"The stupid kid makes no sense!"

"You need to at least try to understand—"

"I do! I think he just likes making me angry!"

He does not. The walls of his room don't mute the shouts, and Ben flinches with each one.

He didn't mean to make his dad angry. He's not even sure how it started, but the insults have been yelled, the doors slammed, and now his parents are fighting again. Because of him.

"He's just a kid, Han," Mom says.

"He's twelve! That's old enough to know he should respect his father."

"Thirteen," Ben whispers to his empty room. "I'm thirteen."

They'd fought on his birthday. Dad had left; the icing melted off the cake and Ben pretended he wasn't crying in his locked room.

"He's not the only one that could be more respectful."

"Oh, not this again, your worshipfulness."

"I just thought that if we're going to discuss our son's faults, I should remind you that you're not perfect either. You're worse than him sometimes!"

Ben hugs his gangly legs to his chest. Shaggy black hair covers his closed eyes but it doesn't block out the fight.

"Am not!"

"Yes you are. If this is mature, I never want to know what you were like as a teenager."

"I was better than Ben!"

A pane of glass in Ben's window shatters. They're shouting too loudly to hear it.

Warm air fills the room. He can't stop shaking. He hadn't mean to lose control again, he really hadn't, but he did and Mom and Dad would find out and punish him and—

Get it together, Ben.

His lungs quaver but he takes a deep breath anyway. As humiliating as it'll be, he'll tell Dad what made him so frustrated today. Then, he can't be mad. Can he? Ben practices what he'll say.

I got a bad grade on my test.

"You should have studied harder instead of practicing those stupid Jedi tricks."

I got into a fight with my best friend. Well, my former best friend.

"Stop being so overdramatic, Ben."

I think everyone in the universe hates me.

"Well, be more likable."

A door slams outside. That means Dad's leaving again. He might be back in time for dinner. Weeks or months might pass before he comes home. He and Mom never know what to expect.

Ben stands and silently leaves his room. Mom is glaring at the front door, arms folded, and Ben almost shrinks back inside.

"Mom. I'm sorry."

She turns around quickly. "Don't blame yourself. Your father has always been like this."

"But if I were smarter, or stronger, or braver…"

"Then you'd be me, and he'd hate you even more. Just forget about it." Mom storms into her office, her long brown hair flowing behind her. She doesn't take it down very often anymore. Ben follows her.

"Do you think he'll be gone for long?" Ben traces the edge of the doorway with his finger.

Mom looks up from her holoscreen, still glaring. "I don't know. I never know with that stupid man."

"I just…want to apologize."

She laughs, short and harsh and cruel. "You, apologize?"

Ben doesn't know if he should cry or lash out. "Mom. Please."

"Leave me alone, Ben. I don't have time for this."

"Mom," he whispers, choking back anger. "I'm sorry."

"It's too late for that now. Now stop talking. I have an important speech to finish and I can't afford any more distractions. Thank goodness your father left."

Ben hovers on the edge of a breakdown. He wonders what the expression on Mom's face would look like when she feels her windpipe close up and realizes her son is choking her. He wants it so desperately; he wants to see her pain. He wants to throw his father's beloved ship to the ground with him in it. He wants to trick his best friend's girlfriend into kissing him, so he can see the betrayal on his friend's face. He wants to destroy an entire planet with just a thought.

But he doesn't. Ben Solo might be an outcast, a freak, and hated by everyone who knows him, but he is not a murderer. He walks into his room and locks the door. Then he holds out his arm, focuses, and clenches his hand into a fist.

The floor-to-ceiling window shatters completely, sparkling in the light of the suns, and it feels so good.