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He thinks his mother used to read him stories when he was not yet shaped from cosmic particles of the flow of the Force.
When he was barely whispers and hopes and plans. The Force already formed around his core, pumping life, future, doom into the spark that hasn't yet come to life as his soul.
A voice then would reach him. Of a woman, tired and afraid. Finding strange solace in these moments when she can stop the swirl of the galaxy endlessly circling, moving, falling into pieces and rebuilding, sit and read to him. Unshaped him, but that voice already named him and brought him onto the path.
I think you will be a boy.
A mocking test of fate.
I think my fear will shape you into being of the same struggles and insecurities we were always cursed with.
I think we won't have much time together so I'm going to have to make do with what we have now.
And so, she did. Put the meetings on pause, the rebellion raging outside the glass walls, the world ends, the world begins, in cycles, over and over again but she, for these few moments, disappeared into the flow of the Force inside her and read to him.
The stories of a wooden boy made by a lonely carpenter into the likeness of the child or a companion, to have, to love, to keep. A vessel of dreams and hopes but grieves and regrets. too, to always be there for him.
(Ben didn't even have a fully conscious heart developed yet, but he already knew this is sad and wrong and you shouldn't love like that. In a prison of your own design.)
But the voice of his mother kept echoing inside his spark and maybe that's how their bloodline loves, in the end.
*
Then his mother stops reading to him when he becomes a real boy, flesh and blood and dark eyes hiding pools of insatiable and curious and longing.
His mother isn't really there, at all.
He once caught her watching him, read to himself. About the Force and its history (the wooden boy discarded on the shelf, gathering dust, never to be recalled again). He turns to her and sees. Fear and confusion. As if she asks him: who are you or what have we done? And then she would disappear to her intergalactic travels, to negotiate peace or prepare more attacks, to maintain fragility of the glass house that was to shatter into pieces very soon.
Ben doesn't know who he is. There is a void in him, where his mother's voice used to read to him. And a shimmer of power that is alive and organic, restless, abandoned. A wild creature, left on its own and to its own devices.
*
Soon, the void echoes with another voice, when Ben is seven and he is about to leave for the uncle's Academy to be the Knight of the Republic.
(Ben knows what it means. He knows what chess game is about. How the pawns once fulfilling their purpose, evaporate into a laser beam. Redundant.)
/Hi. Hello. Is anyone here?/
The voice is shapeless but felt, experienced inside Ben's mind or his heart or both, when he is lying in his bed. Scared and alone. Thinking of the laser beam aiming at him with expectations. But what are those? When do I fulfill them? When can I just be?
Uhm, hi. Who are you?
Ben sends the shimmer of his force into the void inside him to grip something fair and warm and bright and soft. For the first time to feel accompanied.
/I don't know. I'm just kind of floating here. Waiting for someone./
Me, too.
This is what Ben was doing his entire short young life, what felt like it. (Youth ended quickly for him. He had to grow up.) He feels anchored in purpose, now.
How do you know you're waiting for someone? He asks the same time the voice in him prompts.
/I don't know. It just feels like I belong with someone and they have to pick me up./
Ben goes through a profound ache inside. Like he's lost something he never really had, and yet the grief over it fills up the void inside him to the brink.
Can you belong with someone, though? He asks, hopeful but sad.
/Is there any other purpose of life if you don't?/ The voice sounds so sure and absolute, Ben feels something moist gathering in his eyes. After that overwhelming loss he hasn't even experienced and yet.
Doesn't this mean you were created for someone, like a wooden doll for a lonely carpenter to be put in his prison?
Ben delivers the moral of the story he remembered from ages ago. The foreboding of which always stayed in him along with his mother's fear and confusion.
The voice on the other hand or inside him is quiet for a moment and Ben spirals into cold and abandoned before the light returns with anchoring and sure.
/Can't this prison be a home and a carpenter a family?/
Ben lets the moist in his eye fall, like the only physical presence of that voice, the only proof of it being real and his and true, when he whispers to his room, out loud, like a wish to come true.
“If only.”
*
As Ben enters the chess board of the pawns at his Uncle's Academy (his mother didn't even say goodbye to him, she was conducting negotiations on a remote planet, away from him, from home, if he ever was this, if they ever had one. And his father was never there to begin with, chasing the dare of the youth in his pirate ship, he once take him to with a melancholic, but you, my son, have a different path ahead of you, apparently) the void inside him oozes emptiness and cold.
So he seeks out his light in the darkness all the time. And he always finds it (him? His Pinocchio?) there, waiting.
Are you sometimes afraid? Ben looks for reassurance in the dead of the night, when he can't sleep and wishes someone would read to him.
/Not with you here./ And it's more than his mother's voice could ever give him.
I just want to fly in the sky and be free, sometimes. I don't want obligations. The daily schedule of the Academy is grueling and the watchful eyes of his Uncle have the same flash of fear and confusion his mother's did but fueled by cold assessment. Like Ben is a piece of machinery to dismantle and leave in the closed box.
Like he's radioactive.
/I think this is called growing up. / He goes through the entire day of meditation with humming peace inside his mind wrapped in these cocooning words.
~~
Where are you? I wish I could come and get you and fly with you far away? Ben is working on his kybercrystal. The shimmer of the Force in him always amplified whenever they speak. The Force is never more alive than when he thinks of the world he can give to two of them.
Home. Belonging. Whatever this is.
/If you could go to any star and make it a home, where would you go? /There is no answer to where his wooden boy is. There is somber tone instead. Of someone trapped in a tight space, looking through a tiny hole in the wall into the world out of reach on the outside.
Somewhere with endless patches of land where you can't see the horizon. There are two suns shining and it's light and bright and whenever direction you move, you are free. He thinks he can see this place, somewhere out there, waiting for him, calling for him, to come home. But he never knew one so how can he? And will he recognize it?
/If only. /The words echo with the same wish Ben whispered all that time ago, just before he ended up a pawn at the Academy.
~~
What's your name?
/I don't have one. /
Everyone has a name.
/You have to have a person first to name you. /
I am your person.
/Then name me. /
There are sounds buzzing inside Ben to that. Power of possession and ownership.
Mine. You are mine.
He wants to say. My wooden boy so that I never feel alone again.
