Chapter Two: Plundering the Past
Ben Solo - One Day Before
The First Order resources were stretched thin. Too many battles on too many fronts had scattered their forces and their commanders. The Resistance efforts had effectively sown chaos among a group bred for discipline.
Ben frowned, reading through the report. "This is the most recent information you have?"
Poe sat in a chair opposite him, propping his feet up on an unused holodeck. "It's from yesterday, how much more recent do you want?"
"This morning would have been preferable."
"I'll inform my slicers that their groundbreaking, unbelievably impressive work isn't quite good enough." Poe rolled his eyes. "Come on, Kylo, I don't think it's changed much in the last few hours. Did you get to the part about the rendezvous order?"
"Yes." He flicked his finger over the datapad to find the referenced alert. "Looks like some units have acknowledged and are preparing to move out."
"Yep." Here Poe's dark eyes flitted to him, brow furrowing. "So what exactly are you planning, once you get them all together?"
Ben set down the datapad and considered the other man. He didn't still harbor the hate that once boiled in him at the very sight of this cocksure replacement for his mother's affection — but they had a long way to go before he could claim to be friends. Right now he tolerated Poe, for the sake of his mother, and Rey, and the work they needed to undertake. He didn't need to dive into Poe's mind to know he felt the same way.
"That depends on your progress with the establishment of a new government."
Poe rubbed the back of his neck, grimacing. "Yeah, that looks like it's going to be tough. Turns out a month is just enough time to bring out all the leaders of oppressed people who think they know the best answer. It's turning into a logistical nightmare and we've barely begun."
"Good luck with that." Ben allowed his disinterest to seep into the words. He didn't envy the daunting task Leia had set before Poe and the other Resistance leaders to organize a new system of government out of the ashes of this brief but costly war. He had a part in it, but thankfully not the part that required committee meetings and long hours trying to reason with a myriad of strong opinions.
The First Order was still out there, and without a strong hand to seize the reins, it would devolve into in-fighting and forming of factions while various commanders tried to salvage what was left of their empire. It had happened that way before, and Ben did not intend to let it happen again. He would exercise his authority over them and bring them all to heel.
Poe must have been thinking something similar, because he frowned. "We're putting a whole lot of trust in you, Kylo, by giving you back your army. It's maybe the most insane thing we've ever done."
Ben glanced at him. "I don't suppose you'd simply take my word for it if I told you I had no interest in seizing control of the galaxy anymore, would you?"
"Not as such, no," Poe said, breaking into a grin. "But Leia trusts you, and Rey trusts you, and you did help Finn, so...I guess I'll believe you."
It was the closest thing to joking around they'd ever managed with each other, and Ben thought it was plenty for one day. He stood and moved over to a window, letting his thoughts turn to the greater galactic situation. The First Order had resources the new government could use, but it also had a deeply ingrained dogma and mission that would not be easily cast aside. He had to proceed with caution, if he wanted to secure the loyalty of the leadership and prevent dissension. A healthy dose of fear would help keep them in line. Fortunately the rumors trickling through the ranks about Hux seemed to be that Kylo Ren had killed him in revenge. That alone should keep some doubters from planning a mutiny of their own.
"How soon will you go?" Poe asked, watching him.
Ben gazed out at the buzzing, bustling metropolis of Coruscant. He stood with his feet apart, hands coming together behind his back. "Not right away. I need to give them time to get there, and to feel the weight of their failure. Besides, Rey has something she wants to do first."
"Go back to a certain desert planet?" Poe asked, lifting a brow.
He gave a single, short nod, glancing back. "You've spoken to Finn."
"Yeah, he says you need parts for some ship. Why go there, though? You've got a vast armada and shipyards to spare, don't you?"
"I do." Ben could have a new Silencer if he wanted — could have any ship he could dream of with any passing whim. But the idea of fixing up his old one scratched some unrealized itch inside him. It was an illogical desire, though, and he knew it. So rather than admit to Poe that it had been years since he'd done any real mechanical work himself and was rather looking forward to it, he offered another explanation. "But Rey feels ready to go back and face her past, and I intend to be there when it happens."
