Thank you to CHiPsfangirl, CrazedFangirl13, Pinky-chan2, SilverclawRose, Replica Velocity aka X5 714, Brievel, Queenie23, JunJunyil, time2read, Miss Corrine, hellraiserphoenix, and guest Lunar Loon for reviewing!
(Numerous reviewers asked for another pov of "the Y-wing incident". At long last, here it is!)
(Before Kylo Ren)
(Tag to Chapter 14) (Ben is 13)
Strangely, he didn't feel angry when he stomped into the hangar. It was fun to be sullen and watch everyone scramble out of his way. "The creepy kid" they called him. He hated them for it, and enjoyed it when they ran. Sometimes he purposefully hurt someone (not Poe, never Poe) just to prove that he was more powerful and important.
When he Forced the hangar doors open, he expected a show. He'd be shooed out, scolded, he'd scream at the unlucky officer who was nominated to tell his parents, and he'd feel better since they were all too scared to do anything about him anyways, and it was another way to make his parents deal with him when they were too busy doing other stuff in the Republic. He was ten years old now. He was the grandson of Anakin Skywalker. There was no need to fear Master Luke's fussing. His heritage was too imperative to risk ending his training, anyways.
So when the stupid droid rolled into his way, Ben reacted. They didn't need another BB unit – there were plenty of serviceable surveillance droids available. It would just take one push and the entire hangar would freeze up in fear.
Impossibly – terrifyingly – Poe moved faster, and Ben felt his world crash inward even as he pulled back his hands.
It couldn't be stopped. Once the Force took form, only another Jedi could defend against it.
Poe wasn't a Jedi.
Ben heard his screams ring in the hangar. He saw the BB unit race for help, and all he could do was lash out a hand and try to pull Dameron back – No, please don't I'm sorry you weren't supposed to be in the way – only to scream again when Poe slammed into the Y-wing above them. He slid and Ben ran – don't fall I can't catch you Master Luke why aren't you here when I need help? – and three pilots dashed to the scene. It's too late you're not fast enough someone catch him please!
"Poe! Poe!" Ben reached out again, willing the pilot to halt midair, but the Force drifted out of his hands. "Poe!"
As if the unseen finally responded to his plea, the cadet landed on his feet. Ben cried out, sagging when Poe remained standing. The Force saved you somehow but it's my fault and I'm sorry I won't do it again –
Staggering, Poe looked up with glazed eyes and Ben's heart leapt in fear. Poe started to laugh, glancing up to the horrible ship – I hope Mother scraps it or I'll burn it myself and blame it on that stupid BB unit – and shifted one leg forward.
The dip in balance drove him to his knees. Ben shoved the nearest pilot away and skidded to his friend's side – you're my only friend I'm sorry don't be dying please there isn't anyone else who listens to me –
"Poe!" he yelled, patting the pilot's cheek. No don't look at me that way you're all right Poe Dameron start responding to me daft it!
Brown eyes rolled upward and Ben shrieked, toppling in his effort to break Poe's fall. Instantly frantic hands were yanking him away. He kicked out, hollering curses, and froze when one of the pilots shouted, "You'll kick in his head, you fool!"
Horrified, Ben fell into their grasp. Unkind hands dragged him back while too many people gathered around Poe. Get away he's my friend you can't touch him he needs me let me see him!
"Someone get the Jedi!"
"I'm not getting a response out of him."
"Give him some breathing room! You, get the medics."
"Where's the general? Why isn't anyone controlling that kid?"
"I told you this would happen one day."
Sobbing, Ben clamped his sleeves over his eyes and curled into himself. The hand on his shoulder was secure, with no reassurance. I'm sorry I'm sorry it was an accident!
"Ben? Ben!"
He cried when he heard his mother's voice and tore away, slamming into her arms. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
"Ben!" Leia knelt and gripped his shoulders; the first compassionate touch he had felt since entering the hangar. "What happened, Benny?" She turned before he could speak. "Captain Antilles, report."
"Move aside!" The crowd scrambled before Antilles could speak, as Luke darted to the crippled form lying in their midst. Leia gasped.
"Oh no…." Shock filtered to pity and pity spiked into realization. When Leia swung to face Ben, her eyes reflected his despair. "Ben, you didn't….?"
He was babbling and screaming and dripping all over his robes, and it wouldn't stop he couldn't make it stop and Poe was dying and it was all his fault. Leia's eyes snapped as though she would smack him, then her anger dissolved into the general that Ben hated but oh how he wanted her to not be angry with him this one time.
"Ben, stop. Enough," Leia said sternly. "You'll sicken yourself. 3PO, get him to his room. Han!"