Then, something softer, resembling that boy with his nose in the books, searching for the purpose, remembering his mother's voice and looking for it in pages, speaks of Hope and Home.
You are both.
Finally, he listens to the hum inside him. The core of the Force full of bright, warm and fair and this is where the voice comes from (is it the spark that made him from the whispers and hopes and plans? It is his heart? Was he made at all because his wooden boy exists? Is this a twist on the story he remembers from his childhood? It’s not him being the creator in the end?).
He says, out loud, another wish he dares to put into words, so that the void inside him never becomes a cold Nothing anymore.
"This is for when we meet, my light."
*
The moment he wields his first lightsaber, there is a shift inside him, like clogs of the machine shifting (is he that wooden puppet moved by the threads in the end?).
The void inside him comes alive with cold absence of before and a different voice speaks. As if the void becomes it. Sharp, hollow and cold. Encompassing but with suffocation not belonging. Chilling from the inside, rather than making him weightless from within.
So, finally. You've awaken. Son.
A familial name sounds distorted and wrong, as if it's coming from the snarling jaws of a monsters beneath. But no one calls him that anymore. No one has called him that for so long. His uncle spits his name like a warning and he thinks he forgot the sound of his mother's voice at all.
Something desperate and perched in him caves in to that new presence in him.
What is your will?
He almost names the voice, master. Like it is customary in the Academy. Like he should refer with to his uncle (as if they are strangers not bound by blood).
This will come later. Soon.
Now, he opens up these hollow spaces in him to the demands that feel like an anchor.
Are you ready to come back home and to walk the path destined to you?
Ben thinks of the planet with two suns, endless space, limitless horizon, so much light and warm and him, the voice, by his side, how they can finally belong there together and he succumbs to fate, naming it properly this time.
Yes, master.
*
Kylo Ren soon forgets about the stories from the shelves read in a woman's voice that used to be someone's mother. There is no room in him for any other presence but pulsing viciously red and angry and denied and pushed onto the discarded outside, as he lets a new creature in him on a leash of the void rage in injustice and childish misery over that.
Sometimes, at night, a flutter of wings beneath the flared up red brings echoes of before.
/Where have you gone? Where have you disappeared to? I never asked you for your name. I don't know how to call for when I'm in the dark dreaming of our planet and our freedom? /
Ben hears the muffled voice of a boy and there's ache in him of remembering and longing but Kylo doesn't let him respond. He rebukes him with the voice of his master.
"You don't have any other name now. And if you want that dream, that wish, to be yours, you have to take it, by force, with the Force, to never be weak again for anyone."
*
So, Kylo does. Conquers, takes and rules over scorched lands with the cracking of electricity inside him like a hum in the machine operated.
Ben stays quiet. Disappears into the dreams of the impossible.
But remembers.
His light.
What he sounds like, what he feels like.
*
And so it's Ben, who gasps beneath the whirling machinery of the mask, the voice modulator and orders shaping his new identity (threads-operated scarecrow) upon seeing the white, fair, light on the burned coast of another planet conquered and consumed.
A seven-year old boy from years ago whispers.
It’s you. It’s you, my light.
At the white-armoured trooper facing the silent rage of Kylo Ren over a distance. (These soldiers brainwashed and sent onto nations and planets to take and to claim, to exercise power over weakness, looking like fair knights from the book pages forgotten, beneath the layers of dust of the forbidden. But Kylo Ren fails to see the irony in that.)
You’ve found me. We can come back home.
The whispers grow in strength beneath the cold armour of raging purpose. But Kylo Ren squashes them into non-being, into no-recognition, when he elongates his order to Phasma, voice like that void that once spoke inside him and vanquished everything outside it.
“Bring this trooper to me right away, Captain.”
*
The trooper is like a beacon inside his room. Reflects something pristine. It’s not a material of his armour. It’s something invisible to the naked eye. It makes Kylo hiss. Like a foreign substance that itches.
“What’s your name, soldier?”
The trooper doesn’t even have a face, yet. Expressionless masks hide them both from each other. Ben is rattling the cage inside to call the only name he remembers.
My light.
“I don’t have one. I serve under the First Order as one of many. We don’t need names,” the trooper sounds automatic. Reciting formulas. Or going for the safety of the obedience and submission this reign is built on. (Kylo is formed from the same material to his master, in the end).
“Take off your mask,” Kylo gives in to the pleas rattling inside him, of a boy crying after his long lost dream. He still speaks through a modulator, so no one can know and see that this boy in him is still alive and still has a voice (albeit, muffled and restrained. Often. Always).
The trooper’s moves are succinct and precise. A well whirred machine of submission. Which they all are, in the end.
Ben sighs to Kylo’s fist clenching.
The room gets even brighter, then.
The light has a shape, a face and expression now and it puts cracks even on Kylo’s demeanor of a perfect pawn.
The force inside him pulses underneath all red with something weightless, like wings. A recognition. Of a long lost belonging. He moves, no longer a scarecrow on threads of the puppet master but Ben remembering stories that saved him from alone.
His gloved hand reaches for the impossible dream, now tangible, alive, within his grasp. Fingers twitching, he asks, in a voice that almost sounds like Ben’s. “May i?”
The trooper is confused, when he speaks the words drilled into him by the system. “We are at your service, sir,” making Ben rage at the implication. A flash of old possessiveness feels like a cut of the blade.
No. Mine. My light.
Kylo Ren doesn’t manage to stop the fingers from trembling (his body his own again, or Ben’s, no longer automated) when he palms the cheek of his light, captures the dream, like a stardust around their planet of home and belonging. He’s barely audible, when he asks. “What name they gave you here?”
Who dared to name you? Who stole you from me? Ben wants to ask, the irony escapes him. The tragedy does too.
“FN-2187,sir,” comes the answer and the trooper’s voice has a tremor, as his eyelids flutter and he doesn’t jerk away from the touch. Rather leans towards it, like it’s something familiar.
The hum inside Kylo, no, Ben, grows now in something electric, something encompassing, trying to tear the uniform down, trying to make Ben burst free from underneath. “FN, sounds like Finn. Fair. Blessed with knowledge, wisdom and bravery. A hero. My light.”
Kylo doesn’t stop Ben from speaking and FN gasps, his own, gloved hand now moving towards Ben’s, caressing his cheek, seeking skin, seeking physicality, beneath the suits and masks they were put in like shells trapping souls.