The thought that passed through Poe's mind was a loud one, loud enough that Ben didn't need to be in his head to hear it. Poe thought of Tuanal, and thought that Ben ought to answer for the massacre he'd authorized there. Poe hoped that going back to Jakku would force Ben to confront the full weight of his crime.
This amused him, in a grim sort of way. As if he hadn't felt, even in the very moment he authorized it, the damnation of that decision. Still, Tuanal wasn't the chief thing on his mind when it came to Jakku. When he thought of that planet, he didn't think of the sacred village or its dead inhabitants. He thought of the man and woman he'd seen selling their tiny child for pennies.
"Are you going to take Rey with you to the rendezvous?"
"If she wants to come, I won't stop her."
The other man sighed. "So, that's a yes."
Just as they'd come to a reluctant peace with each other, the two men had also come to an unspoken understanding regarding Rey. Ben knew that Poe was trying hard to stifle unrequited feelings for her, and Poe knew that Ben had some kind of connection with her that he couldn't understand or rival. Once, these truths chafed and provoked both of them, but the fires had cooled a little now. Ben no longer cared, and Poe seemed to have resigned his campaign for Rey's interest. Still, Ben could feel pity for the man in his frustration, now that he saw a not-too-distant future wherein Poe had moved on.
Leia insisted that they were brothers, and Ben supposed that wouldn't be true if they hadn't overcome a period of rivalry. He assumed — though, to be honest, he didn't really know anything about brothers.
"What will you have Finn do, now that he's back in good working order?" He tried to direct Poe's attention elsewhere.
The pilot took the diversion and ran with it. "He's got a growing legion of defected troopers who want to follow him. We'll put that to use somehow. And we definitely need Rose. They'll be busy."
"Good." Ben nodded. "Idle, post-war retirement doesn't seem a likely position for either of them."
"For any of us," Poe agreed.
Someone knocked on the door and they both glanced at one another. Now that the Resistance had set up on the highly visible, highly populated, highly historical Coruscant, Ben had to be careful who saw him mingling with the new leaders of the galaxy. Few knew this meeting was even taking place, in fact. Not even Rey, who had been busy with Rose working on the Falcon when Poe pulled Ben aside for a quick update.
Poe ushered him away so that he was not immediately visible from the doorway, and then went to punch in the access code.
The door slid open and a protocol droid stepped forward, her mechanized female voice delivering a quick and apologetic report that General Dameron was wanted at the senate reformation panel in ten minutes. Poe waved her off, annoyed.
When she was gone, he turned back to Ben. "I guess that means this is over. But you're going to check in, even after the rendezvous, right? This will be a coordinated effort, not you doing your thing, and me doing mine, yeah?"
Ben smirked. "I believe we were instructed to work together, were we not?"
Relieved, Poe nodded and smiled widely. "Yeah, we were."
"Then I'll keep you apprised of our movements and plans. Get your talented slicers to work out a highly restricted comms channel or other means of classified communication."
"I will. Look, I hate to ask this again, but I didn't really get a great answer last time. What are you going to do with your army?"
"I won't know until I can consolidate these scattered resources," said Ben, motioning to the datapad report, "and see what we still have left to work with, and until I know what you're working out here. I don't think turning it all over as a military branch to a disorganized, unformed pseudo-government will make the galaxy feel safe. We'll proceed carefully and deliberately."
Poe nodded, rubbing his stubbled jaw, brow furrowed in thought. "I see what you mean."
Ben moved towards the door, but paused at the threshold and turned around, giving Poe one last appraising glance. "Have you decided to trust me?"
Poe shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so."
"I've decided to trust you too." Trust did not mean friendship, but it was a start. Ben adjusted to the fit of this new relationship as he would a pair of stiff new boots. It would get more comfortable with time. "We'll shepherd this new era in little by little, together."
