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Maybe someone had told him, or more likely he had read it, that if you wanted to have a difficult conversation with someone and reduce the potential for conflict, it was better to sit side by side with them.
He took the advice, but chose to take a walk in the park with Rey and their spaniel instead. Sally slightly preceded them, her rump waggling madly from side to side unless she found a really interesting scent, then her body was entirely still and rigid as she figured out whether of friend or foe. Not that she’d be much help with foe, friendship she had down to a tee.
The difficulty was all of his mom’s making, of course, who else would it be?
She wanted the wedding put back until next summer, ‘so much preparation, Benjamin, so many people to fly in. You’re not ashamed of Rey, are you?’
No he wasn’t, he’d marry her before sight of the whole world if that were possible, but they’d agreed on a small, family wedding.
He wasn’t entirely convinced by his mom’s argument, he thought she was concerned by how fast things were going between him and Rey. Maybe too fast. Trying to slow things down. But he’d have married Rey the day he met her if she’d felt the same way, and he was sure that she did.
And then there was the question of legacy, which his mom was determined to protect. Had a duty to protect. Rey had no idea how much he and his family were worth, and did it matter? His mom thought it did and wanted Rey to sign a marriage contract.
‘Mom, please!’
His mom had gone low, ‘what about your children, Benjamin? My grandchildren.’ He could see she had a point, but how to spring all this on Rey?
Rey took it well, the marriage contract bit, probably because she didn’t fully understand just how wealthy his family were, although she raised an eyebrow in inquiry at the necessity. The delay to their wedding day was more problematic, here her brow furrowed, ‘what has inviting hundreds of people we neither know nor care about to do with anything?’
She had a point, but his mom wanted the ceremony conducted at Varykino, the Skywalker summer residence. She’d love it there, it was hill country and the house was situated by a lake. He’d take her there this very weekend, then she’d see for herself.
Rey was doubtful but willing. He felt like a traitor, working in his mom’s interests against those of his girlfriend’s.
The trip to Varykino was a resounding success, but Rey was still holding out for a small wedding, and before the year’s end. He prevaricated.
The trip to his mom’s attorney was less successful. Rey sat opposite Leia, gazing at her future mother-in-law with a puzzled look in her eyes. She’d brought Poe Dameron with her, an old family friend of the Skywalkers but her best friend’s boyfriend, an attorney at law.
Rey’s slim fingers shuffled through the paperwork before her, ‘Senator Organa, would I be right in assuming you regard me as a gold-digger?’ Oof, that had to hurt.
Leia exchanged a quick glance with Lando, the Skywalker attorney who also went way back with the family, and then turned a limpid gaze upon her future daughter-in-law, ‘not at all Rey, but certain family assets have to be ring fenced. You will see you are well provided for.’
‘Senator Organa,’ there was a distinct tremor in Rey’s voice, ‘I can provide for myself.’ Ben saw Poe Dameron reach out a hand and clasp one of Rey’s hands comfortingly as Rey continued, ‘What interests me is that this document defines my status, should I marry your son, as a brood mare.’
Ben’s heart dropped when he heard the words, ‘should I marry,’ they portended nothing good. What was he thinking allowing his mother to dictate the terms of his marriage, he had plenty of money on his own account. This ‘legacy’ he was supposed to protect could go hang, unless he’d already blown it with Rey.
Leia was laughing, a hard tinkling sound. ‘Hardly that, Rey, but I must protect the future Skywalker heirs. That’s if there are any.’ That was a definite barb, even Lando murmured, ‘Leia.’
‘Yes, I can see that’s important to you,’ Rey’s freckled skin now bore an angry flush, ‘and I see my worth is measured in how many children I can breed. How you must have disappointed your own family.’
The inference was clear. Now it was Leia’s turn to have heightened color as she snapped back, ‘hardly, my wealth came through my mother, I was already wealthy in my own right.’
Ben groaned internally, his mother had only to add, ‘not a penniless orphan,’ and his cup of misery would runneth over.
