Thou dost not fly, thou art not perched,

The air is all around:

What is it that can keep thee set,

From falling to the ground?

The concentration of thy mind

Supports thee in the air;

As thou dost watch the small young birgs,

With such a deadly care.

My mind has such a hawk as thou,

It is an evil mood;

It comes when there's no cause for grief,

And on my joys doth brood.

Then do I see my life in parts;

The earth receives my bones,

The common air absorbs my mind-

It knows not flowers from stones.

— The Hawk, W. H. Davies

Angels Fall First

It started as a shadow glimpsed from the corner of his eye in his dreams. The tiniest, most minute flicker of darkness that sputtered briefly as the dying flame of a candle. Perhaps that had always been its way; to appear to those it wished to seduce as something only half-seen, something weak, nonthreatening, innocuous. For there is nothing to be feared in some weak, half-seen flicker. Nothing to worry about.

That was how it had started.

The flicker of shadow played tricks on the mind. If you tried to look at it, to concentrate on it, it disappeared, and it was almost never remembered upon waking from the dream, except perhaps as some inexplicable feeling of waking unsatisfied and disappointed. But the shadow had existed since the beginning of time. It knew the minds of men far better than they could ever comprehend it. The shadow knew that if a man could not understand something, could not see it, could not touch it, he would try all the harder to reach it, to lay his eyes upon it, to run his hands over it and try to understand what it was. Ever had men desired that which was just beyond their reach. And that was the shadow.

At first.

Like a coy young maiden enticing a man to catch her, the shadow knew that it too would have to be caught eventually, because even the most persistent of men would grow frustrated with a chase that bore no sweet fruit, and ended only with frustration time and time again. So the shadow became words, but they were words uttered by no voice; words which merely were. Words which teased and soothed and encouraged, all at the same time. "Come and catch me, hunter," the words conveyed. "Catch me… if you're fast enough."

The shadow knew that few men will back down from a challenge.

The chase was long. He was tested. It ran him ragged through his dreams, leaving him little hints, dangling in front of him tiny clues about where it might appear next, honeyed words of encouragement that he was nearly there, that he just needed to come a little closer. And when it judged he was ready, his mind open, eager for knowledge, the shadow let itself be caught. It let him lay eyes upon it. It let him wrap his hands around it. It let him touch it, tentatively at first, and then with greater confidence as he realised this flickering shadow was not something to be feared and avoided, guarded against constantly, but something that could teach and advise; a new source of strength.

The shadow became a constant companion. When he lay down his head at night and fell asleep to the sound of the other novitiates breathing deeply into their own dreams, when he lay abed willing muscles still aching from training to allow him some reprieve, the shadow was waiting to welcome him with its deep, silky embrace. It whispered things to him, things which stirred his soul because he had longed for them all his life. Things which cut him to the core, even though he knew them to be true. And the harshest truth was the first he heard.

"You will forever live in the shadow of your father and uncle."

Other truths came after.

"The other students are stronger than you. They know you are only here because Luke Skywalker is your uncle. Because he could not refuse his sister's request to have you trained."

He'd always thought that the other students were a little cold towards him. Sometimes when he walked into the room, they hushed up and looked guilty. And now, thanks to the shadow, he knew why.

"You will be measured against those who came before you, and you will always be found wanting."

This was something he had feared since he was young. "Just like his father," they would say. "Hopefully he'll go on to do great things, like his uncle." The people around Ben Solo did not want him to be Ben Solo. They wanted him to be another Han Solo. Another Luke Skywalker. They looked at Ben Solo and saw a disappointment. Something which was already falling well short of their expectations.

"You will be given titles and the respect which accompanies them only because of the accomplishments of others, not because you deserve them."

How many times had people he'd never even met before walked up to him and shook his hand? How many times had people bowed to him as he'd walked through the city with his mother? They did not shake his hand because they liked him, nor did they bow because they respected him. It would be like that in the future, too, if he followed his mother into politics. He would find himself surrounded by fake people paying lip-service to the son of heroes. A son who had never done anything to prove his own worth.

