I have issues... like fandom ADHD where playing Fallen Order somehow turned into a Batman obsession (like HOW?) and then a Benny prank idea just launched into my head and I realized it was high time to post another chapter.

Yeah... I need professional help.

As requested by Judge1964 and Agent ERA, I bring two prompts into play — Chapter 43 memory scene follow-up (Han talks to Luke about how Poe nearly assassinated his kid) and Poe spars with Luke.

(Before Kylo Ren) (Ben is twelve)

Lightsaber in hand, stormclouds brewing over his head, mouse droids scurrying out of his path... It wasn't until Corporal Meek fairly trembled in his salute that Han realized he was doing a fair impression of Ben throwing a tantrum. Gruffly he returned the salute and marched on. So what if there was a little stomp in his stride. His kid had nearly been killed, for kark's sake! And that wasn't counting the skinny one in flight boots — not this round.

Who even taught Dameron how to hold a lightsaber? Han wondered, staring down a mouse droid until it wheeled out of his path. The kid's no more Force-sensitive than a tree! Sure he was a decent pilot, but if Jedi was in his blood, surely Luke would have trained him by now — if only to honor Shara. Leia would've insisted on it.

Just because he can hold his own in a mock duel doesn't mean he's a Force-wielder, Han mentally lectured his son. In fact, he's the last person who should be handling a lightsaber.

Furiously he gripped the grooved handle, wondering which karking trainee had carelessly left it lying about. One miss, one false move on Dameron's part... Fury washed cold and blazing hot down Han's spine. He'd come that close to losing his boy in a friendly match. Never again.

"Luke, you great irresponsible sarlaac!" he called as he tramped into the Jedi's quarters unannounced. The half-jested insult soured in his throat even as he spoke. Flipping out the lightsaber he challenged, "Is one of your little recruits missing this?"

Irritatingly serene, Luke looked up from his meditative posture and merely raised an inquiring eyebrow at the lightsaber. "Ben knows that he's not allowed to practice with another student's blade," he said, preemptively assuming Han's complaint.

"Really?" Han said crisply. "I had no idea you'd established safe boundaries for kids who wave around laser swords. Did you specify that Poe wasn't allowed to use another student's lightsaber? We discussed loopholes, Luke! What in tarnation are you teaching these kids?"

"Poe?" All pretense of serenity vanished from Luke's stance. Finally, someone was taking him seriously! "Poe was dueling with Ben?"

"With a flimsy hand-waver's incineration device!" Han snapped. "Sure, the academy's gotta teach the kid how to handle a blaster, and sooner or later someone's going to get shot, but they didn't teach him to fight children! That's crossing a line!"

"Han, it takes more than instincts to handle a lightsaber, and Ben is well-trained," Luke reasoned. His soothing tone only rankled Han's nerves. "I doubt Poe could have made it past Ben's defenses."

"Is that what you think?" Huffing, Han thumbed the ignition and flipped the lightsaber in an easy circle, slicing a nice Recusant-class warship into two smoldering piles. "Tell me some nut with a lasersword couldn't score a lucky hit in a duel."

Luke cringed, eyeing the smoking model with undue remorse. "Ben is well aware of the dangers," he spoke cautiously, "However, Cadet Dameron's error was a personal lack of judgement, and should be reprimanded by his commanding officer, not a Jedi. I don't have the authority to address this, Han."

"Actually, Jedi business is exactly what I'm here for," Han said gruffly. Sighing, he roved the lightsaber with dismay before flicking it off, "Poe wasn't just swinging it around. He knew what he was doing, Luke. He could've copied those moves from Leia, for all I know."

"Han, you know Leia wouldn't interfere," Luke protested, even while sympathy softened his skeptic approach. "Shara wanted her son to choose his own path."

"Why?" Han interjected, setting the lightsaber heavily on the shelf of model X-Wings and A-Wings. "He's gotta be sensitive, Luke. You would've picked up on that. Why didn't you pull him from the academy?"