“it’s you? You’ve found me. You named me,” there is a light warming up his brown eyes that is blinding now and a smile shaping his full lips into recognition in mutual belonging. Ben feels moisture in his eyes beneath the coldness of the mask, like he’s just woken up from many dreams of the feeling of home he used to have. The echo of the voice wrapped around him then like a blanket.
But it all disperses under realization growing in despair, as FN withdraws his hand and moves away from gravity forming around them like a bubble of safety. He speaks, the words condemning.
“And you’ve built a whole prison to keep me?’
No one speaks to Kylo Ren like that. His body tries to remember the rage, the focus of the war machine, hand like claws ready to strangle, to push the words back to his throat but Ben doesn’t let him.
Ben lets FN rush out of the room, eyes dim with unshed tears of disappointment (it feels like Ben is being strangled, now), light and warmth discarding into ashes. No stardust laying down path to their freedom and their home.
He’s left behind in cold emptiness that resembles the void he promised himself to never return to. To never be devoured by.
But he is the void. Now he knows. Therefore, he can never escape it, can he?
*
“There has been an awakening, have you felt it?” the master asks (it’s his bloodline, in the end, but he is the demiurge of his new persona, so there is no family in his life. Only the Force associates.)
It stirs bristling feeling in him. Anger, mingled with fear (these are his most devoted companions. Maybe they are the only family he will ever have) wrapped around boiling inside rejection. Or, a refusal.
No. You don’t get to touch this and know of this. You don’t get to feel this. He’s mine. Finn is mine.
He tries to swallow it all up, hide it from his demiurge, to not give him more threads to pull on. (He still won’t manage. He will still end up tied up into the theatre as the leading marionette.) He feigns humble devotion, speaking in Ben’s voice (choking on Ben’s feelings) but with Kylo’s etched mask of an expression on his face.
“What do you want me to do about him, master?”
The voice booms with inevitability, when he speaks. The demiurge himself revealing the final act for the audience. “You know what he is. He is a vessel of whatever you yearn after so he can either become your greatest threat or the sharpest tool to execute all your plans with.”
Ben speaks before Kylo stops him.”Do I get to have my own plans, then?”
The chuckle that follows is cold and slimy. The Force inside him echoes with it. Mocking, belittling, but gracious. A guardian petting a naïve child after expressing foolish belief in ancient legends of the mightiest heroes being real.
Does he get to have anything of his own? Or is he just a void to be filled with whatever fate deems approvable at the time?
Ben spits the acid, stirring Kylo’s whimsical rage. They both just accept the answer, rendered numb. “Silly child. You already know you are the Force’s favourite son and whatever She rules over, comes to pass. You are merely an instrument she lets into making it happen. Which is a grace and an honour of possessing the knowledge of Her at all.”
“Yes, master,” Kylo bows and Ben speaks in an empty, automatic voice of a wooden creation.
They all are wooden boys and the Force is the void pulling the strings.
*
He still calls for Finn in his mind (or his heart, or in that spark he used to think might be his soul, but in the end It’s probably just the Force’s whirling him on to the beats).
You once told me that a prison and a carpenter can be a home and a family. This is what all of this has become to me. I can still fly us away to that place with two suns and endless freedom with no horizon in sight.
He lets Ben roam, speak the words suppressed on for too long. He lets Kylo sleep in shame and humiliation, instead.
There is silence on the other end that reminds him of the hollow sound of the void. No, the void has a heartbeat. It’s black and booming. It’s the doomsday clock of the inevitable. This silence is peaceful. Waiting. Hoping, more like it.
Until there isn’t.
Finn speaks their vow.
/If only./
An empty promise of the impossible.
Followed by.
/What’s your name?/
Kylo is asleep (Kylo is choking on shame) so Ben replies. Loud and proud.
Ben.
/Whose son are you, then, Ben?/
Finn read the stories. Finn knows the words. Or is he a vessel of whatever Ben absorbed in his lifetime, in the end. Wooden boys dancing on the strings into their death.
He was told to have so many connections. He is the Force’s favourite son, he is the Princess’s son, he is the notorious smuggler’s son.
Then why it doesn’t feel like it? Then why it’s just an empty sound to him. So he answers. No longer quiet and defeated. But definite.
No one’s.
I am my own master, gets stuck in his throat, as he watches the mask laid by his bed, senses Kylo in him, restless wild dog on somebody else’s leash, always.
/Everybody needs to be someone’s. Everybody needs a family./
An ache in him feels like slash of a weapon across his heart, when he chokes out.
Do you have one?
The real answer gets muffled by fear and insecurity. (Can you be one for me?)
/I’m still looking. But I’m hopeful, Ben./
Hope. Home. Light. Finn.
The way Finn names him, when he talks about hope, (like his name equals hope in some lifetime) might be enough for Ben to feel it all and to believe in it all.
*
That night Finn flies away with a rogue pilot and Kylo’s awakened with raging fury, screaming about Traitor! All thoughts of hope, home and light, forgotten as he opens up to the praises of the master (to the beats of the Force).
Good. That’s it, son. Let the anger guide you home.
*
Kylo is stalking the white deer in the woods. The white deer is beaming with light, so it cannot hide from him. And there is a pull of gravity drawing him straight to the source. (No. Kylo is using primal instinct to hunt the deer. The gravity is for Ben. The source is home.)
Kylo is deflecting the shots of a laser gun with his saber and Ben screams at him to be careful. To protect him.
Don’t hurt him. For then you will truly be orphaned.
Kylo growls possessively, I already am.
He waves his hand furiously to catch the threads into his fist and stop the chase and the run entirely.
The white deer is frozen in place. Paralysed by the force humming around him with entrapment but protection, somehow, too. He has been caught in snares but it also feels like he’s held in someone’s arms.
Kylo stalks his prey and growls through his mask. “I see you found your new family.”
The white deer looks at him defiantly with his heated brown eyes and speaks with Finn’s voice. “I said I’m gonna be looking. And it’s a start.”
Kylo stands before him, with his hand outstretched now (all claws but also trembling fingers, Kylo wants to snap the connection, Ben longs for it). “They are using you. You are the pawn on their chess board, Finn.”
