Work Text:
Ben Solo was dying. Of that, he was nearly certain. He had made peace with it as he felt himself fade into the Force, intent on concentrating on the joyful memory of the kiss that Rey had given him to the very end; but that end never came.
He opened his eyes. Ben was no longer on Exogol. Rey was gone. The Sith temple was gone. The desperate battle raging above was gone. He was in a forest clearing under a clear blue sky and bright sunshine. Birds chirped and leaves rustled in a soft breeze.
He could still feel the pain of every one of his injuries, perhaps more so now, without the adrenaline and the urgency of getting to Rey to keep him going.
“This can’t be right…” he murmured.
Ben stretched out with the Force. Wherever he was, it was old, full of memory, and he was not alone.
* * *
“This way, Aunt Mara,” Anakin called. “It’s coming from that clearing over there.”
Mara could feel something too, familiar, but not quite. Whatever was out there, it felt both familiar and strange, like a dream just before it fades out of memory.
“Mysterious disturbances in the Force just outside the academy would show up when Luke is off world,” Mara muttered to herself.
“I don’t think it’s dangerous, Aunt Mara,” Anakin said.
“A lot of dangerous things are very good at not seeming dangerous at first, kid.”
“Yes, Aunt Mara, I’ll be careful.”
But Mara knew he didn’t entirely believe her. While she hoped he was right this time, she made a mental note to work on coaxing him to be a little more cautious about this kind of thing before he finished his training, which would be soon. He was strong enough in the Force to be a particularly tempting target for the dark side, and he would need to be careful when he set off on his own as a Jedi.
As they approached the clearing, they could see someone there, laying on the ground. Mara motioned for Anakin to stay back, in case this was some sort of trap. Slowly, she entered the clearing and approached the prone figure.
She froze.
There on the ground in front of her, was Anakin.
* * *
The shock that Anakin felt from Aunt Mara brought him into the clearing immediately, his lightsaber at the ready, only to be confronted with… himself?
* * *
“He doesn’t feel like a clone ,” Mara thought to herself, “but he doesn’t feel like a distinct person either. He feels like Anakin, but… distorted… This newcomer felt in the Force the way an object looked when viewed through water.
Aloud, she asked “Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
“My name is Ben,” groaned the stranger, who was now staring at Anakin.
Mara’s eyes narrowed. It was highly unlikely that someone with her son’s name and her nephew’s face who had such a strange presence in the Force and who was clearly badly injured would just coincidentally appear out of nowhere right outside their home. Then again, it was so mind-bogglingly, stupidly obvious as a nefarious plot that she had a hard time believing that it could really be one.
* * *
“I don’t know how I got here,” Ben added quickly. He’d noticed that the mention of his name had deepend the red-haired woman’s suspicion considerably; probably having to do with the near-mirror image of himself standing next to her with his lightsaber drawn.
He should have been nervous. This seemed on the surface to be a very dangerous situation for him, and yet, somehow, Ben had the unshakeable feeling that everything was going to be okay this time. Whether it was the Force or just being too tired and hurt to care anymore about his own safety, Ben wasn’t sure, but either way, he was in no shape to fight. His only hope was to trust that feeling.
“The last thing I remember, I was dying, and then I was here. I don’t even know where 'here' is, or how I am alive at all.”
* * *
The kid was telling the truth, or at least believed that he was.
Mara weighed her options. She still wasn’t fully ready to trust him, but he was badly hurt. If she put him in a healing trance, he’d probably be out for at least a week. That would buy some time to figure out what to do about him, although that did involve the risk of turning a weakened enemy into a strong one.
In spite of her misgivings, Mara had an inexplicable, nagging feeling that she should help the kid, whoever he was. Putting her trust in the Force, she knelt down beside him and said,
“I’m going to put you into a healing trance. We’ll talk more when you’re feeling better.”
* * *
The red-haired woman placed a hand on Ben’s chest, and he felt suddenly warm and relaxed.
He looked up at her, and then at his doppleganger, looking into his own eyes until his consciousness faded completely.
