Coruscant is loud and full of screaming, beating, frantic life. It's almost overwhelming after the coldness of space and the barrenness of Jakku. He's walking along a large street that's at least 50 stories from the ground, all manner of vehicles speeding by him. He had stopped and purchased local clothing, his customary black robes too antagonistic for this meeting. He's surprised to find he's much more comfortable in his dark trousers and blue tunic. He's growing used to going without his mask, the feeling of air on his face no longer startling.
He's nearly to the hotel when he feels Luke. His uncle feels deeply conflicted through the Force. He's not happy to be meeting his prodigal nephew. Ben senses Luke's conflict and barely-suppressed anger. Ben realizes he has been wanting this meeting with his uncle for a very long time. His uncle's willingness to believe the worst of him another in a long line of deeply felt cuts. Of all of his family, it is his uncle who damaged him the most. Where his parents neglected him it was his uncle who hurt him. He thinks about what Luke said about the Force when speaking with Rey, and he wonders if Luke will be willing to acknowledge the same to him; take responsibility for abandoning him to Snoke. He's feeling young and angry, full of an old and well-polished pain. This is not how he wanted to walk into this.
~BR~
Luke is waiting for him in a suite, high in the sky looking over the city. Ben follows Luke's Force signature and knocks on the door.
Luke opens it with the Force, standing in the back of the room, his back to the wall. Defensive in stance and very angry in face. His hand is near his saber and his eyes have gone a stormy gray.
"Uncle."
"Kylo Ren." Ben flinches. It is not until this moment that he realizes he cannot be Kylo Ren any longer. He's not sure if he's worthy of the name Solo, but he knows his chosen identity hurts.
"I've left the First Order. I no longer claim that title."
"How convenient for you, shedding it like a snake's skin."
"I deserve that."
"That and so much more. What you don't deserve is to wear your father's name."
Ben feels that like a slap, resonating in his chest and making his insides clench. "No, I do not. I don't know what to call myself now. I know I ended the right to be my father's son. I can only hope to atone."
"Atone? Atone? There is no atoning for what you've done; the innocent blood that streams from your treacherous hands. Younglings, dozens of them, all gone because of you!" His uncle is savage in his fury.
"Yes, because of me. But I never raised my blade to them; I didn't know what Snoke planned."
"Lies! Lies from your cowardly mouth! I can't believe Leia convinced me to come, this was a mistake."
"No, please, please Uncle, let me speak!" Ben implores. Luke is breathing heavily, his nostrils flaring. The Dark is heavy in him now.
"You are no longer my nephew, you lost the right to call me uncle the minute you betrayed me, betrayed those children, betrayed the galaxy."
"I know, I know I did. But you must listen to me. You're the only hope I have. I know I deserve less than nothing from you, but I want to come home, I want to right the wrongs that I can. I beg you, please listen to me, simply listen to me."
Luke is quiet for a very long time, staring at Ben with furious contempt and endless anger. He's almost vibrating with the power needed to keep control.
"Speak."
"At the temple, 15 years ago, I didn't know he planned to kill them. I didn't know he was going to destroy everything, everyone. I was led to believe that I and the others would be leaving that night – only leaving." He remembers the horror he felt when he saw the blood flowing between the stones of the temple floor, the hideous smell of copper and the whimpers of the dying. Snoke's men methodically killing any survivors. He remembers seeing a girl of five, cleaved in two, her insides glistening in the torchlight. He realizes that would have been Rey if he'd left just a few days later. The memories are making him sick and he has to breathe deeply through his nose to keep from being violently ill.
"It wasn't until that night, when I saw what they were doing, that I understood, but it was too late. I never killed anyone … that night." He realizes what a hypocrite he is, begging his uncle to understand he didn't kill those children. He certainly did later, when he was drunk on the dark and half-mad with power. He looks down.
"I see you understand the problem, Kylo Ren."
"Stop calling me that!"
"Why? It's who you are. All you deserve to be."
"NO! I have to come back, there has to be a way. Please, please Unc- … please." His voice becomes soft and pleading. "I have to fix it. Please help me fix it."
"You can't fix it. It's done. You're a murderer, a creature of the Dark. There is no redemption for you. You put your saber through the chest of my best friend! You let those monsters into the most sacred of places. You may not have massacred those innocent children, but without you none of this would have happened!" Luke's righteous rage pulses through him, the furniture beginning to levitate.
"Is that really what you think? Are you so naive? I wasn't the only one that left that night. He had his hooks in your Academy from the beginning. Seducing, bewitching, enthralling any of us who dared to wonder about the Dark. You left that door wide open, Uncle, and you did nothing, nothing at all to protect us. We were children, too!" Ben is losing his temper; he knows he has to calm down. "I know you understand about the Force now, that the Light Side and the Dark Side are just our small-minded interpretations, I know you do!"
Luke freezes, his eyes becoming slits as the chaotic energy around him stills. Icily he says, "And how do you know that?"
"Mother didn't tell you?" He never seriously believed his mother would keep his confidences to this degree.
"Didn't tell me what, Knight of Ren."
"Stop! Stop calling me that!" Ben sounds like an angry teenager begging to be understood. He turns and starts to walk back and forth, running his hands over his face. He tries to calm himself.