Rey’s lips were pursed in a determined pout, ‘I’m not signing this contract or anything like it, and I’m sure Ben doesn’t expect me to.’
At that her eyes turned toward him, and he was about to confirm he was in total agreement with this sentiment when he caught sight of his mom’s eyes also upon him. His slight hesitation in answering as he wrestled with not wanting to betray either woman, his stuttering unconvincing reply, cost him. He could see it immediately by the expression in Rey’s eyes. A brief flash of hurt before she lowered them, humiliated.
Rey had turned back to face his mom, pushing the papers back toward her, ‘I’m not signing this or anything like it. I’ll sign that I’ll make no claim on your precious legacy, but that’s it.’ With a quick glance at Poe she pushed back her chair, Poe rising with her. Without a word she turned to go. At this Ben too rose to his feet, pushing back his chair with such force it tipped over. ‘Rey, wait!’
His girlfriend paused and half turned, at the same time his mom uttered one word, ‘Benjamin!’
The pause to utter a pleading, ‘Mom,’ cost him again. Rey began walking, one of Dameron’s arms draped consolingly over her shoulders, and didn’t stop until the pair of them turned as they entered the elevator. They were stood just within the car, effectively body checking Ben as he spread his hands wide and pleaded, ‘Rey.’
Her face was set, ‘I think we need to take a break and figure things out,’ she spoke coldly and his heart sank. He knew her nature, he had wounded her, she would not allow him another opportunity, trust had been broken. He could, and would, plead, but he had lost her. The elevator doors closed and she was gone.
‘A clean break,’ that’s what she decided on, and there was not a thing he could do about it. He lost friends too, her friends.
‘Buddy, I’m sorry,’ this was Dameron explaining why there was no invite to his wedding, ‘Finn,’ he added by way of explanation . That’s all he needed to say. Finn was besties with Rey and therefore hated Ben. Poe loved his boyfriend and wouldn’t risk losing him by being disloyal. Love and trust: he had no place in their lives.
Hux was blunter, ‘only you could snatch defeat out the jaws of victory, Solo.’ Hux was shrugging on his coat, sparing him a few moments of his time before striding out the office carrying flowers and a box of candy for the woman he hoped to make Mrs. Hux. Rose Tico came from humble beginnings, Hux was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Hux had no intention of asking his Rosie to sign a marriage contract, ‘We’re in it for the love not the money.’
It was ironic really, that when a real gold-digger came along Leia made no mention of legacy, or demanded the signing of prenups. Perhaps she was making atonement, or trying to.
Bazine had a plan, that much was clear with hindsight. She got the wedding she wanted, the honeymoon, acquired the lifestyle and, in the fullness of time, the divorce settlement. His mom still had bite though. Bazine left leaving something worth having behind, not that she put up too much of a fight to keep it.
It was while he was ferrying this precious cargo home from school, as best he could he was a hands on dad, that the past reached out and gave him a poke.
Through a further operation of irony in his life, Anakin’s teacher was non other than Poe Dameron’s life partner, Finn, who just so happened to have as a close personal friend an engineer in the automotive industry. A particularly gifted one it seemed, his son fairly ablaze with enthusiasm after their class visit.
Anakin was still chatting about it as they laid table for dinner. Ben was touched by his son’s indefatigable enthusiasm and began to pay more mind to his excited chatter.
‘So she designed the car according to aerodynamic principles, bearing in mind everyday functionality.’ Ben laughed softly, this was obviously a direct quote. ‘Her car was awesome too,’ Anakin stuffed an equally awesome amount of mashed potato into his mouth and spoke through it, ‘pristine. If she sold it today it would be worth twenty million dollars, easy.’
Ben frowned at his son’s table manners and issued a mild reproof.
‘Sorry, dad.’
Intrigued, Ben queried, ‘she?’ A belated participant in his son’s enthusiasms .
‘Rey Niima,’ Anakin as mildly scolded his dad’s inattention, ‘you know, the chief engineer at Solo-Calrissian racing.’
