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You’ve always been too much. Too much leg and arm for such a skinny body, too much ear and nose for such an oddly shaped head.
Too much noise inside such a young boy.
You don’t ever remember not being aware of the swirling thing inside you, an ache in your chest that sometimes swells into your throat and tries to smother you. You’re not quite sure what to do with it, so you swallow it whole and try not to disappoint everyone around you.
You manage for a while.
There’s a library in the basement of the temple, and by the time you’re sixteen, you’ve discovered it’s one of the last places your fellow padawans ever like to venture. Therefore, it becomes your favorite place to hide.
It’s quieter there, no extra knots in the force that hum and make it hard to focus. Just the one inside you.
You run your fingers along the spines on the shelf. At this point, it’s almost impossible to find one you haven’t read.
“Stories are important,” Luke had told you once, wrinkles starting to form around his eyes, “but be careful not to let yourself be consumed by them.”
You thought in that moment you understood what he’d meant: quit hiding behind scrolls and books and go make some damn friends.
In hindsight though, he’s more right about you than you ever gave him credit for.
You wrinkle your nose at him and dodge his attempts to ruffle your hair. “I like books. Books don’t make fun of my ears.”
Luke’s eyebrows knit together. “Is someone giving you a hard time?”
It pops in your ears like when you dive too deep in the lake. He didn’t know. He didn’t know the way the others treat you.
You take a step away from him and duck in between the shelves again. “It’s nothing.”
“Ben.”
You absently pull a scroll from a stack, not bothering to even check what it’s about. He follows behind you, because he’s your uncle and it’s the most annoying thing he can think to do at the moment.
“I said it’s nothing.” You stack scroll after scroll in your arms.
“Ben,” he says again. His hand finds your shoulder and squeezes. “You can talk to me.”
I don’t want to talk , you think. I want you to see.
It’s the second time in your life you feel betrayal carve at your skin. It won’t be the last.
You’re ten and you taste metal in your mouth. A trail of blood dribbles down from your nose and over your lips.
Your mother is looking at you like she’s made a monster.
She probably has.
Fear is power , that voice tells you. Teach them to fear you, and you could have the galaxy on a string.
But you’re confused. You don’t want your mother to be afraid. You feel your chin wobbling and your vision obscures through tears.
It was an accident… you didn’t mean to . . .
She’s still on the floor, hand over her mouth and the wall buckled behind her.
“Mama.” It comes spilling out of your mouth like blood gushing from an open wound.
Her face crumples and she opens her arms for you. She’s crying, racked with sobs that you can’t tell if are meant for you or for her. Either way, it’s grief that makes the thing in your chest shatter.
Her light comes pouring through.
She pulls you into her arms and rocks you, pressing her wet nose against your neck. Her voice is an anchor that holds you in the moment, in the warmth of her in the force. She smoothes your unruly hair away from your face and kisses every freckle.
You want to stay there forever.
When she pulls back and runs a hand along your cheek, with sadness still buried in her eyes, you know she’s about to tell you that you can’t.
With an ear pressed to the door to your mother’s office, you can hear the faint voice of her and your uncle. It’s the middle of the night and you should probably be in bed. She’d scold you if she found you, and then you’d be grounded when she found out you’d been eavesdropping.
But the static in your head is too great to do much of anything besides desperately try not to hear. So instead, you fill it with conversations not meant for your ears.
“I’m frightened, Luke. He could hurt someone, he could hurt himself.”
You hear him sigh, distant and crackling through a holo. “You can’t let him know you’re afraid, Leia. He’s the one who should be frightened. He needs you right now.”
“He needs a teacher!”
“He needs his mother.”
Her breath hitches. You make out the noise of squeaking leather as she collapses into her favorite chair, or so you imagine. Pain coats her voice, thick like honey. “I don’t know how to help him.”
You want to throw the door open and throw yourself in her lap.
Don’t send me away! I’ll be good, I promise!
Don’t make me leave.
I’m sorry.
Mama, I’m sorry.
I’ll be good.
Then another voice slithers through the humming in your mind. It curls like smoke, wrapping around your spine and sending cobwebs across your skin. She’s abandoning you, Ben. Just like your father.
You clap your hands over your ears. “Stop it.”
But I’ll never abandon you. I’ll always be here.
You say it again, louder this time to cut through the noise. “Stop it!”
