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 smirked a little at his father's pride as it soaked through his explanation.

Perhaps Han saw it before he tried to hide it. He didn't... shouldn't... care what his mother thought he was destined for. And his father wasn't even there, so how would he know?! ...Except, he was there, at least for some of it. Or these stories wouldn't even exist.

"... I didn't kill you." A telling reminder, with a weight all its own. "I backed down from that."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

He made his mistakes.

Every father, both the good ones and the bad, make mistakes. The biggest (and perhaps inexcusable) one that Han made was convincing himself that there was nothing he could do to help his son with the things that troubled him. To pretend there wasn't good times too, though, was ignoring the obvious signs.

But.

The fact that Ben had considered killing him? It doesn't surprise him.

Somehow he knew when he stepped on that catwalk that his life was likely going to end there. He couldn't even say how he knew, but he did. What surprised him and definitely pleased him, was that ... somehow, things didn't end up that way.

"If it would have helped you then ..." He shakes his head. "... if it could help you now ..." He doesn't finish the thought, but the writing is on the wall. There's nothing he wouldn't do for his kid, including taking a saber to the heart.

[forcefullyunstable]

It was certainly progress when Ben softly replied, "I don't know if it would... or if it would only make things worse."

He turned, actually looking his father in the eyes. His were shaking, emotional and troubled.

"...help me remember who Ben Solo... who I was... Before Kylo Ren... before the Supreme Leader..."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

He'd be inclined say that it wouldn't, not just because his life kind of hangs in the balance on that one, but because he knows how he feels about death. He gets no joy from it. Maybe that's why, despite being a hell of shot and resourceful as all get out, he could never bring himself to taking on bounties.

Despite him believing that most of the answers to Ben's existential questions are going to come from inside of him - he does want to help him more than anything. And it's not lost on him the fact that he thought he couldn't for so many years might have helped put him in this bind ...

"Sure, son." He says swallowing down a lump in his own throat. "Anything you need."

[forcefullyunstable]

They had nothing but time on their hands until they landed on Phu. And during that time, Ben just asked questions about his past, listened to stories from the time they were a family and tried to fit those events into what he thought happened. Sometimes, the pieces fit. Sometimes, not so well.

A few times, when the concentrating look on his face grew very intense, he might even have been using a Jedi mind trick on himself. Something to help him remember who he actually was, and try (not very successfully) to put his torn mind back together.

He was far better at tearing things apart than putting them back together.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

It's hard on Han to watch Ben struggle and know that there's really not much he can do apart from what he's already doing. And be patient, which is not easy for him to do. In fact, it was a lack of patience that was sighted by Leia as a primary reason why it was better send their struggling son off to train with Luke.

A point that was kind of hard to argue against, truth be told.

"Is there anything good that you remember about your mom and me that ... wasn't something I've been talking about?"

[forcefullyunstable]

The struggle was real for both of them. Especially with a question like that.

"Good things?" He scoffed, trying his hardest to remember something that Han hadn't jogged into place. "No."

But after a little while, a couple things did flash through his mind.

"...I remember sitting by a big window, late at night, wondering if you'd come back. I woke up with a blanket over me at least once. Mom might have put it there..."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Certainly, Han prepared himself for the very distinct possibility that Ben's answer could have been 'no' and yet, it still stung when he scoffed and said as much anyway. Jumbled memories or not, it probably said something about the kind of parents he and his wife were to Ben.

"From a house or a ship?" He asks out of offhand curiosity more than any other reason. If he wasn't there, he likely wasn't going to remember that particular moment.

[forcefullyunstable]

"A house, I think. The room was big and empty."

If it was a ship, he had a feeling he wouldn't have been waiting for his father to come back.

"I remember a lot of yelling, a lot of nightmares... A lot of droids..." Someone, or rather something, had to look after a young Ben when Han was away and Leia was tending to political matters. "Definitely a lot of droids once I started figuring out the Force. The voice... Snoke... said it was because everyone was afraid of me. And that they should be."

He remembered that last part very clearly.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

A big empty house seems like a fitting description of any number of houses left in the Organa estate that rarely got used at that point. And by now they had to have all been sold. Well off was ... something of an understatement for that family, but it wasn't like Leia ever cared about the money and Han made it his business not to ask about specifics.

