3/2/1 Y.O.
Kylo feels it when the first one sets foot on the Supremacy.
He supposes it had to happen sooner or later. They're recruiting fast and hard, and new Force sensitives are born or awaken every day.
So, sooner or later, one of them had get swept up into his orbit.
He has the girl brought to him. She's thin, slightly hollow of eyes and cheeks. Even after a few months with the Order, she's not recovered fully from whatever they had her doing before. She's afraid to meet his eyes. That's also fairly common among the ones who used to be slaves. Though when she does glance up, he sees they're deep brown-black, like his, going along with her black hair and deep tan skin.
She's afraid of him, too. Unsure of what she could have possibly done to have the Master call her to his chambers. Afraid of what he might want her to do. He thinks she's twelve or thirteen. Young enough she likely wasn't of much interest to most of the men around her, old enough to know what they wanted with the older girls.
Old enough to know he's one of them, and to be wary of what he may want, especially after asking for her to come to his personal room.
He can read that fear off of her, and winces internally at it.
He kneels in front of her, moving slowly, doing his best to make it clear he's going to move before he does, so she doesn't flinch away from him. He tries to keep his thoughts and feelings calm and nonthreatening. She's not trained, but it's likely she at least sense what's in his head.
On his knees, he can look her in the eye.
"What's your name, child?"
"TR-4487."
He shakes his head, having wanted her real name. She winces a little at that, fear nipping at her heels, making her knees feel soft. Doesn't do to displease the master, any master. His teeth grit.
She was a slave or a runaway or homeless, some sort of person who joined the Order. None of the children kidnapped by Snoke as toddlers are allowed to get this thin, so she has to have a name.
"Your real name. You still remember it, right?"
She nods. "Cassandra Andor. I was named after my great uncle."
"It's a good name." Kylo nods, remembering a few stories his mother told once or twice, and making a mental note to put a stop to forcing the people with names to give them up, and then he looks over to his table and chairs, makes sure she looks, too, and crooks his finger, pulling a chair toward them.
She stares at it, and then looks at him, eyes wide. It's clear she's never even heard of someone else being able to do it.
"You can do it, too, can't you?" he says, voice quiet.
"I…" she looks down… "Sometimes. It doesn't always…"
"And you can feel things… other people can't?"
She nods. "You're very angry at my previous owners."
Only owners. No one will ever own you again.
She blinks. He doesn't know if she understood the words, but she certainly got the idea.
"I am. But that's… Not the point, right now. Would you like to go somewhere and learn how to do it, always?"
He can feel she can't believe such a place exists.
"It does. There's a woman there, her name is Rey, and she teaches people like us how to use the Force."
The child blinks, and looks up at him, eyes bright and fierce. Then she says, "Will I still get to be a citizen after five years?" He can feel how much that word matters to her. She's never had the chance to be anything before, and she wants it.
He nods. "Yes. I'll make sure your time with Mistress Rey counts towards your Order service, but you can't ever let anyone know how you got to her."
"Why not?"
"I'm not… very popular in some places. Can you keep the secret? Just one day Master Padme found you, and brought you to Rey?"
"I can do that."
He smiles at her, says, "Wait here." He goes to his closet, grabs his Padme clothing, and rapidly comes to the conclusion that he can't exactly change in his bedroom, because she's just sitting there. He goes to his refresher and changes in there. Kylo glances at himself in the mirror before he goes to the girl. He looks like a rogue. Brown boots, brown trousers, the belt is unique to him, blaster holder for the left hip, lightsaber clip for his right, white shirt, brown leather jacket, brown leather fingerless gloves, and his hair pulled into a little bun, like Rey does.
He wonders, idly, if this was his father's idea of Ben Solo. Wonders what he'd think if he saw this, and is suddenly flooded with a sense of approval.
He shakes that off; there's work to do, and woolgathering in front of the mirror isn't doing it.
He returns to the girl. "Where are you from, Cassandra?"
"Fest."
He kneels before her again, waves his fingers, and says, "Master Padme found you and brought you to Rey, to learn the Force."
Her eyes are hazy, unfocused. "Master Padme found me."
"Good, child. Let's go meet Rey."
Kylo takes a moment to get a feel for where Rey is. By the side of the lake, and then thinks to her, Meet me in the chapel. Then he takes Cassandra's hand, and in a second he's at Rey's. "Go off and play. Go meet the others. Let me talk to Mistress Rey."
She scarpers off, and a moment later, Rey joins him, watching the girl strolling over to where the other children are, on the bank of the lake, working on catching supper.
Rey raises an eyebrow at him. There's camouflaging his look so he can pass as just another trader, or spy, at night, or, like he is now, several hundred meters away from everyone else, and then there's grabbing a child off the Supremacy, in his command blacks, and bringing her here.
He sees her understand what he's done. "She thinks Master Padme found her. The lie won't hold, not if she sees me in my blacks. She's too smart for it, but for right now, it'll do," he says to Rey.
"You found one."
"And I'm sure I'll find more. You do want me to bring them?"
She swallows, hard. This is the first of the acid tests. Then she nods. They're borrowing trouble, and she knows it. Sooner or later, one of them will know Kylo Ren, and not Master Padme, brought them here. The trick Kylo worked builds feeble memories, poke them, even a little, and they shatter.
But if she means what she teaches… "Every Maji is welcome here, and if that means we get some from the Order, we get them from the Order. I told Poe… well, made him believe, you're a Resistance member in the Order, not sure what he's doing next. If you're our scout there…"
He nods. "I told her her time here would count for her five years of service. Apparently, in addition to money," Kylo says, dryly, he'd been amused listening to Poe try to figure him out, "Master Padme is high enough ranked he can get someone 'transferred' long term, without having it effect their service time."
