Work Text:
“Nothing says ‘sorry I tortured you and violated your mind’ quite like chocolate chip cookies,” Poe says.
Ben notes, with chagrin, that he sounds extremely sarcastic.
“Speak for yourself,” Finn answers. “These aren’t just any chocolate chip cookies, my friend! Have you noticed the gooey center?”
At least someone appreciates Ben’s baking skills.
Poe, however, is determined not to be impressed. Though, judging from the crunching noises, he’s still plenty happy to eat the cookies.
Hypocrite that he is, he says to Finn, “One, you grew up eating nutrigel cubes. You think everything tastes amazing. And two, why did you get chocolate chip cookies? What did Kylo Ben even do to you?”
“Uh, lead an empire that stole me from my family, erased my personality, and used me as a weapon?” Finn asks.
Ben wants to point out that he never wanted to create an army of brainwashed child soldiers -- that was Hux’s project -- but somehow he doesn’t think that Finn and Poe would be open to such a nuanced view of his role in the First Order. And anyway, he’d have to give up his eavesdropping position.
“Touche,” Poe concedes. “But I still maintain that chocolate chip cookies are not a sufficient apology for evil.”
Fine, Ben thinks. I’ll just have to try harder.
***
Visiting Maz Kanata is frankly the hardest thing he’s done in, well, ever. He would rather crawl broken and bleeding out of yet another not-quite-bottomless pit to face Palpatine than stare into her all-knowing eyes. He could handle rage; he deserves it, even. He’d steeled himself against her disappointment. It could be no worse than what he already felt for himself. But he’d never expected her complete and total silence.
He says, finally, “You’re a woman of business, and I have the credits. Can you get me the galaxy’s best chocolate chips?”
“For you, seventy percent up front.” She doesn’t bother to adjust her multi-lenses, as if he’s not worth even looking at.
“Fifty is standard,” Ben shoots back. He’d come prepared to negotiate. It’s what you do in a wretched hive of scum and villainy, after all.
“Make it eighty.” Maz’s baleful stare is unnerving, worse than Snoke’s, honestly.
Ben curls his hand over his bag of credits. “Handmade by culinary droids in climate controlled facilities. You promise?”
She tilts her head inquiringly, as if daring him to repeat the request. Ben slides the bag across the counter with a sigh.
“Fine, take it all upfront. I’ll see you in two weeks’ time.”
He slides away from the bar, his pockets disconcertingly light. It’s fine, he tells himself. He’d made a killing selling scrap from Exogol, and there’s plenty more where it came from. Even if scavenging is beneath him.
***
Rey, at least, is more than happy to exchange food for forgiveness. He’d brought her pastries from across the galaxy, home baked bread, exotic melons, steaks that are exquisitely seared on the outside and still red and bloody on the inside. But her favorite by far were the dark leafy greens, lightly charred in a smoking hot skillet, dressed with the barest hint of citra juice. That had made her kiss him.
But this week, the greens have a rival: ice. Since discovering her obsession, he’s brought her shaved ice and crushed ice topped with sweet syrups. He’d sneaked into the fab lab at night to print 3D molds for spheres and pyramids and gigantic cubes, each of which had thrilled her more than the last.
The next morning, a warning sign had gone up about misuse of extremely limited government resources. He took it down before Rey saw. At least, he thinks he took it down before she saw. Or, at any rate, she hasn’t said anything, so she’s not entirely opposed to minor embezzlement for personal pleasure.
Next time, he’ll remember to wipe the memory banks when he’s done.
Tonight he has the best gift of all, a single block of shimmering ice, perfectly clear, not a single bubble or imperfection.
Rey gasps when he slides it out of the cooler, and he thinks he absolutely, positively does not deserve to be here, watching her eyes light up with wonder. But Rey absolutely, positively deserves to have wonderful things, and if he’s the one who can provide them… It’s a moral dilemma for the ages. At some point, he’ll die (again) and the Force can sort it out. Right now, he’s staying to watch her lick her lips.
“How did you make this?” she asks, and listens gleefully to his long explanation about uniform cooling temperatures and correctly insulated containers.
Ben can’t remember anytime in his entire life, as Ben Solo or Kylo Ren, when anyone’s been nearly so interested in everything he loves: mechanics, flying, building unnecessarily complicated contraptions for tasks that aren’t actually important. She’s never once told him to shut up, only launched into equally long and passionate explanations of her own.
Except now she’s saying, “So I could do this in my kitchen? If I just get an insulated carrier box?”
That is completely, totally not the right outcome of this conversation.
He says, “You could, but there’s no need. I can bring you all the ice you want.”
“You’re going to keep doing this?” she asks, eyes wide.
“Absolutely,” Ben says. “Once a week. I mean, at least. More if you want it.”
If he’d thought Rey’s eyes had lit up before, now they’re positively incandescent. She seizes a mallet from a pile of tools on her workbench and cracks off a long, decadent piece. He hadn’t realized until then that she’d been planning to save it, calculating out exactly how long she could make it last.
