Summary: *MAJOR SPOILERS FOR STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS* 'I am being torn apart. I want to be free of this pain. I know what I have to do but I don't know if I have the strength to do it.' / 'Anything.'
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars or the rights to any of these characters. I'd also like to remind everyone that this is based on The Force Awakens. If you haven't seen it, don't read on.
A/N: As I've already stated, we are in major spoiler territory right now. For the last time: don't read until you've watched the film. I was always going to write a fic for the bridge scene, and it was always going to be hard, because, let's be honest, this scene left me a trembling wreck in the cinema. But I wrote it. And I'm kind of proud, rightly or wrongly.
I hope you can enjoy (if enjoy is the right word). Feedback is always welcome!
Anything
'In case you don't find what you're looking for
In case you're missing what you had before
In case you change your mind, I'll be waiting
In case you just want to come home.'
Before he shouts his son's name and a stranger replies, there is hope. Only a flicker of it, but it is there, however tiny and unreasonable. But that spark dies the instant Han finds himself standing on the walkway seeing what has become of his son.
He doesn't know the figure that stands before him, tattered cape draped over his shoulders, all features concealed by an inhuman mask. He almost raises his blaster and shoots the thing in front of him on the spot; it reminds him so much of Vader. Even the suffocating darkness that always surrounded Leia's father now creeps around Han like a taunting embrace. That darkness only increases when the mask turns to look at him, and he searches the soulless visage in desperation, looking for any sign of the boy he once knew, to find nothing. When the figure replies, the modulated voice box almost manages to disguise the words far enough to be unrecognisable. But not quite.
That speech, the voice he has kept in his memory in the hope of one day finding it again, breaks the illusion. It is no longer a monster in front of him. It is his son. Their son. Ben.
Ben is not the monster. He's only been stolen by one.
Something in Han's chest swells as his son fights the monster enough to remove his helmet. The boy he remembers is gone, replaced by a grown man whose eyes are shadowed and who walks with the weight of the galaxy bearing down on him, as if he alone must carry its unimaginable burden. There is no comparison to be drawn between him and the laughing, loving child Han always sees in his mind when he recalls Ben… but seeing those eyes, those eyes that remind him all too much of Leia's, he knows.
This is Ben, and he isn't gone.
Not yet.
The flame of hope rekindles, and the black shroud over the walkway recedes to let it grow enough so Han begins to wonder if maybe Leia wasn't right after all, that maybe Ben can still come back to them, intact. Even as his son tells him different, tells him what Han knows in his own heart to be true, he finds himself instead listening to the same argument Leia has given him time and again.
It's too late.
And he finds himself answering for Leia, but not just for her, because her beliefs are his own, now- it's not too late, it can't be, Ben is still there, he knows what he's doing is wrong. And together, they can fight whatever it is that he's so scared of. It's not impossible.
It never has been.
He wants to say all of this now, while he stands face-to-face with his son who he thought he would never see again, but he can't find the words. His words aren't needed anymore, though, because Ben has found his own.
I am being torn apart. I want to be free of this pain. I know what I have to do but I don't know if I have the strength to do it.
To hear the voice he has loved and kept for so long say those words is worse than anything Han has ever felt. He cannot comprehend or understand how the light and dark wages a war in his son's soul, but he knows its pain. Effects of the battle inside are imparted not merely on Ben, but on everyone who has loved him, everyone he has ever loved, like a dropped stone creating widening swells over a lake's surface. Yes, Han can feel the pain of the conflict. And he knows his son is going through the same pain, only infinitely worse. That is why he's here, to ease that pain.
That is why he feels the promise come unbidden to his lips: anything.
In that instant, something changes, as if the vow has lifted a veil from his son's mind enough for him to see a truth he has always blocked out before. Ben holds out his weapon. The weapon that Luke has always said is a Jedi's life.
For a moment, a phantom moment of wishful thought, Han believes.
They've done it, he and Leia. They've beaten the darkness again, beaten the cage of poison from around their son, released him from the hell that Snoke has imprisoned him inside of.
But even as his hand wraps around the deadly cold hilt of the proffered blade, the place in his heart that has been empty ever since Ben was stolen remains still. There is no familiar warmth, as there was when he laid eyes on Leia for the first time in years. There is only an icy fist of hate and fear and anger crystallising inside of his chest as he meets Ren's eyes.
He knows before it happens. But it's not until the ice is fractured by a searing blade of energy, which burns muscle and flesh and everything in-between, that Han's belief completely dies.
Ren's eyes of stone watch without a trace of regret as the blade burns through his chest, intent on incinerating everything he's ever felt for his son. It is torture, feeling the fire crackle there, knowing that it will win no matter how hard he resists. The agony is not from the cauterising light, however, but from the knowledge that he will never see his Ben again.
When the blade leaves his chest, a smoking void in its wake, and the crackling hum of the lightsabre fades far away, there is only the stranger's face to keep him holding on. There is no feeling in the hand that searches the features before him, desperate to find something, anything that he can, before there is no chance to do so. There is no emotion in the too-familiar eyes that regard him with inhuman detachment.
Thank you.
The emptiness inside fills all as his limbs become limp. He feels himself fall into the welcoming oblivion, the cruel tendrils of frigid air wrapping around him too slowly to prevent the inevitable. Darkness below. Darkness above. Darkness inside.
Darkness swallows him. It is made of anger and fear and hate and betrayal.
But before the dark drowns him, a whisper of light. A voice that lets him know that there is still hope, that maybe the darkness won't always win.
Han…
Leia.