Rey chuckles at that. "Handy skill to have." Then she nods to the children. "Here they wear no mark but that of the Maji, but I'm fine with her time here counting for her time with you. Here we're all Maji. When she leaves, she can go back to the Order or whatever comes next for her."
"Good."
"What's her name?"
"Cassandra Andor."
She glances back to the children, a few of them are watching them, though they're mostly working. She shakes her head and decides to do it anyway. She kisses Kylo quickly. "Tonight. Now, I've got to get Cassandra settled."
He kisses back, squeezing her hand, enjoying this, them, together, in daylight, being seen by other people, even if they are at a distance. "Tonight."
As she's stepping out of the chapel, she says to him, "You look good."
He rolls his eyes and flashes back to his ship.
Apparently, it's a day for visitors at Lirium.
"Chewie! Rose!" Rey takes Rose in her arms, looking at her. "You're huge!"
Rose glares at her. Seven months pregnant, in a ship, with the gravity set to .7 Gs is lovely. Stepping onto Lirium, with its full G, is like suddenly gaining a full body suit of iron. "Don't remind me." She's rubbing her back. "I hate gravity."
Finn gently hugs her, and then wraps Rey into a bear hug, swinging her around. "Hello!"
Rey smiles, very pleased to see them. "Hello back! I've missed you." And she has. Getting them back to visit is one of the highlights of her time here.
Chewie's looking ahead, seeing the ungainly cargo ship that's parked next to the Falcon. Who's flying that pile of shit?
"I am!" Poe says, jogging up to them. He'd been helping to build another cottage (Their eventual 'sewing room,' because apparently, if you're going to make clothing, you need space to lay fabric out, cut it, and good light for putting it together. At least, when he got done laughing, Master Ren suggested that the lack of such things may have been why they were having such a hard time getting any two pieces of fabric the same size. Rey rolled her eyes at him, but did notice when they moved into the chapel and spread out, it was easier. So, sewing room went onto the list, because even the kids don't like cutting fabric on the floor.) when the Falcon came slipping down. It took a minute to get everything properly secured before he could leave. Then he looks from Chewie to the Falcon. "Also, really?
Chewie replies, and Poe says, "Well, I suppose it does take one to know one."
Chewie laughs at that and so does Poe.
"Also, as much as I'd like a sweet little flier with tight action and more guns than I can count, they don't exactly have cargo space. With this girl, BB-8 and I can take pretty much anything, or anyone, anywhere."
Chewie nods at that. The shape of the game has changed, significantly, for Poe over the last six months, and so has what he flies.
"What's got you down here?" Rey says. "I wasn't expecting you for another few weeks."
Leia's will got settled. Remember those funds the Ygrines 'gave' her? Chewie asks.
Rey nods. "The not exactly willing transfer of funds."
Yes. She didn't have a good plan for what to do next, when they gave it to her, so she paid people off, clearing the Resistance's debts, but didn't buy anything new. There was some left, and apparently, I'm her legal next of kin, so…
"So we got a med droid and a modular clinic, and we're bringing it here to set it up!" Finn finishes. Rey can feel that as Rose is getting bigger, Finn's getting more and more nervous about them floating around in the middle of space with no access to good medical care. Everyone with the Resistance had to be a decent jackleg medic, but there's a big difference between cauterizing a wound and slapping a bacta-infused pressure bandage on it, and delivering a baby.
"And a house for you, I hope," Poe says. "I'm fine crashing in my ship, but you three are going to need a home soon." He elbows Chewie. "You don't want dirty nappies cluttering up your ship, right?"
Compared to Waldo and his mates, a baby human won't be that annoying. It takes them a year or so to start chewing on everything, and their teeth aren't sharp enough to do any damage.
Rey can tell that Chewie's looking forward to being a grand-wookie. And that he's sad that said baby isn't going to be staying on the Falcon with him. If they're setting up the med clinic here, it's because Rose and the baby are going to be staying here, too. For a while, at least.
"Waldo?" Poe asks. He's hasn't heard this bit of the story before.
"One of the Porgs," Rose says. "He and his ladies live with us, and keep us in eggs, which is nice, but they like to chew on everything, which isn't."
Poe's nodding. He knew about the Porgs, just didn't know one of them had a name. "Waldo has a name but his mates don't?"
"They look exactly the same," Finn says, exasperated. "It took me three months to figure out how many of them there were. They'd never all be in the same part of the ship at the same time. I had to catch each one, stow it in our berth, and then search around for another one. The only reason we know which one Waldo is is because he's half again as big as the ladies."
Poe laughs at the image of Finn chasing around after a bunch of Porgs, who are, apparently, curious about Lirium, and starting to hop down the ramp of the Falcon to do a bit of exploring.
The eggs are tasty, Chewie adds.
"Good, we're looking for tasty here. All fish and packaged food leaves something to be desired," Poe says.
Maybe this time, they'll decide to stay. The Porgs always like to go and explore, swim in the lake, catch some fish, but they also, always, seem to know when Chewie's gearing up to leave, and when he does, they're back on the Falcon.
"Nah, Waldo'd miss you if you left without him," Finn says to Chewie.
Chewie grunts and shakes his head.
"Yeah, you're right. We've still got a few hours of light. Let's get as much as we can unpacked," Rey says. "Though, you know, if you decided to not eat all the next batch of eggs, I could see us having a use for some chicks here."
"The Med Droid is still in a box?" Rey says to Finn.