Now she’s leaning back in her chair, sliding the ice slowly back and forth between her lips. He wants to watch, and he thinks she intends for him to, but for some reason, he can’t get Poe Dameron out of his mind.
“You accepted my apology. Why won’t Poe?” he bursts out.
He probably ruined the moment, but Rey doesn’t look ruffled. She says, “Have you tried apologizing with words instead of cookies?” Her own words are distorted around the massive hunk of ice.
“Why would he want words from me? I lie all the time.” Wait. That’s the wrong impression. He amends, “I used to lie all the time, I mean. Not anymore, but a lot before.”
That in itself is a lie, but he’s working on it.
“Look, that’s what Poe thinks is valuable.” Rey deposits the ice chunk carefully into her drink. “Finn cares about the cookies because storm troopers only ever got nutrigel. And you did all this research to figure out that water is a ceremonial gift on Jakku. And ice, well, that’s unheard of. I could rule the planet with this!”
She gestures at the block of ice on the worktop, and Ben almost says do you want to?, but he catches himself in time. Conquering planets is a thing of the past.
Instead, he says, “There was no research, Rey. I just know you. I wanted you to have something you would love.”
“Which is exactly my point,” she says. “Poe loves words, and that’s what you should give him.”
She holds out her hand, and when Ben takes it uncertainly, she stands up, spins around, shoves him into her chair and climbs into his lap. This outcome is, honestly, beyond his wildest dreams, and he can’t help but ask, “What did I do to deserve this?”
It’s an out, really, an opportunity for her to say that he doesn’t deserve it, leave the gift and please go. Instead, she says, “You cared enough to figure out what I love.”
***
If Rey says Poe wants words, Ben believes her, but he brings a fresh batch of cookies just in case. Maz had gotten the artisanal chocolate chips in, and he’s not about to let the effort -- or his credits -- go to waste.
Poe opens the door when Ben rings the chime, but he doesn’t invite him in, which is fair, because honestly, Ben doesn’t care to be alone in a room with himself either.
Ben grits his teeth. Nobody’s in the corridor -- it’s too late for that -- but just the thought that there could be a witness grates on his nerves. Poe knows that too. It’s why he won’t open the door far enough to let Ben in.
Well, never let it be said that Ben doesn’t admire a bit of petty revenge.
He says, “I owe you an apology.”
Poe’s blaster is in Ben’s face so fast he probably couldn’t have blocked it, even if he’d seen it coming.
“Give me one good reason not to kill you.”
“At this distance, it’ll make a terrible mess,” Ben says, always too much of a smartass for his own good. “Let me back up a little. Against the wall, at least.”
Poe’s sneer is ugly, his eyes as dark as any Knight of Ren. “Have lots of experience with this, do you?”
“Not with a blaster, no.” Gods, why doesn’t he know when to shut up? He really is his father’s son.
He hears the soft snick of the safety clicking off, and he nods at Poe. “It’s okay,” he says. “If you want to, go ahead.”
Who could imagine his life would end this way, standing in an anonymous corridor with a plate of cookies, about to be shot by the man who was once his best and only friend? He relaxes his body, muscle by muscle, joint by joint, the way Uncle Luke had taught him so long ago. It really is okay if he dies right here, right now. He doesn’t know why the Force brought him back, but if it’s so Poe can gain some measure of peace by shooting him, that’s fair. He pushes aside the things he wants to think about -- Rey’s body against his, the final caress of his mother’s mind -- and forces himself to remember the faces of the beings he’s killed. That’s what he deserves to die thinking about.
The blaster shudders against his forehead. Ben closes his eyes so Poe won’t have to look at him when he pulls the trigger. And then, suddenly, the pressure of the muzzle disappears.
Ben opens his eyes again. Poe’s standing in front of him, breathing hard.
“Why not?” he blurts. “You deserve revenge.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not you. And I don’t plan to be.”
Ben nods. Living is the greater punishment; he supposes that’s why he was returned to this world. With nothing else to say, he holds out the plate of cookies one more time. It really is the best and only thing he has to offer.
Poe sighs. “Whatever. Leave them. I’ll give them to the squad tomorrow. Don’t come here again.”
***
Rey says, “What are we making for your mother’s name day?”
Ben blinks. He hadn’t known it was coming. Well, that’s not entirely true. It’s more like he suppressed the knowledge, the same way he had suppressed many other unpleasant and inconvenient truths. Master Luke -- Uncle Luke -- always said that fear, anger, and hate were of the dark side, but so’s denial. In fact, the dark side is built on it.
“I assumed we’d make her favorite meal,” Rey says. She frowns. “I just don’t know what it is. Was.”
Right. He’s been apologizing to everyone else with food, so it follows that he’ll make food for all the apologies he can’t give. Sorry you depleted your life force turning me to the light. Sorry I blew up another one of your home planets. Sorry about that time I joined a genocidal totalitarian regime and repeatedly attempted to kill everyone you loved, sometimes with great success.