This gave his companion a crooked grin and he nodded, extending his hand. Ben glanced at it, smothered the urge to ignore him, and instead clasped it in a brief shake of concord.
"Good luck on Jakku," Poe called after him as he headed down the hall.
Ben didn't turn. His thoughts had already moved on from the once-pilot-now-leader. He searched for that thread of connection inside him that tied him to Rey's light, and used it as a homing beacon to guide him to her location. They'd lingered here long enough. Finn and Rose were settled after their pleasant convalescent vacation, Rey had drunk her fill of the bizarre world filled with one enormous, chaotic city, and now Ben had properly laid the groundwork for the complex task ahead of him. Nothing remained. It was time to go.
When he found her, suspended against the side of the Falcon by a makeshift harness, hidden behind a protective visor and busy with a welding torch, Ben experienced a rush of profound pleasure. It washed away the careful, guarded attitude he employed around the rebels.
She must have felt his proximity, because she paused, clicked off the torch, and lifted her visor. Her gaze locked onto his immediately, as if she'd known exactly where to look for him.
"Hey, where'd you go?" she called down.
He toyed with a smile. "I had a meeting."
"A meeting?" She pulled one side of her harness and it lowered her quickly to the ground. "What does that mean?"
"I'll tell you later. We should go soon. Will she fly?" He motioned at the hulking, hideous freighter.
Rey grinned. "Of course she will. Ready to give her a spin?"
"No, she's all yours."
Jakku - Now
How foolish he'd been.
This was...this was fun.
Ben regretted turning down every one of Rey's offers to let him fly before this moment. He'd not known, could not have guessed, that it would fulfill him on such a deep level.
The Corellian freighter moved like an extension of his own body. It flew better than the Silencer. He'd never been behind the controls of anything so intuitive and responsive. No wonder his father loved his ship, and no wonder Rey had fallen in love on her first flight. Despite the monstrosity of the many, many modifications made over the lifetime of the Falcon, she slipped around with agility and grace, justifying every single one of them.
"This is a great ship," he confessed as they wheeled around a huge Star Destroyer jutting out of the sand.
Rey laughed. "That greatness comes at the price of reliability, or have you forgotten?"
"It's worth it."
"Head that way, if you're done here." She leaned forward and pointed towards an unremarkable horizon.
The Graveyard was a grim place, littered with wreckage and bleached bones. He wasn't sorry to leave it, though it had made a suitable playground for him to test the responsiveness of the Falcon.
When he wasn't thinking about the ship, or listening to Rey's stories about a particular scene, he was quietly and secretly enumerating the many ways Jakku was quickly becoming the worst place he'd ever visited. A more miserable, deplorable spot in all the galaxy Ben could not imagine.
Still, he kept these thoughts to himself, careful to hide them behind a subtle partition he'd erected in his mind. This barrier maintained a facade of reassuring ambivalence for Rey to fall back on when her own emotions and memories became too overwhelming. Ben wanted to be her strength when she felt weak. She needed to believe that he didn't find Jakku horrible and alarming.
— Although he did, and it was. The more he saw of this dismal wasteland, the more his soul quaked with fury that the other half of him had been forced to endure so many years alone here. If the Force could have shown him this future beside her, he would have moved heaven and earth to get her off this rock long, long ago.
Ben listened to her stories and explanations with an attitude of interest, though sometimes the things she described with nonchalance made him shudder. He thought his childhood had taught him about not getting attached to things or people — they all chose something else, in the end. But while he'd learned about the cruelty of people's choices, hearing her stories made him realize she'd been far better acquainted with the cruelty of fate. She'd grown up watching people die in traumatizing and unexpected ways. No wonder her light was shaded by veins of darkness. Her life had been an exercise in resisting despair and doubt and death.
"Follow that hapabore trail," she motioned, and Ben wondered if that streak of flat sand was what she meant. A few specks moved along it, whether scavengers or indigenous Teedos, he couldn't discern.
