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Prologue (In A Galaxy Far, Far Away)
It’s hard to clamber down the ladder to the Gunner Bay with a bottle clenched in his teeth; but he, the bottle, and Kira must all get there without one of them breaking. Unfortunately there’s not enough hands to go around to have the bottle climb itself safely down with them.So he holds it in his teeth, with the closest thing in him left that bows to a form of prayer, as he makes his way down the ladder so they can drink.“Here,” a hand brushes his chest from below. Not intentionally. It's open, fingers splayed. Reaching up in offering.Ben wedges a heel on the rung to ground his position on the ladder as he leans back, glancing dubiously at the hand.Her upper arm is brushing between his legs, but with Kira, what seemed like teasing was really a punch in the face and what constituted actual flirting...was another form of punch in the face.So he doesn’t take it as more than an accident where there is actual contact between her arm and his body.He takes a deep breath around the bottle plugging his mouth shut, hissing and steaming the surface under his lips, and tries not to let himself stiffen at the absent brush of her muscular forearm against his thigh.“You’re more fun with your mouth shut,” she observes, and the bottle almost slips right out of his teeth.Kira’s gotten her footing on the floor.She’s actually trying to help with one thing.And yet no one in his life makes him feel more nervous than his Uncle’s student.He keeps picturing that bottle falling from his mouth and shattering on the grated floor.It’s a tight fit for two in the gunner bay. But they make it work.He tilts his chin down, bottleneck between his teeth, and when they lock eyes in silent communication, he spits it out and she catches the rum in her outstretched hand as it falls. So if he does something stupid, like falling, he at least won’t break any teeth on the glass.By the time she steps away, procured rum in her fist, there’s no threat of falling at all.The show of trust between them leaves him a little numb and stupid. Blinking more than he should.Ben Solo swallows as he takes a few more steps down the ladder and in the tight quarters he knows if he manages a step back he’d be leaning himself against Kira.He hears the sound of uncorking as he finishes his descent. Kira is curled up on the rounded viewport. Typical; he gets the chair, she gets the view.She’s punchier at seventeen than she ever was before; it doesn’t seem possible, but it flowers from her like a patch of brassvine briars in the yard that never got trimmed down after his father stopped coming home. It took up half the lawn by the time Ben stopped coming home. He thought of it often when he came back to Kira, the last time he saw that shrub. Spiralling and growing thorns and thickening the jagged bark at the trunk.All of this was a sign of health, yet chaos.His mother grunted into her caf when he commented on it.“Just leave it be. Let it turn into what it wants to,” she chuckled dryly. “Stubborn thing. I kind of like it the way that it is.”He’s grown his own set of brambles, and she’s lounging across the half-moon viewport of his ship’s gunner bay right now, drinking his rum like she owns the place.Kira’s still compensating for all the freckles with a constant, curdling kind of glare, even while drinking, even lit by a lilac moon that has her coiled muscles draped in mysterious purple shadow.At seventeen.Her birthday.“Now that you’ve kidnapped me,” she’s feigning that clumsy indifference again by not looking at him. Imperceptible shyness flutters across that face.He knows that face better than his own.She hands him the bottle. It’s wet at the neck from his spit, his mouth-grip on it from the descent, that her fingers haven’t wiped that away. It’s wet at the mouth from her lips, her sip, and he presses it eagerly to his tongue as he too takes his first pull from the shared libation.“How are you going to explain to your Uncle why you didn’t take me straight back?”“How are you going to explain to Luke that you picked the drinking for tonight’s plans?For her birthday. The one she chose for herself, not knowing the real one.They are both too shy, or raw, to acknowledge that it was the day he found her on Jakku and brought her to Luke. The first one she could record in a ship log.The first day Kira was real to anyone other than herself.“Hmm,” and she looks at the moon instead of answering, close enough to look like a stretch of sky in front of the viewport instead of a mass of rock in front of them.Her profile is growing more regal.Her hand reaches out for the bottle. He stills on a third sip in as many minutes.Oh. So this is sharing.He passes it to her.Running into a friend in the Outer Rim is a rare occasion, even rarer as a smuggler.Maybe even rarer for a Jedi Padawan on a mission without a Master anywhere in sight.