He says, “She loved frozen food. And military rations.”
“Well, we’re not leaving that on an altar,” Rey says. Apparently she’s been researching Alderaanian funerary customs. “Anyway, are you sure that’s what she liked to eat? Or just what was convenient?”
Ben clenches his jaw against a surge of anger. She had liked the military rations; she’d said they reminded her of a simpler time in her life. When he was a child, he understood that to mean “life was easier before you were around.” Now he can see that war is simpler than peace, but it’s not the sort of truth to share with a seven-year-old.
But the important truth -- and he really is trying to be more honest, with himself and others -- is that he doesn’t want to remember the rest of the food, because then he’ll have to remember the person who taught him to cook it.
Also, he’s going to have to build an altar.
Shit.
***
Rey shows up at 0800 hours on his mother’s name day, looking impossibly bright eyed on a day that Ben expected would make her sad. He’d steeled himself for it, made himself ready to comfort someone grieving the death of a person he technically killed.
She says, eagerly, “I’ve never gotten to do this before.”
“What?” Ben genuinely has no idea what she’s on about. Usually, not being able to keep up with a conversation makes him angry. With Rey, it makes his heart beat faster. Maybe he’s making progress.
“A memorial,” she says, sighing contentedly. “On Jakku, you couldn’t really stop for that sort of thing. No work, no food, no water, you know?”
She looks at Ben expectantly, like he really does know, even though he decidedly does not.
With nothing else to say, he points to the corner of his room, beneath the dingy window. “I finished the altar. Unless there’s something you’d like to add.”
Assembling it had been difficult. Few of his mother’s possessions survived. Those that had did not belong to him. In the end, he’d printed her dissertations on flimsy: the original one, in biochem, that she’d gotten because anything else would have landed her in an internment camp in the Imperial days, and the political science one she’d actually wanted, which she’d started almost as soon as she was elected Senator.
To that, he’d added a small personal comm link, the only one of his mother’s belongings that had been returned to him. She’d programmed it when he was five, a promise that no matter where she was, he would always be able to reach her. Judging from the mismatched parts, it had been smashed and repaired at least once, possibly more.
Poe Dameron had brought it to him, possibly as an act of revenge. “I told her to get rid of it, but she never would,” he’d said, dropping it into Ben’s hand. His jaw clenched. “She never gave up on you, you know.”
“I do know,” he’d said, but by the time the words worked their way out of his mouth, Poe was gone.
Rey surveys the Alderaanian cloths he’d draped over the table, looking satisfied. They aren’t originals, of course; Ben hadn’t had time for that sort of hunt -- he doubted he’d find anyone willing to sell him valuable Alderaanian antiques anyway -- but the prints are back in style again, and replicas had been easy to find.
He hears a soft click, and a holoprojector illuminates the table with images of his mother surrounded by her other, better children: Rey and Poe and Finn and Kaydel and Rose, and others he doesn’t even know. Ben has no family holos, of course. Snoke hadn’t actually made him delete them. In time, when my apprentice is ready, he’d said. And of course, Ben had done it, ready or not.
This, obviously, is not Rey’s problem, so he shoves his head into the chiller before he does anything untoward. There isn’t much to organize, not for this meal, but he does his best to maintain a credible veneer of rustling through the vegetable drawer and rearranging his carefully frozen sauce cubes.
Rey’s head pops under his shoulder a few minutes later, and her smile fades at the sight of the nearly barren shelves.
“Where is everything? I thought you would make something nice.”
Ben clenches his jaw so hard he actually hears his teeth click. Rey probably hears it too. He’d really, really like to smash something right now, but he forces himself to breathe instead. If he smashes things, Rey will leave, possibly forever. This is not the desired outcome.
“She didn’t like fancy food. She didn’t object to it, obviously, but it didn’t make her feel --” he has to swallow hard to get the word out -- “loved. It didn’t make her feel loved.”
Rey frowns and tilts her head. “Why not?”
Ben bites back a laugh. Of course food makes Rey feel loved, the fancier the better. Not because she’s a picky person, but because she can see the effort and abundance that goes into it. That’s why Ben’s been making her all sorts of gourmet meals. Well, that and he’s naturally inclined toward being showy.
“She was born a princess, and then she was a Senator. People made her nice meals because they wanted something from her, or because they thought she expected it. An ordinary meal meant she was home, with people who weren’t trying to impress her.” The tightness in his chest eases, at least a little bit. He had known her. Not the way he should have, fighting alongside her till the end, but he still knew things about her that no one else did.
He’d skipped the posh, climate controlled section of the market in favor of the clapboard stalls outside, where he’d bartered for cheap bantha steaks that wouldn’t taste good unless he coated them with crispy crumbs and covered them with creamy gravy. This was his father’s cooking, the sort of thing you could buy at a cheap cantina, but served with the bravado of a waiter at a five diamond restaurant on Canto Bight.
“This was the last meal that Han Solo --”
No, wrong name. Try again.
“The last meal my father --”
Keep trying, use the name he had wanted to be called.