The fear Ben saw in his father's eyes was more terrifying than anger. Watching his parents run to Poe's side – it was an accident I never wanted to hurt him – seeing their intensity as they surrounded him and kept his head from bashing the floor as he thrashed – no it's not right he's always in control he can't be sick that way – Ben hated it and yet he yearned for Poe to be that important to his family. They're my parents not yours! But I want you to stay!
He fought off 3PO's insistences until Captain Antilles noticed his presence. With grim forbearance the captain hoisted Ben to his feet and marched him from the hangar. Ben gnashed at him, reaching back for his writhing friend – he's my friend Luke make him stop you have to fix him please! – until he was snatched up and swung over Antilles' shoulder.
"Let me go! Let me go! I have to be there!" He can't die I won't let him you can't take him away from me!
"If you were my kid, I'd never let you near Dameron again."
Steely words petrified Ben and he floundered, cold and hurting because it was true, they would never let him near Poe again, even if he did survive, because he was a monster like the pilots said and only monsters hurt their friends.
Soft cries warmed Captain Antilles' sympathy and when they reached Ben's room, he set him down gently. "Stay here," the captain ordered. "They'll call for you when it's over."
Over. Finished. They would come for him when Poe was dead, or never able to speak or swallow properly again, or never want to see Ben if he was lucky enough to be sensible in his head. Tripping backwards, Ben scooted inside and watched the doors close. With a high keen he buried his face in his arms and rocked. He didn't stop until Leia came to hold him.
It was the longest twelve hours of his life.
(Aftermath)
"It's gonna be a cinch," Ech'ban drawled as he leaned over Poe's chair. "They'll blast their way inside in all the fiery Resistance glory, clap Kylo Ren over the head, drag him on board, and it's back home we go. End of Kylo Ren, end of the First Order. They can't just replicate evil dark lords like clones, y'know."
Unconvinced, Finn paced. "He called me up about your jacket," he muttered, partially to Poe and more to himself. "That was my third comlink in a week. How does he get all this information? I mean, he walked straight into the Resistance! Are we not taking this seriously?"
"Relax!" Ech'ban called. "He toddled in like a spiky-haired nitwit who didn't know a wrench from an electric socket. If he wanted to blow up the Resistance base, all he had to do was try to reset a toaster." He sniggered. "I would have signed under the First Order just to see that."
"Wait – you saw Kylo Ren?" Finn paused mid-stride.
"I saw Matt Dem." Ech'ban shrugged. "The radar technician. He was a newbie – I was supposed to show him the ropes. How could I know the golden droid let him in?"
"That's exactly what I mean!" Finn spluttered, flinging his hands into the air. "He was – right there! How could we not have noticed a breach in the security?"
"The cameras were down," Ech'ban reminded. "He probably jammed the holorecorders beforehand."
"Ben doesn't… know anything about cameras," Poe interjected quietly. He paused, frowned intensely, and stared at the engine indicators. Something was off….
An unidentified code blinked softly. Poe hissed.
"Out. Everybody, out," he ordered, leaping from his chair.
"What? What is it?" Ech'ban wondered, even as he grabbed his helmet and blaster.
"Just go! Go, go, go!" Pushing them ahead, Poe slammed the locking sequence and flung himself down the ramp. Finn touched ground and rolled, anticipating the countdown. Ech'ban wavered and then lunged down, covering his head. Poe slammed onto his shoulder just as the cruiser exploded in a crush of heat.
Just as a flurry of black robes wound around him.
Just as the Force embraced the inferno, flaring it around the three rebels huddling in the dirt.
Just as gloved hands tucked protectively around his head, and Poe knew it was Ben.
"Stay down," Kylo Ren whispered, his voice hoarse and jagged. "Stay down. Stay down."
The helmet was gone.
"I'll find who did this, I swear," Kylo Ren said rapidly as flames roared around them. "It was Hux, I'm sure of it. He will pay."
"Ben?" The name fell out naturally and Poe inhaled, relishing the familiarity.
Kylo Ren froze. A feeling subtler than hope, something which had no name, murked his eyes as he raised a trembling hand and pressed it against Poe's forehead.
Lines of model B-wings unfurled into a cluttered room, filled with wrinkled clothes and scattered trinkets. There was no mirror – only shards of reflection – and Poe heard Leia shouting that she would remove all the mirrors in the house the next time Ben vandalized.
He crouched sympathetically beside Ben as the child pushed and prodded his nose, trying to wrestle it into a favorable shape. "I look abominable!" Ben wailed.
Acne was never much of a problem in Poe's younger years, but Ben hid in his room for weeks at a time. He tried to sneak out of the house with a respiratory mask to hide his face. Apparently Han thought it was a "Vader stage" and threw it away, and the devastated teen swore he would hide in Poe's room until his face favored him again.