“Luke isn’t overbearing...” Kira tried to explain, her chin on his shoulder, her arms around his waist, while he toyed with an issue with the engine too high above her head to reach. She offered to climb up and see, and her arms strayed around his waist to attempt the effort; but when he insisted on fixing it on his own, her arms didn’t leave him.
Distracted, they spoke then of the education he was not receiving, and she took in his place.
"...It’s harder than that. When we don’t agree, or I defy him...it’s like he drops me.”
A few sparks singed his cheek as he made a wrong move with the wires. She watched sagely, a hand flying up and untangling his mess before more serious burns were inflicted.
He's busy cradling his singed cheek, shielding his precious scruff, while patient, slender fingers coax the sparking nest apart. He expected to smell burned skin from the hand above his head. But she didn't flinch away like he did.
“Drops you?” he remembered aloud.
“If I argue. He doesn’t punish me, or explain himself. He just dares me to make it on my own. Follow my hunches. And fail. And it’s...humiliating. To have him not trust me to explain the whole truth instead of having me blaze off alone to try and prove him wrong with half the information.”
“How’s old Luke doing?”Kira’s nostrils flare. A tell if she ever had one -she didn’t need one, she told just as easily from her own sharp tongue- and he straightened in his gunner seat, curious.“I don’t know why you build a school when you’re not going to offer guidance. It feels impossible to build anything from his teachings. It’s all about what the force isn’t; how I’m using it wrong.”Ben snickers.“Some things never change. He tried all the ‘find the answer inside yourself’ bantha shit on me when I was a kid. I punched him.”Kira snorts, coughing on the sip she was taking.Her laugh fills the small bay. Lavender and rum. That was her seventeenth birthday.His was a strange itch on his jaw from his new facial hair sprouting in, ignoring comms from his mother, clambering through the Falcon to search every nook and cranny for a guide on how to be its captain.He never found that.“You punched Jedi Master Luke Skywalker?”“He was a guest in his sister’s home at the time,” Ben grumbles, but Kira has dissolved into appreciate laughter that puffs his chest up with a little more bravado than the tension that usually weaves into the memory. “And my father said he deserved it, trying to get in my head like that. I always took after my father. Could do more with a blaster or a good punch than a laser sword.”
“I can do more with a lightsaber than you cou-”
She deflates when she sees him crack a smile at her hastily-triggered competitive side.“Hmm,” she says instead, a glare slowly creeping across her features.“You hate it? School?”Her head bows.“I’m not supposed to hate anything.”“But you’ll find that things can go on normally even when you do.”Ben leans back in his chair. She’s staring intently at her knees.Picking at her plain civilian clothes.His heart almost stopped when he saw her. The little Jedi girl, not so little and not dressed like a Jedi anymore. Far from her new home and in need of a lift.He is struck with the profoundness of luck; that it got to be him both times.“If you don’t like it,” he leans forward and awkwardly puts a hand on her knee. Her nostrils flare to see his fingers dwarf her muscular thigh. This does feel odd for him. The strangeness. He’d managed to secure a satisfactory sexual encounter with two Bothans on a planet that had outlawed speech for a thousand years.(Ben did not know their verdict on pleasured moaning; but luckily none of them got caught).If he knew something; it was touch.Yet here he was, patting her knee like he didn’t know how to talk to a human.Her leg is stiff like she’s trying to walk off a sprain.And he just...keeps patting.Stupidly.Her bright eyes stare at him.He lifts his hand off, fingers splayed like he too was burned, and he withdraws to his gunner seat. They’re both awkwardly silent for a moment.Like it was new.“If you don’t like it...I’ve been thinking about taking on some more crew.”She groans.“Yeah, Official Falcon Bedwarmer, I’m sure.”“Honest,” but even he grins. “Bed’s pretty cold, though.”She kicks him, but her face twists in a grin as she takes a sip from the bottle.“You’re a scoundrel, Ben Solo.”But the lightness of the word on her tongue implied...that she liked it.She never took him up on this.It wasn’t the first time he offered.It wouldn’t be the last.
A long Time Ago (Three Years Earlier...)