“My dad made for my mother’s name day. When we were a family, I mean.”
Say the rest of it out loud. Don’t brood silently and smash things.
“They -- we -- always got along on name days, holidays, things like that. I thought it meant we were fake, but now I think it was love.”
He clears his throat, looks up at the ceiling, counts to five.
When he trusts himself to speak normally again, he says, “Anyway, I’ve decided not to boil the space carrots within an inch of their lives. It’s just criminal. Maybe a glaze or something.”
At last, he hazards a glance at Rey. He’s not sure what he expected -- anger, maybe, about the life he’d thrown away -- but it’s not the naked longing radiating from her face.
“Tell me more about your family.”
It’s not a request. It’s a demand, and Ben complies. However much it hurts.
***
Rey had used the word we a lot when she talked about celebrating his mother’s name day, but somehow Ben hadn’t realized she meant they would actually cook together.
“It’s not necessary,” he protests. “I can take care of it.”
Rey gives him a look that he remembers from the field of battle, one that clearly says she intends to kick his ass, no matter how untrained or inexperienced she may be.
“Are you saying I’m not good enough?” she asks.
Ben backpedals quickly. “I don’t recall that belief ever working out well for me.” He shrugs, like it’s no big deal, even though it had driven him mad. “I only wanted to spare you the effort.”
Rey gives him another you’re-an-idiot glare. “She didn’t spare any effort for me, and I don’t intend to spare any effort for her.”
“Right,” he says, pulling her back from the stove before she throws one of the steaks into the cold, ungreased skillet. “The trick is to heat up the skillet first, then the oil, then you put the steak in.”
He braces himself for an argument, or a barrage of follow-up questions that amount to are you really sure you know what you’re doing?, but Rey nods silently, her gaze steely and focused. Evidently, she’s determined to learn, and fast.
Ben wisely doesn’t admit he’s sorry to teach her. He’s under no illusion that Rey has any reason to tolerate his presence in her life, but he figures she’s enough of a hustler to use him for food and ice and -- if he’s lucky -- a variety of physical pleasures. If she can cook on her own, his time with her will be shorter than he’d hoped.
“What now?” she asks -- well, demands, judging from the tone of her voice.
Not wanting to reveal his reluctance, he shows her how water droplets dance across the surface of a perfectly heated skillet.
“Do it again,” she commands, and Ben thinks he will never tire of her constant hunger for new experiences, and the way her eyes light up when she finds them.
He realizes suddenly how long it’s been since he taught anyone anything, and he’s missed it. Cooking is trivial, he supposes, compared to the arts of the Force, but also far less likely to unleash evil across the galaxy.
“High heat will make the outside crispy,” he says, sliding the first steak into the skillet. Now he’s enjoying himself, even if these cooking lessons mean Rey won’t need him much longer.
“Got it,” she says with a businesslike nod and ratchets the burner up to the max.
“Crispy, not burnt,” Ben adjusts the heat back to a more sensible medium high. “If the oil smokes, it’s too hot.”
He makes a mental note that she’s the kind of student who likes to take everything to the highest extreme. Next time, he’ll do a better job explaining the middle ground. He doesn’t think Rey would take it well if she ruined a piece of food -- or she’d just make them both eat it anyway, and he doesn’t much care for his food to be coated with actual ashes.
“Stop,” he says as Rey approaches the skillet with a spatula in her hand and a determined look in her eye. “We flip the steak once. If you can’t leave it alone, do something else.”
He starts whisking a vinaigrette for the greens, keeping a wary eye on Rey in case she tries to molest the steak again. If he were really following his father’s tradition, he would’ve bought a bottle of dressing at the market, but it tastes like chemicals, and anything pre-made is stupidly expensive these days, now that the hyperlanes are choked with the rubble of First Order ships. Rey, meanwhile, is carving a citra fruit into an elaborate garnish that doesn’t go with the humble meal -- but then, putting a rose on a plate of cantina food is exactly the sort of the thing Han Solo would’ve done.
When the steak and all the side dishes are done, Rey deposits the first plate on the altar with a wide grin and pulls Ben toward his rickety dining table, where two fresh glasses of Corellian brandy are waiting -- also obtained from Maz Kanata, with even more discomfort than the chocolate chips, but she’s still a business woman, and he still has the credits, so they’d tolerated one another long enough to get the transaction done.
Objectively, it’s an excellent meal: the crumb coating on the steak is perfectly crisp, the gravy is free of lumps, and the space carrots are tender without being mushy. Rey’s feet bump against his under the table, and he knows from her grin that it’s not an accident.
But he feels twitchy, like little pinpricks of lightning are running under his skin -- a sensation he knows well, thanks to Snoke’s favorite disciplinary tactic.
Finally, he stands up and takes the plate off the altar. “This doesn’t belong here.”
Rey huffs indignantly. “Why? Because we don’t have real candles? I read the funerary rights myself! Flashlights are an acceptable substitute in the modern era!”