* * *
“How are you holding up, Anakin?” Mara asked once they had gotten the newcomer inside and laid him in a guest bedroom (one which could be locked from the outside).
“I’m okay,” Anakin replied.
“Are you feeling any strange buzzing sensations? Disorientation?” Mara pressed, trying to remember how Luke had described his encounter with a clone of himself so many years ago.
“Not exactly… He does feel strange…” Anakin paused, trying to find the right words. “It’s like… an echo, or like a reflection, but a distorted one, and he’s not bothering me any. I feel fine.”
“Hmmmm… Well, I want you to be careful around him, just in case… and never alone; at least until we can figure out where he came from and why he’s here.”
* * *
“He doesn’t feel like any clone I’ve ever encountered,” Luke said. He had hurried back to the academy when Mara contacted him about their mysterious visitor, who had been in a healing trance for three days now and seemed likely to stay that way for at least three more.
Leia and Han had arrived not long after Luke, wanting to see for themselves this mysterious clone-but-not-a-clone of their son. Now they all sat together, trying to puzzle out this mystery.
“You say he calls himself Ben? It sounds to me like somebody is trying to pull one over on us, by sending in a lookalike, but hasn’t gotten their facts straight,” said Han.
“There’s no way that I know of to fake his presence in the Force,” said Mara.
“Yes,” Leia added. “I can’t explain it, but I can feel that whoever he is, wherever he came from. That is my son… somehow.”
“What?! Sweetheart, Anakin can’t possibly have a twin that we never knew about before,” said Han
“But…” Luke said, “apparently he does.” He stood up. “For lack of any better ideas, I’m going to meditate; see if I can get any hints about where this kid came from that way.”
“Wait,” said Leia. “I think I should do it.”
* * *
As visions go, this one was as vague as ever; a jumble of events with little or no context, a dark cavern echoing with hundreds of voices, a desperate climb to reach… something, someone?
Whatever was going on, Leia was able to say that she got the very strong sense that the young man had been sent here from somewhere, or somewhen else.
“What do you mean ‘sent’ here?! From where? How?!” asked Han.
“I don’t know exactly,” Leia said, “the future maybe?”
“Could he have been sent to warn us about some impending danger?” Mara said.
“If he were Anakin from the future, why would he call himself Ben?” Luke said.
“Maybe he is Ben from the future,” suggested Han.
“No,” Mara shook her head. “For one, he doesn’t feel in the Force like the Ben that I know at all. He feels like Anakin. For another, if he were Ben from the future, he would have recognized his own mother.”
“Hmmm… maybe he isn’t from our future, but from some other future, or present for that matter; one where history has played out very differently than it has here,” said Luke.
“One where things were going very badly for us,” added Leia.
“Like some sort of alternate timeline where that clone of Thrawn that you found woke up and plunged the galaxy into war all over again or something?” asked Han.
“I can’t speak to the specifics, but yeah, something like that,” said Luke, and Leia nodded agreement.
“Okay, but why?” said Han.
“Leia mentioned that things were going badly for us in her vision. Maybe this was a last ditch attempt to at least get him to safety before everything blows up?” said Mara.
“If I were in a desperate enough situation and I could figure out how, I would do it without hesitation,” said Leia. “And… Now that I think of it, maybe I did. Maybe that’s how I know, deep down, that he is my son, and why I felt the Force telling me that I should be the one to meditate on it.”
“Well, until he finishes healing, that sounds like as likely an explanation as any,” Luke said.
* * *
A few days later, Luke sensed that the kid was nearly ready to wake up from his healing trance. He went to the room where Anakin’s doppelganger was, and looked down at the sleeping form on the bed. Luke thought it might be a good idea to be there when the boy woke up, to reassure him that whatever danger he had been in before had passed, but he soon realized that this was a mistake.
The young man’s eyes opened. He saw Luke, and to Luke’s surprise, the sight of him terrified the boy, who was out of bed and across the room in an instant, putting the bed between them. He had stolen Luke’s lightsaber along the way, and he held it in front of him now, ignited, as he cowered behind it.