The Pilgrim's Road (though the term was far too generous, in his opinion) lead them to the Sacred Villages, perched atop a ravine. Passing over these put a heavy silence between them. Ben didn't need to be told what those were, or why one of them was a sand-covered ruin now.
Rey didn't glance at him, and he could feel a fleeting echo of pain flare in her. She didn't like to be reminded of the things he'd done before. As for Ben himself, he observed the scene with passionate self-loathing. He'd let himself be a puppet for far too long. He had slaughtered innocents for a cause that had, in the end, deceived him. He would have liked to be free of the souls that clamored to him from the void, clawing at his conscience, demanding justice from him — but he did not deserve it. So he endured them. He accepted them as his punishment.
"Hey." Rey's hand found his arm, touch as gentle as her voice. "Head towards those mountains."
He squinted at the horizon, grateful for something else to think about. "There are mountains out there?"
"More like shadows from this distance."
Even shadows seemed like a liberal description. Ben could discern a smudge on the horizon, slightly darker than the sky arcing over it. He pressed the throttle and they surged away from the sacred villages. Dark memories behind them, both breathed a sigh of relief and focused on the smudge, growing now into shadows, and then into jagged, toothy shapes.
"Carbon Ridge," Rey explained as they got closer. "Hostile place. Not much of value up there — unless you believe the rumors."
"And what do the rumors claim?"
He'd vaguely expected to find relief from the stark, wretched landscape among the crags and shaded valleys of the mountains, but that proved utterly wrong. The mountains were merely sharply upthrust monuments of bare, brown rock.
"They say there is a secret Imperial base hidden down there, guarded by creatures called Dead-Enders."
Ben frowned. "I've never heard of that."
She shrugged. "I always assumed it wasn't true. The Dead-Enders are very real, but the base seems farfetched. I just thought they were half-mad survivors of a crash site."
"Has anyone been up there?" He scanned the cracked and baked terrain with new interest, curiosity prickling.
Snoke had never mentioned anything about a secret base on Jakku, but it didn't necessarily mean one didn't exist. Ben's deep dives into the archives of the Empire had unearthed information regarding Emperor Palpatine's keen interest in the Unknown Regions long before the war pushed them out there. Jakku was the last stop before heading into those uncharted territories. It wouldn't be outrageous to think that Palpatine would use Jakku to plan and launch investigations beyond the galactic shores. So...it was possible.
"Ben," Rey said, voice flat and unimpressed. She could feel his stirring interest. "There's nothing."
"Does that mean yes, someone has?"
"Yes. Plutt and a few of his people went looking for valuable salvage. Do you know what they found?"
"I'm guessing trouble, by your tone." He glanced at her with a wry smirk.
She nodded, brows low, mouth set in a hard line. "The Dead-Enders. They came back with bad moods and several fewer men than they left with."
Ben pulled away from the mountainside, searching the steep slopes for a good landing site. He'd spotted what he thought was a likely location for a hiding spot in the form of an ominous cave. "Weapons are no trouble for us."
"For us?" Rey recoiled. "You want to go up there?"
A rocky outcropping caught his eye. It wasn't great, but it was better than landing at the base. He circled it slowly. "Don't you want to know for sure?"
"Not particularly, no."
But Ben knew better. She could feel that her own curiosity had sparked, perhaps lit by the flame of his own. Still, she was fighting it, burying it beneath opposition and logical fact. No matter. He could form a rebuttal for each and every argument rising up in her mind. This place didn't have a lot of emotional connection for her, so here he was going to push this, even if it made her uneasy.
They landed a little precariously, and Ben wondered if this ledge was quite as stable as it looked. Rey's tight, worried grip on the console told him she wondered the same thing.
"This is a bad idea," she said in a low, warning voice.
