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He is thirteen years old and his voice is breaking, and he is not supposed to be on this planet.
He can’t help but throw an anxious glance over his shoulder every now and then. Master Luke is the opposite of vindictive, but he has this way of being disappointedthat’s so much worse. He can already picture it, the quiet sigh, the furrow of his eyebrows.
It’s a look his mom gives his dad a lot.
“Hey, kid.” A heavy arm drops around his shoulders, jostling him. He scowls up, gets a laugh for his trouble. “Don’t give me that, we’re almost done here.”
“We’ve been almost done here for three days,” he points out. “Master Luke was expecting me back–”
His father snorts, an easy, irreverent sound that he himself has yet to master. “You can call him uncle, kid. I’m not about to tell on you.”
“I’m not scared,” he grumbles. This planet is terrible. It’s hot, and he has sand everywhere. When his father had swooped in from who-knows-where to ask if he wanted to go on a road trip, this wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind. “It’srespectful.”
“Respectful, huh? He tell you that? He also tell you that I once had to stuff him in with a bunch of tauntaun guts to keep him alive after he did something stupid?”
“No, but mom told me about the time they both had to rescue you after you ended up frozen in carbonite and couldn’t even see after they got you out–”
“All right, all right.” His dad makes a face, but there’s no real annoyance in his voice. “Bet she didn’t tell you what happened to her in that story.”
“She choked Jabba the Hutt to death?”
His dad squints down at him for a second. “You need better role models, kid.”
As if on cue, a distinctly Wookiee roar sounds from the other side of the scrap yard. His dad curses and is off running almost immediately, yelling something back about ‘go exploring!’. Or maybe it’s ‘stay where you are!’. Hard to tell, to be honest. He looks after his footsteps for a second, two, before shoving his hands in his pockets and wandering off.
It’s not like he’s going to lose track of the Falcon of all ships. And he might not be fully trained yet, but any kind of Force training pretty much immediately gives him a leg up on anyone on this hunk of junk planet.
He squints, still scowling. There’s something niggling in the back of his mind, an itch that won’t let up. It’s been doing it ever since they landed on Jakku, and he can’t figure out why. Without his dad as a distraction, it just seems to be getting worse.
A few scavengers crawl in from the sand dunes. Most are using some kind of vehicle, but there’s one small figure who follows belatedly after, tripping over two-large shoes, and hauling a net almost as long as she is tall. It’s a girl, he realises, not some kind of short alien species.
She tugs at her haul, dragging it along in short, sad bursts. She doesn’t look around like some of the other scavengers, for people she knows - or for people she doesn’t know, for that matter. Her gaze is locked unerringly on the scrap merchant’s stall.
She can’t be more than ten.
He shouldn’t do it. He’s not supposed to show off, or even use his abilities away from Master Luke and their school. The galaxy isn’t ready for the Jedi to reveal themselves properly yet - or maybe the Jedi aren’t ready for the galaxy. There are so few of them, and so much of everyone else. But this is Jakku. What’s the worst that can happen?
He gives the net a nudge. Not much of one, but enough to off-set the weight a bit, help her along. He’s feeling pretty impressed with himself, too, right up until he notices that she’s staring right at him.
Not back at the net of scraps. Not at literally anything else that’s closer or more likely to have caused the sudden ease in her burden. Her gaze has fallen on him and isn’t picking itself back up,something between a scowl and confusion messing up her little face.
The itch in the back of his mind intensifies. And he might be young, might be only half trained, but he’s not an idiot. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.
Maybe there are no coincidences.
He stops pushing the net. He should get his dad. Not a Force user, but still one of the few people left who knew anything about it. He’d get in touch with Uncle Luke, get him to come and check it out, and the girl would probably be bundled up and taken to training along with the rest of them.
More competition, a quiet voice in the back of his mind whispers. He frowns at it; the girl has looked away finally, gone back to lugging her load towards the scrap merchant. The itch abates, but doesn’t disappear.
Had he imagined it?
“Ben?” His father’s voice calls from the same direction Chewie had roared from. “Ben! Where’d you get to, kid?”
“Here!” He tears his own gaze away from the girl, jogs back towards the Falcon. “Sorry. I thought…”
One last glance. But her tiny form has been swallowed by the tents, and the more he thinks about just leaving, the better he feels.
A knuckle raps gently on his forehead. “You sure thinking’s what you were doing in there?”
He gives his father’s snort a try. It doesn’t fit right on him, so he gives him a little shove through the Force instead. Bad behaviour, but Han Solo is the last person in the galaxy who gets to comment on that. “Nevermind. Are we done here for real, now?”
His dad gives him a grin, ruffling his hair. “Yeah, we’re done here for real. Turns out a Wookiee’s a pretty handy negotiator to have hanging around.”
A pleased growl comes from within the guts of the Falcon. Han jerks a thumb towards it.
“That said, I reckon he’s feeling a little tired after all that grumbling. What d’you say to stepping up as co-pilot?”
“Really?” Over-protective is an understatement when it comes to how his dad feels about his ship.
“Wouldn’t’ve said it if I didn’t mean it.” The arm is back around his shoulders again, steering him up the ramp. “This baby’s going to be yours one day, after all. Might as well get used to it now.”
Most thoughts of the girl drop away in the face of this gift, and he heads eagerly into the cockpit on his own strength. Later, he might feel a vague brush of guilt, of curiosity, but he shoves that aside as well.
Just a coincidence. Nothing important at all. If the Force was with her, the Force would have let her be found. She hadn’t been, ergo, she was as normal as most of everyone else.
Not like Ben.