No, Ben didn’t know, and after a beat in order to compose himself asked his son to explain, thereby unexpectedly getting an answer to a question he had asked every day of his life since that day: ‘where had she gone’, the only woman he had ever loved? It grieved him to learn she had thought it necessary to put an ocean between them.
The bare bones of it were this: she’d teamed up with retired race driver Han Solo and entered the world of F1 racing, based in Europe. She had tweaked the design of the Solo F1 car with funding from Lando Calrissian, and on the back of track success had designed and built one of the most sought after sports cars in the world, the Falcon F1, retailing at a mere twelve million dollars on a bad day.
Recently, she had crossed the Atlantic with the whole race team, Formula 1 had come to these shores from Europe for the first time ever. But hopefully not the last.
Ben stared into eyes as deep and dark as his own, finally he could speak, ‘Son, how about we go racing this weekend?’ Anakin’s subsequent shout of joy and fist bump was affirmation enough, ‘Awesome!’
The venue was sold out but that was not a problem for a Skywalker, they were granted access all areas separate from the unwashed, walking amongst the celebrity petrol heads, the great and the good.
The cars were on the grid assembled in racing order, their dry weather tires wrapped in warmers in the belief it helped with grip. Strolling amongst these were those granted privilege through fame or wealth - or both - and two man news crews hoping to get the lowdown on race strategy. As if. The gold reserve was not guarded as closely as that. This was a multi billion dollar business - generated by the most prestigious and successful of teams.
He held his son’s hand as they strolled at leisure through the crowds, stopping to admire the high performance cars, Anakin having taken a crash course in F1 lore since Rey Niima’s class visit.
He saw her first due to his height, as they approached the head of the grid where the teams with the fastest qualifying times were placed, Solo-Calrissian were placed first and third after the qualifiers. She was talking to a news team, standing a little up from the grid, a leash looped around each wrist restraining two English Spaniels, their black heads and long glossy black ears giving way to white coats sprinkled with black speckles.
His heart lurched guiltily within him. He’d kept Sally, spitefully asserting he could provide for her better. These two were in superb condition.
Anakin had spotted her now, showing a tendency to drag his dad forward, Ben kept tight hold of his son’s hand, chiding him for his hurry. They reached her as the reporter and cameraman wound up the short, clearly unable to winkle out her team’s race strategy but wishing her best of luck anyway. She turned, and evidence of the laughing riposte she had just made faded from her face which now stilled, expressionless.
How it would have gone without Anakin who could know, but his son finally succeeded in loosing his hand and rushed forward crying out, ‘Ms. Niima, it’s me, Anakin Solo, you visited Mr. Storm’s class with your car.’ And of course what could have more compatibility with a high energy preteen than two high energy spaniels. Anakin dropped to his knees and was covered in spaniel, chuckling as they romped and whined and vied for pets and praise. The ice princess who owned them slowly relented because of their antics, and a warm albeit reluctant smile lit up her face, and his heart lurched again with painful memory.
She was speaking, answering Anakin’s question, ‘they are called Maud and Sally.’
‘How do you tell them apart?’, wondered Anakin.
She laughed and clicked her tongue, ‘Sally,’ one of the spaniels stopped trying to ingratiate herself with him and turned to her owner with a wuff of inquiry.
‘Come on, let’s go to the pit lane and settle these two down.’ She nodded to Ben, acknowledging him, but he wasn’t fooled. Without Anakin that could easily pass for a nod of dismissal. He fell in behind them, Anakin blissfully unaware of the tension between his dad and his new hero, chattering nineteen to the dozen.
They were all there, her friends, and Lando Calrissian looking sleek and urbane in slacks and a blazer, a silk pocket square spilling out his breast pocket in a way that bespoke careless rakishness. He was able to greet Ben with perfect sangfroid too, without a trace of self-consciousness. He’d always been able to do this, casting himself as a good friend of Han Solo while simultaneously working to further Skywalker interests no matter the cost to friendship.