“Take off your mask and maybe then I’ll believe that you know anything about freedom, Ben.”
Ben chuckles to Kylo’s grunt of frustration and the connection turns to white noise around Finn as he swoons like cut out of paper, like threads of a puppet have been severed. Straight into Kylo’s claws but Ben’s arms.
I’ve got you, Finn.
A predator triumphs and a guardian sighs in a relief.
*
Ben stands by Finn’s bed on Kylo Ren’s ship, with the mask laid down on the ground like a sign of peace (or capitulation. Ben fought this battle bravely and Ben won).
The shimmer of the Force around them is the sound of balance and calm. And right. As if the war is not raging on the outside. As if there are no sides. As if they all aren’t on a battlefield of the Force’s merciless whims.
As if they are in the same bubble they were all those years ago. Speaking to each other’s hearts with their barely shaped voices, sharing stumbling on their feet dreams and hopes and identities.
Finn opens his eyes and Ben drowns. In light. In hope. In home. Finally it doesn’t feel like watching him through a peephole on the wall of his own creation.
He reads the expression, there, greedily. Like he used to read one of his stories. But Finn is quiet and focused. The page is empty. His heart betrays nothing. He speaks, though. And his voice sounds both, playful and sad.
“Are we on that ship you promised that will fly us away onto the planet of dreams come true?”
Ben wants to shout Yes! Anything! Everything you want! But there’s a tug in him. The void oozing orders and demands. A reminder that he is on the path he himself paved and it might be too late to turn back. He is obliged. (That’s what he tells himself, when the word he should be using is imprisoned). He murmurs, apologetic and ashamed. “It’s not that simple.”
“Huh. So this is how it feels to be your own master, instead of being used as a pawn on a chess board, right?” Finn lifts himself up, defiance in his now hardened gaze. This brings him closer to Ben.
The Force around them shimmers with forbidden whispers. Ben breathes in electricity. It’s not painful and burning, like when the master pulls his threads.
It settles under his garment, on his skin, with a caress he never knew before. An invitation. An irresistible pull.
“Do you remember anything about your childhood?” Ben asks, and he sounds hoarse. Like there’s not enough air in his lungs.
Finn stays seated on the bed, his eyes still endless pool of allure, they roam Ben’s face and it’s palpable. Like fingers tracing skin to commit the image to memory.
Finn shakes his head, the light in his eyes dim, now.
Ben still pulls on that thread. They are merged into one with Kylo now and he’s wired with possessiveness and desperation.
To keep this. To have this.
Something of his own. Finally.
His wooden boy coming to life within the reach of his palms.
“That’s because you came into being from my wishes, I think. “
“I did?” there’s that playful glint, again and Finn brings himself even closer, with a taunt. “And what does it mean, Ben?”
“That you belong to me,” Ben growls now with an echo of a voice modulator (a whimpering child desperate to keep his favourite toy. He never got to play with too long. He never got to play with in reality.) He watches Finn’s mouth to the Force buzzing with impatience.
“Hmm, what happened to your being free and independent agenda?”
Ben feels it more on his lips than hears the words and there’s tingling of warmth enveloping him, he only felt in the void that never leaves him when they spoke across space and time. He wants to reach out and touch the source, grasp it and hold it in his hands, but Finn’s moving. Away from his grip, a dust around the planet where their dreams are ashes.
“I’m not letting you go,” Ben growls after him.
“You never had me to begin with,” Finn’s moving towards the door that is closed shut by the shudder of the Force.
“You won’t find family with my mother, Finn,” there’s a gasp that dissolves into the room as they both freeze in the spot. Finn by the door and Ben watching after him, desperate and angry, from the bed.
“Leia is your mother?” he’s turned away from Ben but his voice betrays poignancy. Maybe even sadness.
“This is what she does. She doesn’t know anything else. All her life she fought the war and she only knows how to raise soldiers and provide to the army.”
Ben clutches on the edge of the bed (there’s grief in him wrapped in vivid layers of anger) and it seems to hit Finn with a wave of inconsolable, because his body caves in, like there’s a burden on his back that overwhelms him. When he speaks, it’s in a firm voice, though.
“Tell me, Ben. Whose war this is?”
There’s silence that stretches. Only a whirl of the pull between them, making Ben raise himself and walk towards the warmth, the light.
Home.
Refraining himself from touching. Imprinting Finn’s physicality, leaving marks, like a tattoo of a warm body on the empty side of the bed.
He shivers and almost audibly sighs. The sigh comes out as a statement. Beaten and bitter. “Maybe it’s the Force’s war. And maybe we are just vessels for her whims, in the end.”
Finn seems to curl inside himself even more, making Ben reach out, his hand suspended in the air, not taught how to touch, not knowing how to hold.
He desperately wants to.
Know how to.
Just do.
Finn declares with finality, moving away from Ben’s reach, to stand by the door. “I’m still giving making your own choice a shot, Ben.” A symbolic image he illustrates the words with .
Kylo rages but Ben shuts him down (whines of a denied child, condemned to the void, again and again, really, by his own design). There’s weak, unconvincing. “I’m not letting you go,” whispered, as his hand still waves at the lock to the sound of hissing, revealing the exit.
“I hope you aren’t,” is what remains after Finn.
Ben isn’t sure if it’s the Force inside him playing tricks or Finn’s parting vow.
He’s left behind, alone, with hands and arms empty. Again.
But with the mask on the floor and Ben staying in control till the end of this day.
*
At night Kylo awakens and whispers through Ben’s Force.
You belong to me.
The reply comes and it makes Kylo’s jaws snarl but Ben’s heart soar.
/I can’t belong to you, Ben. But I can belong with you./
*
When Kylo Ren drives his light saber through Han Solo's chest, Ben is awake and it's Ben who's looking into these old, tired, defeated eyes.
It's Ben, who remembers these few times his father took him on board of the Millennium Falcon, like introducing him to the secret world of time frozen forever in the young, daring and adventurous (Han never left this land, this kingdom of forever untouched by the age, even if his body was, and the years passed by and yet Han never learned how to move on and live on). There was secrecy to him on board of that ship but playfulness, too. Han taught him tricks, how to speak to the machine, almost like they are force sensitive and share this communion of understanding. But then his father would disappear for weeks, stolen inside this ship into Han Solo, a legendary smuggler that never settles.