"Boxes," Finn replies. "They're 50,000 fewer credits if you put them together yourself. Between R2 and BB they can get him put together, and 50,000 credits buys a lot of medicine." He glances around; it's just the two of them in the Falcon's rear cargo hold. "She hates it when I say anything or look worried, but… That's part of why I want to be here, now, not weeks from now like we planned. If we can't get him working properly, we've still got time to go find a planet with a decent medical set up that won't ask too many questions or check our IDs too closely."
"Are you still wanted?"
Finn nods. "Last I checked, I was still listed as a deserter. Rose isn't on their lists, but… I don't want to have to leave her at a hospital alone for fear that some random camera might get a shot of my face and let the Order know where I am. And Chewie… He's on the Order's lists, right behind Leia and Poe as the third most wanted member of the Resistance, and he's wanted in at least two hundred other systems for his various adventures with Han or on his own."
Rey winces at that. They both remember what Han and Chewie were doing when they met up, and not only did that sort of thing get them in trouble with different organized crime groups, it also put them on the criminal list of most systems they worked in.
Finn sighs. "I like this. This is fun. We're flying fast and free, going from job to job, picking up whatever people want to move. I get to fast talk and make deals, and skirt the law and…" he's grinning. "It's fun. And I'm good at it. I mean, really good at it. Chewie says I'm a natural born scoundrel." He sighs again. "But it's not safe. We took fire on the last two jobs before the Falcon got to hyperspace."
"Not a place for a baby," Rey says.
"No. And Rose hates that I feel that way. If it's safe enough for me, it's safe enough for them… And… I don't know. I guess she's not wrong, but… The idea of them out here knots up my guts, and not in the way they knot up when I'm in danger."
"Stay here. We need people. We need builders. There's only so much I can do, even with thirteen children. Just adding Poe to the mix increases our productivity by close to a hundred percent. Some things are just easier with grown up muscles and attention spans. You and Rose and Chewie… We'd get so much done."
He rolls his eyes. "I know. And I'll stay for… as long as I can. But Chewie needs a partner, too, and you, and this settlement starve if we don't keep bringing you goods, and we can't afford to do that if we don't take risky jobs. Not enough profit on the boring ones."
Rey doesn't like the way that feels, because, of course, she has someone who could make it unnecessary for anyone to do anything even remotely risky to support her settlement. Someone who has specifically said he'd give her pretty much anything she could possibly want here. Someone who… is possibly making their job significantly more dangerous. "You're smuggling from the Unknown Regions?"
"No!" Finn raises his hands, almost warding off that idea. "Risky, not suicidal. You try to break the blockade The Order has on that border, you better be sure they never see you, otherwise you're dead. So, no, I'm talking about just their patrols. Ever since the Order got that…" Finn looks like he wants to curse, "hyperspeed tracking device, we skirt way around them. At the first hint of one of their ships, we're gone. Rose has our scanners set to maximum, boosted that, and keeps them constantly looking for anything with an Order call sign. But that's about not getting caught as a deserter, terrorist, and their 'friend.' The people shooting at us are the keepers of whatever local laws we're trying to break."
That eases up on her feelings, some. But a system's fleet of ships can kill you just as dead as the Order's.
Finn feels what she's thinking, and nods. "Come on, let's get this unloaded."
The children really like it when the Falcon crew comes.
Not only do they bring goodies, (Chewie made sure to bring several crates of fresh citronin. Most of the children have never had one before, but they're all happily peeling off the orange skins and slorping down the bright red-purple sour-sweet fruit inside.) but they have stories.
So, like most nights they come to visit, they set up bonfires, roast up the fish, and settle in for story time. Not all of the children understand Chewie's roars, but C3PO can and often does translate.
She can feel Kylo wondering where she is, what she's doing. Normally, she finishes up with the children and goes to her cottage to "meditate," but that wouldn't do for a night when they've got this many visitors.
She lets him feel what she's doing, and why she won't be suddenly appearing in his ship.
Bonfire night.
Kylo rolls his eyes and grabs yet another data pad, slamming it a bit too hard on the table next to the dinner that's supposed to be for both of them, but will apparently just be for him.
It's not that he begrudges her time with—Okay, it is. He begrudges the fuck out of it. Getting done with his stuff, shoving it aside, and then seeing her is the highlight of his day, and just sitting around, with too much dinner for just him, getting colder by the minute, though he stabs at it with a fork and gets to it, because she's off having roast fish with a bunch of other people while they laugh and tell stories is…
Shit! It's absolute fucking shit!
He grabs the datapad and slams it into the wall, and the sound of it shattering into a billion pieces is somewhat satisfying, but… he sighs, annoyed. Now he's got to get copies of what was on that damn thing, because he's still got to read it. Because his work doesn't just go away when it's inconvenient.
Kind of like hers.
He growls quietly, aware of the fact that things like bonfire night and telling stories and teaching are part of her job.
And, okay, no, he doesn't exactly want to spend a few hours with Finn and Poe and Chewie and Rose and the droids. That's not a recipe for a good time for anyone, but…
He does. Or, at least, he wants the idea of being able to relax with her, with other people around, and for them to have some sort of… life… outside the confines of his quarters and hers. He wants to be able to sit next to her on the edge of the lake and join story time. Okay, he's probably not good at telling stories, he's never tried, but he can damn well listen to them.
Then come listen to them sounds in his head.
And get shot at? Start a brawl?
I'm not suggesting marching on up and sitting next to me in your full command blacks and mask, but… No one says you can't listen.
He vividly sends her the image of him rolling his eyes extravagantly. I can hide in the background. No, thank you.
He feels an answering sense of longing from her, and the image of him sitting on the ground, palms behind him, leaning into them, one leg extended, one bent, foot on the ground, and her sitting between them, back against his knee as the party rolls on.