Leaning against the mauled shelf, Han stuffed his hands into his back pockets, admitting in a mumble, "Kid's wasted as a pilot."

"He didn't want to," Luke answered. Succinct, compassionate, to the point. Why couldn't 'discussions' with Leia be this simple? "I approached him some years ago with the offer to train among my students. He refused."

"Why, because he can't fly and still be a perfect little Jedi?" Han accused. "You managed."

"It's not about the academy," Luke said, closing his eyes in a moment of exasperation. "Poe doesn't believe in the Force's influence, Han. You didn't when we fought the Empire."

"Yeah, well then I had a kid, and it hit me in the face," Han snarked. "Literally. Three days old and he already had his mother's temper!"

Blue eyes lit up with mirth at the memory of a child's antics, but Luke remained serious. "Poe is not like Ben," he assured Han. "He may accept the Force, but as long as he separates himself from it, he'll never understand its power. It's his choice, and I cannot conform him to any decision."

"You could run him around a swamp and teach him a few rock-stacking tricks," Han suggested impishly.

"Han." Shaking his head, Luke dismissed the probe, frivolous as it was disguised. "Obi-Wan never believed I was too old to be trained. If Poe wants to be a Jedi, he'll make that decision on his own.

"If he ever gets to that point," Han admitted, examining the melted ship morosely. "I might have scared him off."

"He'll find his own way in time," Luke reassured him. "He has his mother's spirit."

"You think so, huh?" Han said skeptically. "You know your trainees, Luke, but I know the kid. He doesn't push buttons twice."

"He'll come around," Luke said, confidence curling in a self-assured smile. "He can't help but trust in the Force, even if he doesn't acknowledge it."

Maybe Luke was right, in another universe where kids didn't turn into monsters and Fathers didn't have to pack away stuffed banthas and dusty models. The day came when Ben was gone, and then Poe never came back.

Luke understood his initiates, but Han knew the kid. Poe wouldn't look twice at a lightsaber again.

(Aftermath)

Leia was apparently feeling gracious, for she took the opportunity to pull her brother into a private room before rounding on him.. "You think that because you've miraculously returned from your island of solitude you can just take over my bridge?"

"I'm more concerned that General Huffs was able to signal our flag ship during a light jump," Luke admitted.

"Stop changing the subject."

"Stop leaving me out of everything!" Was it too difficult to alert him when the First Order was placing dibs on his former apprentice? "You don't have to run this fleet alone, Leia."

"You think I chose this position from sheer stubbornness?" General all the way through, taking both responsibility and blame for every misstep of the Resistance. "Where were you when the First Order constructed a planet-destroying weapon? Where was Han? For years I've held together a scrappy team of fighters while you two gallivant about, ignoring the galaxy you just saved!"

"All right - all right," Luke coaxed, trailing waves of Force-calm with an outstretched hand. (She hated that. It still worked.) "I'm here, Leia. Let me take some of the burden from you."

"It's a little late for that, don't you think?" Leia snapped, folding her arms, immovable.

She seemed to forget how easily one twin could sense the other. And Luke had years of experience consoling his sister's temper.

"It's Ben, isn't it?" he said softly, withdrawing three inches to give her the allusion of control. "You sense something."

"He's my son," Leia said, instantly bracing for the accusations against her duty to the cause. Turmoil surged in the space between them. Conflict tormented their family line, whispering words of animosity; rejection; hate. Yet no amount of bitterness could tear a mother's love away from her child.

Ben hadn't accounted for that when he joined forces with Snokes.

Luke was banking on that tiny, overlooked factor to win them the war.

"You think there's a chance," he said, just above a whisper. Compassion brought a sad smile to his face when Leia glanced sharply over her shoulder, tucking her arms around herself. The strong and war-hardened princess, never one to admit that she longed for someone to hold her when she was the most afraid.

Ben had taken after his mother.

