Chapter Text
Freya stumbled out of the hanger, caught somewhere between hyper-ventilating and laughing hysterically. In the end she did neither, instead finding a stack of supply crates and slumping down to sit on one. Her head dropped into her hands. Solo was wrong, they did need to know this because there was no reason to believe Snoke’s unknown master wouldn’t tell the universe what had happened. But he’d been right, she didn’t want know… and the pain on Leia’s face…
She sighed and rubbed her eyes. Solo had been blunt in his explanations. He obviously didn’t want to talk about it so had replied to their questions in as brutal a fashion as he could, pulling no punches about what he’d done or why. Most of those explanations had boiled down to ‘because Snoke told me to’ until Starkiller. That was when Solo realised Snoke would not stop until he crushed the galaxy under his heel. The promise of a better future for the galaxy was a lie, so killing Snoke and deserting had become his best option. He refused to answer any question about where or when he met Rey, saying it was private and nothing to do Snoke or the First Order.
He also wouldn’t tell them who Snoke’s master was, although he clearly knew, instead aiming them at the First Order and he was more then happy to provide the information to destroy them, but what stuck with her, what made her heart bleed was the simple fact that he hadn’t believed his parents cared about him. He had honestly believed Leia would trust her brother over him and from the expression on Leia’s face, he was right. It made her realise that it wasn’t until she joined Leia’s staff, that she discovered her mentor even had a son, let alone one who frequently attended social events with her when Han was away. She thought nothing of it, assuming the child was a teenager. Discovering the child had been five made her gut clench at the number of times Leia directed her to call home and inform the nanny that she wouldn’t be back until late.
Freya suddenly, desperately wanted to hug her parents and her wife. Her hands rested lightly on her stomach. Damina hadn’t been subtle lately in her desire to start a family, and Freya had always said that she would carry their first child. She thought again of the pain in Solo’s eyes. In her mind, she saw Leia flee in despair. Her hand clenched. She wouldn’t… but she never through Leia Organa would either.
The sound of a footstep startled her and she looked up to find Rey smiling sadly at her and holding two cups of caf. She held one out.
“It wasn’t just Leia.” She explained as Freya took the cup.
“What do you mean?”
Rey sighed and let her own cup float for a moment while she hopped onto the crate beside her. The cup floated back into her hand.
“I’m only telling you this because Leia won’t and Ben asked me to, but… Leia wasn’t in a position to take care of Ben when he was born without sacrificing something else and by something, I mean her position in galaxy politics. He was used by his mother as a cute stand-in for his father, and abused by people who thought him an easy way to get to Leia and while she never realised how bad it was, Leia also did nothing to stop what she saw. For what it’s worth, their relationship is improving.”
Freya fiddled with her cup as she watched Rey collect her thoughts. There was a big secret here, something Rey, Solo and Leia were in on, probably Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca and Han as well, but whatever it was, they weren’t telling. She hoped it didn’t bite them in the ass the way the Vader story had.
Rey continued, still smiling sadly, “As for Han, he panicked at the idea of being a father and when he thought he was failing, did what he did best, ran. He effectively abandoned him and even though he knew Ben hated the temple and didn’t want to be a Jedi, he still left him there again and again. His nannies… Evangeline and Cordelia were older women, Alderaanian and deep in mourning. Leia was helping them when she offered them the job, she didn’t think about what Ben needed from them and they had little patience for a shy child who would lash out with the Force when he was scared. Leia simply took whatever they said at face value, too busy to look into it further. ”
She took a sip of the caf, absently twisting the cup in her hands, “And Snoke had been after Vader’s heir even before he was born, grooming him. Ben fought him for twenty-three years despite being plagued by nightmare and visions, but everyone has a breaking point. Snoke was an expert manipulator. He made Han and Leia fear their son, and made sure Ben knew. He fed Luke’s paranoia and mistrust which isolated Ben at the Temple. The Jedi preached Light above all else and Luke is… not to put to fine a point on it, a fanatic.”
She sighed again and looked up to meet Freya’s eyes, “What Luke took to be the Light ‘winning’ in Ben was depression. And once Ben fell down that hole, his ability to fight or even argue with Snoke was gone. What he thought in depression, Snoke then parroted back to him as if it were true and… Ben couldn’t see a way out.”
“Why didn’t Luke recognise it?” Freya asked in surprise, she thought teachers were trained to recognise things like that.