But they both know that's not how it would work, and right now, with as fragile as her set up is… She's not willing to burn any bridges or lose any friends. But, gods as soon as he sees it, he wants it.
How late will you be? He picks at another bite of what's supposed to be their dinner. It's good, or would be if he was sharing it. Somehow roast mushroom pasta loses a lot of its savor when he's eating it alone.
Chewie's telling us about—He feels her pause—taking out Jabba's pleasure ship.
Another eye roll. He knows that story is the rescue of Han Solo, and if it's Chewie's full version of it, which encompasses everything from Vader capturing Han to the two years they spent planning it, to the year it took them to get everyone into place, to the actual rescue, they'll be up for hours.
I'll take tax revenue reports over that.
He feels the sense of her kiss, and sighs at that, too. He sends one back to her, and then makes himself eat his supper, and summon another copy of the reports.
When he's sitting at his desk, reading yet another report about some bit of idiot minutia that goes into running a functional government, he thinks that Hux was onto something.
He wasn't meant to be a politician.
He's probably not meant to be a ruler.
Trying to make himself care about stuff like this is just… exhausting.
But if he doesn't care about it, if he fobs it all off onto his underlings… Well, he does, a lot of it, but he spot checks things more or less at random to keep them on their toes. No one has the brainpower to keep a galaxy-wide system going strong in his own head, so he doesn't even try, but just keeping up with the spot checking makes him want to grind his teeth into dust.
He feels like he runs into something on every report. Which means meetings with the people who are supposed to be in charge of these things, and then more meetings, and maybe it gets taken care of, or maybe he's just found the tip of some conspiracy, or one of his men trying to build his own little empire in the middle of the Order, or…
Usually, this would be about the time Rey would put her hands on his shoulders, kiss him on the back of the head, and then turn the damn datapad off and tell him to come to bed.
And usually, he would, and they'd spend an hour or so playing in his bed or the bath, before shifting back to hers to sleep.
He lets his mind wander to hers, and the stories are still going on. Likely because a quick check at his chronometer tells him it's only been an hour.
"Fuck it!"
He strips out of his command blacks and yanks on Padme's clothing. He pulls his hair back, doing a haphazard job of it. But it's late, enough, and if Padme actually had some sort of job that involved moving around more than shuffling datapads, his hair could fall out of its knot.
He makes a mental note to make sure he gets at least an hour, better yet, two, with the training droids tomorrow. Today, yesterday, and the day before were pretty much all sitting around days, and he can feel that's part of why he's so edgy. He needs to move around, hard, fast, dangerous, at least every other day, or he starts to shift out of balance, and everything starts getting to him.
A moment's concentration brings him to Rey's cottage.
Another moment of… he's not exactly pulling up his courage, but… steeling himself, maybe, before he leaves. From the space in front of her door, he can't see them, but he can hear them, and see the glow beyond the cottages near the lake.
He closes his eyes and focuses. As he was trained, both times, there are skills that fall more readily to the light side of things, and skills that more easily fall to the dark, and skills, like rock floating, that have no alliance to a side.
Fighting, attacking, destruction, deception, raising passions, and sewing discord are all, broadly, dark side skills. And he has a fairly easy time with all of them.
Calming, healing, soothing, negotiating, seeking accord… Those are all, broadly, light side skills. And he could, broadly, fail, at just about all of them. He thinks part of why Luke was so frustrated with him was that he had no talent for most of the light side skills, and even expending a lot of energy, could only get to mediocre at them. Though he wonders now, as he's finding himself stumbling around with some of these skills, and not being horrible at them, though he's certainly rough and untrained, if part of continually, always failing at them was Snoke's fingers tangling through his skills.
There was one light side skill, though… It's not exactly a deception skill, though it's close, which is likely why he could do it. It's actually the light side version of a deception skill. Anyone who's done any level of Jedi or Sith training knows there will be times when it's just easier to not be seen. Kylo can't make himself invisible. (Or if he can, he's unaware of it.) He can however, make the people around him not look where he is. If, for some reason, a person managed to actually point her face in his direction, she'd see him, and remember him, but, if he's using his ability to do this, she wouldn't turn to him.
He was always good at that one. Not invisibility so much as don't see me.
It won't work on another Maji, not one who's any good at sorting through her feelings and sensing what's around her. In that case, it'll actually draw attention to himself, because she'll feel him manipulating the Force. Rey, for example, will feel him from a kilometer away doing this. And he's sure some of the other Maji will have a sense of something off, but none of them are well enough trained to focus down onto what. But for the average person, she'll just never notice him.
He cloaks himself, and then starts toward the light of the bonfires.
It is a party. He can feel the enjoyment from two hundred meters away. He can't make out distinct voices yet, but he feels Rey sense him and offer him welcome… As long as he stays in the shadows beyond the firelight.
He pulls closer, sees where she got the idea of the two of them at the party. Finn's on the ground, sitting with Rose between his legs, rubbing her back and hips, listening to the story with interest.
He's still well in the dark when Chewie stops talking, and looks up, suddenly. He's staring around, searching, but he can't find Kylo. Kylo rolls his eyes at himself. Chewie can smell him. Probably smell him well enough to hit him with the bowcaster if he allowed the bolt to hit. But he doesn't yell, and when Poe and Finn ask what's up, he says nothing, and goes back to telling the story.
Apparently Rey isn't wrong about Chewie not wanting to kill him. One growl, and this party would have gotten interesting.
Even at a party, even on a mostly deserted planet, Chewie, Poe, and Finn are wearing weapons, and Rey has her staff near her hand.
He shakes his head, joining in is silly. He's still outside. Eternally outside.
No, you aren't.