He waited a moment, listening for groans or shifting rocks beneath them. Nothing. Confident that they weren't about to plunge to their deaths, he finally powered down and stood, giving Rey one last glance. She watched him warily. Ben headed out of the cockpit, not waiting to see if she would follow. But of course she did, as he knew she would. Together they descended the loading ramp, emerging into hot, howling winds which threatened to blow them completely off the mountainside.
Rey gasped and grabbed onto him reflexively. "You didn't even give me a chance to tell you about the wind," she complained above the roaring. "Or the rockslides!"
He slipped her arm through his and grabbed her hand. "Come on. We'll be fine."
The reluctance on her face almost made him call off the plan. She was afraid — which baffled him, considering the danger she had faced in the past with barely a flicker of worry. Despite this fear, and after a moment of hesitation, she nodded and gave him permission to continue.
He pressed his shoulder into the wind and led them, holding tightly to Rey, her arm tucked beneath his. He angled his body in front of hers as much as he could so as to shield her from the gale. But kriff, it was hot. He glanced up at the path climbing up towards a dark, gaping maw in the mountainside. They'd landed near it, which was fortunate.
Ben couldn't really identify why this mystery had seized him, or why it felt so important to investigate. Rey was probably right — she had lived here her entire life, after all. But something drove him onward, compelling him to find out for himself. It came from a place inside him he was used to heeding. Maybe not quite the Force, this didn't necessarily have the flavor of something to do with the Force, but it did come from the same well that housed his instincts.
Thankfully, Rey had decided to go along with this incomprehensible whim, even though he knew she didn't really get it.
They climbed, and eventually the path twisted them out of the full force of the wind. It still tousled them vigorously, but no longer seemed to be trying to kill them.
"Ripper-raptors," Rey said, pointing up to the sky.
Four huge reptilians rode the thermals high above them, leathery wings outstretched as they circled slowly. Ben felt Rey shudder against him, and drew her in a little closer.
"Scavengers of a different sort?" he guessed.
She nodded, eyeing the creatures uncomfortably. "Where there are ripper-raptors, there will soon be dead things for them to eat."
"They'll be disappointed," Ben assured her. No doubt Rey had watched them devour a not-quite-dead victim once or twice, explaining the deep dread he detected flowing through her. He tried to push back with calm reassurance. They could handle just about anything. A few carrion lizards weren't anything to get worked up about. Though he had to admit, the sight of them hanging in the air like that, tracking the two humans' ascent, gave him an eerie feeling.
The path became very steep right before the cave, until Ben and Rey were forced to use their hands to scrabble up the last few feet. They emerged on a ledge much bigger than the one they'd used as a landing pad, though this one was surrounded by huge boulders and a debris field of smashed and splintered rocks. Clearly they shouldn't linger here too long. The rest of the mountain sloped above them towards a jagged, broken peak. He understood the danger of rockslides now, observing the shattered evidence of them at his feet.
But beyond that, the cave. A black scar in the side of the earth, ominous and threatening.
Ben moved towards it. Rey fell into step beside him, still nervous but forcing strength into her every step. He admired this about her. Even when she was afraid, she could always somehow tap into a well of courage.
A shadow moved between them and the cave — a figure, shifting between boulders.
Rey stopped, and Ben followed suit.
A huge rock came hurling down at them from above, flashing in Ben's periphery. He lashed out with a protective burst of Force, sending the rock to smash harmlessly against an enormous boulder.
"They're trying to stone us," Rey warned as another flew at them.
Ben deflected that one as well, frowning. "Are these the Dead-Enders?"
"Yeah."
One of them stepped out into view. He was unmistakably human, with a huge white beard flowing nearly to his ankles and wild, glassy blue eyes. He wore tattered and broken Imperial armor and screamed a string of numbers. He then chucked another massive rock at them.
Rey took this one, sending it blasting straight back to the attacker. It smashed into his chest and knocked him flat, a scream that choked into a wheeze shattering the mountain silence.
More figures began to emerge, all almost identical. They stared at their fallen comrade, blinking and processing slowly.