“I’ve done some calculations...with the amount of food you eat, you’re burning more calories than you consume whenever you do that. Save your energy; or you’ll waste away here.”She ignores them; because they don’t know what they’re talking about.Strength isn’t just about food.Her hands knock against the training bag; the newest one. She’d chanced upon a dead luggabeast on a dune a few weeks ago and was able to strip enough leather for a humanoid-sized lump that she packed with wadding rags and sand. Her stitches weren’t as tight this time around -it’ll pop a few seams quicker than the last one did and was already leaking sand with every strike- but the state of the last one was unusable so this one would have to work for a while.And it took a punch in a way that filled her belly with satisfaction more than food ever could.Kira always has energy to punch something.“Save your energy, kid, you’re starting to look like a cricket. All legs and joints.”That stung. She was trying to build up her body, and she was only getting more wiry. Her next swing exerts so much force she falls into the bag dangling outside her scavenger home. It was too much momentum to pull herself back from. It was all of herself.She straightens her chin as the observer, a crusty-voiced Teedo, laughs at her bad swing. Her teeth grit, and there’s that bitter roll of sand over her tongue that has become instinctual. One’s mouth was never truly empty on Jakku. Sand always had a way of getting in.“Keep it up and the next punching bag is going to you strung up from one of these chains. Your stuffing falling out. Alive.” The Teedo merely laughs at her again, clicking the alive luggabeast it is perched on to keep walking through the dunes.That used to be her biggest fear. That she’d overwork herself: and wasted herself into nothing. That wasn’t even a death.She never pictured a corpse.She just pictured herself growing less and less corporeal, until she could slip through the particles of dry Jakku air like she never existed at all.No corpse left behind to remember her by.That fear couldn’t fill her days for long. That every punch she sent out in her rage, to feel seen, further wasted her away. It had take fourteen years to make herself since her birth. How many would it take to tear herself away?There was enough rage in her that if that was the case, it would not take long for her to vanish into the sand.She tried to build herself up. With muscle over the bone. She hardened, she gouged. She looked the same in her wraps, but underneath was a strong core that rattled like a kyber crystal in a unstable saber chamber. Hissing, spitting sparks.With a clenched jaw, she lowers the bag down from the hook so she can make some repair stitches before bed.She actually mourns how exhausted she feels. She might pass out before she can thread a needle.She may miss it.
There is power in you, Kira. You are stronger than you know.
The first time she heard it she didn’t sleep the whole night.Voices filled her head often on Jakku, but she knew them to be the conjuring trick that they were. It was only wishful thinking to believe someone was on the other end of her conversations.To get through the monotony; sometimes she would talk to her parents about her day, as it was happening, like she was recounting it over dinner.
The wound had a little rust along the broken skin, but I stitched it up good. I don’t think it’s getting more swollen, but maybe I should check in the morning? There’s that vial of bacta on the shelf, but I wasn’t sure I needed to dip into yet-
Kira would find her lips moving as she worked. Almost talking. And her mother would be nodding, in her head, unfurling her hand to wind the bandages free and check.Another pair of eyes on her problems was a fantasy.And the voice she heard at night evolved it into a much darker one.She wove between the instincts to shut it out and let it in. Often embracing until avoidance was necessary, her heart beating too fast, her brain addicted to peeling it apart for scraps.Until she just accepted it duly. How she imagined those on other planets would a change in weather.But if she hears the voice tonight or not, so be it.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Actually, Ma, I don’t think there’s anything in this galaxy that I need less than this job,” Ben props his hip on the dash of the Falcon, settling in for another long, drawn-out argument.
Step one was to get comfortable and find something else to focus on.
He scratches his nails through his stubble, barely awake, and feeling barely
alive
from the comm he has to field from his concerned mother.
Who has a task for him.
Her firm voice rumbles with frustration before any words come out. His mother is fearsome; evidenced by the literal growl she gives him when he tries to reject her orders.
“Luke needs all the help he can get. Take this as a gesture of mutual good graces now that you’re tearing around the galaxy committing felony-level trade law infractions. Or a down payment for the next time I have to stop someone from setting the dogs on you when you’re in this star system.”
As she speaks, he continues to strum his growing facial hair. It’s been coming in for the past several months, he’s not passed his eyes across a mirror in a few weeks but it
feels
fuller. A symptom of his liberation; he hasn’t shaved since he was sixteen, and the progress is slower than he’d like.
But with the thickening patch on his chin, he does feel he’s signaling his own split from his past by growing into a different face. He’s prouder of what it represents than what it is.
It represents total freedom.