You really want to see how exciting this will be if I crash this party? He can feel a little thrill at the idea of the fight that would ensue. He's wearing a blaster and his lightsaber. The blaster is just part of the image he's projecting. He's fired one maybe ten times, and isn't a particularly good aim. But he also doesn't need to be. His fingers stroke the hilt of his blade.
She feels his image of it, and he gets the sense of disappointment from her. But it's not just aimed at him. She can feel how fast the balance she's trying to build would tip out of alignment if Kylo popped up here. She knows that Kylo's not the only one who would enjoy a no-holds-barred, drop-down, drag-out fight between them.
He also gets a shape, a flash, of a future. He thinks she's seeing it, but he may, too. A time where he will be able to join her at a group like this.
Not eternally. That's her voice in his head. You want me to make my excuses?
Yes, but he doesn't think that at her. He's feeling… something. No. There's…
Her presence in his mind is suddenly very gentle, soothing. I feel it, too, love. If she's thinking at him that tenderly, it's important. Go to it.
He turns away from the firelight, feeling pulled, out, past the chapel, to the field where the ships wait.
Seeing it, he inclines his head, feeling a wave of of course.
The Millennium Falcon.
His father's one true love.
Like usual when it's parked, the ramp is down. Anyone could just walk in. So, he does.
There are memories here. A lot of them. While it's true that it was rare for both of his parents to be with him at the same time, they certainly tried for at least one of them to be around as often as possible. Unfortunately, at least according to the child who was Ben, as often as possible worked out to slightly less than a quarter of the time.
In his mother's case, that was likely more often than she would have liked. It wasn't so much that she didn't want to be with him as it was that every other minute, she, too, was finding some sort of stupid little glitch in her reports and flying all over the galaxy to have meetings and try to fix them.
He supposes a perk of being the Master, as opposed to being a senator, is that his meetings come to him and he sets them to suit him.
Han probably spent more time with him than he liked. Mostly because it was a good excuse to avoid all of the minutia he was supposed to be dealing with.
Instead of sitting around listening to diplomats blather on, Han would come home to visit, and 'fix up the Falcon.' Kylo's still honestly not sure if the Falcon is just a terribly designed ship that requires constant, un-ending attention to keep it in the air, or if his father was just a terrible mechanic. (Or some combination thereof.)
Standing at the foot of the ramp, looking up, it's occurring to Kylo that the ship isn't nearly as big as he thinks it should be. Of course, most of his images of it come from his childhood, and once, on his knees, looking up at Rey.
Inside, he's shocked by how familiar it is, and how different. The shape, the smell, the feel of it is the same. He could be six-years-old, sitting by one of the floor plates, handing his father tools.
But it's not the same. The colors are different. The details… Chewie, Rose, or Finn have been playing with it some, refitting the storage chambers… Re-doing the upholstery? He's almost certain the cushions on the seats in the center lounge weren't that color before.
There are parts of… He smiles a little; he doesn't know what it is by looking at it, but he can feel the attention, and dreams that have been going into it, and that lets him know it's the start of a crib. Finn and Rose have been working on it together, building a place for their child to rest. And bits of it are scattered through the central lounge area. He touches a piece, carefully, not wanting to move it. It's wood, satin smooth to the touch, and hours of patient sanding and shaping have gone into getting it that way.
He startles away from his thoughts when something… he assumes this has to be a porg, trills at him in a disturbed sort of way. It's angry at him, apparently it knows he doesn't belong here. "Shh… I'm Rey's friend."
It yells louder and two more of them join him. All three are glaring up at him, tiny pointy teeth bared.
He's never been any good at this, but… "Shush, Waldo." (One of them has to be Waldo, right?) And then he lays down a gentle bit of Force, hoping to calm them. And, unlike every time he's tried this before, Waldo and his friends calm down. They're still wary of him, but they aren't yelling.
He bends down, reaching out his hand, and stops a few inches away from the biggest one. Waldo cocks his head, eyeing Kylo, but decides to hop a little closer and get his neck rubbed.
Rey's right, stroking one of these things, and feeling it purr, is actually pretty nice. Waldo's crooking his neck, trying to get Kylo to pet him properly, so Kylo kneels, and in a moment, he's got Waldo in his arms, purring at him.
"Well, at least I can please someone on this damn ship."
"That's not fair."
Kylo's eyes close, and he rubs his lips together. He doesn't turn, but he knows the voice behind him. That's why he's here after all. He bites his lip again, before saying, "Isn't it? I certainly never found anything that made you happy."
He turns to face Han. He's just as old as he was the last time they met, though he's much less upset looking. Kylo has to assume that's true of himself, too.
Han looks him up and down. "I like this."
Kylo scoffs. "A costume?"
Han rolls his eyes, and Kylo suddenly knows, feels, where he got that from. Because he never really knew his parents as an adult, he's never internalized them, as adults. So, he's never felt the bits of him that mirror them, though he is, right now.
"The costume's nice, too." Han says with a patronizing smirk. "It's too neat and tidy and expensive, but it's nice, for a costume. It's clear you're slumming. You don't have the posture for it, and you've got the blaster on the wrong side, too."
Kylo doesn't glare at him, but he does say, voice painfully dry. "My saber goes on the right." He shifts his right arm and Waldo, offering his father a clear view of his preferred weapon. "I don't go out unarmed, but if someone had taught me how to shoot, the way he promised to, the blaster could have been on the right side."
A lot of Han's bravado slips away at that, and more of the real man is visible under the image of Han. His voice is regretful when he says, "I know." He looks at the blaster, and the ship, and says, "I meant to. All of it." He sighs again, and nods to Waldo. "You remember that… what was it? Linus… You called it Linus."