“Come on.” Ben jerks his head toward the door. “Follow me.”
There’s a beggar woman around the corner, camped under the tree near the hangar bay. She’s one of dozens who mill around the base, homeless after the many battles to wrest this planet from the last remnants of the Order. So really, Ben could’ve taken the plate almost anywhere, but he picks this woman because she hisses I know who you are every time he walks past. He’s not sure if he wronged her personally, or just in the general sense that he wronged every sentient being in the galaxy, but she’s calling him on it, so he figures he owes her an apology.
“Who’s that?” Rey asks after he’s handed over the food.
He shrugs. “I don’t know, but my mother wouldn’t have wanted food to go to waste.”
Rey nods approvingly. “Excellent. We’ll do this every week then.”
***
Ben’s getting twitchy again.
The last few weeks have settled into a routine: cookies for Finn and ice for Rey, meals for assorted people in need, illicit repair work on Black Squadron’s X-wings, and regular debriefings with the Navy, whose questions about the Order are seemingly inexhaustible.
He’s apologized to everyone in his immediate proximity, so really, he ought to be sleeping better at night.
Well, that’s not quite true, and he really is working on being more honest. It’s work that will never end.
Today’s truth is that he hasn’t apologized to Han Solo. He hasn’t apologized to his dad.
Never mind that it will be purely symbolic. That hadn’t stopped him from building the altar for his mother, or from taking food to beggars in her name. What is owed to one parent is owed to the other.
He’ll just have to grit his teeth -- literally, he finds the sensation stress relieving and has worn through many specialized nightguards -- and visit the Han Solo memorial outside the market.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, and deposits a crate of citra fruit at the statue’s feet. They’ll be gone in minutes, for sure. Probably taken by the urchins that congregate around the square. His father would like that, right?
He doesn’t sleep any better that night.
Okay, so he hadn’t done enough. He goes back the next day with citra fruit and protein powder and ration bars, the sort of thing a hungry person might be able to make an actual meal with. This time, he looks the statue in the face. It’s smiling beatifically, which is frankly disconcerting.
“I’m really very sorry?” he says, but it comes out more like a question. That thing is not his father.
A fight erupts at the statue’s feet as children discover the crates of food.
He’s really, really shit at apologizing. What else is he supposed to do? His father despised his homeworld, believed in no higher power, hated funerals with a vengeance. Unlike his mother, he left behind no easy rituals of remembrance.
***
Ben’s selling scrap on Nevarro the first time he sees a home for decommissioned storm troopers. He supposes he shouldn’t be surprised. Not all of them had shed their conditioning as easily as Finn; some aren’t able to care for themselves without orders, and many of the children in training had no parents to claim them.
He counts his credits, puts back the bare minimum required for his own food and fuel, and spends the rest on supplies for the home. He’d like to tell the market women to just deliver his order, but it’s hard to say how much of it might go missing along the way, and what kind of memorial is that? However much he doesn’t want to, he walks the hoversled to the home himself.
The Sister’s eyes light up when she sees the crates of food and bacta. Pushing back her habit to look up at his face, she exclaims, “Who are you?”
Ben swallows. “Han Solo.”
The Sister frowns. “Come now, don’t be shy! I know he’s dead. Tell us, what’s your name?”
By now, she’s surrounded by a gaggle of children, all looking up at him with wonder and awe. Ben’s heart races as he envisions the headline: Former First Order leader feeds the starving.
But this isn’t about him.
“Poe Dameron,” he says. “Delivering supplies in honor of Han Solo.”
Afterward, he stops at a cheap cantina and orders a bantha steak for lunch. It’s much too chewy, and he closes his eyes and thinks, Thank you for teaching me to salt the meat half an hour before it goes in the pan.
He sleeps a whole four hours that night.
***
Finding the rest of the storm trooper homes takes some sleuthing, but Ben knows where the bases and training centers were, and his patience for HoloNet research had been honed waiting for his mother to come out of trade negotiations and diplomatic meetings. In other words, it’s nearly infinite.
He’d told Rey he wouldn’t be gone very long, but moving makes him feel better, and it’s for a good cause. He doubts she’ll notice his absence much anyway, now that she knows how to cook for herself and he’d left her all the fancy ice molds.
***
On Tatooine, the junk hauler tries to lowball his scrap, which obviously can’t be allowed, since Ben is planning to donate his profits to a nearby wayward storm troopers’ home.
“It’s worth a hundred at least,” he says smoothly.
“Oh, at least,” the hauler echoes, antennae quivering.
“Probably more,” Ben suggests.
The hauler waves his proboscis enthusiastically. “Most likely two hundred.”
“Yes, exactly two hundred,” Ben says, collecting the heavy pouch of credits. That’s twice as much bacta as he could’ve bought before, and is ripping off a thief to help the poor really the dark side?
Yes, says a voice in his mind that sounds suspiciously like Uncle Luke.
Shut up, Ben thinks. I don’t take moral advice from people who tried to kill me. Anyway, this trip is for his dad, and he certainly never had a problem with using whatever tools happened to be on hand to complete the mission.