"Hey," Luke said, taking two strides and taking her in, cushioning her flinch with the Force and letting it linger, gentle on her coiled shoulders. Calm, Sister. You will not carry this alone.

"He nearly killed my boy," Leia said, her voice rasping, hidden in his shoulder. "Kriff, I trusted him, and I almost sent Poe to his..."

"I was there," Luke whispered, cutting her off. "He'll be fine. He's a survivor, as always."

"They want his execution," Leia said bitterly. "I should have finished it; Han would have done the same."

The wound tore open; an unsealed cavern laced with salt and bitter waters. He hadn't seen his oldest friend since Ben turned to the dark. Even in spirit, Luke had never realized how short a time there was to say goodbye.

He was a fool.

"Han would have believed in him," Luke acknowledged. "He would have tried to bring him home."

"I won't choose between them," Leia hissed. "I won't end this war with another sacrifice."

Stroking the greying strands that were forced into a tight knot, Luke said nothing. Had not others watched as friends and kin fell prey to the enemy, one after another, until they alone huddled in a refugee ship far from the wasteland of their homeland? Had not mothers and fathers mourned as a soldier of the First Order was shot down by his brother in the Resistance? War birthed prisoner and pyre alike, without discrimination for sides. The general of an army had no more hope for her children than the mother who wept in the slums. Yet pity cried out for them both, for no parent must choose which child should survive.

"No one shall weigh your mind with treason," Luke reassured, his voice dead in his sister's ears. Softly he recited the proverb, "'The Force alone knows what will come of this day. Who can determine the fate of those we cherish?'"

"'Not by my hand or theirs, but by the will of the Force,'" Leia finished hollowly. She clenched her hand in Luke's cloak, her silence voicing the sorrow which screams could not convey. The Force shuddered around them, bearing the weight of a broken heart. Luke stood in the void for them both.

Let the hours pass in silence; he didn't mind. His greatest failure had always been time.

Sometime in the last few hours of schedled daylight, Luke had discarded his perpetual hermit's garb and exchanged it for a discrete tunic and cloak. In black. (And they wondered why Kylo Ren was attracted to mystical, shadowed personas and gloomy atmospheres.)

Poe flexed his hands and fought the impulse to avert his eyes in mental defense against overreaching masters who could sense emotional turbulence and perhaps the subconscious turmoil that no one had a right to pick through with their prowling, curious, Force-driven claws. (It was Master Skywalker. He wouldn't.)

No matter how he reasoned with himself, or how merry blue eyes differed from cynical brown, Poe couldn't relax. He flinched when Luke shot out one black-gloved hand —

— And stared in befuddlement at the cylinder proffered hilt-first. Elegant, tasteful, bound with copper overlapping silver coils, it looked more lethal in a Jedi's hand than if was sitting on a display shelf, collecting the dust of an era long gone. (Poe almost couldn't picture her with a lasersword, but the design was distinctly Alderaanean.)

"That's General Organa's," he said warily.

"Technically," Luke agreed with a casual shrug. "She gave it to me for safekeeping. You can use it in the meantime."

"Uh, thanks but... no thanks," Poe said, folding his arms in a snug and casual rebuff. "You'd better ask Rey; she's been hovering lately."

And that wasn't figurative. The first time Finn caught her meditating three feet off the floor on his mandatory sanitation detail he'd tripped over the mop bucket, garnering more screams for soapy liquid slopping over Rey's smelly laundry pile than from the Faust who'd ratted him out to the vice admiral in the first place. (And that was definitely Finn's own fault because Poe didn't get caught when he put a handful of field mice in the Paige's flightsuit locker. A good former stormtrooper ought to know some basic infiltration tactics.)

"You used to duel with a few kids, I remember," Luke said contemplatively.

"Bostaffs," Poe clarified. "Swinging a stick isn't the same as wielding a lightsword. Even Rey says the techniques are completely opposite."

"Mm, same concept," Luke wheedled, tossing the elegant cylinder at Poe's head. He had no choice but to snatch it up before the hilt dented against the floor. (Dafted manipulative Jedi.)