"You know you mother and I never felt that way about you, son." Mostly the truth. Han can only speak for himself, but he was certainly not afraid of Ben at that time. Word of a few towns burned to the ground in his rage, lives taken to soon and his involvement in wiping out a whole star system had adjusted his stance a little.

He wasn't afraid of his the youngest Solo right now, however. Talking with him, seeing that he was ... trying. That helped.

[forcefullyunstable]

"Of course you did..." He replied. The statement wasn't curt. Instead, it almost sounded sad. "Too much Vader. Too much Vader. I didn't know what it meant at the time. But I found out."

He wasn't being very Vader-like now, though, and he wasn't sure what to make of that. He activated his lightsaber, but all he did with it was start to roast another skewer of meat.

He could hear all the reminders from Snoke over the years in the back of his mind playing like a broken record. Their fear, their disgust, unwanted, unloved, the call of the light, failing to live up to his true destiny, pain for power, pain for punishment, let it out, just let it go...

It took every bit of control Ben had not to slip right back into Kylo Ren right then and there. The war inside his mind was extremely visible. And that rathtar chunk was as good as blackened now.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

He did say that didn't he?

Not when his son was small and he still openly cared his father, as perhaps he might 'remembering' right now, but he did say it. Only days ago. In a private conversation with Leia. When Han was still trying to come to terms with the Hosnian system becoming Hosnian asteroid field and knowing that his kid was a part of the machine that had done it; he had said exactly that.

It make him feel kind of sick just thinking about it and ... angry too. About the Starkiller base, yes, but also the fact that he had said that. Mad that those words came out of him in the first place and worse, that he'd meant them when he said it.

He pushes his plate away.

"I never said anything like that then." He says quietly after counting back from ten. "Never did until you gave people all those reasons to compare you two."

[forcefullyunstable]

"Then everyone else did! And they're right!"

He stood up, hurling the charred meat in a random direction. His lightsaber was already active, but at least he paused before just cutting through the table or anything else in the galley.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Or anyone else for that matter.

Every time he sees that scarlet lightsaber ignite he flinches. It's the brightness of it, he tells himself, or worrying about his old relic of a freighter, but that's not really it; it's just the lie a father tells himself because he's still worried that one of these bursts of anger is going to mean the extinction of Han Solo.

He doesn't really want to die, but then again, he never thought he'd live this long either.

"I wish you weren't so torn up inside by what everyone around you thinks." To say that Han doesn't care about what anyone thinks of him ever would be untrue, but he's far less concerned about his persona than most. He's certainly never felt a burden to live up to any of his ancestors - he hardly knew who any of them were.

[forcefullyunstable]

"What, you think that's not all there is?!" He shouted without fully thinking it through.

There was some truth to such a dramatic statement. Ben clearly remembered his mother's reaction to the news of her father's identity getting out and how it started to topple her political career. Luke was nothing but a failure, and the Jedi perceived to be a myth in most parts of the galaxy simply because no one saw them active. And in the First Order, dammit, reputation is everything. What the Supreme Leader thinks of you determines if you live or die.

"I'm not Kylo Ren. I'm not Ben Solo. I don't know what I am and neither do you!!"

He stormed out, as volatile as ever, dragging his saber through part of the wall as he went.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

For all the anger in his heart that Han sometimes harbored, he couldn't hang onto it long while he watched his son in clear anguish. Though it will spike again briefly when he sees a saber going through the durasteel of his ship. There was a want to help Ben, of course, nothing that he wanted more in the entire galaxy in this moment. He just didn't know how. Or if he even could.

He knew that there was a way to live that had nothing to do with who you were related to and what you thought your destiny was, though, because he was proof of it. Even when he married Leia and everyone thought it would bring about a certain pattern of behavior, he never let it trap him. He never let anything define Han Solo apart from himself. For good and for bad.

He spends some time cleaning up their mess and looking at all the damage that the Falcon had acquired over the last few days. As if he might find the answers to his questions in the carbon scoring.

Though he doesn't.