Luke raised his hands in what he hoped was a non-threatening gesture and said
“Hey, it’s alright. No one here is going to hurt you.”
In the kid’s present state of near-panic, Luke doubted that any of the words he said were really getting through, but he kept talking, hoping that a soothing tone of voice would help to calm the young man down.
“Ben; you said your name was Ben? My name is Luke Skywalker. I am a Jedi Master. You are at my Jedi academy on Yavin IV.”
“Yavin? Your academy wasn’t on Yavin.”
While Luke wasn’t sure he liked the implications of Ben’s use of the past tense, at least the kid was talking to him. He hoped he could build on that progress.
“Where you are from, I’m sure that’s true,” Luke said. “This is not where you are from. I don’t know exactly how or why, but it seems that the Force has brought you here from an alternate reality. That’s why, you may have noticed, that there is already someone here who is identical to you.”
* * *
The initial shock of waking up to find Luke Skywalker looming over him once again began to slowly fade as Ben got his bearings in this new place. He could feel that this Luke, at least for now, sincerely meant him no harm.
Ben remembered the strangeness of looking into his own eyes as he faded from consciousness, and wondered what could possibly have brought him here, and where here even was.
* * *
To Luke’s relief, he could feel Ben’s curiosity overcoming his fear. He kept talking.
“Your counterpart; his name is Anakin.”
“Anakin?”
“Yes, Anakin,” Luke said. “His brother’s name is Jacen, and…”
“Brother?!” Ben interrupted, clearly surprised.
“You don’t have a brother?” Luke asked.
“No.”
“Or a sister?”
“No.”
“Hmmm, interesting,” Luke said. “Anakin has both.”
With that, the young man’s curiosity won out, and Luke breathed a sigh of relief.
* * *
Ben’s mind buzzed with the possibilities. Was this somehow related to the vision that Rey had described seeing in the cave on Ach-to?
“Ben?” Luke said, interrupting Ben’s thoughts. “May I have my lightsaber back?”
Ben looked at the lightsaber in his hand, the same one that still haunted his nightmares. He hesitated, but he sensed no ill will toward him from Luke. He closed down the saber, and slowly set it down on the bed in front of him.
Very slowly, and, Ben sensed, very cautiously, Luke took the lightsaber and put it back in its customary place on his belt.
“Come on,” he said to Ben. “You were out for a long time, you must be hungry. I know I usually am after a healing trance.”
He’d been too distracted to notice before now, but the reminder made Ben acutely aware of his stomach rumbling.
“Yeah, I am; now that you mention it.”
* * *
“He was terrified. ” Luke told Mara later that night as they lay together in bed. “I’ve never felt anyone be so afraid of me before.”
“He seemed to warm up to you pretty quickly though.”
“Yeah… I wonder… Do you think in whatever reality he’s from I turned to the dark side?”
“It would explain his reaction.”
“And it would explain why he said that my academy ‘wasn’t on Yavin,’ past tense,” Luke murmured.
“And it would explain how things could be going so badly for us in Leia’s vision.”
“That must be it,” Luke nodded. “Poor kid.”
“It makes sense, but the only way to know for sure is to ask him.”
“Yeah… I don’t need the Force to get the feeling that it’s a sensitive subject though.”
“Okay, so maybe don’t ask him right away. Give him some time to get his bearings. Maybe he’ll tell you on his own when he’s ready.”
“Maybe.”
“For tonight, if you’re worrying about it, don’t. Whatever the version of you that he knew did or didn’t do, that isn’t who you are here and now.”
Luke sighed. “You know me too well, Mara.” He leaned in close to kiss her.
“And I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she whispered just before their lips met.
* * *
Ben settled into life at the academy. The Skywalker and Solo families welcomed him as one of their own, calling him “Big Ben,” in contrast to Ben Skywalker, who they started calling “Little Ben.”
He made a point of being helpful whenever the opportunity arose, perhaps a little too helpful, Luke thought. For all his outward friendliness, Luke could sense a lingering guilt under the surface of Ben’s earnest demeanor.
