A/N- This is just a short drabble that I wrote for May the Forth. I have plans for a much longer and more in depth story involving what I want the Knights of Ren and Episode VIII to be which I hope to finish and release before December 15th comes around and all my ideas can no longer be even the tiniest bit possible. Please enjoy my angst-ridden boy, Ben Solo, in all his brooding glory.
Ben Solo.
That was his name. His birth name. The name his mother and father chose. The name of a Jedi in training.
Darth Vader.
That was his Grandfather. A former Jedi turned Sith. A man who confused him so much.
Ben Solo and Darth Vader. Light and dark. Jedi and Sith.
Kylo Ren was neither… or both? Honestly, he didn't know.
Kylo held the the melted remains of his grandfather's helmet in his hands and looked into the obsidian depths that once held Darth Vader's eyes. He longed to feel nothing, to be numb of the world around him. To take neither pain nor pleasure from the death of Han Solo. He wanted to slip on the helmet and hide from everything. To fall into the void and never return.
But that wasn't an option.
Is this what he wanted? A world so bleak that he wanted to leave it. His master saw the world in shades of grey. Good and evil were not opposites but compliments. One could not exist without the other and only when they lived together in harmony could balance be restored to the universe. Kylo Ren remembered being torn between the two. His father on one side, his grandfather's legacy on the other. He had found it difficult to function regularly. There was a constant push and pull that drove Kylo mad. All he wanted to do was find the balance within himself, to practice what his master preached. To live in the gray.
But Han Solo's continued existence made this impossible. Ben longed to return to the light, to the blues and greens of the Jedi. The strength of that side was overwhelming and no matter how far away he ran, it followed him like a tattoo on his heart. This angered him. He remembered being so enraged by his own weakness and with that fury came the dark, the reds and oranges of the Sith.
He couldn't figure it out. He was alway either one or the other and he knew his master was becoming disappointed in him. Why couldn't he be neither… or both?
Perhaps, he thought, if one side was no longer pulling me towards it, I could finally relax. I might just be able to gain that equilibrium in myself and truly become one with the force, a perfect combination of light and dark, just like my master.
It had been a dangerous thought and for countless nights he tossed and turned as the idea floated around his brain refusing to leave him alone. And as he stood on that bridge on Star Killer Base with his father, he was still having that same internal debate. He just wanted it to stop. He wanted the world to stop and then Han Solo said, "Leave here with me. Come home. We miss you."
And Ben Solo broke. He broke into a million pieces. The tears sprung to his dark eyes as he felt the last fragments of his old life rip from his body.
"I'm being torn apart. I want to be free of this pain," he pleaded, to who he did not know.
There's only one way. It was as if the universe itself was answering his plea, but that hurt as well.
"I know what I have to do, but I don't know if I have the strength to do it. Will you help me?"
"Yes. Anything."
His father stepped closer and all Kylo Ren had to do to be free of all this torment was activate his light saber.
But he was wrong. As he watched his father fall to his death at the bottom of the base, Ben Solo died and Kylo Ren was now the one who was broken. He didn't feel balanced. All he felt was rage.
Kylo clutched the helmet tighter as the rest of the night's events flashed across his mind. Everything that happened with FN-2187. The girl, Rey. The destruction of the Star Killer Base. He sat in his quarters on the starship that was making it's way to Coresant and the anger returned. The helmet was the symbol of that anger and Kylo knew that once the anger disappeared, his sorrow would return. Why couldn't he just turn off his emotions. That sounded so much easier. But right now, he had two options. Fury or despair? He chucked the helmet through the glass wall between his bed and the latrine. Despair it was.
What had he done? He regretted it with every fiber of his being. And the worst part was, absolutely no would believe him.