Be careful, says his mother’s voice and Ben sighs.
He can earn more credits by collecting more scrap; it will just be harder and take longer. With no small quantity of reluctance, he adds laziness and love of convenience to the ever-growing list of character traits that lead to the dark side.
***
He’s starting to get a kick out of visiting the galaxy’s Han Solo memorials. He can really feel his father’s shock and horror at seeing himself transformed into a statue, especially one that’s soaring with shyyyo birds (Tatooine), hugging children (Nevarro), or staring dreamily into the sunset (Kalyps).
“I can burn it down, if you want,” he says, gazing at the monstrosity of Han Solo embracing a flock of street urchins. Nobody answers, of course, but his father’s presence feels closer than it has since that day he and Rey almost stabbed each other to death.
The vague whisper of arson is really an upgrade over that day, now that he thinks of it. Maybe making peace with his dad is a matter of getting close to his memory on occasions that don’t involve near murder. That night, after one too many shots of Corellian brandy, he takes his laser knife and etches Thank you for teaching me to only flip the steak once into the statue’s base. One true thing to go with the false memorial.
After that, it gets to be a habit: scrapping, drinking, etching a memory into the base of some statue.
Thank you for teaching me to look through the sight and not at the target, he writes on a dark night on Tatooine.
Out loud, to no one in particular, he says, “I’m sorry Mother got so angry with you. I had a good time, and you really didn’t know ten-year-olds weren’t supposed to do that kind of thing.”
On Kalyps, he writes, Thank you for showing me how to return to the flight envelope after a single-axis departure from controlled flight. He should add a thank you for using official Naval terminology, because Ben had loved it even though his father hated it, and for showing him the actual math instead of saying something maddening, like “you just have to feel it.” But really, carving an entire paragraph into the base of a statue is pushing it.
So it goes for three weeks, selling scrap, donating the proceeds, and hunting down memorials, until remembering the days his father was present is as easy as remembering the many days he was absent.
***
Ben hadn’t intended to venture into the core, but after all the terrible statues he’s seen, he’s morbidly curious about the new, much more official Rebellion & Resistance Memorial in the Galactic City. It’s still trying to shed its reputation as the old Imperial capital, so only the maker knows what kind of monstrosity they’ve created.
Maybe if he’d read the whole article, and he’d noticed it was carved by Alderaan’s best surviving sculptor, he would’ve known better than to look.
“Fifty credits there are birds and children,” he says to no one in particular as he strides toward the square. Maybe there will be rays of sunshine too.
It takes him a while to get a good look; Coruscant is more crowded than anywhere he’s been lately, and the new memorial had attracted visitors from around the galaxy. The first thing he sees is his mother on the ground, leaning out to fire a blaster in spite of her wounded arm. Her eyes are defiant, but he can see the lines of pain around them. His father is standing above her, staring down in amazement even while his hands are busy yanking wires out of a control panel.
Ben knows this moment, had grown up hearing the story on all those holidays and name days when his parents had suddenly, miraculously gotten along. Endor. The shield generator. The moment when all seemed lost, and his mother killed their would-be captors. I love you. I know. It was practically the family slogan.
Now that he’s standing at the statue’s base, he can really see his parents’ faces, and it’s them: loving, defiant, ready to give their lives fighting evil, and wildly unprepared for an accidental pregnancy. His knees buckle, and quite unexpectedly, he finds himself on the ground.
That’s where he stays, until a member of the local constabulary forces him away.
***
Ben can think of a lot of thank you’s he might etch into the base of his parents’ statue. In hindsight, it was a lucky childhood, though sometimes -- often, if he’s being honest -- a lonely one. But he owes his parents’ unusual marriage for a lot of things: the number of languages he can speak, his ability to blend in at state dinners and shady cantinas, his grasp of small electronics repair and interplanetary economics equations, to name a few.
So, after slightly more than his two customary shots of Corellian brandy, he returns to the statue after dark. Whereupon he quickly discovers that carving his personal tribute is slightly more complicated in the Galacity City than the Outer Rim. For example, there are police.
Luke -- and Ben Kenobi before him, judging from the stories -- had always seemed quite comfortable using the Force for mind control. Ben’s not honestly sure that sort of thing belongs to the light, but he doesn’t see much alternative tonight.
“You don’t see me anymore,” he says to the first guard. “I’m invisible.”
“Whoa.” The guard’s eyes widen. “Cool.”
To the next one, he says, “I’m supposed to be here. I’m the sculptor.”
This guard is an art aficionado, unfortunately. “You’re Balrab Artesia?” she squeals. “Can I get an autograph?”
It transpires she wants him to sign her bosom, and he scrawls the signature hastily, hoping he’s spelling the name correctly.
“Don’t show anyone,” he adds before she can walk away. If she rushes back to the station and tells her friends, things might get a lot more awkward. Of course, that’s exactly what she wants to do, and he has to push harder than he’d like.