It was Ben then watching him disappear into the sky, the smallest dot out of reach. And it's Ben now who doesn't look away either, when Han Solo (but his father too) falls into the abyss.
He felt abandoned and left behind, then. Now, there's liberation to it.
Like he's cutting the threads. Of the past and the expectations of constant puppeteers pouring into him the essence of what he is supposed to be.
Looks like we won't be sharing a great adventure after all, son. You are to follow your uncle's path.
Being a part of the Academy is a great honour. Time to bring the legacy to its glory.
Remember, letting the Force in is always a gamble you play, you have to have confidence but no ounce of ego, Ben.
All these masters of his fate telling him who to be, what to do.
There's a purr of approval spreading inside that has the void's voice.
Yes. Good. Be free. Let go.
He basks in and fails to recognise as the same script of deeds and actions assigned to make up the essence of his wooden self.
As the dot that was his father and the most legendary smuggler of the galaxy dissolves into nothing in the fall and this is the final snap of this particular thread in him, brown, heated eyes draw him in.
Finn watches him from above the bridge, the channel between them stirring with emotions. All stages of grief, for whom, though?
What have you done?
The question in the swirl of it all prevails, so Ben knows.
It's for him. The mourning is.
He replies. Out loud. A vow brimming with pride.
"I set myself free."
And Finn sends him poignant and solemn.
On whose orders?
And disappears, rushes out of this tomb, into the woods.
A true image of freedom.
*
They meet there, in the snow. And Ben sees him with the glory of the light saber for the first time. The light feels nuclear (scorching, burning but cleansing, like baptism. From the ashes you came to the ashes you'll return.) The buzzing electricity hits him like a lunch of a fist but a physical caress, too and he wants to go to his knees and crawl to Finn for more of this.
Absolution.
Damnation.
Kylo roars Ben's whimpered pleas. "You belong to me!"
And Finn's reply, electric blue fire in his eyes and a provocation, a challenge, a demand in his voice. "Then come and get me!" makes his body feel like made of clay, wanting to be deliver to and through Finn's hands only.
When they clash among the trees, in the clearing covered pristine white pool of snow like pages of this new chapter of liberated Ben fighting for his wooden boy (a marionette seeking true light, really) it fills Ben up to the brink with something burning, overwhelming, elevating.
Ectasy.
Completion.
Power.
Hunger.
Every clash of their sabers increases the wave to a tenfold and makes him overflow.
Like he's too tight, too small, too frail to be able to contain it all.
The Force in him sings. The melody is made of Finn's name.
"Do you feel it?"
Ben asks, when keeping him trapped for a moment under a blow. His voice cracks with the electric.
"Yes," there's a shiver of capitulation in Finn's almost sigh when he parries the blow and pushes Ben away, saber brimming with nuclear energy of his heart.
The dance continues, this push and pull. Pin and deflect, trap and release, run and chase.
"Come with me," Ben hisses, pushing Finn to the trunk, mouth close to his ear. A plea, a promise, a vow. His body yearns.
"To serve your master?" Finn smirks but it's defeated, and it's him now trapping Ben under the weight of his body against the tree. His lips are so close and Ben feels his strong thigh pinning him down and he arches, and he bows and he seeks him out with an angry grunt.
"I don't have a master."
"Then whose bidding you're doing now."
"You're the one to talk. You think my parents adopt you? No, they recruit you and my father didn't know the concept of forming a bond. Wrong place to look for your belonging, Finn."
Ben has his hands in a grip, above his head, their bodies aligned in this almost embrace, but a clash of strengths, too. Ben only sees Finn's mouth and feels him warm and firm under himself.
He aches. He doesn't manage to swallow the moan.
"You're saying this, here is a better place to look for it, Ben?" Finn breathes to his mouth, rendering him soft And at his mercy, using this moment of a crumbling into complete weakness will to knock Ben to his knees and hold their both sabers to his neck.
Ben stays, submitted not defeated. Looks up at his deliverer with worship and desperation and accepts the only truth he wants to recognise here and now. "Yes."
Finn turns their weapons off (so the submission is mutual, Ben rejoices, Kylo has no say here), drops his to their feet and reaches with his hand to Ben's cheek, to his mouth. It feels like a kiss, it feels like a scar, too and Ben leans to it all the more to commit it to his heart.
"We both have things to figure out. I'll be seeing you in the Force."
With the last flutter of his touch and a promise whispered, Finn is gone, rushing to the ship, leaving Ben on his knees.
Not defeated.
Just Finn’s.
*
And then the dreams start.
Ben thinks these are dreams or projections sent in the channel of their Force communion.
The touch feels real. The closeness, too. The sounds echo and the yearning fills him up, the way Finn does.
He’s on his knees, like he was in the snow, paying tribute of submission.
/Ben?/ Finn traces his mouth with his fingers.
I’m yours. Ben opens up to let him in.
/Show me./ Finn strokes his hair, lovingly, like they experienced touch before. Like they were lovers before. Like they know what closeness in bodies is.
Ben does. Hungry, desperate, clumsy but eager. And when Finn fills his mouth with himself it tastes like the essence of the Force, heals him from within, gives him purpose and anchor.
~~
It’s a swirl of images every night. They aren’t images. They are experiences. Even if across the distance, Finn’s skin is inside his hands and Ben’s moans disappear inside Finn’s mouth, like he’s drinking him up, drinking him whole.
/I’ve never, I don’t, I can’t stop…/ Finn stumbles through words that get lost among their whimpers and dissolve on their tongues, inside their insatiable mouths.
Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop. And they merge in a kiss that makes the Force inside them surge into one.
They are orphans, growing up together and discovering each other’s trembling humanity.
/Is this real?/ Finn’s lining up their hands, lacing their fingers together, kissing Ben’s fingertips.
Doesn’t it feel real? Ben mouths it to Finn’s forehead, nuzzling his hair, his mouth on his eyelids, adoring.
/But these hands kill. How can they be this?/ Finn guides their laced palms to his chest so that Ben can feel his heartbeat. Clear, focused, loud sound of devotion.
Just like yours. As drenched in blood. Ben clings to his shoulders and pulls him close, into an embrace, as Force cocoons them into the bubble shimmering with balance and peace.