The first time Han allowed Ben to drive the Falcon, he dragged Poe along "for damage control". Ben panicked, Poe played copilot while Han dragged the ship out of a grassy field, and Ben smashed a coolant on purpose.
"It's all fun and games until the kid breaks something," Han used to say – proving true in one incident five minutes later, when Ben failed in holochess and argued so violently with Chewbacca that Poe had to step between them (nearly losing an arm for his troubles).
They used to lounge on their free days. Ben had a three month phase of slinging himself upside down over the couch. Poe kept a holochip of a sleeping Ben slung across the cushions, lank hair trailing into his mouth. He felt more loss for the picture than his X-wing when both were incinerated on Jakku.
Leia told him that a toddler Ben used to trail after R2-D2 and call him "moo-moo".
Once, when Poe miscalculated his fuel reserves, he botched a landing and had to walk the last three hours back to the base. In a blizzard. When Chewbacca dragged him out of a snowdrift and Han slapped his face until he was fuzzily coherent, when he was bundled in the general's coat and lugged to the infinitely warmer hanger, he could have sworn he heard Han mutter, "He gets it from Leia's side of the family."
The aftermath of pneumonia was something he had hoped to forget. Still, he gleaned one important factor – Leia couldn't cook, but she sure knew how to brew tea. ("It was easy," she told him when he asked how she managed to get the sweetness just right. "I gave the honey to Ben and left yours alone." From the way Ben was sucking on the spoon and trying to lap the bottom of his own mug, Poe guessed the tiny Jedi wished he had colds more often.)
Poe and Ben used to challenge each other to a snarling contest in front of the mirror. Poe thought he could intimidate a stormtrooper. Ben laughed at him. The kid wasn't that scary, either.
"Ben used to have an army of stuffed toys," Han commented once. "He still has one or two hiding under the bed. He picked the eyes and nose off of his Ewok. I told Leia she was raising him wrong."
Apparently, Han loved assembling models with his son. He never found time to finish a project, though. Poe started helping with the paint jobs when Ben was nine. When Han returned home unexpectedly and saw them laughing together, his cheer waned into a troubled smile. Oftentimes afterwards, Poe sensed a quiet resentment when Ben was giddy – as though Han knew he had somehow been replaced.
Leia urged Poe to train Ben in a flight simulator. (He suspected she was acting on Han's behalf.) It wasn't easy when Ben was more entertained by smashing his ship into the nearest star and yelling "Kabooom!"
Ben was intrigued by living things. He liked to dig out crabs and pull their shells off, then watch them pitifully crawl away. When he saw Poe crush them to end their pain, he started crying.
After "the haircut incident", Ben triumphed in his lopsided mullet for all of two hours. Leia screamed loud enough that Han thought a mouse was loose in the apartment, Master Skywalker divebombed into the room searching for stormtroopers, and Poe whistled quietly and strolled to his X-wing. When he saw Ben next, the unfortunate child had been given a "proper" trim. Ben hid in his room until Leia - fed up with boys attempting their own manicures - ordered Poe to sit quietly while his own curls were managed. Afterwards, the comrades-in-bowl-cuts assuaged their shorn egos with canron for Ben and a frosty for Poe. They never spoke of it again - just giggled out of sight whenever Leia cornered Han with a pair of scissors and the oath to "tame the scruff out of the nerf herder".
Poe had trouble sleeping on certain days. They hadn't died together. He was lying awake, head buried into the pillow, thinking of his mom when Leia quietly entered the room and shushed his roommate, bending to rest a hand against the back of Poe's neck. Her fingers massaged gently, accompanied by a ripple of the Force, and he fell asleep to memories he'd almost forgotten.
Han brought back memories, too, in his own powerless way. During the worst years after Kes's death, he joined Poe in the hangar late at night, a bottle of "the good stuff" and a score of old stories lightening the gloom of Poe's aloneness. One night before he walked away, he clapped Poe's shoulder and muttered gruffly, "Thanks for looking after him, kid."
It seemed Leia wasn't the only one who was worried about leaving Ben without a guardian.
I'm a guardian, Poe thought, and the rush of memories whirled around the acknowledgement, swelling through him until he could have laughed and leaped and closed his hands around a star. The grief and ecstasy of his life snicked into place and he broke away from the Force, pressing a hand against the side of his head as he wobbled to his feet.
Ben rose with him, looking on with vulnerable uncertainty. The fire of Leia's cruiser burned unnoticed. Poe looked past the hideous scar and into the destroyer's eyes, and saw the child who was hiding away, still mourning the absence of parents and friends.
He smiled crookedly and held out one hand.
Ben crashed into him.