It takes him a minute to remember what Linus was. "My pet zeefir?"
"Yeah. You remember what happened to it?"
Kylo blinks. He had a pet. He knows that, but the memories of it are blurry at best. He was young, four, five, not yet six. He has much clearer memories, from when he's older, seven, eight, asking for a pet, and both of his parents being very nervous, and then saying no. But thinking back, looking… Linus… It was small and round and fluffy, black and green, with short silky fur, and he'd feed it lettuce and grapes, and it would curl up in his hand and let him pet it. His eyes shut, and he swallows, hard. He'd picked it up too fast, not gentle enough, startled it, and it bit him, hard, tiny teeth cutting into his finger, and he thrashed out, hard, with his body and power, and killed it. It was accidental. He knows that. He hadn't been trying to… Well, he had. It hurt him, so he hurt it. He just didn't understand what he'd done to it until he picked it back up and found blood coming out of its eyes, ears, and nose. And when he did, he got so upset he blew all the electronics in their home.
Han looks at the cradle parts all around him. "We were scared, Ben. You're right about that. You used to break things, hurt people. You didn't have the control to not do it accidentally, and you didn't have the wisdom to not do it intentionally, and… And we didn't know what to do. And we didn't want to give up on you, but…" Han's biting his own lip now. "We were running a race against time and you, trying to find… anything… to get you off that path before you killed someone. Remember that tutor… Master Symns? You choked him so bad… The only reason he didn't die is you thought you killed him when he passed out so you stopped. No one…" And Kylo can tell he means Leia and Luke, "thought it was a good idea to let you play with the dark. You had enough trouble dealing with it when it was forbidden, and that letting you dabble with it…" Han's ghost still wears his own blaster. He touches it. "This, the Falcon, flying around, playing fast and loose with the law, making deals that weren't technically legal. We thought that'd just… invite you to go wild."
Kylo just feels exhausted at that. Like his joints have gone weak after too many years of running full out. He sits down, slumping into the sofa behind the dejarik table. For a moment, he just stares around the Falcon, and then finally manages to say, "How much worse could it have possibly turned out?"
Han's face is old, his eyes tired, when he says, "You think I haven't been beating myself with that for years now?" Han shakes his head. "When Luke told us what happened… I didn't talk to your mother again for eight years, and I hit Luke hard enough I broke his jaw and knocked out three of his teeth. I never spoke to him again. I still haven't. He's out there, I can feel it, but… I let them have you because it was supposed to work. I gave you to them because it was supposed to prevent you from…" His voice is shaking at that. "You could have stayed with me, ended up the most vicious pirate to ever fly a ship, and you wouldn't have done a tenth the damage you did as Snoke's right hand."
Kylo blinks. He hadn't known any of that. "You… left her?" Their marriage had always been either hot or cold, and usually it was also spread out over a few hundred light years, with each of them in a different quadrant of the galaxy. But it was always there.
"Left her, left the Republic, left it all. Chewie and I got back in the air and went back to what we were best at. I saw her for a few minutes, before… The last thing she ever said to me was to go get you, bring you home. I told her that Luke, who was supposed to know it all, failed, rubbed it in, and she told me Luke was a Jedi, and I was your father. Closest I ever saw her get to admitting she'd been wrong about something."
Kylo knows what happened next in that story.
Han sits next to him and, cups his face. Kylo can't feel it, but he knows what he's doing, the exact same gesture he did right before he killed him. And he knows what Han's feeling as he does it, because it's all right at the top of his mind.
"Twenty-two years… You thought I…"
Kylo swallows, hard, biting his lip… "Thought? You left me. You dangled a life in front of me. We were going to learn to fly and shoot, and I was going to be the best pilot in the galaxy, next to my Dad, and then you snatched it away, and you left me! I begged you to come, and you didn't rescue me. Luke would tell the story of you showing up in the nick of time to rescue him, but you never came for me." His voice cracks. "You killed the dark creatures trying to shoot him, but you left me flying alone." Tears are easing down his face.
"I know." Han's voice is shaking. "If I'd had the weapon to shoot what was haunting you, I'd have shot it, a million times over, but I didn't. And trust me, we tried." A flood of images of Han and Chewie looking for any attack they could try against Snoke pour over him, but there was never an attack that they could get in clean on. Never one with a chance of working.
They're in almost the same position as they were on Starkiller. Sitting instead of standing, and Kylo's still holding Waldo, instead of a saber.
Han's looking into his eyes. "And I tried to atone for it. Last thing I ever did was for you." He half smiles, but it's a sad gesture. He leans back, clears his throat, sniffs, and then looks Kylo up and down, and he half-inclines his head. "Rey's done more. Nothing like a pretty girl for that, but… I didn't fail you, not in the end. That was the crack she needed to work her way in."
Kylo can remember Snoke saying that killing Han had ripped his soul apart. He knows that's not actually true. Whatever soul he has or had was more or less the same. It ripped his illusions apart. It let him see that anger wouldn't make things better. It was the first real moment of doubting Snoke. He'd done as he'd been told, proven himself again and again, but the promised relief didn't come. It never came. Test after test after test, and he passed them all, but it never came.
And when Rey was looking up at him, and Snoke was droning on, he knew another kill on his list wouldn't give him peace. It wouldn't let him settle, untroubled into the dark.
Because dark wasn't what Snoke wanted for him.
Snoke wanted evil. And Rey can talk about evil being actions and not people, but… Snoke wanted to turn his dark to evil, he wanted evil soaking through his every muscle and nerve. He wanted evil to define every aspect of his life, because he knew every strike, every hit, every jolt, every pain, all of that just increased his dark.