"I, oh stars, how many times will I have to admit this? I, that is, Rey-"
"Rey? So help me, if you hurt that kind young woman I will kill you where you stand."
"Do you promise?"
This brings Luke up short, and he looks stunned and unmoored. "What do you mean? Explain yourself. Now."
"We have a Force Bond. Since Starkiller." Luke is about to speak, but Ben hurries on, "I hid it from her; she doesn't know. That's why I wanted to talk with you-"
"You can't break a Force Bo-"
"I know that, don't you think I know that? I may be Dark but I was never stupid. I don't want to break it. I want to find her family. I know you left her on Jakku."
Of all the things Luke imagined Kylo Ren had wanted, none of them included this.
"I don't understand; you're not making any sense. You want to come home, you've left the First Order, you have a Force Bond with my apprentice, that she apparently doesn't know anything about, and you want to find her family?"
"Yes, all of it, yes." Ben is grateful that Luke seems to be listening now. "Her light. It captured me. I couldn't turn from it. I didn't even try. She … she captivated me, her goodness, the way that nothing, not even that hell she called a planet could take away her inherent light … I was powerless against her. I've been drifting in her light for months and months and it's changed me." Ben is breathing heavily now; he's so passionate about Rey.
"All of this, over a woman?"
"Don't talk about her like that! Like she's trivial – like she means nothing. She's everything to me. I will do anything I have to do to be worthy of her. I will take the First Order apart piece by piece, bring you Snoke's head on a platter, spend years as the Resistance and New Republic's pet turncoat, anything, just let me have a chance to prove to her what she means to me."
"Oh dear Maker, you think you're in love with her," Luke says this with great skepticism.
"I don't think – I know," Ben says fervently.
"And her family, you plan to bring her her family like a bouquet of flowers, a box of sweets?"
"Stop! Stop talking like this means nothing, like it's some passing fancy. I'm 30 years-old, I know my own heart. I'm not the child you knew."
"No. You're not." Luke regards him. "You say she knows nothing of the Bond."
"No … I hid from her," he says with a tremor in his voice. "Mother said, she said that I might have harmed her by staying in her head like that. Is it true?"
"I wouldn't imagine she's in any more danger, beyond being Bound to a killer."
"I know. I know I am. But I'm changing, I don't do that anymore."
"Oh, I see, you've found love so now you're a messenger of the Light, no more Dark Side?"
"I heard you talking with Rey, I know you don't believe that any longer. Grandfather says I've found my balance. In Rey," he says a little smugly.
Luke's head moves up sharply. "You've spoken with Anakin?"
"Yes, on Jakku. He came to me. He told me that if I explained, you would forgive me."
"Hmm. Balance, you say? You no longer feel the pull of the Dark Side?"
"It's not like that; I just don't feel pulled apart. Both sides move through me, working together. The torment, it's finally over. After a lifetime of pain, she's set me free. Don't you see, Unc- Luke? Can't you hear what I'm telling you? If all I have for the rest of my life is her gentle light through the Bond, if she's happy, I'll accept it. But I have to try."
"She's only 20 you know. I won't help you seduce that young girl."
"Seduce? You think this is about something as base as carnality? She changed me. She saved me. I love her more than I could have ever even conceived of. You can't know how I burn, how I ache-"
"Can't I? You think I've never burned?"
"No, I don't. If you had, you'd be with them right now."
This makes Luke stop his verbal advance. He leans against the wall, his hand stroking his beard, considering his one-time nephew.
"So you imagine finding her family, coming to the base, giving her this … gift, and she'll fall into your arms in gratitude?"
"No! Yes … I don't know. I just know I have to try."
"I do not believe you've thought this through. She may not hate you any longer but she will when she finds out about the Force Bond." This makes Ben go cold, his deepest fears laid out in front of him.
"I believe she will forgive me. If I can show her what she means to me, show her how I'm changing, have changed … I believe in her. In this." Ben's voice shows that he doesn't quite think what he's saying is true.
"You've no real idea what you're doing, do you?"
Ben looks at the floor. He's silent for a long time, thinking that he doesn't have any choice; that he's just been moving towards this point heedlessly for all this time.
"No. I don't. I have no idea what will happen. You're right, she'll probably hate me, she'll probably ask you to help her learn to block the Bond. But don't you see? I've risked that, risked everything for this one chance. She needs her family. She needs to know."
"And if there is no family to find?" Luke says.
"Then at least she'll know. She deserves to know." Ben's eyes are brimming with entreaty. "Why haven't you told her you're the one that left her on Jakku?"
It's Luke's turn to look away. "Because it would break her very fragile trust in me. Maybe in everyone. She's come so far, I couldn't take that risk."
"But she still thinks her family left her there, told her they'd come back. Why did you tell her they'd come back?" Ben's tone is confused.
"So she would stay, so you would never find her. That clearly worked about as well as bantha spit. You've always been just one step away from her, haven't you? A few days difference and she'd be dead, a better understanding of yourself and she'd be yours." Luke doesn't mean to be cruel but it hurts just the same.
"Will you help me, please?"
Luke sighs heavily. "I already promised your mother that I would."
~BR~
Thank you Meaghan M/Juulna. She is a tremendous person I'm very lucky to have her as a beta.
Thank you to everyone who is reading and reviewing. It makes a big difference in the writing process and I really do change things because of feedback.