Here was that trouble she mentioned. Ben unclipped his lightsaber and ignited it, the anticipation of a good fight trickling into his veins. He was ready. Though, if they were unarmed except for rocks, this could quickly become a slaughter.
At the sight of the lightsaber, every single figure reacted — at first recoiling, and then erupting into savage, senseless cries and waving hands.
Rey glanced at Ben, and he at her.
"What does that mean?" he asked her.
She shrugged.
The figures moved towards them slowly, still bawling in incomprehensible babble, but now they stretched out their hands before them as if in supplication. This bizarre sight forced Ben back a step, wary and confused. Rey, however, moved towards them. Ben did not like this. He reached out and grabbed her before she got too close to these human-shaped ghosts.
They moved like men already dead. Slow, weary, pained. Their armor was in deplorable condition, and every single one sported a beard as long as the first. Their skin had turned leathery and tough in the relentless heat of the mountainside, but their eyes shone brightly — too brightly. They glistened with madness.
"I don't think they're going to hurt us anymore," Rey murmured, letting him pull her back to his side.
Ben wasn't so convinced. He thrust out with his mind, searching for whatever she thought she felt. The men were mostly gone, at least in their mental capacity. They repeated strings of thought over and over in their minds, but intent filtered through the nonsense in vague wisps. And Rey was right. In that intent, Ben sensed only wanting and relief, no threat.
He clicked off his lightsaber, but did not relax.
The men stopped just short of the couple, sinking to their knees, groaning syllables without words. Two of them reached for Ben's boot, touching it almost reverently.
"Umm..." said Rey, observing this worship.
Ben shook them off, skin crawling at the idea of these wraiths touching any part of him. "What is this?"
The men all flinched and opened their mouths wordlessly, gaping in silent stupor.
Rey squatted down to their level. "Who are you?"
Six pairs of glassy, distant eyes fixated on Ben. None of them seemed to hear her.
Ben frowned. "Are you officers of the Empire?"
One of them expelled a groaning sound.
"I don't...I don't think they can really talk anymore," Rey decided, standing when she realized they only cared about Ben. "Maybe we can find the answers we need inside them?"
Ben glanced at her with a lifted brow. "Are you suggesting a probe?"
She winced, but nodded. Her reluctance was palpable. "You're...pretty gentle, when you want to be. Maybe they won't even feel it."
They wouldn't, unless they were actively trying to resist him. Given the devastated nature of their cognitive function, Ben doubted they'd put up much of a fight even if they did know what he intended to do. So he lifted a hand and directed it towards the nearest of them, letting the cosmic energy that thrummed through him flow into the other man, wrapping around his enfeebled mind and opening its rusty gate.
There wasn't much left. A few fragments of memories, more than thirty years old now, of superior officers in Imperial garb issuing instruction. These instructions revolved around and around, circling on an endless loop, the only thing that remained after all this time.
Guard the base until he comes. Guard the base until he comes. Guard the base until he comes.
When Ben searched for who "he" was, he found a fractured image of Darth Vader, red saber flashing before him, flanked by Darth Sidious. Darkness emerged, deep and yawning, stretching before him like a chasm and calling him by name.
He wrenched himself out of the man's mind, expelling a short, shaken breath.
"What did you see?" Rey asked urgently.
The shade before him didn't even seem to have noticed. His posture, expression, and breathing didn't change.
"They are Imperials," he confirmed. "And they were instructed to keep watch here, thirty years ago. They've been waiting..."
"Waiting for what?"
"For Darth Vader. Or the Emperor." He offered the hilt of his lightsaber to her.
She took it, turning it over in her hands as comprehension dawned. "They think you're Darth Vader?"
"I think they're too far gone to recognize more than just the red beam."
All once, Rey drew herself up and pressed the weapon back into his hands. "Tell them to show us the base. If they were instructed to guard this place, it means there is one after all. They'll listen to you. Use that, and get us into the base."