“Ben?” The door to the office slides open. Your mother stands with her hands braced against the frame. Her face is red and splotchy, but the sadness is gone and fury flashes across her features.
Just as quickly though, she’s looking at you with concern and all anger is faded.
You didn’t know it then, but she’d felt it too, that thing that blocks out the sun.
Her hands flutter over you before resting against your cheeks, cradling your face. She looks over her shoulder at the blue-hued vision of your uncle. “Luke,” she says. “Please.”
Luke’s shoulders fall in defeat. “Fine. Bring him to the temple.”
You’ll never forget the way relief etches itself across her whole body. Betrayal in the first act.
This time, you let the voice whisper in your ear. I’ll always be here.
Moira is a year younger than you, and she tries desperately to be your friend. It would be charming, if you weren’t so determined to be alone.
You feel her approach before she even speaks. She’s a bubble in the force. She bobs and floats through it, light as air, but the pressure of it irritates your skin.
“Mind if I join you?”
You let a single eye fall open.
Her hands are tucked behind her back and she stands closer than you anticipated, head cocked with a warm smile painted on her mouth.
You swallow and pray that your face isn’t as red as it feels. You hate meditating with other people around but she’s the only one who ever tries to include you in things, so you relent. “Sure.”
She doesn’t say anything but her smile widens until dimples push into her cheeks. A sense of relief washes over you as she chooses to settle in the grass a few paces away.
You close your eyes again and focus on the flow of life around you. The silence of it catches you like a tide and begins to sweep you away.
Silence isn’t really the right word though. You’ve never known it, not truly. But the sound of life and death, growth and decay, cancels out the other thing that gnaws at you constantly. It’s as close as you ever got to silence.
Until she speaks and you’re ripped back down to the present. Your eyes snap open to find she’s watching you.
“Ben,” she says, “Me and a few of the others are going to hang out in the common room after dinner tonight. Do you want to join us?”
There is nothing about that that sounds even remotely enjoyable. You scrunch your nose. “The others don’t like me very much.”
“That’s because they don’t know you.”
“As opposed to you?” It comes out of your mouth before you can stop it. You almost smack yourself in the forehead.
A smug grin pulls at her lips. “I know you better than anyone else here. Except for maybe Master Luke.”
Not necessarily true , you think. But she doesn’t need to know that.
“What are you--” your voice cracks. Oh, this is going just great .
She laughs but it doesn’t feel malevolent. Not like what you were used to.
You clear your throat and try again. “What are you guys going to do?”
“Hang out, play games.” She shrugs. “Normal teen stuff.”
“Normal teen stuff,” you repeat. “Because I’m so obviously well-versed in what that is.”
Her dark eyes widen at you.
And then she throws her head back and howls with laughter.
You can’t help but smile yourself, and heat rises all the way to the tips of your ears. The sound of it settles over you like snow.
She wipes a tear from her eye. “Well, I wasn’t going to say it.”
You run a hand through your hair. “But you were thinking it, it’s fine.”
“So you’ll be there?”
You take a deep breath and offer her another reassuring smile. “I guess.”
“Good. I’ll see you there.”
Your father comes home just in time to see you off.
Chewie lifts you up in the air and you can’t stop yourself from squealing. He’s soft and smells like the inside of the Falcon, leather and grease and musk. You bury your face in his fur and squeeze, trying ignore the feeling that this was goodbye forever.
He makes a quiet-- as quiet as Chewie can be-- noise and passes you into the arms of your father.
You missed him more than the voice wants you to admit.
“Hey there, kid,” he says. “I missed you.”
Your hands curl against the collar of his shirt and you bury your face in his neck. “I missed you too,” you say, but it scalds your tongue.
You want to hang on and never let go, but he kisses your cheek and sets you back on the ground, and wanders off to find your mother.
It’s your thirteenth birthday, and for once you’re allowed to leave the temple to spend it with your parents.
But only because it’s also the thirteenth anniversary of the Galactic Concordance, and the esteemed Senator Leia Organa and family was invited to the celebrations on Hosnian Prime. You’re forced to make an appearance.
You’ve been stuffed into robes with embroidered sleeves and thrown out to drown in a sea of people that fuss over you like a newborn. Your cheeks have been pinched so much you were certain they’d bruise.
“Look at all that hair!”