“Our little secret,” he murmurs in the low voice, after a cursory inspection of her thoughts reveals that’s the sort of thing she likes.
“Our little secret,” she answers back, eyes unfocused.
“And don’t tell anyone else I’m here.”
She nods dreamily, and Ben rushes toward the statue. Better to get it over with and get out before things get messier than they already are.
As it turns out, this statue is made of sterner stuff than the hastily erected memorials on the Outer Rim, probably to defend it from precisely the sort of personalized engravings that Ben has in mind. He has to push the laser knife along with the Force, as if it were a very tiny lightsaber. Even then, the lettering is so shallow he suspects it’ll disappear with one good polishing -- and maybe it should. The thank you he’d intended didn’t come out. Instead, he’d written I needed help.
“Maybe if you’d been home a little more, you would’ve noticed a dark Jedi lord started whispering in my mind when I was seven years old,” he snaps at the statue, imbuing his voice with all the white-hot fury he’d pent up over the years. He grits his teeth. “Or maybe, if you couldn’t have stopped that, you would’ve at least noticed the secret meetings.”
Except his father had noticed and blown it off as the sort of thing teenagers do, had been happy about it even. Hey kid, if you met a girl, have fun, but be safe. A box of prophylactics appeared under the sink, and Ben made a point of regularly withdrawing whatever he imagined a reasonable boy might use.
He remembers his mother returning from a conference, guessing too late that something was wrong. You can tell me anything, you know, Ben. How quickly Snoke’s answer had slithered through his mind: No, I’m the one you can tell. Look how busy she is, how tired.
Both of them had tried so hard, but never the right thing at the right time. Never guessing that what he had needed most was just more time.
Anger wells up inside of him, at himself, at Snoke and Palpatine, at his parents, at Anakin Skywalker for starting the family on this whole doomed course and his namesake Ben Kenobi for failing to stop it. Before he knows it, he’s rushing toward the statue.
Never strike with a closed fist, his father’s voice says in his mind.
Elbows and knees are much more effective, his mother adds.
He remembers how they’d rushed home after he’d gotten into a fight, unified even though they’d been screaming at each other the week before. His father had reached for the regen unit, but her mother laid her small, soft hand over his, and the bones had knit back together under the warmth of her touch.
This is a terrible idea, he thinks a second before his closed fist strikes the cold metal base of the statue, followed quickly by better to destroy yourself than something else. A white hot bolt of pain shoots up his arm, and he fights the urge to double over under the force of it. He’d forgotten what it was like to actually feel pain, instead of turning it into some dark source of power.
He’s standing there, staring at his broken and bloody knuckles, when a familiar voice says, “You were always such a drama queen.”
“Poe?”
Ben turns around, wondering if he’s actually drunk enough and hurt enough to be hallucinating.
“In the flesh.” He cuts his eyes toward the statue. “Unlike some people you were ranting at.”
Ben scans Poe for a weapon, but his holster is empty. He hadn’t come for revenge, then.
“Why are you here?”
“You know, I started getting some weird fan mail about a month ago. Thank you notes from orphans and ex storm troopers. Something to do with food donations. Would you happen to know anything about that?”
Ben leans against the statue he’d just punched. The throbbing in his hand is making him weak and nauseous.
“How did you know it was me?”
Poe rolls his eyes. “Subtle is not your middle name. And one of the kids drew a picture. You’re kind of a...unique looking human being.”
Ben bites back a laugh. This feels like their old patter -- yeah, kid, you’re weird, so what? -- but he hasn’t got the right to laugh with Poe. No yet.
Sure enough, Poe’s jaw clenches. Ben sees the cords tighten in his neck.
“Look, I’m not sure you deserve forgiveness, but it’s not up to me to figure that out.” He lets out a breath in a long whoosh. “All I have to know is what I want to feel like on the inside, and I don’t want to feel eaten up by anger and hate.”
“And you followed me to Coruscant to say that?”
“No, I followed you to Coruscant because I assumed you were up to no good. Turns out you’re up to minor vandalism, maybe a public intox charge.” He claps Ben on the shoulder. “Come on, there’s a regen kit on my ship. I’ve got something to show you, and then I’m taking you home. There’s somebody who misses you.”
Ben’s heart leaps. “Rey?”
“Between you and me, I kinda question her taste.”
“Frankly, so do I.”
Poe laughs, just a little, barely more than a snort. But it’s a start.
***
Ben follows Poe’s X-wing back to Kalyps. In the old days, they would’ve raced, daring each other to pull more and more irresponsible stunts along the way. Today, he gets a set of coordinates and eight hours of radio silence. He pushes back the urge for a barrel roll, not wanting to push the limits of their new peace.
They arrive at the dusty spaceport just as the suns are setting, and Ben follows Poe to the market square, which is almost empty now that the day is done. The Han Solo statue still grins in the center, surrounded by its flock of crudely carved children.
“I’ve seen this.” Ben doesn’t bother to keep the annoyance out of his voice. A single confrontation with the statue is sufficient for a lifetime, so he’s already fulfilled his quota.