We are chessboard pieces. We are toy soldiers. He murmurs to the top of his head. A melancholic surrender.
/Who will smash the board first, then?/ Finn peers into his eyes curiously but with a demand, too.
Can it be smashed? Isn’t destiny already set? Ben’s been an instrument of it since he was born (or what feels like, designed by it). He leans his forehead against Finn’s. Offering himself up to a resignation.
/I believe in our two suns, Ben./ Finn pledges to his mouth.
Ben accepts the promise with lips pliant and seeking and a reply already turned to a long, searing kiss. It’s a vow, then. My light.
*
He somehow managed to convince himself that he is cutting threads of a web weaved, tangled around his legs as he’s being forced onto the path of destiny, whenever they die. Whenever they are killed by him (because of him, more like it).
He pushed the dreams into the corner of his mind with ashes and dirt, buried beneath it all, as forgotten, as irrelevant. Dreams of his father, of a touch on his cheek, soft in reassurance, loud with I love you, son. No longer a dot disappearing into the sky (or into the abyss). He stays. He chooses. And Ben finally belongs.
With someone.
The indifference he harboured for Han, is not in him now, when he feels his Mother go. She doesn’t scatter into nothingness. Her particles return to the source. The almighty Force, binding it all together, or having her whimsical grip on the souls of her vessels? Feeding on devotion, on belief, on their naivety. Like it is a relationship. Not a parasite leeching you off all your will.
He seeks out anger. Safe and familiar. Hatred, too.
Good riddance. Now you can pay the final tribute of a willless servant to her, mother.
He clings to the buzzing restlessness inside. These are ashes, this is the dirt he will bury the memory of her under.
And there will be no dreams. No haunting guilt.
/Liar./
Finn whispers inside him. Ben feels it, too. Warm like his embrace, soft like his kiss. Comfort, understanding. He refuses to cave in to.
He shuts the connection. Pushes him away. And lets the anger in, with the void purring with appraisal.
~~
Then, with his uncle, he has no more indifference or anger left. But he still doesn’t let despair in. Not with him. Never with him.
Luke humiliates him one last time, with his righteousness, haughty contempt. When he doesn’t even fight him. When he becomes the entity of his preachings, instead. Even if the last physical image of his that remains, are his eyes.
Sad, apologetic, guilty and ashamed.
I’m sorry, I let the fear in. I let it rule.
(The Skywalkers’ Curse. But he doesn’t know it yet).
This time Ben reaches out in the force. There are scraps of anger there, bitter indifference too, and if despair breaks through, he smashes it under his heel.
Is that all he taught you, too? Regret? Shame? Guilt? Pathetic.
The reply comes instantly. Offers the same comfort and understanding then before. And Ben is not sure he’s strong enough to reject it, this time.
/No, Ben. He taught me patience. And in it. Hope./
Finn is there, so close, within his reach. Ben wants to move, go to him, on his knees, submit to whatever will Finn wants to pour into him. (Fill me up, all the emptiness with you, and just you). But instead he seeks the only familiar he knows, that never let him down (that weaved its web around his brain and his eyes and keeps him in a cocoon of a spider ready to feast).
He succumbs to the void. And the anchor of its guidance.
*
The void has a body now. More like a shadow, blurred around the edges but shimmering with blue and electric.
It's not weak. It's not weightless. It's not ethereal. Like shadow is.
It weights in the space with heavy, suffocating, powerful presence. Grounding but also overwhelming.
Kylo Ren kneels for it with Ben rattling the cage meekly.
"You struggle, son."
I am not your son.
Yes. Help me walk the path.
The tear inside him bleeds with anger and fear. That are never far away. That are his only true, most loyal companions. The family that never lets him down. Never leaves. Never lies. Never judges. Just is.
The void probably hears it all, but Kylo speaks the words expected of him, torn from Ben with taste of copper on his tongue.
"Yes, my master."
The void sits on a throne, untouchable, unyielding. Monument of power absolute but it feels like it's everywhere, inside, outside, slipping into cracks and tying up loose ends.
Securing the threads on the marionette.
"You allowed him too much freedom. You need to make a choice. Either you claim what is yours, what you created, your wooden boy, doing your bidding or you let him be your end."
Kylo bites on the words Ben pushes outside. "Doesn't he complete me? Aren't we to walk the path of balance together?"
The void, sniggers. Contemptuous, belittling. It has no face but Ben's mind is filled with an ugly smile of a rebuking wraith.
"Oh, child. You seek to be grounded, you yearn after anchor. You want to feel strong and rooted. You can't do it in a dyad. The power of self lies in singularity and whatever else you manage to shape around it, conquer to it, devour with it."
Kylo clenches his fist to silence Ben or to act on Ben's command, when he lets the offensive response out." Who are you in my singularity, then? "
The pain comes first, before the words larger than the universe, filling up every empty, missing piece inside Ben pour out like a river of black goo breaking its banks to flood and extinguish every obstacle on its way.
"I am your will and I vanquish your will. You are and you aren't because of me. Always remember that."
*
The ocean around brims with restlessness, when Ben faces Finn on the ruins of the abandoned ancient ship hunted for artifacts and hidden powers.
Neither of them is here for that.
"How did you know where to find me?"
Ben asks, with pride and affection. The electricity between them hums with anticipation. The distance seems endless, now when they at each other’s reach. Almost touching. Almost being close. Complete. Together.
Finn smirks. It’s warm and all-knowing. It’s full of certainty. And then he speaks.”You still don’t understand the concept of belonging with someone. And you still refuse to see how it goes both ways.”
“Is the Force telling you to be here? Are you bound to my will, Finn?” Ben sounds like a confused child, because Ben often is one, stuck under glass, a soldier wired to perform the same act over and over again.
Finn chuckles. There’s sadness there. Melancholy. “Oh, Ben. You fought your entire life to be able to make your own choice and now you can’t recognize when someone is making one.”
His entire skin itches to touch, to reach for him, to merge them together. The Force is already tangled around them like a wedding band.
He remains distant. Lightsaber behind his belt. Heart crying for Finn but his face, a mask of indifference. “Will you come quietly?”
Finn moves, before he speaks. Towards Ben. There’s freedom and confidence in his steps, and the tug this awakens in Ben is not about pulling the leash. Of fate. Of inevitable. Of designed. It’s about responding to his closeness, increasing, becoming bigger, being right there, with a smell of the stardust and warmth and brightness.