Han walks off the old YT-1300 to go back to the bridge of the Eravana. Might as well check in with Chewie and make sure that the were still proceeding to Phu as scheduled.

[forcefullyunstable]

Ben was a mess. All he had in his life were missing and malformed pieces of what everyone else saw and expected. The light side. The dark side. His father's memories of him were no different, just a little bit kinder. He liked thinking about them, but his mind kept falling into doubt, guilt, anger, fear... everything that Snoke used to manipulate Ben Solo from the very beginning.

For most of the trip, (despite having the vast expanse of the Ervana at his disposal) he secluded himself in that cargo hold, often using the Force to seal the door shut. Anyone standing on the other side would hear angry shouting, violent outbursts and broken sobs.

If left to his own devices, he couldn't pull himself out of his own twisted mind. It might be more merciful to just give him some kind of order to follow or task to do. Something, anything...

[twelve_not_fourteen]

It's worrisome that Ben has such a hard time finding his own purpose. Maybe that was part of the trouble. If he couldn't decide for himself what he should do with his life, then it seems as if he would always be susceptible to being the tool of someone else designs. Even if he'd managed to dodge a dose of plasma to the heart, it's not as if Han could tell his son what to do forever.

After an hour or so, well before they should be arriving at Phu, Ben will feel the Eravana shudder. That in itself is not a good sign. A heavy class freighter is the spacefaring equivalent of a plow. Once it's got enough forward momentum going to push it along, there isn't much that's going to slow it down or stop it. And since it's so big and slow, you can bet Han had his heavily shielded.

Even your average-sized asteroid will bounce off the Eravana without anyone on board being aware.

The ship shudders again.

There's no way for Han or Chewie to hail the youngest Solo while he's in the cargo hold unless he would be willing to answer his personal comlink, but neither of them seem to want to stop long enough to try. If Ben reaches out with the force to sense what the two of them are doing right now, he'll find that they're both running toward the Falcon.

[forcefullyunstable]

The shuddering momentarily shook Ben out of misery and exhaustion. At least for a moment. He sat up, looking around. When nothing seemed out of the ordinary, he closed his eyes and sunk back down once again. Then it happened a second time.

This time, he did sit up. He concentrated on the Force and felt his father and Chewie moving closer. When it happened a third time, he tried to discern exactly what could be hitting them that damn hard.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Is there something left to sense in the poor warped minds of the children who became the slaves of the first order? Because if so, Ben will feel five First Order pilots flying TIE/fo model starships in the vicinity. Their aim, seemingly, to perform a coordinated strike on the Eravana. And since TIE fighters don't end up in deep space by themselves, there's probably a battlecruiser nearby.

When Han and Chewie start pounding their way onto the Falcon, the force sensitive will hear his father's voice raised in concern. "Ben, we've got trouble!"

Pilot and co-pilot raise the ramp and head directly to the cockpit. It's gonna be another quick take off, but fortunately, it's not as if Han doesn't have a wealth of experience on how those work.

[forcefullyunstable]

When Ben reached out with the Force, he was assaulted with not only the image of TIE fighters, but of the forces building nearby. It wasn't just any battlecruiser, it was the first order's flagship. He could feel Snoke's presence closing in.

The voice that resonated in his mind gave a final warning to Kylo Ren - admonishing him for squandering both his potential and the teachings he received, plucking tragic and angry memories from deep inside his head, fear and pain and torment... that could all be over if he simply completed this final test.

If he killed Han Solo.

Ben struggled to his feet, stumbling out of the cargo hold with his head in both hands. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!!"

He made his way to the cockpit, slamming into more than a couple of walls as he fought against a barrage of mental attacks and constant reminders of what he could do to ease his own suffering.

Just kill Han Solo.

"You have no idea what kind of trouble you're in!" He managed to spit out before he screamed, hurling his lightsaber (thankfully deactivated) at Chewbacca. He dropped to his knees. "...Snoke... He found me. He's in my head! The Finalizer... The First Order..."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

At this point in Captain Solo's life, he's seen the force so often that he can't deny it's power anymore. He saw the dark side in the form of the threatening presence of Darth Vader and has seen the light side represented by the luminous presence of Luke Skywalker. This was the way in manifested when he found himself swept up in the galactic war. The way he'd seen it, then.