"Ignite and swish," Luke instructed. "Basic fundamentals — no different from a electrostaff or a viproblade. Oh, and don't scar up the floor. It's Leia's ship and she'll have words with me if another scrappy cadet trips over a durasteel crack."

Pressing his lips into a thin line, Poe flicked the on switch and bent his knees in a stance he'd seen Rey take in every starting duel. It felt... even. Settled. He could spring the first move or retreat in an instant. (Maybe he'd watched a few of Ben's fights. Not that a fourteen-year-old kid could best a Jedi Master.)

"Good starting form," Luke praised, lowering his blade lethargically. "Now if I move in from the left..."

A quick sidestep and block turned the blade away from his face. Maybe it was just like a bostaff, only more pointy and liable to melt the floor. Poe regained his stance, waiting for the next move.

Luke sighed. "Don't pose every time you move; it's way too obvious and it obstructs your flow. Finish your block and step into the next. Don't think about it; just move."

Lance, block, step, block, step, backwards skuttle. Luke chuckled as a sudden dart of blue forced Poe to retreat. "Nice reflexes. Rey was sucking on her fingers for a week."

"Is that the point of training; torturing initiatives?" Poe hazarded a jibe.

"The 'sabers are powered down," Luke insisted, tapping the blade lightly against the floor to demonstrate. "They'll burn but they won't chop your arm off. You can't respect a weapons unless you understand the wounds dealt by your hand. Every apprentice should respect the power of their blade."

"Seems a bit eccentric," Poe garnered, dodging another swish and jabbing tentatively. Green clashed with blue and he darted left again. "Like shooting yourself in the foot to understand how a blaster works."

"Do I tell you how to fly an X-Wing?" Luke countered. "And don't answer that — I ought to show you upstarts how it's done, and I won't. Why? Because the best teacher is experience. Anyone can swing a sword. You might cut yourself but you'll live. One wrong move with a fully-powered lightsaber and people start losing limbs."

"Yeah, I get it," Poe said briskly, rapping off three flashing strokes before jumping away from a parry. Han made that pretty clear, in the hazed tatters of a training room scored by "harmless" blades.

"Rey understands it," Luke continued. "So does Finn. They moved on. The problem is, you let it settle so deep in your skull you couldn't even touch a lightsaber when you forgot your history with the kid."

Flight boots skidding, Poe caught Luke's blade and shoved. "Excuse me?"

"Every Jedi initiate fudges the line," Luke scolded. "They get cocky; they don't rationalize; they don't realize the dangers of their own powers. But they don't give up just because a geezer general gets ruffled."

Swerving loose, Poe lowered his 'saber and backed away. "I barely remember it. It doesn't matter. It was a long time ago. I didn't even want to be a — why is this even an issue?"

Sighing, Luke shook his head. "Because you just completed a basic training exercise without dropping your blade once. Not many initiates can accomplish that on their first try. Rey wasn't one of them."

"So I learned to dodge a stick," Poe argued. "Ech'ban and I used to —" He swallowed the bitter taste and amended, "We used to spar all the time at the academy."

"And if you trusted your feelings more, you'd be surprised what more you can do outside of the cockpit," Luke reasoned.

"I don't need any of this Jedi-feely stuff," Poe said, tossing the lightsaber back to its guardian. "I'm an amazing pilot, and I've got two Jedi for backup and your whole mythical spirit army. I don't need a lasersword to bring down the First Order."

"No, you don't," Luke admitted gruffly. "But you could use a smidgen of creativity."

"Talking to the guy who coined the name General Hugs," Poe muttered. "Thanks for the sword tips, Master Luke. I've got night patrol in half an hour. Maybe my relief will want a lesson, though."

He didn't need the Force to feel the swell of disappointment in the room. Shrugging his shoulders antsily, Poe brushed it off. He wasn't a Jedi. Never needed to be one.

The tugging of the Force was never enough to save Ben.