“Yeah, well, look again.” Poe doesn’t bother to keep the annoyance out of his voice either.
Sighing dramatically -- like an overlarge teenager, his mother’s voice suggests -- he squints toward the memorial. A series of odd squiggles and curves decorated the base, new since his last visit. Stepping closer, he can see it’s writing.
On the back is his original inscription, the overly long and technical sentence that amounts to “thanks for teaching me not to crash.” Next to it is another inscription, much simpler, that says thanks for teaching me how to barrel roll without dying. Poe’s, if Ben had to guess. He remembers the day. Around it are dozens of messages in handwriting he can’t recognize: thank yous for jobs that were desperately needed, for food and medical supplies smuggled behind the backs of ravenous gangs, for shooting to wound and not to kill, for instilling the example of bravery and resistance.
Ben feels dizzy, like he had on Coruscant, though he manages not to fall on his ass this time.
It’s all true, he thinks. The version of his father in this statue is real; he was and always will be Ben’s most patient teacher, and a man who looked out for others while pretending to care only for himself. But the other version -- the one that won’t ever appear in a memorial -- is true too. His father did say things he shouldn’t have and storm off into the night. He did leave for no good reason and stay gone for far too long.
Maybe the key to the light is accepting that these kinds of contradictions can exist. Maybe it’s not perfect honesty, unflinching self-sacrifice, beatific smiles and a dozen other ideals Ben could never hope to live up to. It’s just knowing that people are complicated, because that’s the thing that allows you to forgive.
And if that’s true, it means that maybe there’s hope for him too.
“We can stay as long as you want,” Poe says, jolting Ben out of his reverie. “Although if it’s gonna be much longer, we should probably lock and load.”
Ben looks around and realizes for the first time that the square is completely empty. The suns have vanished below the horizon, leaving behind a pale violet line beneath the night’s first stars. And Poe is right -- as tranquil as it looks, this is no place to be unarmed after dark.
“Just one problem,” Ben says. “I’m out of fuel and I haven’t got any credits.”
“Of course not. You’re really annoying, you know that?” Poe rolls his eyes, but he tosses Ben a pouch of credits.
“I’m good for it,” Ben says quickly. “As soon as I sell the next load of scrap --”
But Poe cuts him off with an impatient wave of his hand. “Forget about it. Drinks are on you next time.”
Next time. Ben lets the words rattle around in his mind, and as he points his freshly refueled ship toward home, he realizes that he’s smiling.
***
When Ben thinks about the kind of person he is, it’s surprising that he’s never been slapped across the face before. He’d certainly deserved it. He just hadn’t expected it to happen at this particular moment.
He says, “I’m back!” and holds out an Icee Slurp Cone from the market on Kalyps, carefully preserved in its own miniature stasis field.
Rey takes one look at him and swings.
“You left! For weeks!”
Her face is flushed with fury. Ben flinches backward, less from the force of the blow than fear of what might happen next. Confrontations between him and Rey have usually ended with an explosion. Literally.
He’s ready with a quip -- his parents’ relationship suggests a fair amount of shouting is normal -- but the words die on his lips when he sees the tears gathered at the corners of her eyes.
“I didn’t know you’d mind,” he says, suddenly off balance.
It’s the wrong thing to say. Rey’s face screws up again with fresh fury.
“You have so many friends here,” he says placatingly. “Poe and Finn and Rose --”
An old surge of pride rises within him, and he cuts himself off before he admits the truth: that he knows he cares far more for Rey than she’ll ever care for a man like him.
“You thought I wouldn’t mind,” Rey hisses. “After weeks of showing up every night, bringing presents, acting like you cared. And the others -- they don’t know what it’s like, having this power you can’t control, worrying every day you’ll do it wrong. But you know. You’re the only one who knows. And I needed you.”
Ben’s been cautious with their Force bond since he came back, not sure how much Rey wants it, or how much he wants her to see what a mess he is. Now though, he can see the image playing over and over in her mind as if it were right in front of him: a little girl, crying for her parents’ ship to return, even as it rises further in the sky.
And in this moment, he’s become exactly what he once hated most: his father, returned from a prolonged absence, carrying a present when all Ben had wanted was his presence.
His father’s voice says, I don’t need you to build me a memorial, kid. Just do better than I did, okay?
He stretches a tentative hand toward Rey, ready for her to knock it away and storm out of the room, which frankly, has been the mildest of his past responses to any perceived rejection. But Rey -- who is significantly better than him in all regards -- simply launches herself into his arms.
Maybe, he thinks, doing better just means to stay.
Even when he’s not sure of the path forward.
Even when he loves a woman better and stronger than he is.
To keep seeking connection, even when it terrifies him.
To face the future instead of living in the past, even if it means confronting over and over again the people he hurt and living in a place if he doesn’t know he deserves to be.
He tightens his arms around Rey and murmurs into her hair, “I’m here. I’ll stay.”