Ben coldly nodded on receipt of his greeting, ‘good to see you, Benny,’ the older man not perturbed in the slightest by Ben’s presence. Someone had presented him a business opportunity, he had applied a lawyer’s mind to the proposal and found it good - no matter he had also drawn up the contract which had estranged Rey Niima from Ben Solo forever. Ben hoped he could sleep at night. Clearly a wasted wish, Lando looked extremely well rested.
Poe and Finn were there too, Finn bristling immediately at sight of the man who had broken his best friend’s heart. Each man had a four year old resting on a hip, their twin boys, both dressed identically, as were their dads.
Ben’s gaze took in Hux, accompanied by Mrs Hux just coming into her full beauty, Hux’s appearance a carbon copy of Lando except Hux’s neck was naked whereas Lando wore an Ascott as florid as his pocket square. Hux’s pocket square was folded with mathematical precision, although his hair touched his collar in a Hugh Grant floppy haired style these days, presumably at the behest of Mrs Hux.
Hux too nursed a toddler on his hip, the blending of the Huxes dna producing a green eyed dark auburn haired boy. Mrs Hux steered a stroller containing a little girl whose tiny tufts of hair, caught up in tiny bobble decorated hair ties, gave the promise of strawberry blondness. She was comfortably and deeply asleep.
Hux’s manner was very much an at ease paterfamilias. Give him a few years and he’d be insufferably smug. He nodded and murmured, ‘Solo,’ by way of greeting. Without Anakin, Ben might have felt intimidated. His son was shy but fearless.
If Rey found humor or felt satisfaction at the inhospitable reception of her former lover, she gave no sign, merely inviting Anakin to come help her cage the spaniels and she’d show them around, father and son. Hardly had she remarked this than a figure strolled out the pit garage and into the pit lane, Han Solo, team manager and absentee father.
In manner he was still the Han of back in the day, irrepressible and fearless. In appearance he was much changed, grizzled and moving with the crablike gait of a body that had endured much physical trauma. He could be designated a silver fox now, but Han’s hair stood up in tufts like he’d attacked it with nail scissors that very morning in a bleary eyed attempt at achieving a degree of sophistication. In contrast Lando’s locks were sleek and well curated.
‘Hi, son,’ he was toe-curlingly oblivious that his son may harbor resentment toward an absent father, and now fixed his gaze upon Anakin, ‘well, hello you. Got a kind word for your granddaddy?’
Wasn’t that just a Han Solo way of living, forget the past and live in the present. Well, some people, most people, felt that a little cavalier. A reprehensible way of treating the people you supposedly cared about - unless it was all show and you didn’t care for them at all. Internally Ben fulminated, hot words of repudiation wanting to spill right out his mouth.
Ben felt Anakin slip a hand in his, apprehensive but also a little curious, ‘you’re my grandfather?’
‘Sure am. Saw you the week you were born, a little red rooster!’
Ben looked down into his son’s eyes and answered the question in them with a nod. Anakin returned his gaze toward the person of Han Solo, his absentee grandfather.
Before Ben could reflect sourly on yet another impending unwanted episode of the Family Solo psychodrama, another player entered the chat, emerging from the gloom of the pit garage, ‘hey, Pops.’
Whatever the youth was going to say was destined to be one of life’s mysteries. At sight of Ben and Anakin he pulled up short, the words dying on his lips, and Ben felt the pavement under his feet heave up and then recede at a rapid rate of knots. It was a feeling akin to being on a small ship upon a vast, turbulent ocean.
Han Solo, of course, took it all in his stride. Without missing a beat he introduced, ’my other grandson, Benjamin.’ Anakin, staring worshipfully at the newcomer, emitted a shy, ‘hi,’ accompanied by a little hand wave, and then asked with an adorable lack of worldly wisdom, ‘are we cousins?’
‘Something like that,’ the youth replied diplomatically, whose teen voice was clearly in the process of breaking.
Ben felt his son’s hand slip out of his as Anakin took tentative steps towards the newcomer with an unnecessary introduction, ‘I’m Anakin.’
‘Hi, I’m Ben.’