Raw, untamed power.
And that old fucker was using him as a battery, pulling strength from his torment.
Kylo's a creature of the dark. There's no two ways about that. He always has been dark and always will be dark. It calls to him, and he can feel it burning in his blood and skin anytime a fight gets near or an insult is offered. Dark requires very little effort from him, which isn't true of light.
And so was his father. He spent his whole life dancing between the light and the dark, a lot of it on the dark side of things. Even when he was on the "good" side, he certainly wasn't doing it from a place of calm, serene agape. He was in it for his friends, for his love, for his money, to save his own ass. He fought by and for his attachments, his passions. No high, lofty political goals. No love for the Rebellion or the ideal of Republic. Just his emotions. His hate for the Empire, his love for Chewie, and Leia, his attachment to them.
And if he'd had the chance to go off with him… Kylo wipes his eyes and looks around the Falcon. "I would have been a good scoundrel."
Han half laughs at that, and then nods. "Probably. It's not too late, you can still find out."
Kylo sighs, makes a sound that could almost be called a laugh. "I've kind of got this other job…"
Han smirks at that. "That's your mother." Then he shakes his head… "You are such a mirror. Vader's darkness. Leia's light." He winks. "My good looks."
Kylo rolls his eyes and shakes his head. "Your jokes were always terrible."
Han grins. "Your son will think the same thing about yours." Then he grows more serious. He pats Kylo's face again. "And if the time comes, you'll have learned from my mistakes."
Kylo nods, solemnly this time. "And your sacrifice."
"Good. Unless you want to explain to Finn why you're in here, it's time to get moving. They're breaking up."
Kylo blinks, and Han is gone. He puts Waldo down, and leaves the Falcon, quickly.
Rey's already back in her cottage when he gets there. But she didn't beat him by much. She's only got one boot off.
"Aren't there still three hours left in the thrilling tale of Luke's idiot plan?" he says as he slips in.
She just looks at him.
"Come on, I've heard that story fifty times. Luke's plan gets dumber every time I hear it. 'And then I decided to give the droids to Jabba, because I had the feeling I'd need them there. R2 of course knew what was up, but Threepio was bad with secrets, so I had to keep him in the dark, and…'" He rolls his eyes. "Lando had a plan, too. Get in, get back against the wall with Han, set up a dampening shield, toss the bomb, blow everything up, and then walk away from the rubble with him still frozen, then thaw out nice and easy later. If some bits of him shattered in the explosion, well, the Rebellion had a perfectly good medical cruiser, and Luke was doing fine with a prosthetic arm."
Rey doesn't want to admit that as plans for a rescue goes, it does seem to be an absurdly complicated one. Though… she supposes that Luke may have, just possibly, known what he was talking about when he said not to 'magic' something just for the sake of 'magicking' it. "Rose was half asleep, and the younger kids were getting drowsy. Chewie'll tell the rest of it tomorrow night."
Kylo nods, pulling off his boots and jacket.
Rey's watching him, waiting to see how his part of it had gone.
He doesn't shrug. He does finish taking off his boots and jacket, and snuggles up next to her on the extra-large chair in her main room. For a moment. Then he gets up and grabs the extra blanket from her bed, the one that used to live on his bed. It's getting cooler every day, cooler yet at night, and in his Padme wear, once the jacket is off, he just has trousers and a light shirt.
She stands up, waits for him to get settled, and then snuggles in on his lap, wrapping the blanket around both of them. He's still not talking, so she says, tentatively. "You don't feel angry."
"I don't. Not sure what I feel right now, but not angry."
She rests her head on his shoulder, and he kisses her forehead. He's thinking and feeling, trying to put the last hour or so into some sort of perspective.
"You asked me why I hated him."
She's gently stroking his chest, taking advantage of the v-neck on his shirt to just pet him skin to skin. "I like this. You not covered from chin to toes." She gives him another little stroke, touches the Maji pendant on his chest, and he kisses her, not minding the digression. Some things are easier to go at sideways. But she does get back to the point. "And you said you didn't. I didn't believe you then, and I still don't."
He half inclines his head, and rests his chin against her for a second before saying, "I didn't just hate him. If I'd just hated him… I don't know… Maybe I wouldn't have killed him. Hate is… hot and bright and steady and easy. It just is. It expects nothing and leads to nothing and there's just power and pain."
"Doesn't sound easy to me."
"Probably not." He looks away from her, across this small room to the kitchen table, trying to imagine a future here, with little kids, with the son who thinks his jokes are terrible. He doesn't see it, because the image of a small child, with dark unruly hair, and too much nose, two feet on his foot, arms tight around his knee as he thumps around with him overwhelms it. It doesn't shift, but his perspective does, and he becomes the boy, because he was the boy.
"I wanted to be him when I was little. Before I knew what a Jedi was, or who Uncle Luke was, or why my parents were rarely around. I knew he was the best pilot in the galaxy, and he'd fly around far and fast, and I was going to be just like him."
"I saw that memory. You on his lap, in the Falcon."
He nods. "Yeah." He rubs his face against the top of her head. "It never went away, you know? It's not like one day I said, 'No flying for me, I'll become a Jedi.' I got to work in the Falcon when he was home, but we didn't go joyriding in it. I'd probably been begging for years, and I finally get to fly in the damn thing, but he's dragging me off to Luke, where I don't want to go." He closes his eyes, wincing. When he got upset, he'd blow the power on things, fry the electronics. That's why they never went joyriding, why Han didn't have him up in the air practically before he could walk. He didn't want to risk taking him in a ship unless it was absolutely necessary.