Light side or dark side. Good or Evil.

For a long time, that was how he believe that it worked. And yet, he knew so well that people could rarely be portrayed in such extremes. Like him. Not a good man or a bad man, per se. Not light or dark.

He can feel when things are going wrong. It was always an icy feeling, like dread in his gut. He felt it now. Getting deeper and colder as his son grew near. He heard his son cry out. Felt his pain not through the power of the force, but with empathy. It could be the end of him.

The burn of lightsaber would probably hurt for a moment. Maybe it would even remind him of the heating elements he'd been shoved face first into on Besbin. That pain that transcended beyond the nerves that felt it and stunned you mentally as well. Then whatever was beyond. He swears he almost feels it coming, till that saber hit shaped like a cross goes flying at his partner.

Best in Chewie's hands, whose Wookiee strength could crush it before Ben might reach for it again - with the force or with an outstretched hand.

"Ben." Han says, oddly calm for how much worry he feels right now. "Kid, stay with us. We're gonna get you out of here."

It's all he can think to do. All that he feels like he can do right now. Han's hands fly over the controls on the right side of the ship, particularly in the region of the Navcom. His partner needs no words from the Captain to know what he's up to. They're jumping into lightspeed upon take off. Likely through a barrage of laser fire.

[forcefullyunstable]

Even Ben was surprised he had as much willpower as he did to essentially surrender his weapon to Chewbacca. For the first time in a decade or more, he was actively trying to resist Snoke's influence. He was trying, with all his might, to make his own choice. Snoke, however, had his tendrils around his apprentice's mind and he was not pleased with such blatant disobedience.

He screamed. The sound was harsh and raw, immediately familiar to anyone who had survived torture. But unlike the devices Vader employed at Bespin all those years ago, like Kylo Ren, Snoke needed only the Force. Unlike Kylo Ren, however, he'd perfected the technique.

In the back of his mind, he heard his father telling him to hold on and he felt the ship make the jump almost instantly after takeoff. Everything else was lost beneath the pain.

Distance pried a shaking, sobbing Ben free of Snoke's assault. It left him trembling on the floor like the aftermath of a seizure. A thin line of blood trickled out of his nose and he fought to catch his breath.

"I'm sorry... I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..." He choked between heaving breaths. At first, it sounded like he was apologizing to Han, but it might have been directed towards the Supreme Leader instead. "I can't... I w..won't..."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Han knew about torture first hand, so, of course, he recognized that kind of scream. Physically, the worst pain Captain Solo had ever felt was at the hands of Darth Vader. You could study his nerves among all the types of pain that he had ever been exposed to in a life that seen, perhaps, more than his fair share of it. The evidence would be irrefutable.

And yet, it didn't compare to the hurt that he felt listening to his son cry out in that primal sort of agony that nobody should ever have to hear - much less hear coming from the vocal cords on their own kid. Or the feeling that he was completely helpless to ease his suffering. As far as he knew, nothing more that he could do apart from being on the opposite side of the galaxy from Snoke and hope that the control he had on Ben would weaken.

"Chewie, help Ben while I've got the controls, I want to be sure that we're not being followed."

It's a command he gives with regret. He'd love to be the one to pick his son up and carry him off to lie down somewhere, but the reality was, he's almost seventy years old. Chewbacca was the more sensible choice to do the lifting.

"Then come right back because I wanna watch over him."

[forcefullyunstable]

The jump to hyperspace broke the initial hold. Distance would only help. But in the meantime, Ben was a quivering wreck holding onto Chewbacca's fur as he was hoisted off the floor with ease.

That was something he did remember from childhood, and it never felt more real.

The Wookie carried him to Han's bunk, putting him on the actual bed - not the cargo hold he'd practically claimed as his own. By the time Chewie returned to the cockpit to trade places with Han, Ben had calmed somewhat. At least enough to look his father in the eyes and mutter, "he's gone..."

'For now.' Went painfully unspoken.

"I'm sorry... I lost us the other ship..."