Rey and Ben walked up the ramp of the Millenium Falcon hand in hand. Ben came to an abrupt halt at the top, everything aboard the old crate was exactly as he remembered it, especially the smell. The smell of the ship was like ozone and grease tumbled together with dirty socks and wookiee sweat. It reminded him of his childhood so much that he could almost hear his father making a snarky comment.
At the thought of his father, Ben's insides twisted painfully.
Rey lifted their joined hands to her mouth and kissed his knuckles. 'I'm sure he would be nothing but proud of you.' She said soothingly into their shared mind.
'I… just need a minute.' He thought and then severed the connection, retreating into his own mind.
Rey watched him, not believing for a second that he was anywhere near as stoic as he appeared on the outside.
Ben knew as soon as he'd caught a whiff of that smell that he wasn't ready for this. He had known that being onboard this ship would hurt, but he hadn't thought it would hurt this much. He could almost feel his father caressing the scarred side of his face as he had done just before he'd fallen. Just after Ben had impaled him with his light saber.
"Why don't you go ahead and get cleaned up?" He suggested aloud. "I'll just… uh… hang around out here."
"Ben," Rey said gently. "You don't have to face this alone. Let me help you."
"I wish you could." He said, his voice hoarse with strong emotion.
"But this is something you need to deal with on your own." She finished for him.
"Yeah." He said trying not to break down and bawl.
"Alright." She said sadly. "I'll give you a few minutes alone, then."
Ben watched her go and felt, once again, like the luckiest man alive. Her understanding helped him to cope with the avalanche of guilt he was buried under.
He wandered over to the bulkhead wall across from the gaming table and pressed the panel that had always opened into his dad's personal liquor cabinet. The wet bar, his dad had called the shallow compartment with tall shelves lined in liquor bottles. The panel slid open with a hiss and he was nearly floored.
Sitting front and center amongst an array of brightly colored bottles was the clear, half-full bottle of Correlian Firewhiskey that Han had been carrying around for over four decades.
It was the bottle from which Ben had had his first taste of alcohol.
It was the middle of the night on his tenth birthday when his dad had smuggled him out of the house on Coruscant and taken him to the Falcon. He'd sat him down at the checkered gaming table then pulled the bottle out and sat down across from him.
"Don't tell your mother." Dad had said with one of his toothy smiles. "Or Chewie... He'll tell Leia on us."
"I wont tell nobody, dad!" He'd promised enthusiastically, thrilled to be sharing a secret with his idol.
"This bottle has been in my family since My great-great-great-grandfather, Hank Solo -did I ever tell you about him?" Dad paused a beat until Ben shook his head.
"No? Oh, well now, he was a real scoundrel." His dad gave him a wicked grin. "He stole this exact bottle from the personal liquor cabinet of Shuus Galadalontos himself."
"Who's Shoes Galalaladuts?" He frowned as his tongue tripped over the name.
"Shuus Galadalontos." His dad repeated the impossible name. "He was head of the Correlian thieve's guild almost two hundred years ago. The greatest thief this galaxy has ever known." The grin on his dad's face was sparkling with pride at his ancestor's daring feat.
"How did he do that?" Intrigued and excited Ben scooted to the edge of his seat.
"He … uh…" Dad looked a little bashful all of a sudden, then cleared his throat. "He was friends with ol' Shuus's wife. He stole it one night when he was sneaking out of Shuus's bedroom."
"Why was he in Shoeses room?" He asked, all innocence and glowing curiousity.
"I'll tell you more about that later." Dad said opening the bottle. "The important thing is… every since Hank stole this bottle, we Solos have had this tradition, you see… when one of us gets to be your age, we set down as father and son and drink a toast to old Hank." Han winked. "Double digits is a big thing to us, you know."
"Double digits?" Ben hadn't heard that expression before.
"Yeah, the big one-oh. You're growing up, kiddo." His dad poured a tiny bit into two little glasses, one for each of them.
"I am?" Ben's heart had swelled with hero-worship for his dad.
"You betcha!" His dad reached across the table and ruffled his hair. "Raise your glass, son, and repeat after me. Ready?"
Ben had eagerly raised his glass and then nodded.
"To Hank! May we be blessed with beautiful girls, fast ships, and good times, if they don't kill us young we'll live forever!" Dad grinned and waited patiently while Ben repeated the toast. Then they touched the rims of their glasses together and Dad threw his drink down his throat in one quick gulp.
Ben tried to copy how his dad had done that, but as soon as the liquid hit his throat he started coughing and hacking and spit the blazing hot drink all over the place.
Dad had laughed and wiped the whiskey off his face. "You're definitely a real Solo now, my boy."
"But, I spit it out!" Ben said, heartbroken.
"That's why we call ourselves Solo… because we only ever get to drink one shot of this, even though we make the same toast with our father and our son." His father had explained, grinning with mischief. "Don't worry, it's way better when you're the dad."
"So I get to be just Ben Solo, now?" Ben had asked, full of hope. He'd never liked being called Ben Organa-Solo.
"If you want," His father said in a warm tone. "But remember, you can't tell your mom about this. So you better think of a good reason to drop the hyphen." He'd warned.
"I will!" Ben said and clapped his hands together happily.
"Remember, kid," His father said more seriously than Ben had ever seen or heard of him being, before or since. "No matter what anyone tells you. No matter what anyone says about Organas or Skywalkers or the Force or whatnot… You'll always be a Solo."
"You mean it? No matter what?" Ben had asked, his little chest bursting with glowing pride.
"No matter what." His dad told him emphatically as he put the lid back on the bottle.
Ben cradled the bottle in his hands and burst into howling sobs.