At first, Luke and the others didn’t mention it, wanting to give Ben space, and time to heal from whatever haunted him, but the longer they waited, the more Ben ingratiated himself into life at the academy, the stronger the feeling became. Finally, Luke decided that it was time to clear the air. On a golden afternoon, he set aside some time to talk to Ben. They hiked out into the forest around the academy, just the two of them.
Luke decided to get right to the point. “Ben, it’s not your fault.”
“What?”
“It’s not your fault that I turned to the dark side in the timeline that you came from. Whatever you did, or didn’t do, you don’t need to carry that guilt around any longer. I’ve had enough near misses myself to know that whatever happened, it wasn’t because of you.”
To Luke’s dismay, his attempt at reassurance only made Ben feel worse. Luke could feel the kid’s shame and grief threatening to overwhelm him. He decided to stop talking.
They sat together on a log in silence as Ben wrestled with his feelings and the sun dipped ever closer to the horizon. Finally, Ben spoke, in a low voice, barely above a whisper.
“You didn’t turn to the dark side. I did.”
* * *
Ben winced when he felt Luke’s shock ripple out through the Force. He’d been dreading this conversation, although, now that he couldn’t put it off any more, Ben felt strangely relieved. Whatever happened next, at least he would no longer be taking advantage of their trust and goodwill. He told Luke everything, from the voices that he had heard his whole life, to that fateful night at the other Luke’s academy, the murder of Han Solo by his own hand, his strange connection to Rey, his rejection of the dark side, and his desperate attempt to save her life as the last thing he remembered before he woke up here.
Luke listened, making no attempt to interrupt, until Ben had finished his story. Then, slowly, deliberately, Luke reached out, and pulled Ben into a hug.
Ben, emotionally spent from his confession and surprised by this totally unexpected reaction from Luke, didn’t know what to think. He had been preparing himself for anger, fear, rejection… but all he felt from Uncle Luke now was compassion.
The memory came to the surface of Ben’s consciousness of his father’s final moments, reaching up to touch his son’s cheek one last time, with only love, until the very end, even in the face of the unforgivable. Tears welled up in Ben’s eyes. He laid his head on Luke’s shoulder and let them come.
* * *
Luke held Ben tight as he sobbed, finally confronting all that weighed so heavily on his heart, as the sun set and the stars came out overhead. When all of Ben’s tears were spent, they went back inside, back home , and it was home, Luke made that clear, for as long as Ben cared to stay.
* * *
“Hey Ben, Luke told me about what happened,” Mara said the next day. “I thought you might be interested to know, Palpatine used to talk to me in my head too.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. I could hear his voice calling to me from anywhere in the galaxy. I used to carry out his commands, his “justice” as he called it. I thought at the time that I was doing the right thing, only learning the truth later.”
Ben was speechless. Mara could sense from his tangle of conflicting emotions that this was a lot to take in, especially, she suspected, when he was still feeling raw from last night.
“I bottled up my feelings about it for a long time,” Mara said. “Probably too long. I don’t want to push you before you’re ready, but I want you to know that I’m here for you if you ever need someone to talk to about it.”
“I…uh…th…thanks,” Ben said.
* * *
Eventually, Ben did take Mara up on her offer to talk, and more.
Ben asked Luke and Mara to teach him how to teach others the ways of the Force.
Luke was happy to oblige, and taught Ben everything he knew. Ben was the happiest he had ever been. The only thing that Ben could have wished for, was for Rey to be here to share this happiness with him.
“She would love this place,” Ben said to anyone who would listen “It’s so green and alive… and the people… she was so lonely.”
“Maybe you could find a way to bring her here,” Little Ben suggested one day. “You traveled here. Maybe she could too.”
“Even if I knew how to do that, I doubt she would come, not when there are people there who need her,” Ben replied.
* * *
Leia, for her part, always had a strange feeling about Ben. She knew, deep in her soul, that he was her son, from the moment she saw him, but there was something else too, a whisper in the Force that she always felt around him whenever she came to visit, but could never quite parse the meaning of.