“I remember when you were just a baby! You used to follow your mother around like a little shadow!”
“Oh, Ben! You look just like your father!”
That one cuts to the bone, because he’s not there. He and your mother had fought all night and when you woke up, he was gone.
You give them the most charming smile you can muster and excuse yourself from the crowd.
The noise in your head fades the further away you get from the party.
To be fair, you’d know the Senate building in your sleep. Every alcove, every winding empty hallway. Up until you were sent away to train, it was a home to you just like the Falcon or your apartments on Chandrila.
It’s been years, but while the memories are fuzzy, they’re still there.
Footsteps approach from the opposite end of the corridor and you panic. You’d rather die than face any more of your mother’s so-called friends, so you dive towards the closest window.
You’re trying to hide behind a particularly heavy curtain when someone tugs on the back of your collar and nearly throws you down on the polished marble floor. Whirling around, you’re ready unleash a blast of force energy, only to see the man who helped teach you all the things that made your mother roll her eyes.
Lando Calrissian stands over you with a grin splitting his face.
You almost knock him over when you fling your arms around him. “Uncle Lando!”
He laughs and hugs you back so tight it forces the air from your lungs. “Look at you, kid! You’re all grown up!”
“Grown up enough to beat you at Sabacc?”
“Hey!” He pushes you back far enough to keep his hands on your shoulders. “Shouldn’t there be some Jedi Code about challenging your teacher?”
You can’t help yourself from groaning and rolling your eyes.
He smirks behind his mustache. “Jedi training going that well, huh?”
“It’s—” All the words tangle in your mouth. Boring. Long. Unhelpful. “Fine.”
“Just fine? Well, don’t tell your mother you feel that way or you’ll never hear the end of it. I’m sure she has the speech already prepared.”
“Is there a speech she doesn’t have prepared?”
He sighed and shook his head, still looking more amused than anyone else you’d seen all night. “Probably not.”
By the time you’re twenty, you’ve managed to make some friends. Though you’re never really sure if they’re your friends because they like you or they’re scared of you.
Maybe those are the same thing.
The six of you are collapsed on the floor in the sparring room, chests heaving and dripping with sweat.
You all feel the pull to something greater, something beyond what Luke is willing to teach.
“The galaxy doesn’t need another Jedi Order of old. We need something new, something better,” she says.
Portia is a tiny, dark thing. Her presence in the force is like lightning. Quick and hot and deadly.
And Luke tries to smother it.
You don’t though. You see potential in her speed and strength, in her willingness to do whatever it takes to win.
That old voice rings in your ear. You need people like her to succeed. Everyone in the galaxy will fear what you can do together.
“Luke is a fool,” you say in agreement. “If we follow the same rules as those before, we’ll follow the same failures.”
The group murmurs in agreement.
Rook flexes his fingers and you feel the force shift around him. “Light and dark? No, those are binary lies. There’s just the force in an endless pool of power.”
You turn to look out the window, out at the sea of stars that mark a midnight sky. Your eyes settle on the dot your mother had taught you was the remnant light of Alderaan.
“One day,” you say distantly, “we’ll make it right.”
Your uncle tries to kill you.
There’s a part of you that says you shouldn’t be surprised, that you should’ve seen it coming. But the truth of the matter is that when you wake up, frightened and still half-asleep, to find him bearing down on you with his lightsaber raised, the last tether of hope snaps.
It’s snuffed out of you like a candle.
He’s given up on me , you think. He thinks I’m past the point of no return.
It wasn’t true, not then.
But the voice tells you it is.
He wants your power for himself. He’s threatened by what you can do.
End Luke Skywalker and you will rise as the new face of the force.
“Ben, no!” your uncle cries.
You bring the hut down on top of him and raze the temple to the ground.
“Ben, talk to me. Please. I miss you.”
You’re twenty-two and you don’t want to see your mother. You’re tired of her voice, the pity on her tongue that feels years too late.
If only you knew it would be the last chance you’d have to talk to her.
The words tumble through your mind again.
I don’t want to talk.
I want you to see.
“Then you shouldn’t have sent me away.”
She sighs, somewhere across the galaxy. The projection of her scrambles for a moment as she sits. “I didn’t send you away. I sent you to learn.”
You slam your hands on your desk. “Then are you proud of me, General Organa? Did Skywalker finally make me a boy you could be proud of?”
