keep him from ever being recognized by anyone apart from Leia, Luke and unfortunately Snoke.

The things surgical droids could do in his day to change identifying features was pretty impressive. It could only be better and more elaborate now.

But a lot of keeping Ben Solo protected was going to come from a combination of what Captain Solo can teach him about how an experienced swindler does it and what the young man has learned over the years to defend himself.

His father will do everything in his power to keep him safe, but there was something going on with him too. He'd been ignoring the signs for a while, but the three-way conversation he had with Bala-Tik and Tasu Leech had made it painfully obvious. He was losing his edge. Tired and old, they called him. Too old to be trying to get back to the smuggling game now and being 'the most famous (and recognizable) smuggler in the galaxy' closed a lot more doors than it opened. It was going to be a complicated problem to unravel.

Anyway, it had been picked up by the old man that his son didn't seem to make eye contact with him much. It makes a man look guilty and he's half tempted to ask Ben what he's afraid to see in his eyes, but he doesn't. In those eyes is worry - because how can he not feel that way with his son so precariously teetering between the light and the dark. In those eyes is uncertainty - because his whole damn world had been turned upside over the last few days and frankly he's still trying to sort it all out.

There's love there too. Genuine happiness, which, by the way isn't something Han feels very often. He's got his son with him. That's been the thing he's wanted the most for a very long time. Makes the rest of it all seem less ... bothersome.

"I love you, kid." He begins with his answer. "There's a lot I want to get you up to speed on, but here with me is exactly where I want you to be."

[forcefullyunstable]

Pouting lips trembled slightly, before finally turning into a thin smile. It was easy to miss, as it had probably been a decade or more since Kylo Ren or Ben Solo actually smiled. But there was hope, at least, that it wouldn't be the last time.

"...Then, I'll stay here with you. For a while, at least." He said softly.

He stared down at his hands. He knew his father wanted him to contribute something beyond unquestioningly following orders. So he tried to recall the details of the mess Han Solo had already described. He was listening, sort of...

"You said you thought there were still two rathtars left. So we find the ship, and then we just have to deliver them? What weak-minded fool bought rathtars?"

[twelve_not_fourteen]

It's been so long since Han has seen anything other than grave stares in his son. The few odd times that he would see Ben with his Uncle ... he should have known that the kid wasn't happy. He certainly didn't have the look of a young man that was.

In fact, while Han was pursuing the things that a talented pilot, but non-jedi could do with his time and word was spreading across the galaxy of the misdeeds of Kylo Ren and his Knights; he didn't initially connect that this threat was his own son. Not till he heard the news from Leia and he hadn't seen what the youngest Solo had become with his own eyes till the raid on Takodana.

"King Prana." He says with a frown. "He thought they'd make his menagerie more impressive than his rival's. He already put the word out that he's angry that I failed him. Heard as much from Maz at the cantina ..."

Some people have too much money. There's no way, even if Han was filthy rich, that he would ever sink his funds into a personal zoo.

"Mostly, I'm just hoping the Eravana is still there so I can sell it off. I have a plan for the money."

[forcefullyunstable]

"Depending on what you do with the rathtars, he might not have a rival. Or you might not have a problem. I'm sure any king would pay a great deal for the privlege of continuing to be your problem, as opposed to a rather unpleasant alternative."

Destruction and bloodshed at its finest - Kylo Ren was merciless when it came to people's lives. What he fell back on when told to think for himself was a very frightening example of what Ben Solo had become.

"...what are you going to do with the money?"

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Well, he'd have to admit that unleashing the Rathars on Prana or Regent Solculvis would probably solve his problem.

In fact, it kind of reminded him of the time he repaid Ploovo Two-for-one for a loan that seemed to keep arbitrarily accruing interest every time he got close to paying it off. He ended up attaching a credit voucher to an ornery Dinko and placing it in a case for that small-time hustler to find. The look on his face when it chomped down on his thumb was worth every credit.

But the clear difference is that a Dinko isn't going to do any lasting damage to a person or their property. Rathars will.

Maybe a little time observing the Captain and the way he conducts business will help change the way he thinks. He can hope as much, anyway.

"A portion of the money will get us supplies for the next run, so we can choose our next job rather than take whatever we can get." That's the part he can see his son respecting and supporting. "The bulk of it, though, I want to divide up and send to the families of my crew."

[forcefullyunstable]

He could have easily scoffed, 'did you always have a heart, or did you grow one after you got rid of me?' But instead, he simply nodded.

"It's your money." He sighed. "And the rathtars, if they are still alive?"

Because Han was already quite aware of some of the things Ben intended to do with them.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

He could have been glib.

For people who knew Han when he was his son's age? Most people probably would have similarly accused him of going soft. It's just that he's seen a lot of things in his life and they've had their impact on him. In general, the money seems less important when you're old. You can't take it with you.

Besides, it was one of the only time's he's ever run with a 'crew' larger than himself and Chewbacca. To have it fail so spectacularly makes him feel like he should pay a penance of some kind. If only to help him get to sleep a little better.

"Check the holonet, I suppose. See if anyone's willing to buy them and if not, dump them off in the Almanian system where I found them."

[forcefullyunstable]

"You do that, then." he declared. "I'll try and get a sense of what we're dealing with."

Most of his recent experiences with technology involved light-saber assisted rampages. Han would probably appreciate it if Ben didn't find a reason to get frustrated online.

As they sped through hyperspace, both of them had time for a meal, and this time, he actually ate some of it. It didn't taste at all like stormtrooper rations, and it sat heavy on a stomach already bundled tight with nerves. But he did eat.

And the two of them finally had a chance to really talk.

He tried to answer a few more of his father's questions about the Force, what he learned from Luke and what he'd learned from the Supreme Leader. Eventually, he asked, "What was I like before Snoke got into my head? I... I don't really remember..."