The Call to the Light
Chapter 20 complete
Ben's allowed their connection through the Force to evaporate. If she goes to sleep, he doesn't want to sense her barriers fall in favor of loose, tempting dreams spilling into his consciousness. Her emotions are like a sudden chilly night that leaves him exposed and lonely, missing the warmth. Feeling defeated, pained at how Rey left him, he exits the hanger and ascends to the main cabin.
Even with the change of atmosphere, the amber-colored lights and the ratty sofas, Ben wants to scream. He is overcome with some foreign need to run back downstairs and find Rey, to remain in her company. It sounds deeply pathetic. Light-years away from Snoke and he still feels like he needs to belong to someone.
The brat, Terric, is thankfully tucked in a corner with the same datapad. Ben doesn't have to look to know he's there – the boy's cool dislike marks his presence enough. It's the only thing that's bothered Ben more than that broken-nosed, blue eyed changeling who has…a history with Rey. Remembering Terric's recent acidic behavior over the slavers, Ben keeps note of those plum-colored eyes aimed at him while he walks toward Rumley. "Where are the others?"
The Bothan cautiously steps over some of the child slaves, putting away empty bowls and cups. "Oh. Niall's set a course to his friends' place. Korla… well, he's taken a liking to her, so Force only knows whose hand is up whose shirt by now."
At least someone's enjoying themselves, he thinks tersely. Of course, he groans in distaste. "When are we expected to arrive on this hideaway planet?"
"No more than an hour, I imagine. These poor slaves haven't had much rest."
Nodding absently, Ben looks around for a bare spot on the floor to sit. He leans against the wall and allows the metal to cool him. His heart still beats erratically, from learning about his grandfather, from the fight…
They didn't do anything wrong, Rey said. Of course, it didn't seem that way. Anakin Skywalker wasn't a murderer before he met his grandmother. Not like Ben.
His scavenger's grown bolder in her feelings toward him, too, damn her. He doesn't have the heart to snap at her, not anymore. He cringes at the way she had tried to soothe him after killing those slave traders, shamelessly, their body parts strewn at their feet. Her tender breaths on his face.
And just now, leaning over him, across his lap, her neck ripe, so much like in the shared Force-vision he asked to see of Rey and Niall, hot and vibrant, waiting to be tasted…
"You haven't eaten," Rumley tells him in the most inopportune time.
Ben casts his dark eyes at the Bothan. "I don't imagine there's anything left."
"We saved some for you and Rey." Rumley points to two bowls of whatever, still warm.
When he retrieves one of them and sits back down, he is pleased to hear Terric shuffle irritably out of the room.
Before he exits through the door, Ben extends two fingers and watches where Terric lets go of the datapad, where Ben swiftly lets it float over to an empty chair.
The part-Zabrak's kept his nose in that thing for too long for Ben to not notice. The redeeming Jedi may not be able to pursue an unethical method of acquiring truth through mind probes; even if Rey wasn't on the ship with him…just the idea of her disappointment has made him stop.
So, stealing and hacking into private property will have to do. His father Han Solo would be so proud.
He waits for Rumley to turn in some other direction before striding over to the chair. The datapad is a recent model. Out here, only fakes or ancient models would have been available. The boy, according to Rumley, is a tight-lipped lawless wannabe from the Inner Rim. What kind of secrets does he keep on this professional-level piece of equipment?
"Delta-one-five-dash-four-six-three," Rumley offers behind his back. Ben hadn't expected him to offer the password without even a question. Bothans, however, know everything. "I'd check the bottom left file named 'Jarie', if I were you."
Ben shoots Rumley a mild look of concern. The name. It can't possibly be…?
His fingers dance over the keypad to open the file. Self-doubt and ghosts of his slain surround him like an oncoming storm.
One of the first images is of a girl, a teenager with small horns, two braids, and facial tattoos that could have been perceived as cute and fashionable for a Zabrak. In another image, she hugs what has to be a ten-year-old version of Terric – in another, she practices lightsaber forms next to a Padawan Ben doesn't recognize.
