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Ben.
It was the voice again.
He was no longer surprised by it; it had been the stuff of nightmares ever since he had arrived at Snoke’s base, following the destruction of Starkiller Base. The voice had haunted his sleep at first, later slipping out of the dream realm and entering his waking hours at the most inopportune of times. No one else could hear it. If the Supreme Leader ever sensed it, he gave no such indication. Ren stood, feeling at his waist for his lightsaber. After the murder of Han Solo, and his humiliating defeat at the hands of the scavenger, he had been subject to auditory hallucinations beyond even his comprehension. At first, he thought they were Force visions. Now, he wasn’t quite sure of his own sanity.
Ben.
“Ben Solo does not exist,” he said to the empty room, voice distorted by his mask. “Show yourself,” he ordered. There was only silence, and he brought the saber down in an arc, cleaving an end table in two.
Ben, the voice said again, this time with a maddening note of patience. Stop resisting.
The room seemed to swim before him, and Ren sank to his knees, switching off the lightsaber. He closed his eyes behind the mask, attempting to clear his mind and shut off the increasingly insistent calls from the voice. It had haunted him every night after he murdered Han Solo, punctuating his nightmares with a foreign element that seemed curiously familiar. As the days progressed and his wound healed he heard the voice day and night. It interrupted his meetings with the Supreme leader, and his responsibilities with the other Knights of Ren. And now, alone in his dimly lit quarters, it called to him more clearly than ever, so loudly that it was impossible the others could not hear it. He wondered briefly if this is what it felt like, to go mad. It could hardly be the pull from the light; he knew that well enough.
“Get out of my head,” Ren said, a thread of fear undermining the hostility in his voice. An unbidden memory of a female voice saying those same words entered his mind, and his nails dug into his palms.
The girl is—
“OUT!” he roared, and he ignited the saber as the red miasma swam before his eyes. He could feel the stormtroopers and other personnel patrolling the base react with fear, their consciousnesses colored by the alarm he always sensed during one of his rages. But this other presence was calm, lending a terrible sort of weight to the room. It smothered and engulfed him, and as he battered the furniture and walls, its presence only grew. He could not destroy the source of the voice; the more he damage he caused, the more it bore down upon him. At last he threw the saber to the ground in frustration, and with shaking hands unlatched the mask, feeling as though he was suffocating. He imploringly stared at the warped visage of Darth Vader, massaging his temples.
“She was right about me,” he said, ignoring the unshakeable feeling that he was being observed.
The mask did not answer. The voice called him again.
“I worry that I will never attain your strength,” he continued, ignoring it. “I miscalculated-- killing Han Solo did not make me any stronger. Show me--“
I am trying to show you, Ben.
Vader’s mask was not itself luminous, but it suddenly seemed to emit a cold blue light. Ren at first thought it was from the moon outside his window, but as his gaze panned up, he saw that he was wrong. The Force ghost of Darth Vader materialized before him, not young and uninjured, but the way he must have appeared when Skywalker unmasked him. Ren realized that he was seeing Darth Vader as he had been when he died: pale, scarred, broken, and consumed with regret. The ghost of the man reeked of weakness, and Ren stepped back, calling his weapon to his hand. “Get out.”
“But you called me here,” Vader said. His voice was a deep, sonorous bass that reminded him more of his own than it did of Luke Skywalker’s. A part of him wondered why he hadn’t noticed it before.
“No,” Ren said, but his voice was less strong. “Why would I call a traitor to the Empire--“
“You have called on me for many years, Ben,” Vader said evenly. “Search your feelings, you know it to be true.”
“If you came here to convince me to give in to sentiment, leave,” Ren said. “I will not be turned as you were.”
The Force ghost sighed. “I came to warn you.”
Ren laughed humorlessly. “Of the perils of working for the First Order? You’re not one to give advice. If you had just killed Skywalker--“
“If you had killed the girl, you would have eliminated a serious threat to the First Order,” Vader said. “Now your mother has located Luke, and the girl will train under the most powerful Jedi--“
“Skywalker is not a Jedi,” Ren snapped, “and killing the girl would not have made a difference.”
“Would you have brought her before Snoke?” Vader pressed. “You held back when you dueled her.“
“Because every Force-sensitive is valuable,” Ren said evenly, “and the Supreme Leader wanted her alive. Unlike you, I do not disobey my master.”
For the first time, Vader smiled, and there was humor in his voice. “My own grandson, the lapdog of a dictator. Even as Lord Vader, I held ambitions of one day ruling the galaxy.”
“What did you come to warn me about?” Ren said flatly.
“Only this. You thought killing your father would make you stronger, but it did not. You thought denying your compassion for another Force-sensitive child would make you stronger, or that denying your family would bring you the power you crave. You are not meant to be a Sith, Ben.” Vader smiled again, and a flicker of a young Anakin Skywalker passed over his face. “You have equal potential for Light and Dark. Why do you try to deny half of what you are?”
“The Sith Order and the Jedi Order are relics of the past,” Ren said. “Your view of the Force is antiquated. I do not need to be a Sith to master the Dark side.”
“Exactly,” Vader said. “You do not. This is why you don’t belong here, Ben-- you, more than anyone else, ought to understand that it was the division between Light and Dark that threw the Force out of balance. When I was a padawan, I was taught that sentiment led to Darkness. Snoke teaches you that sentiment made me turn.”
“Luke Skywalker said that sentiment keeps one from turning to Darkness.”
“Luke is no stranger to the Dark side,” Vader said calmly. “He hoped to create a new breed of Jedi, that would not fall afoul of the practices I was taught. You destroyed that.”
“The Dark side is what brought you to the height of your power,” Ren said, his head spinning.
“The Dark side must be taught and encouraged, yes,” Vader agreed, “but it must be tempered with the Light. The Force is not meant to be separated, but the Jedi and Sith did just that. By helping Snoke, you only deepen the divide between Light and Dark.”
“The Light side of the Force is a hindrance,” Ren said, but he did not sound so sure.
“To give in wholly to one side of the Force is the ultimate weakness,” Vader replied. “You called me here, and so I came to warn you. Do not listen to Snoke. He is no different than the Jedi masters who told me to abandon all emotion in pursuit of mastering the Force. From the time of your birth, Snoke has been corrupting your mind, to use you for your power. You have already attempted to sever one of your ties to balance--“
“Han Solo,” Ren murmured.
“--but it is not too late,” Vader said. “You do not need to abandon the Dark side. You need only embrace both sides of the Force, and you will have everything you desire.”
For a moment, Ren was silent. Something about the way Vader had said ‘attempted’ made him toy with the idea of the impossible, and his vision became misty.
“It is not too late, Ben,” Vader repeated, as his silhouette began to fade. “There is still time...” and the specter disappeared into the moonlight, as if it had never been there.
Ren stood in quiet contemplation, his hands clasped before him, and he allowed himself to imagine the life Vader had described: using a balance of the Force, asking his mother’s forgiveness, even seeing his father again--
He allowed himself a minute to indulge in sentimental fantasies, and then he slid his helmet back into place. He called the lightsaber to his hand, igniting the blade and hovering the pulsating red beam over the mask of Anakin Skywalker. Ren raised his arm, preparing himself to deliver a blow that would sever yet another tie to the past he had forsaken--
Ben, stop--!
He brought the blade down on the remains of the mask, leaving the room after pausing to observe his handiwork. The new blow gave Vader’s helmet an almost tragic appearance. Heat from the blade had partially melted the steel, leaving little trails of molten metal underneath the eye sockets. In the moonlight, they almost resembled tears.