My light.
He sends ripples of confession through their bond and Ben outstretches his hands towards Ben, with calm and absolute devotion. “I believe in us.”
When the laser handcuffs close on Finn’s wrist, Ben leans closer, touches his fingers with his tips and they stay in the moment, savour it, like they are wed, among the raging ocean, droplets of water settling on their skin like baptism, like cleansing. Like a new beginning.
Their foreheads touch and Ben whispers, breath like a kiss shaped around the promise.
“Maybe that’s enough. Maybe it’s about the singularity of us.”
*
Finn is kneeling for the void in its throne room, as it hisses and purrs in content, with Ben?Kylo? towering behind, like a puppeteer presenting his most perfect toy.
See what you taught me? He is to me what I am to you and the cycle never ends.
Ben spits behind the cold, focused composure of the Master Knight of Ren offering his pelt in a game of pretences.
The void speaks and, as always, it’s the sound of the world expanding, spreading, but suffocating, closing in like the world has folded on you and there is no escape from it ever. “Have you made your choice, son?”
“Yes, master,” Kylo delivers the lines with Ben’s voice tearing them to pieces.
I am not your son!.
“Show me,” the voice has a physical grip and claws and jaws and wraps around Ben’s heart like a snake to strangle and to suck out, not only any hesitation but all the will entirely.
Kylo opens his lightsaber with a buzz (body tied in threads, moving to the conduct of the director). Ben is calm beneath the hissing of a snake devouring. He remembers with clearance and absolution.
I believe in us.
And with the whole strength of these words taking shape, brimming with electricity, with the completeness (singularity!) of them, Ben, not Kylo, makes the lightsaber come to life with blue, electric flames and sends them at the void, to cut the web, to vanquish the threads, to make his choice.
To be free in everything that isthem.
The void remains untouched. The monument so tall, so huge, so encompassing it covers them in impenetrable darkness. And it cackles, absorbing the beams effortlessly, bathing in them, because it is made of them.
“Silly boy. Did you really think I will not see this coming. Weak, pathetic creature such as yourself. You can’t be singular. You can’t be powerful. You cling to others like a crawling insect seeking that host to live,” and then the void aims the stream of the electric flames at Finn, keeping his snake-like grip on Ben’s neck, immobilizing him from within, with his shackles of the power and humiliation, too.
It laughs coldly with words like lashes, as Finn writhes on the floor in a grasp of silent torture and Ben chokes on the invisible hand and his naïve intentions, mostly.
“You think that you made this wooden doll for yourself, not to be lonely. That the Force graced you with her limitless to do that. You are merely a worm to her. You are as much a wooden doll as this toy of yours is. You are all not worthy to be wielding her powers as the sacred instruments. You are not even worthy to be her vessels. The Force is proud, endless, infinite. She cannot be bothered with the meek weaklings. For only I can raise above it all to serve and deliver. And so I shall.”
The void grows in spite and malevolence. A maelstrom now, sucking everything alive in to extinguish it as sustenance for itself. The words cut with mockery, like lashes of the whip it now disciplines disobedient creatures with Ben and Finn are to it.
“I can be merciful so I will rid you of your struggles, now. And the Force, of the burden of you.”
And they find themselves in the eye of the storm. Finn, bend and folded like a ragged doll trashed by the angry creator, his mouth frozen around unbearable pain Ben can feel inside himself, as he’s gulping for the air, suffocating.
The eyes still see. The eyes are still locked. The eyes still believe.
The eyes speak. Plead. Vow.
Be with me.
Be with me.
Be with me.
/But I never went away./
/I was./
/I am./
/I will be./
There is a point of contact between them, then, that grows into shape all-encompassing. Warm, bright and unending. All the layers of the Force inside them manifest into this supernova, forming a shield against the void’s assault, then extending into a sword-like creation to oppose the electric waves of destruction.
And so it does, slowly, inevitably, starts gnawing on the void’s power, like waters covering flames. Water, that is patient and flowing and endless and relentless, against fire, violent and greedy but burning out just as quickly as it erupts.
There’s something soothing and peaceful about this supernova made of them both. As if all those years, it waited for this moment to pour out of them. A confirmation. A reassurance. A declaration.
Of one in togetherness.
Of singularity in a dyad.
It feels ecstatic. Ben caves in completely, to feel Finn wrapped around him so tight there is no end and no beginning to either of them. There is no hollow spaces inside him anymore. There is overflowing with purpose, anchor and awareness.
That it’s been all leading up to this.
To them.
As them.
As one unit.
The void whimpers, groans and shrieks, caught on the edge of the supernova sword, slowly cracking under its power, breaking into pieces, becoming particles, becoming dust, becoming nothing. Ben (Kylo kneeled for them both, paid tribute and surrendered) hears the scream disintegrating into ashes, damned to non-existence, still asking, betrayed, confused and maybe, above all, scared.
But how?
Ben doesn’t understand this either. Doesn’t know the answer either. He just feels and it’s right and he’s grounded and he’s found.
And then, he’s drained, falling to the ground. Finally, a puppet cut from the strings. Light, weightless.
And then, he’s no more.
*
He opens his eyes to warm, brown gaze peering into his face with concern and affection. He’s surrounded by something strong and solid. Something unbreakable. Something a shelter could be made of.
Finn’s arms hold him (whole), as he finds himself on his lap, cradled back to consciousness.
“Hi,” his smile brightness the throne room of the ship they just vanquished the void on. Like the sky is opened above them and the suns shine with double force. Ben drowns in the sensation, his own face mirrors the expression dreamily, his voice hoarse (like he hasn’t used it before out loud or was asleep the entire time). “Hi, yourself. Are we dead?” he adds, nonchalant. Doesn’t really care if this is the way to go. In Finn’s arms.
“No, Ben. The opposite. I think we can finally start living,” Finn’s fingers stroke the loose strands of the hair on his forehead. Tender and adoring. Memorising the features.
It feels different. It’s raw and utterly physical. There used to be this layer of shimmering filter there. The electricity singing under skin. But somehow making them detached from their bodies. Like they really are hanging from the strings, suspended on stage and moved by something external.
