Glimpses of Ben Solo's past at the Jedi Academy i.e. the Jedi temple in the last year prior to his fall to the Dark Side. Politics, intrigues, reflections and family disputes. We (and the next 3 generations probably) will get a thorough analysis of why Ben turned to the Dark Side through comics, animated series and novelizations, and this is mine.
Somehow, I can't help but feel for this over-grown man-child.
He is having the same dream, again.
She appears in the darkness before him, her face so brightly illuminated he can barely discern her features.
The feeling of recognition is so potent that it takes his breath away.
However, although it appears she runs towards him, she stops mere feet from him and falters.
Something prevents her from coming to him.
There is an air of loss surrounding her, almost as tangible as the bright light that encircles her.
"Wait for me, sweetheart," he utters, again surprised at how much intense compassion just one simple word can have.
"Where are you?" She screams as if from afar, although she seems to be very near him.
The distant clash of weapons and battle cries behind him remind him of an imminent danger that looms over both of them, but for some reason, he feels she is in a more of a danger than he is.
Or perhaps it's just his intense desire to protect her from the world - he was a sappy romantic in his adolescence.
The girl makes another uncertain step in his direction. Her face slowly turns to him and features start forming on her.
And just as he thinks that she finally wakes up to the realization who he is, it is he who is awaken, and quite crudely at that.
"Wake up, M'Lord," Irin's grating, freshly mutated voice snaps him from the gentle haze of her presence.
The scrawny boy with hawk-like nose sneers at him, and Ben soon realizes why.
He embraces his crumbled sheets beneath him, and drools over his crushed pillow. The awkward pose unmistakably resembles a lover's embrace, and Irin, a rogue kid who grew up on the rough streets of Cardota City, is very well acquainted with various… bodily reactions.
And there is a tension down there, an embarrassing tension barely covered under the sheets and his softly woven Jedi pants.
The rage replaces shame. Irin's is the first neck he successfully Force chokes.
The rogue boy makes an admirable attempt to defend himself, but the resistance makes Ben even madder and more focused.
You're dead, you little punk, Ben hisses into boy's mind.
And as Irin's mocking face turns purple, his uncle barges in through the door.
"Ben, what are you doing?!" He shrieks, and with a flick of a finger, the choke is broken.
Like a slap in the face. Not a moment of privacy in the Jedi temple.
Ben's lips almost twist into a very appropriate: He started it!, but the expression on Luke's face tells him it will only make things worse.
He was, after all, the most powerful among the dozen of apprentices Luke singlehandedly picked. And Luke definitely prepares him for a sort of a leadership role.
And that preparation includes the highest number of penalties and penances per capita, as compared to anyone else - Irin included.
Ben suspects Luke has something of a soft spot for the Cardotan delinquent, Irin being an abandoned child of smugglers who affiliated with the Empire much more often than they did with the rebels. In the years after the Galactic Peace Treaty was sealed and the New Republic established in Hosnian system, they simply left the toddler behind in a panicking exodus from the city, fearing the retribution from the victory drunken masses.
Ben also suspects that Luke is growing weary with this unruly bunch he salvaged from across the galaxy.
Only truly non-trouble making are the two girls - one young Twi'lek, intensely beautiful and flexible like the rest of her kind always is, sapphire blue eyes on a perfectly oval face. But alas, she is completely disinterested with the same sex. She left her girlfriend on Lothal and she treats every male padawan like a pestering annoyance.
The other is a frail albino girl from Tatooine, short-sighted and a mute. She is so timid and cautious in the sun that it reduces her to nothing more than a shadow-like presence in their midst. She only communicates with Luke, the Twi'lek and only so often with Ben, avoiding all eye contact with him. She is actually very intelligent and a sort of a book-worm like he is - her sensitive skin isn't compatible with the unforgiving suns of Tatooine, so her parents spare her from any outdoor work and leave her in the confinement of her small room with her books and her Force sensitivity.
Ben senses they dispatched her to the academy a little too eagerly - there is no use of a child that can't contribute to the farm.
Her position makes him like her even more, finding it strangely similar to his own. And on top of that, somewhere under the sediments of her vast timidity, he feels she has a pure, girlish crush on him. It does a lot of good to his sensitive adolescent ego.
Strange she didn't mind his ears, though. He was really self-conscious of those ears.
"Thinking about your girlfriend, aye?" Irin's triangular face appears from the top of the grove.
The punk really has a death wish.
"Shut up," Ben barks at him, but restrains himself from fist-fighting with Irin. "You earned me a month's worth of scrubbing water closets".
"Always eager to please, M'Lord," Irin grins and makes a mock-bow.
Ben raises his eyes and his expression is obviously such that even Irin has to flinch. As he recoils back, his shirt pulls down and to some satisfaction, Ben notices dark purple bruises on his neck where his hands were, hypothetically.
"You should put some ointment on that," Ben says, imitating concern. "You don't want to go like that around. It makes your ugly face even uglier."
Irin frowns. He hates when this entitled brat shows that amount of swagger.
"At least I don't parade around with TIE fighter on my head."
Ben is already on the verge of cracking his skull open, when the pommel of Luke's saber hits Irin at the back of his head. It wasn't a powerful blow - Luke sent the saber flying as soon as he noticed the commotion and let it hit the unruly student sideways.
Soon they're both scrubbing sewers, only on the opposite sides of the temple.
Other students now have to make after-hour shifts at watching over them. Needless to say, it does wonders for Ben's already shaky popularity. The Twi'lek openly yawns. Others wrinkle their noses and don't even try to conceal the endless grunts and small curses for having to baby-sit Solo.
The only one who enjoys the assignment is the albino girl, Jessa Schimbke (Schimbie for short), and only when she's with Ben.
And even she is giggling silently at the sight.
That girl from his dreams will be his undoing.