As time went on, and Ben’s own inner light grew brighter, the feeling grew stronger. She felt it now in the back of her mind, all the time, even when she was far far away. The Force was trying to tell Leia something. What, exactly, it was, that she needed to know or to do, she still wasn’t sure, but finally, when the moment felt right, she made the time to make another trip to Yavin to see Ben, possibly, she sensed, for the last time.
* * *
“Quiet your mind. Reach out to the Force…” Luke said.
He, Mara, Han, Jacen, Jaina, Anakin, Ben Skywalker, and Ben Solo were all seated together with Leia, unsure of what her strange feeling of finality about this visit could mean. Han took her hand, even as he tried not to distract her with his own worry.
For a little while, there was only silence, and then, those who could feel the Force sensed a change in Leia. She looked at Ben, and smiled.
“There you are,” she said.
“Mom?” Ben said, his voice trembling.
Leia nodded.
“I’m sorry Ben. I’m sorry that I sent you away, that I wasn’t there to protect you like I should have been…”
“No. No no no. Mother… I’m the one who should be apologizing. I’m so sorry…”
“We can both be sorry then,” Leia said with a wry smile. She opened her arms, inviting him in for a hug. Ben embraced her, with tears in his eyes.
“Have you come to say goodbye?” Ben asked.
“Yes. But first, there is one last thing for me to do. When you were dying on Exogol, I brought you here, where I knew you could be safe, and heal; and you have. Now, if you are ready, I’ve come to show you the way back home.”
Ben stepped back.
“But… I…”
“It doesn’t have to be right this minute. Take some time to think about it. I’ll be here when you’re ready. Oh, and…” Leia turned to Han and the others, “don’t worry. The Leia that lives here with you will be just fine. This is just the only way I can speak to anyone here.”
With that, Leia was back to her old self again. She looked around the room.
“What happened?” she asked.
* * *
“You could stay,” Little Ben said.
“He’s right,” agreed Jaina, while Jacen and Anakin nodded.
“I know,” said Ben. “It’s not that I want to leave. I don’t, but…”
“You miss Rey?” asked Little Ben.
“I do; but also, I… I know what I have to do.
“When I first came here, I thought my life was over, and that the galaxy that I was leaving behind was better off for it, but now… now I have a chance to help rebuild what I had once helped to destroy. I’ve learned so much while I’ve been here, I can use that to help.”
* * *
Han was the first to break the silence that followed.
“Kid, you do what you feel you have to do, and good luck to you, it sounds like you’ll need it; but wherever you go, whatever happens, you will always have another home to come back to here, even if only in spirit.”
“Yeah, just try to give me a heads up first if you’re going to possess me like Mom just did,” Anakin said.
“I don’t know; it might be fun to see how long it takes anyone to notice,” Ben joked.
They all laughed.
Ben said goodbye to everyone in turn. There were hugs and tears and laughter and advice all around. Finally, Ben turned back to Leia and said,
“Okay, I think I’m ready now.”
* * *
“Be with me,” Rey whispered into the chilly night air, hoping that Ben’s spirit would find the way back to her.
“Rey, I’m here.”
Rey opened her eyes, and there he was, in person! She reached out to him, hardly daring to believe it. When Ben took her hand, she let out the breath that she hadn’t even realized she was holding. He pulled her close, and Rey looked up into his deep brown eyes and kissed him.
“I hope you’re not planning on leaving me again.”
“Never,” Ben promised, and he kissed her again.
* * *
It took some time for the others, Poe and Finn and Rose and the rest, to warm up to Ben, though not as long as he would have guessed. Poe was particularly fascinated to learn that the home that he grew up in was Luke’s Jedi academy in an alternate reality.
Between Rey’s studies of the ancient Jedi texts, and all that Ben had learned from the other Master Luke Skywalker, together they were able to build the foundation of a new Jedi order that would last for generations to come.
And they lived happily ever after.