Now, Ben is rooted inside his body and Finn’s touch on him reaches to his very core with overwhelming intensity. Like they are stripped and bare for each other.
“Something is different. Something has changed,” he lifts himself up, which brings him even closer to Finn. His lips take up his entire line of his vision. Soft, full. Delicious. Ben reads the words from them, rather than hear them.
“I think, it’s gone, Ben. The Force is.”
He understands the weightlessness he feels now, but also almost visceral carnality, making him so sensitive to the way Finn’s lips part, his skin, smooth and youthful and not enough, Ben yearns to see more, his voice, deep and rumbling, like a sensation of tender caress but anchoring grip on a body, on Ben’s body.
He still asks, afraid that it will pass, too, as a mirage of his desperate (pathetic, lonely, clingy creature, he remembers the echoes of the void) lonely heart. That Finn will scatter into dust like a proof of it all.
“Then how are you here?”
The sound of his chuckle, something hoarse, deep and sensual makes him gasp. Ben thinks of teeth on skin, grazing teasingly, or butterfly touches of fingers that then dig into hips and leave marks.”Hmm, what am I doing here. I think something in here is the answer to that question, Ben.”
There are hands now, on his waist, touching, asking for permission, to bring him closer. Ben goes, into Finn’s arms, like he would in their Force bubble, but it doesn’t feel like it at all. It’s tattooed on every cell of his body, seared with full, safe, warm and strong. Ben nuzzles his neck, smiles to the crook of it, consumes the sensations, with lips mouthing words to skin.
“It is?”
“And you already know it,” breathed out to Ben’s hair and then his ear, with mouth reciprocating closeness, shaped around beaming expression.
Before their mouths meet, there is a confession, shared in minds and hearts, without the Force’s channel, and yet they are able to hear each other and speak above and over the words.
I belong with you.
/I belong with you./
A dyad speaking in singularity. As one. Which now, they are, kissing, for the first time, with tastes on tongues, sighs tingling throats, breaths shaking with want for more and a laugh of relief and content.
~~
Ben isn’t sure how long it’s been. He’s lost in Finn’s skin, in the sounds they are making, as he’s crawled on his lap and lets himself be devoured, when Finn speaks, voice heavy and breathless, making something in Ben stir, with even more hunger for this, all the time, forever, never enough.
“Let’s go home so we can continue this in bed. Properly.”
Ben drinks it up from Finn’s mouth with his own, before he responds, like there’s something choking him (moans of Finn’s name in his throat). “Where is home?”
And with their hands laced now (a dyad in singularity) Finn guides him to it. “I’ll show you.”
Epilogue
Finn is late. He is often late, when he drives from town, wrapping up the accounting of the bar at the end of the day, often stopped by the regulars (adored by both, the newcomers, those who visit all the time and the staff alike). From what Ben saw, he's a dream boss, managing this place like a true leader, fellow worker, too and the head of the family. No wonder the Cantina is the most visited place on Tatooine.
He even performs with the band at times. (Ben has to drag him to his office after one such event, during which Finn danced and sang to some sensual jazz, wearing golden glitter, see-through satin clothes, and he's made himself into such a lure, Ben was reduced to nothing but hunger, which he eagerly expressed and sated by pushing Finn against his own desk to go to his knees to take him into his mouth and have him release with a series of delicious moans around "I've created a monster.")
They generally rarely can take their hands off each other. They don’t need a provocation such as that or an excuse. All those years of starvation after closeness of any sort but also body against body, pours out of them in insatiable desire to touch and kiss and have. All the time.
So, it is no surprise now, that as Ben's been finishing dinner, Finn isn't here. (Probably stopped by someone for a friendly chat or catching up or keeping the numbers pinned and controlled).
Ben has closed the garage an hour ago. He has a small, local business of transport repairs on the outskirts of town. (Whenever he handles the engines, hears them roar, puts pieces together, smears oil on his face, he remembers the echoes of Han, that feel like pieces of a life from some before or somewhere else. They stirr an ache in him, of a regret, of a defeat, too. But maybe also give him all the more motivation to commit to this work, as a form of a tribute. Homage to these memories, to this figure of a father he never really knew.)
He's washing his face and his hands under the hose now, outside their compact but comfortable house, with dinner ready on the stove when he hears the sound of Finn's vespa pulling in. The response in the core of his body is always something raw and visceral. Ache, longing and relief, as he's rushing to greet him. The routine is always the same and it never grows into something tedious or automatic.
He's in Finn's arms, fitting there like a glove (like their bodies were really carved out for each other in that space matter) and they're kissing. Long, all hands gripping hair, mapping shoulders, nuzzling and affectionate pecks in the aftermath, too.
"Hmm, I'm never getting tired of this, baby," the way Finn sounds, mouthing the crook of Ben's neck, then, kissed out, breathless, making Ben want to devour him some more. It always leads to more kisses against the vespa, trying to get to skin with sighs-like laughter of joy overflowing.
" I hope you aren't," Ben speaks now to his chest, where Finn's heart beats and Ben leans, bows for this, for then, disarmed by all the endearments Finn uses with him all the time.
"You, speaking of hope? What progress of living in our home together," Finn chuckles, joining their hands and guiding Ben towards the house entrance.
"And dinner on the stove isn't burnt," Ben says, proud and beaming on their way to the kitchen.
"What a good thing that we've found each other after all, Ben," murmured to his ear, with poignant intimacy.
The meaning of it is not lost on Ben.
The choice.
Nothing about destiny. Nothing about being put on each other's path.
It's how they have become them.
There's a vow there, a one that doesn't need a ring, or a ceremony (they have one, anyway, every evening) and Ben replies to his lips, with Finn smiling and meeting him halfway, already.
"Yes, it is. My light."
This is the only endearment Ben sometimes brings back, because Finn never stopped being it.
With or without the Force, destiny, wonders or curses.
~~
By the time they eat dinner, it often grows cold. They are too preoccupied with tattooing their bodies with each other, to catch up with all those lost years.
~~
And the evening ceremony is them sitting on the roof of their house and watching the sunset together. Two suns gliding lower and lower towards the line of the horizon, merging into one as they do, and as they dissolve behind it they become a whole, complete star.
Singularity in a dyad.
Finn pulls him close and Ben puts his head on his shoulder.
From afar, they too look like two halves falling into one.