“Ben--”
“No! I don’t want to hear it from you! I don’t want to hear about how you suddenly care about how I’m doing because I embarrassed your precious name!”
“That’s not--”
“Isn’t it, though? Isn’t that what it’s always been about? Protecting your legacy? This precious royal bloodline?”
She stares at you for a long moment, chewing on the inside of her cheek. You know now she looked at you like that because she’s hiding a secret, a flaw in your genetic code that you’d yet discovered. “You’re not just a Skywalker or an Organa. You’re a Solo too.”
“That must be it then. That’s the disappointing part.” There’s a part of you that revels in seeing the pain flash across her face. It makes you feel powerful. “Tell me, mother, when’s the last time you saw my father? Are the rumors true? Has it been a while?”
You see the veins in her neck throb. Her teeth grind together. “I don’t even know who you are anymore.”
A cruel smile unfolds across your mouth. “I’m your son. And there’s nothing you can do about it.”
She just shakes her head at you, jaw set. Without another word, the connection drops and her hologram blips out.
The feeling of satisfaction disappears with your mother, leaving behind nothing but shame.
There’s fire everywhere. You feel it against your skin, the heat that almost blisters.
Luke Skywalker is dead.
That’s what you tell everyone.
You’re not even sure if it’s true, but you pray it is. He deserves no less.
Your friends stumble through the darkness for you. Portia and Rook are the first to find you, lightsabers ignited and brows knit in confusion.
Your new name slips from their mouth with ease. “Ren, what’s going on?”
Your knuckles grip your own saber until it shakes. “Luke tried to kill me.”
Portia meets your eyes with burning intensity. “Where is he?”
“He’s dead.”
Rook shifts uneasily on his feet, quiet for a moment. Finally, he looks up at you too. “What do you want us to do?”
“Find the others.” There’s something else gnawing at you, that voice that beckons. Come to me and I’ll give you everything you ever wanted. All you have to do is let me in.
So you let it in.
Your lips pull back over your teeth. “Kill anyone else who gets in the way.”
Moira has that look in her eyes, like your mother after you threw her into the wall.
This time though, you’re certain you deserve it.
She finds you in Luke’s office, clawing through shelves and boxes and his desk.
Somewhere in all this mess was the fragment of a holocron you desperately needed.
She steps into the room with her lightsaber still clipped on her hip. Her face is bare with sorrow. When she speaks, her voice quivers. “Ben.”
Your head snaps up.
The silence hangs heavy like ash between you.
Her head shakes slowly in horror. “What have you done?”
Your hands close into fists so tight your nails dig into your own skin. She doesn’t even bother to ask if you’re truly responsible. She just assumes.
It hurts that she’s right. But it’s too late for that now.
You reach for your own lightsaber and stand from Luke’s desk, carefully making your way around it to stand before her. Your eyes never leave hers as you ignite your saber. It hums under your fingers. “Get out.”
It’s your last offer of mercy.
She refuses.
You’re genuinely shocked to see tears slip down her cheeks. She lifts her chin in defiance. “Where’s Master Luke?”
The words rise from your chest like smoke. “Your Master is dead. He was weak and foolish, like all Jedi, so I destroyed him.”
Shock ripples over her form. Her eyes flicker down to your hand and then she truly understands. You see the muscles in her jaw work under skin, over teeth. “Don’t make me do this, Ben. Don’t make me fight you.”
You raise your saber and hold it to your chest. “Ben Solo is dead too.”
It only takes a moment for her to unclip her lightsaber and meet you with a flash of green plasma.
She fights, you’ll give her that. She manages to clip your arm, burning a scar into your flesh that still mocks you in the mirror. Her teeth are bared, face carved with fury and grief and something feral: her own desperate need to survive.
But in the end she missteps, leaves herself open in the chest and so you bury your blade there.
You still remember the sound she made as her breath left her body.
For the briefest of moments, she looks at you again and you see that dreaded thing that will always haunt you, marred on her face. Pity.
She crumples to the floor in a heap.
Just like that, it’s over. The Jedi are gone, your uncle is gone, and you can never go back.
But there is no you . There is just the hollowed out body of a boy and a voice made of rage to fill it.
Ben Solo is dead, burned with the last of the Jedi in a temple that will spit ash into the sky for weeks.
And Kylo Ren is born.