Staggering, Poe coughed lightly and embraced the towering Sith. (Or was it a Jedi – he was a Jedi if he was allied with the Resistance, right? At least, that's what it was supposed to mean. The lines were harder to differentiate these days.)
Kriff, the kid was like a tree.
"This isn't fair," Poe grumbled, and it felt good to jest again. "Everyone's getting taller than me."
Ben gripped him tighter, with a sound curiously like a sob.
Finn swore.
"Poe, get down!"
There was a scuffle and another furious curse. Startled, Poe turned his head, and a muscle in his back twitched the wrong way.
His jacket tore as Ben shifted, and he knew something had gone horribly wrong.
"Poe!" Finn screamed.
Before he could finish turning, before he could fathom the wobbling in his vision, weightlessness shook through his knees. He saw fury and terror in Finn's eyes as Ech'ban supported him from behind.
…No… not supporting… he's holding him back… what's happening?...
Poe stumbled and Ben held him infinitely closer.
"It's all right," Ben said, his voice hitching. "I promise there won't be any pain."
"What….?" Coldness bled into his confusion and Poe whispered, "What have you done?"
He fell against Ben and something twisted inside of him, retreating with an awful squelch. Heat gushed down his back.
Pulling back his arm, Ben held out a scarlet knife. A knife with a dented, worn handle. The blade had been replaced, fixed with four inches of crooked steel.
"No!" Poe gasped, coughing as liquid flushed his throat. "No, no, no…." He clasped a hand behind him and Ben hushed, dropping to a crouch and dragging Poe with him.
"No, not this time, Poe," Ben soothed, tugging the pilot's hand away from the wound. "Please don't fight it."
"Ben!" Poe croaked, scrambling for one last attempt to stop it, this isn't happening, it's a dream or it's not true tell me you're still in there!
"Not Ben," his betrayer murmured. "Not anymore. You were his last weakness."
Poe's eyes widened and Ben drew back, dark eyes lancing in guilt.
"I had to draw you away," he said hastily. "I had to make myself believe I could be good, to prove that Kylo Ren was better. You were my final test." His voice wavered. "This is what you wanted, isn't it? To stand beside me and show me the way?"
This isn't what I wanted! Poe heaved a breath to shout it and curled into himself, gurgling.
Ben cringed. He looked away, diverting his attention to the knife. "I thought of using the knife I gave you – that old vibroblade. I stole it from you to prove myself, early in the game. It belonged to my father. But this…." He tossed the blade away as Poe spasmed, gritting his teeth. "This brought us together."
"Why?" Poe hissed. His gut coiled and his heart pounded as wetness pooled under him, and still there was no pain. He could feel his mind threading apart, struggling to keep him alive. "Why?"
Ben smiled without passion. It was nothing like his grin of the past, whenever he revealed one of his devious little schemes. There were no mouse droids to sabotage this time. "It was your destiny, of course. I used Ben's weakest moment to prove my ultimate strength. Now your work is complete. It's all right, Poe. You won't die alone."
I'd prefer not to die at all. Poe tried to force the words and only a hiss spouted past his teeth. He wanted to snarl, wanted to spit upon the First Order, and he could only wheeze a sob.
"Don't be afraid," Ben said softly. Struggle writhed in his eyes, but he was fighting it down. Slowly murdering his best friend.
"M'scared," Poe gritted out. That's what you wanted, isn't it? Cause this isn't how I planned to die! He wanted that last flight, that crash of glory, that crescendo of knowing he had given all for the galaxy. Not you. Not this!
Ben's eyes sharpened and Poe wanted to drag the sorrow out, to bring him back to the day of the Y-wing, to remind him of his fervent promise. He couldn't speak it, and he knew it wouldn't make any difference.
Ben never listened to anyone.
"It won't be long," Ben whispered. "You'll be at peace soon." His hand cupped under Poe's head, like a friend's comforting touch, and Poe couldn't restrain the moisture that squeezed under his eyelids.
"B-Ben….n-n-…."
Dimly he heard a scream. Leia – no – ! He tried to respond and his hearing jolted to a shrill whine. Don't hurt her!
He was flung to the ground and he felt the thud of another body striking the earth. At once his back plunged into agony. He arched, keening as his limbs refused to move. Stop it… just make it stop… Stop, everyone… stop fighting….
Shouting rose above the ringing in his ears. Leia's voice, howling again and again. One eyelid roved open and Poe saw a blur of movement, knew that it was she who raised her hand before a black flurry of robes flumped to the ground several feet away. His vision was cut off again but he wasn't scared, she was there now, lifting him up, clapping his face, her voice a frantic drone against the roar, the hand against his back only a burden as he fled the land of burning tears and sank into the pure grey of unjaded nothing.