Drawing in a sharp breath, Ben's vision blurs. Jarie was a Force-sensitive Uncle Luke discovered when she was twelve. She wasn't much older than Ben when he started living at the temple; he remembers they shared some classes together. She, like other new trainees in Luke's New Jedi Order, had been raised by a family who protected her from the Empire.
A trembling lurch of his stomach helps Ben remember the last time he saw her. She was fierce, surprising him with a war cry of her own. Ben had been standing over the fresh corpse of his fellow students, their flesh soaking in the mud and rain. Jarie's lightsaber was an odd shade of a sunset. It had blazed in vengeful madness. Almost on autopilot, Ben's movements were calculated, programmed to wait out her energy and trigger her weakness.
He had killed her. He had killed this woman in Terric's life. Is she a cousin, or sister?
The next files are on Hosnia, and all their press-covered horrors. Ben scrolls past them, swallowing.
There's a tell-tale itch, a pull from the back of his head. He ignores it in favor of something that robs his attention, for the most demanding of all these documents is (finally, FINALLY!) the much-talked-about Holonet report about his identity leak, is in Ben's hands:
KYLO REN UNMASKED: LEIA ORGANA'S SON?
His eyes scan each word like demons on the prowl: A leaked recording has been released in which a secret executive meeting of the Resistance leaders was called on short-term notice by General Leia (formerly Princess of Alderaan) Organa Solo. In a brief statement to her high-ranking compatriots, including General Statura and Admiral Ackbar, the General reveals that Kylo Ren, the monster of the First Order's tyrranical regime and First Knight of Ren, is none other than her thought-to-be-deceased son, Ben Organa Solo.
Below, condemning his fate, he reads his mother's own (alleged) words in the transcript.
Gen. Organa: I don't…I don't know why I'm telling you this, other than that I saw it with my own eyes. Several of my staff did as well. I won't reveal their names, but…Kylo Ren is my son. It's Ben. I've known it since the Second Purge. He is alive now, and he's escaped his master, Snoke. I know this because…it was my brother Luke's plan to rescue him, to get him out. And he's escaped. He's defected from the First Order. He has sworn this statement to me, and on all that is true and powerful, I swear that this is the truth.
The General has a lot to answer for: the murder of innocents, including younglings as young as five, countless torture victims (including the scion of the Resistance, Poe Dameron) and the destruction of the Hosnian System. By the time the war's over, it will not be this "Kylo Ren/Ben Solo" monstrosity whose head will be set upon a spike…it will be Leia Organa's, also.
Dread leeching his face, Ben scans the page for the name of the author, but cannot find any: On behalf of this publication, the legal name of this author has been withdrawn for protection. He has decided to retain the alias of Anonymous.
Terric is the author. He knows it.
The hunger to punish wracks his form. Before he can think on how to torture the answers out of Terric (even if he can't), the disturbance in his head echoes for his attention. He has to blink away the oncoming headache.
Ben's been lucky; he's been protected, a little bit, by his selfishness and desire to forget all he's done around Rey; to convince himself he deserves all she expects (wants) of him. Even when he's denied the foolish idea that someone like her could want something like him, it's been such an absurd idea that it's practically eclipsed having to absorb all his crimes.
This picture of Jarie is more proof; unending, miserable proof that he will never, ever be good, that there is some terrible fate that awaits him.
"Ben? Solo, are you all right?"
Whoever's talking, he can't hear them; the Force is giving a tremor of premonitions that Ben has to be quiet for.
In it he sees three faces: the golden boy, Dameron, looking up at him in fear, but without revulsion. He looked up at him, eyes wide and begging, with desperation.
The next is of a masked man in black taking off his mask, his green Mirialan skin a contrast to the red saber reflecting his profile – Zonak Ren, second only to Kylo Ren in prowess and ferocity.
The last is of Rey offering him the fullest, brightest smile he has ever seen. Her eyes sparkle like newborn stars, like amber fire. Though he isn't aware of it, he gasps at the idea that he could kiss each one; truly, he feels that right now he can melt away into nothing with the image of her wholesome goodness aimed his way.