Rey shrugged, “Luke was never trained as a teacher, or as a childcare worker of any kind. He was Luke Skywalker, so when he told parents their kids were force-sensitive, they handed them over, but he had no idea how to take care of, or teach, them. The ghosts of the Jedi helped to an extent, but Jedi traditionally started training at three and Luke was taking seven to fourteen-years-olds. Ben was extremely gifted, but prone to angry outbursts that Luke didn’t know how to deal with. Luke believed the younger children were scared of him. The older ones resented him, and he – Luke –
unknowingly upped the ante. When he realised Ben was better with a sabre then him, he began to push the other knights, who saw themselves as being trained to fight Ben.”
Freya groaned, “It was like dominos… each step pushed him further and further. No wonder he thought he had nowhere to go.”
Rey nodded, “No where to go and no reason to look.”
“But he’s returned to the Light now?” Freya asked after a pause. That was what the senate most wanted confirmed.
Rey wobbled her free hand, “More that he left the Jedi path of Light Dark dichotomy and is now on one that doesn’t have that divide. She held out her hand and a stick flew into it. Then, digging the pointier end into the ground, she drew three lines intersecting at the centre to form a star.
“The Chatos didn’t believe in the Light and Dark, but that the Force was the tension between opposites – the balances between them.” She used the stick to write ‘Hot’ at the top of one line and then ‘Cold’ at the bottom of it. On the next, she wrote ‘Wet’ and ‘Dry’. She handed the stick to Freya, “Can you think of another one?”
Freya hesitated for a moment and then wrote ‘Peace’ and ‘War’.
Rey hummed, “Not quite. Peace and war don’t work with the other four. They have to be interconnected.”
“What do you mean?”
“Something can be hot and wet, or hot and dry. Or it can be cold and wet or dry, but war and peace don’t correspond to any of them. What is the star describing the balance of?”
Freya looked at it with wide eyes and slowly rubbed the words out, thinking.
Rey sat there, sipping her caf and waited.
“Hot, Cold, Wet, Dry… water?” Freya murmured, “No… weather!” She added ‘Windy’ and ‘Calm’ to the star.
Rey smiled, “Nice answer. This is where the Jedi differ from the Chatos. Later, the Dai Bandu brought in the idea of ‘Light’ and ‘Dark’ as catch all terms for intentions. Anything driven by emotion, passion was ‘Dark’. Anything that came from a sense of serenity was ‘Light’. For whatever reason, their planet was particularly susceptible to that particular balance. The Jedi somehow managed to take the worst elements of both philosophies and make them their own. Add that to a tendency for radicalization and a growing belief that the Light was somehow better and stronger and…”Rey shrugged and waved a hand to the sky above them.
“Are these stars common?”
“Hmm? They were. The Dai Bandu and Chatos both used them, but they were never popular with the Followers of Palawa or the Je’daii. The early Jedi used a modified one where they divided the star into half black and half white, putting the things they associated with the Light and Dark into them, but it fell out of favour about eight hundred years ago. Master Yoda didn’t like them”, Rey smirked.
“The star can be used to balance anything, just as you did here.” She continued after a moment, “They’re designed to show how the competing forces were working against and with each other.” She motioned to the one before them, “This was very simple, if you sit down and think about it, you can add another ten lines to your weather star. I’ve seen one that had to have had more than ten thousand lines.”
Freya had to ask, “What was it for?”
“Closing the Academy of Chatos.”
“Oh.”
Rey sighed, drawing them back to her original point, “Ben Solo and Kylo Ren are the same person. The difference now isn’t because of the Light or the Dark.” She motioned once again to the star, “It’s that he’s balanced.”
“Grey?” Freya suggested, but Rey shook her head.
“The Grey Jedi Order was a specific thing, an attempt by some Jedi to turn away from the Light and find balance. I wouldn’t say they were wrong, but the angle they came from made them susceptible to Sith manipulation.”
“What happened to them?”
“There was a war. They lost.” Rey shrugged and hopped down from the crate, “Ben, Ap’lek and I are leaving in a couple of hours. We need to track down the other Knights of Ren. Find your fellow senators and make a list of whatever questions you still have. We’ll send the answers back.”
Freya watched her walk away, when she suddenly turned back and crocked a finger. The two empty mugs shot over to her. Rey waved one absently in her direction before disappearing into the trees.
Freya leaned back. Rey had given her a lot to think about. After a moment, she leaned forward and picked back up the stick to rub out the words around the star. She paused for a moment to consider her current situation and then began to put down the main elements of what she thought of as ‘The Ben Solo Problem’ because from what Rey said, this wasn’t as easy as Light and Dark.