The boys fist bumped and Anakin made a shy but purposeful start at getting acquainted with his kinsman. The older boy clearly knew more about the existence of Anakin than Anakin knew of Benjamin.
Young Ben had his mother’s hair and eye coloring, and thankfully her ears. But his hair was thick and luxuriant, worn well over his collar. He had a habit of carelessly pushing it back one handed. His eyes were just as compelling as his mother’s, and set between them was a patrician nose above full lips.
It was in his height he most favored his father. Big hands set on slim wrists with skinny arms, the muscles yet to be defined. And big feet attached to long thin legs. He’d easily make over six feet the other side of puberty. Ben’s eyes drank him in with a thirst that could never be slaked.
Anakin had bestowed the required hug on his grandpa and was being led into the gloom of the pit garage, Han as expansive and heedless as ever. Oh, well, that was alright then, the sky had just fallen in on his son but Han Solo was ok so everyone else had to just suck it up.
In spite his inner turmoil, Ben stood there in some shock. Might be stood there still, except a slim figure came into his line of sight, Rey, now dressed in a coverall in team colors.
‘This changes nothing, Ben,’ her voice was quiet but rose above the cacophony which surrounded them, a still silent bubble seemed to encompass them.
At last he found his voice, ‘what, are you serious? This changes everything, you should have told me.’ Anger was replacing shock over what might have been.
‘No,’ she was shaking her head, ‘Leia would have taken him from me, and you would have let her.’
He was aghast that she could think and say such a thing, and said so.
Her chin went up, ‘how often does Bazine see Anakin?’
He stared at her, dumbfounded. What? No, the two were not the same, they were as far apart as the dawn was from the dark. Leia wouldn’t let her grandson be used as a bargaining chip, that’s all. She’d had Anakin’s best interests at heart, the tiny Skywalker heir, the namesake of her father.
It suddenly occurred to him that there was another who had an equal if not greater claim to the Skywalker fortune. Did Lando know? Of course he did. If there was a way to have Lando disbarred over this he’d find it.
Meanwhile he stood miserably before her, the past and its consequences rising up before him, bringing with it ‘if only’s’ and ‘what if’s’. He’d always thought she’d hate him, but maybe she’d rather laugh at him.
‘I’d like to be in his life, I know I have no right, but I’d like that, even in a small way.’
She took hold of his hands, her fingers chilly. Automatically he pressed her palms together the better to encompass her hands with his own. She had always felt the cold.
‘I’d like that too, and so would Ben. He knows all about you,’ there was a tremor in her voice, moisture in the eyes looking up at him.
‘What,’ he burst out, ‘that his father’s a blithering idiot, a weak fool.’
‘Hush,’ she commanded, ‘we both made mistakes. I should have stayed, toughed it out, married you anyway in spite of your mom.’
He massaged her hands, ‘Bazine, she wasn’t real, not like we were. She got me on the rebound. It wasn’t real for her either, but Anakin.’ His voice trailed off, never would he want his son to feel unwanted. He sighed deeply, what a mess this all was.
‘Hush,’ she said again, ‘we’ll work it out, together.’
Could there really be that much grace in the world? He doubted it, but she didn’t, he could see it in her eyes. She’d always been the strong one, stronger than she knew. He bent his head and pressed his lips to hers, just a light brush of his against hers but full of meaning.
‘Well,’ she said unsteadily, as he raised his head, ‘there’s a kiss to build a dream on.’
He would have kissed her again, in a more meaningful way, but suddenly their quiet bubble was torn away. The PA system was blaring out for everyone to leave the grid. They stared about them like startled deer, and then she laughed, ‘Come on, Solo, let’s go racing.’
She was tugging at his hand, trying to dislodge his feet from the pavement, he took an unsteady step forward, then another.
‘Come on,’ she shouted gaily, ‘let’s go racing.’
It was like they were both intoxicated, whether from relief or the possibility of a brighter future together, who could know. Their children beckoned from the pit curb, their voices blending as one, ‘mom, dad, guys, come on, it’s race time.’
They ran toward them hand in hand.