He slumps a bit more as he adds, "And he didn't teach me how to shoot. He was supposed to. He promised to." But, again, don't want to play with guns with the kid who can't be trusted to hold one without hurting you. Not enough control to avoid doing it accidentally. And Ben had lots of accidents. Not wise enough to not do it on purpose. And Ben had a temper that was always simmering away. If someone hit him, emotionally, literally, or metaphorically, he always hit back and hard.
"And we didn't go over how to plot a course without a navi computer. He could do that in his head, you know? If the computer in the Falcon was going too slow, and he needed to get out of there fast, he'd just punch it, finish the calculations while they were in hyperspeed, and update it on the fly, because he could do it." He bites his bottom lip, remembering an argument. "It was so fucking dangerous, and she hated him doing it. Hated him talking about it, even. Didn't want him encouraging me, but… It saved their lives a few times." But Ben never did get good enough at math to do that. To even do it slow, on a pad. Luke didn't teach much math, probably didn't know how to do that sort of calculation himself, and he certainly wasn't messing around with math texts on the Finalizer.
"We didn't get to simple math, like how to figure the price on a trip, taking into account the fuel costs and where you were coming from and going to. Like, you could offer a lower price if you could pick up something worth moving at the end spot, but if it was just a barren rock, the cost had to cover the trip back…"
He stops talking, looking far away, not really seeing the room around them. A million goodbyes, that's what he's seeing, cast over and through the last one.
"You were disappointed?" Rey says, tentatively.
He nods. "Yeah. And envious. He got the life I wanted. He got to fly the skies and go wherever he liked, join whatever he liked, live however he liked. He made his own rules and didn't have to live up to anyone else's expectations."
She hugs him a little tighter.
"I hated Luke. I would have killed Luke if I'd had the chance. For a heartbeat there, I thought I had. That was the best fucking second and a half of that month. I hated Hux, and I ran him through with my lightsaber while holding him up by his neck, and then snapped it with my own hand. I hated M'Gll, and I took her head off the day I left Luke's school. There are more; the list is longer than it should be. And I've given exactly no thought whatsoever about those kills after them.
"Just things I did. Like swatting a fly…" He shrugs a little. "More like scratching an itch. Something that satisfied a need, but wasn't worth a second thought.
"But I still think about killing him, and Snoke."
That she wasn't expecting.
He snorts a little, self-deprecating. "Ben's father and Kylo's. I killed them both. They both disappointed me. They both told me lies about the life I would have with them. They both lived a life I wanted."
She strokes his chest again.
"Hate burns bright and vanishes. Once you're done, you're done." His eyes close, and he curls in against her. She can feel the thought he doesn't give to words. Disappointment is forever. "I would have rather hated him. We'd be done if I'd hated him."
Rey doesn't know what to do with that, and Kylo doesn't either. They spend a moment just sitting. Feeling.
"You're hopeful, and afraid."
He nods. "Tiny little spark of it. Like maybe this time, he won't disappoint me."
"He won't."
"Likely, because I don't need anything from him anymore."
She kisses him, deciding not to call him on the lie.
Well? Chewie asks when the Falcon is quiet and Finn and Rose have gone to bed.
"No new holes in me, so given our track record, I'd say it went well," Han replies, his ghost settling in next to Chewie in the cockpit.
He listens to Chewie's response and says, "Yeah, I know. My expectations are so low they're in danger of melting from the heat of the planet's core. I'm just saying, it could have gone worse."
Chewie snorts at that.
"Look, I'm not asking you to make nice with him. Still, I'm the one he stabbed, and if I can get past it…"
Han nods at Chewie's reply. "Well, yes, I do have more of a vested interest in it than you do."
Chewie sounds off for a long time.
"I know that, too. We did the best we could, with what we knew, and it wasn't enough. Maybe there was nothing that could have been enough. We've known enough drunks over the years to know sometimes you've got to break before you can change. Doesn't mean I don't feel like I should have done more. And this… Maybe there's finally a chance for more."
Chewie doesn't say it; he just looks at Han.
"Yeah, I'd hug you, too, if I could."
Notes:
I've got a lot of thoughts on this one, often shaped by the discourse on the Solo family. So, first of all, everyone was doing the best they could. I've seen so many Han and Leia were shitty parents posts out there, so...
A: Not in my 'verse. They weren't bad; they were *wrong.* They made the gamble, and it backfired spectacularly. I wish I remembered the name of it, but there's a fic out there where Ben has some sort of mental illness, and Leia sends him off to boarding school that treats kids with all sorts of art therapy, but the guy who runs the school, Snoke, is abusing them. I feel like that's a really good read on any real world take on this situation. They sent him to their best chance at getting him help, but the demons they were trying to get him away from followed him there.
B: They're in the middle of an ongoing war. They have legitimate reasons to not be with Ben all the time. Kylo still doesn't quite get that, but we'll get there.
C: Even without Snoke, Ben Solo would have been a difficult child. His own baseline, just based on how sensitive he is and his dark nature, is anxious and depressed. Especially as a kid, this little guy would have needed a lot of gentle petting and coddling and attention, and he just didn't get it. That said, in my 'verse Ben Solo was a legitimately dangerous child to be around.
D: Add in a manipulative psychic-vampire pulling off Ben's pain and power, and that is going to be bad. We don't get a lot of backstory on Snoke, but I'm thinking he's some sort of psy-vamp. (Or whatever the Force equivalent is.) Snoke's untamed power line... Look, no sane ruler wants that. Untamed power is dangerous to you and everyone else. You want tamed and controlled power, lots and lots of it. (i.e. Vader.) The guy who wants untamed power is the guy who's using you as a psychic battery. And from the looks of it, whatever Snoke was teaching Kylo, it wasn't anything to *tame* him.