An Offer He Wouldn't Refuse
All characters except Ulappac Lens belong to Lucasfilm/Disney, no copyright infringement is intended.
Please bear in mind that English is not my first language. Thanks to PJ_1228 for beta-reading and suggestions.
Timeline: about 18 years after the Battle of Endor. I don't follow the suggestion that Leia must have gotten pregnant right after it since the new canon stories suggest she, Han and the others had to take care of some Imperial uprisings in the immediate aftermath of Endor. I gave them some time to breathe and settle down. So for this story's purposes Ben/Kylo is roughly 16 standard years old.
Canon might prove me wrong but I don't care.
In The Force Awakens Han never says that it was Ben who destroyed Luke's new Jedi Order – he says "one boy, a young apprentice" - but in this story, let's assume Kylo copied his old Grandpa in that regard, too.
Chapter 1
"Ben, no!"
The vision of his son disappeared as sudden consciousness pulled him back to the present.
Han Solo turned, not sure if he had actually screamed those words out loud. But his wife had not stirred, her breath still deep and regular. Thankful, Han closed his eyes again.
As usual these days, it had taken Leia hours to fall asleep, tossing under the covers and quietly sobbing into her pillow when she felt he wouldn't notice. She'd never cry in front of him and she quickly stifled his attempts to talk to her about it.
All he could do was hold her, in the rare moments when she let him, unable to find the right words to console her, to lessen the pain of losing her only child.
Their child.
Their son.
Then a bitter taste rose in the back of his throat, the dull lingering pain in his innards making it difficult to breathe. He slipped from the bed, careful not to disturb Leia and slowly padded to the living room of their private quarters.
The almost empty bottle of Corellian whiskey still stood on the side table the way he had left it the night before. He picked up the used glass and poured the last of the amber liquid.
Too many bottles lately.
He raised the glass to his lips and felt the welcoming burn of the alcohol as it travelled down his throat.
He tried to focus on the warmth spreading from his gut, tried to block the pictures that haunted his dreams almost every night, cursing himself that he had insisted on reviewing the security footage, refusing to believe Luke when he had told him what Ben had done.
Now he could never unsee his teenage son killing his fellow students in cold blood. Innocent children brutally cut down.
It had torn his heart out.
His son had died there, too. The creature in the footage might still bear the soft face of Ben Solo.
But the hate he had seen there left Han hopeless.
He swallowed hard and sat the glass back on the table, then turned around and silently went back to the bedroom to grab his clothes thrown in a careless heap on the floor.
For a moment he watched Leia, her long hair spread out over the pillows.
She looked so vulnerable in her sleep, so much younger than she was now.
No one but he ever got to see this side of her. Come dawn, she would shroud herself in strength, an inner corset that kept her upright and functioning, the dutiful leader in the ranks of the New Republic. Forever the Princess.
Armor that even he could rarely get through.
He had never been able to muster that kind of strength. In fact, it took him everything to not just run as he had done so many times before.
He dressed and left the apartment. He knew that no matter how hard he'd try, sleep would not come back. He might as well do something productive.