Sometimes, when she spoke in a certain way or held herself tight and squared like that, Ben could glimpse the empress she might have been. He grinned, just a little, and turned back to the creatures at his feet. He didn't feel the need to pretend to be his grandfather. They could not recognize the difference anyway. Instead he ignited his saber and watched as all eyes turned to the crackling blade, drawn like moths to a flame.
He pointed with it towards the cave. "Take us inside."
They rose. Two remained behind while the others lurched into step. Something about their posture had straightened and they seemed to walk with a little more purpose than before. Good. That meant there was something of the old soldiers still left inside them. Ben tingled with anticipation as they followed these creatures past the dead man with the crushed chest. A surge of guilt and sorrow swelled within Rey at the sight of him. Ben knew she hadn't meant to kill their attacker, but her aim had been a bit too accurate and her defensive instinct a bit too strong.
It was a mercy, he assured her silently. These men have been waiting for death for a long time.
This eased her anguish a little, but he knew it would take her a while to really believe that.
Darkness swallowed them up as they entered the cave, lit only by the crimson glow of his hissing lightsaber. A long tunnel wound down and down, plunging deep into the heart of the mountain. If Ben hadn't personally glimpsed inside the mind of one of these guards, he might suspect they were being led into a deadly and unescapable trap. But there was no deception left in them, only one unshakeable order.
Finally the passage opened. They couldn't tell how big the space was, only that the tight walls of the cavern had leapt suddenly into the blackness, too far away to discern. One of the men disappeared into the gloom. Rey pressed in close to Ben, her face awash with the eerie red glow. Ben wondered why she didn't light her own blade for additional light. Detecting this question, she shook her head and gave their remaining companions a dubious look.
Somewhere a loud clack sounded, followed by a slow whirring. Popping and buzzing, a series of lights flickered to life and illuminated an enormous cavern. Rey gasped and Ben's heart skipped a beat, both struck with speechless awe by what unfolded before their eyes.
{Author's Note}
:D
Sorry to end on a cliffhanger, guys. It's just more fun that way. Next update should be coming in a couple days. Don't worry, I haven't lost my momentum with these two, despite the other stuff going on. It helps that Disney keeps putting out new Star Wars material to keep it all fresh in my mind. I just finished reading Last Shot. Baby Ben and Papa Han were absolutely adorable and heartbreakingly sweet. I enjoyed it a lot. And if you're on Twitter, check out the video that Star Wars just posted today where Donald Glover gives us a tour of a VERY SPIFFY AND GORGEOUS Millennium Falcon, pre-Han, of course. So much cool stuff.
Anyway, some comment responses:
Nakamagirl6: Yay! I'm really happy you came over from the other story. Thank you for your kind words and don't worry about making peace, there's lots to come still! Thanks for your review!
XxEviexX: I'M REALLY HAPPY YOU'RE HERE! Also your reviews are just a little bit extra awesome because I have spawned an offspring by your same name, so seeing your username triggers an additional pleased response in my brain. It's a good name. That aside, thanks for your review!
anniemp: Hooray! As always, thanks for your editing and thoughtful remarks. To answer your question, it's been about a month since Naboo and a couple weeks since DFN ended. I had more planned between that ending and this beginning, but I scrapped most of it. Also I went and read Divergent Dreams on your recommendation and enjoyed it a lot. That was a fun take on those alternate futures. I have some different strategies for how to handle the Jakku visit, but it's a super intriguing idea. I may have to figure out how to work that in another way. And don't worry about real life interference with updates ;) I'm highly motivated to keep working on this and get new chapters up quickly.
Kelcou13: I'm so honored! Thank you! And I'm excited you've come over from the first one. :D I debated whether or not to just keep adding to it or make a new one, and decided it would make more sense for a new adventure to have its own story. So I'm pleased as punch that you're here and still following this thread.
BillieCipher92: Thank you so much! I'm happy that you decided to read DFN and enjoyed that too. There is so much to explore with these two characters — hopefully its a fun ride for both of us :D