What doesn't make more sense is that she is lying down. And, from the angle of the vision, so is he….
Force Almighty.
"Is, uh…is there a private room?" Ben feels the customary headache coming on, enough to make him wince. Force users usually experience minor effects as part of visions, but Ben's always felt like heavy migraines. "I need to meditate."
Rumley's ears twitch in concern. "Sure. I think, down the hall – "
His eyes begin to sting, and Ben needs to lie down, to breathe in peace. He waves his thanks and gropes around the corridor for the door.
The minute he's alone, something warm creeps under his skin. The Force is like a too-warm blanket around him, stubborn yet soft like a living thing. It doesn't feel foreign at all, only for the fact that this warmth is something he has refused so long, and Ben is so tired and alone that he cannot fight it anymore.
It's her. Somehow, her connection through the Force has bloomed into something akin to a sunrise, to blood rushing through veins, sudden and wholesome. Ben briefly has to hold himself up, lest he feel disoriented by this sudden, heady sensation.
It is unlike anything he has experienced coming from her. It's as if spice is being vented into the air, and Ben suffocates sweetly from it.
In the privacy of this space, as if he is back in that sepulcher-like cell high above the sea in Sher-hatha, Ben lets all the trappings of control and Jedi stoicism away, expelling it until he shivers.
He is so alone that it hurts. But he cannot…he would condemn himself to ruin along with her, all over again.
And now. Now, now some boy threatens to take all that away from him –
Rey. Ben gets to his feet and begins to pace. She did want to be left alone, but Terric's datapad sits traitorously across from him, containing more of his past sins. Rey, I need to speak to -
The wall he encounters protecting her mind isn't summoned up quickly enough. The sweetest fire he felt a minute ago is extinguished, raw, replaced with this torn wound that makes Ben gasp, reaching across his skin at his own heart.
How does she hurt this way?
Because you deny her, the voice inside him echoes.
The room squeezes in like a cell. He needs to see her. He doesn't want to hurt her. He wants to protect her (forever, if he can fantasize about it). He remembers how she caved in on him in her wild grief, holding onto him. If there was ever a time he felt he truly could be in the Light again and not burn, it was when he held her, and her gentle, flickering soul, weakened like a candle on that coast.
He's made her smaller. The only one who can save him, and he's torn her down.
Grabbing the datapad, he leaves the room, meaning to go to her.
He's seized in the middle of the hallway, though, his presence in the Force suddenly jarred by a disturbance outside of the freighter. He senses the hum of several ships, like pinpricks along the same tunnel of hyperspace as they are.
Someone's coming for them. It's a familiar presence, one who's sweated under his torture methods a long time ago. He thinks wildly: How?! No one knows where they are.
Except for the apparent spy, Terric, on the ship.
Not like this. Not now. They'll take me away. I can't leave her…!
Anonymity was the only thing that has protected them. Even with this news leak, he and Rey were hiding in the least traceable area in the galaxy. It was reasonably assumed the First Order or the Resistance wouldn't concentrate on one – two – Jedi when they have an entire war to win.
He doesn't think he'd be wrong.
It's too late. He's done for. It's all over for him.
Ben pulls himself up, glaring in the direction of the cockpit.
On his way there, Rumley watches him and his whiskers twitch in concern. "What are you doing? We still need to be in hyperspace for another hour."
"There's a ship full of Resistance fighters waiting for me."
Ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
Rey shoots out of bed. Not only has the ship stopped, but there's a familiar presence in the Force, screaming at her to go to it.
Though non-Force-sensitives do not have as unique signatures as her Jedi companion, she can hear this newcomer's own charismatic aura. This time, it's tampered like steel, sharp and determined.
She runs down the ramp, still in her sleeping clothes. A single carrier docks neatly inside of the hanger next to the Falcon. A dozen soldiers in Resistance garb line up, armed with blasters.
Poe Dameron is among them.