disclaimer: I do not own Star Wars.

"Too much of Vader in him."

It was a lie. They both knew it. There wasn't too much of Vader, he had too much of his parents. But it was easier to lie and say it was Vader. He was the villain of the story after all, and neither one of them had the connection to him that Luke did. So when faced with unpleasant truths, the two of them lied to each other and to him, and said he was too much like Vader.

It was to be expected that he would begin to identify with this mythical Vader. After all, the silent whispers, the troubled looks, made him think that he had no connection to anyone else. His anger wasn't his mother's, but his grandfather's. His determination (stubbornness) was like his grandfather, not his mother and his father. It only made sense, if he was Vader's grandson, to start up where he left off.

And so he ignored his father and to an extent his mother and listened with half an ear to his uncle. Because he had some half formed notions, from what his uncle had said and the whispers he heard. (He missed the most important whisper, that tried to tell him he was very much like his parents.) He had this idea that his grandfather must have been great (like he used to think about his father). He listened to Snoke because Snoke told him what he wanted to hear (yes, you belong. Your grandfather would have wanted this). And so he didn't so much as fall as jump to the Darkness, embraced it. Renamed himself, became who he was meant to be (reinvented himself).

His parents took it to mean that they were right (that they had failed). He had too much of his grandfather (mother, father) in him. He was Dark and Doomed (they were confused and busy and lost and didn't know how to raise a child). He was powerful (and as blind as his parents). He destroyed their family (they didn't know how to be one). But their comfort came from this idea that he was too much like Vader.

Vader had come back. There was hope in believing he was too much like Vader because that meant that he could come back to them. He wasn't completely doomed, he could come back if he was shown love and acceptance like Darth Vader before him. If he mirrored Vader, then there was still hope.

(Otherwise, there wasn't any because hadn't they screwed everything up and not fixed a thing and possibly made everything worse?)

And they went back to what they knew how to do, who to be, and ran away from all their problems.

(It seems almost a requirement that Skywalker families must be dysfunctional and broken. Even if neither mother nor father nor son ever went by the name Skywalker.)

Han Solo was a smuggler who had never grown up with parents and was afraid to let himself love.

Leia Organa was a princess who was more familiar with fighting and strategy than familial love.

Luke Skywalker was a naive farmer who only had two beings to look upon for guidance in the ways of the Jedi, and felt he destroyed all those he loved.

Ben Solo was a child who had to grow up on his own in a family ill-equipped to show him love.

(And the Force went to sleep, because if no one was going to listen to them, then they sure as hell weren't going to keep trying.)

So no one heard the whispers of Ben Solo and his temper like his mother's. Or of how his inability to listen to the Force was identical to his father and his mother. Of his father and mother's stubbornness which was magnified in him. Of his need to protect himself was identical to his father's.

No one heard the whispers of Anakin Skywalker. Of how Darth Vader was a lie. Of how Darth Vader was not this mythical villain, but a troubled young man who made a horrific bed and laid in it until he learned that the only one forcing him to stay was himself.

No one heard the angry whispers of 'This is not how love is'. No one heard the angry whispers of how much more powerful Anakin Skywalker was because out of all the things he feared, loving someone was not one. How much less powerful Leia and Ben were making themselves when they refused to listen to the Force.

No one heard the resigned whispers of 'They are definitely Skywalkers'.

And the Force decided to stay asleep until someone proved worthy of their help. Until either Leia decided to embrace herself and her family and her legacy, or Ben Solo decided that he should think for himself, or Luke Skywalker realized that he was not the only Jedi, just the only one who had trained with two actual Jedi Masters.

(Or, as the case turned out to be, if a young woman was able to reach out and find them and learn from them like the first Jedi and the first Sith did. That was enough to wake up and see what was going on.)

Describing Ben Solo or Kylo Ren as having too much Vader was a lie. He may have been an awful lot like Anakin Skywalker, or Leia Organa, or Han Solo or even a bit confused like his Uncle Luke was at one point before he was born, but he wasn't too much like Vader.

But his parents decided to blame Vader, because that was who was responsible for most of the other moments of pain and suffering in their life before the first time Ben Solo accidentally used the Force to throw a tantrum as a baby. It was so much easier to lay the blame elsewhere. So much easier. Too easy.

He was far too much like his mother and his father.

And neither one of them were ready to admit that they had no idea how to raise someone who was just like them.

(And he didn't want to admit that maybe he had made a miscalculation when he killed his father. Didn't want to admit that he had noticed the difference in the Force when the woman, Rey, went back along their temporary connection to read him. He didn't want to admit that after everything at Starkiller base he was just as confused as he was before. He didn't want to admit that the Force did not use him as it did his grandfather, that some no name woman from a backwater planet could make the Force swirl more than he could for almost as long as he would allow himself to remember.)

Admitting that meant that they had to look at their own failures.

And none of them were good at that.