“I don’t need your handouts,” he glares out at the stars surrounding them, like she’s got those dogs on leashes hidden behind the small moon in the distance, “I’ve been keeping out of trouble on my own.”
Leia laughs, dryly, a little mockingly: her control was tight and her reach was seemingly infinite. Escaping his mother was harder than any other means of the law.
“Not out of trouble. Out of consequences. They’ll catch up with you eventually. And who do you think had a hand in you avoiding them for this long?”
He holds back a curse.
She
would
take credit for his successful, self-run business. He’s been striking out on his own for months.
So she occasionally pulled some strings.
That was only for the trouble that she
knew
about.
“I don’t want to see the school. I don’t want a strategic little tour of the Jedi Training Facilities after spending a voyage across the galaxy back from Jakku, that
pit,
building up a little kid to the idea of attending it so you and your brother have me trying to frame it as a positive to lure me back to my roots-”
“Ben-”
“I don’t want to haul the Falcon out to Jakku in the first place, just because no one can spare a charter to a little force-sensitive brat on that nowhere, nothing little planet-”
“Ben.”
His mother sounds tired.
“Consider this child the one taking your place in the school. Can you do that? Get her there in one piece. Please. Just fix this one loose end.”
“So I have to offer transport to the kid who got my spot, the one I didn’t even want?”
The dice on the dash catch the light of a passing freighter.
He’s stopped at this moon, faking some routine engine checks, until someone boards, accepts three crates that keep hissing at him onto their own shuttle, and then transfers him the credits.
But right now, he’s killing time waiting for that to happen, arguing with his mother, and killing any sense of his feeling of accomplishment or excitement for the cargo he’s smuggled here.
His father was never dealing with with the Kanjiklub successfully. Not on this scale.
Ben Solo will make his fortune, and quite possibly meet his death, in half the time.
"Sentients aren't cargo," he said in a low tone.
Leia actually snorted at him.
"Then consider yourself a driver. That's what your father called it. He never got involved in his own supply. You're just moving it."
The mention of his father sobers them both for a tense, silent pause.
“It’s a job,” Leia says finally, “like any other. Pick up the kid and drop her off at the location. I’ll transfer you the credits. You’re only rejecting on principle; and smuggler’s don’t have principles.”
Those dice glint again.
He bites his lower lip.
“I don’t ever want to hear about Jedi school again,” he warns. “From here on out. This kid is your surrogate Jedi Child. Pin up its report card on the food synthesizer. Have it take obligatory calls from you. I’m through. You’ve got your replacement.”
Leia’s silence, above all, is the saddest response she could have.
He bites back guilt at her disappointment. Trying to think of the amount of open space he has for his getaway. How fast he could accelerate the Falcon if all goes well. It could get up to 3,000 Gs, his dad used to say.
“It’s not about replacing you,” her voice is pained, “that can’t be done. But it is about righting a wrong. Balancing out your absence.”
“That’s what a replacement is, Ma.”
But a light flashes red in the cockpit. He freezes.
Someone’s boarding the ship.
He glances at the time listed on the dash.
A little early.
That’s never good.
He picks up his blaster, his jaw clenched.
“Send me the coordinates. I’m finishing up a sale.”
There's a static chunk taken out of his mother's reply when the interference with the comm goes wacky.
“Sounds m/or/e like a robbery.”
“I’ll pick her up on my way. I’m charging my usual fee. No family discounts.”
“Ah. A usual fee. How nice to have a point of reference for a receipt of some of your profiteering.”
He hangs up, feeling the ship jolt with the unexpected passenger.
With an annoyed glare, he knows it’s a waste of effort to walk over to the dash.
He raises his hand instead.
Ben doesn’t like to do this. These powers are a chain on his soul for the rest of his life; no one in his family will let go of him until he accepts their legacy, their training, to be just like the uncle he barely knows.
Ben wasn’t one for robes, or ancient texts.
He likes the practical use of his powers. When they’re
his
powers. Not when they’re this interconnected
Force
that he’s guilted to balance the light and dark of, the glorious purpose of it all, committing to martyrdom just to move some rocks without touching them.
That’s a lot of commitment for him.
He lifts his father’s dice off the dash with his powers, and stuffs them in their off-ship hiding spot in the pocket of his vest before drawing his blaster.
He never faces a fight without them.
For luck.