"The older you become, the more your father will resent you."

That, too, had had seen for himself. As a youngster, his father had always been there to play with him, to talk to him, tell him stories, engage in mock-fights… but times had changed. Han Solo found the life of a husband and father too sedate. He went on long journeys, always taking routes through hotly contested systems, never avoiding trouble, constantly seeking action. His mother's requests to spend more time with his son had resulted in much eye-rolling and excuse-making. I'll take Ben out to the races when I get back from this next run. This shipment of medical supplies really can't wait. Chewie wants to test a new engine; it would be too dangerous to take Ben. One excuse after another, all designed to take Han Solo one step further away from the son he saw as nothing but a shackle.

But it didn't have to be that way. Ben Solo was the boy who had everything but deserved nothing. Ben Solo was the boy people saw as clay to be molded into their own ideal of a paragon. Ben Solo was weak. But he didn't have to be Ben Solo. He could be the man he wanted to be. A man who gained his own reputation, his own titles, whose notoriety would spread to the furthest edges of known space. His could be the name whispered on lips everywhere, and for reasons which had nothing to do with famous relatives or barely-remembered heroic antics from bygone times. He could step out of his father's shadow, reject the favouritism of his uncle. He could spread his wings and fly.

He teetered for a very long time, wallowing in a darkness that no longer flickered in his dreams, but that engulfed him like an ocean wave, carrying into him unspoken feelings of frustration, anger and despair. But even as he drowned in it, he hated and feared it. Luke had drilled into them, over and over again, that one could not let the darkness in, and despite the blatant favouritism, Luke had never lied to him, avoided him, nor let him down. For Luke, he hung on, as a man doomed to fall to his death hangs on to the cliff face by the skin of his fingernails.

He had given darkness a chance, and it had lured him with not one worm on a hook, but many. All around he could feel them, worms and hooks, wriggling seductively. "Just take one bite!" they cheered. And he felt the hooks pulling at him not only when he slept, but when he was awake. They haunted the edges of his vision, pressing in on him, making everything smaller, darker, changing the way he saw the familiar, making it into something strange. He had given darkness a chance, but he could not take the worm on the hook; not yet. He had to give the light one last chance too. With a child's hope he held onto it, a single candle buried inside his heart which kept the deepening darkness at bay. He needed help to fan that flame, to turn the lone candle into many, to bathe his soul in warmth and light and make him anew.

There was one person who could do that. One person he had always looked up to, even as he resented. One person he most aspired to be like, even as he ached to be his own man. One person who could with a word, a touch, even a look, make all of this right.

His father.

There was another test-flight scheduled for one of the new engine designs. He found his father in the hangar, on his back beneath the prototype ship, one hand groping blindly for a coil spanner. "Dammit, Chewie, where the hell's that spanner?" Han Solo growled from beneath the belly of the ship. Ben reached down and handed the tool over.

"Here you go, father."

The response was a grunt, of acknowledgement or surprise. A few scraping sounds, a shower of sparks, and then Han Solo slid back along the floor and gave his son a smile. Ben felt the candle in his heart grow brighter.

"What brings you down here, son?"

"I just wanted to spend a little time with you," he'd replied. "I'll be heading back to the training grounds with Luke tomorrow, so we might not get another chance to talk."

Han Solo's eyebrows rose up towards his hairline. "Talk? What about? Wait, if it's about girls, I'm not sure your mother would want me to be the one to have this conversation with you."

"It's not about girls."

"Then, what?"

Ben had hesitated. What if his father thought him mad, or corrupt? What if he told Luke, and had Ben banished from the training grounds, forced to abandon his training with the Force? What if he told others? If word spread? His entire future potentially ruined, all because he wanted his father to tell him that everything would be alright. All because he wanted to be a little boy one last time. Closing his eyes, Ben pushed back at the shadows which were sliding across his mind, instilling him with fear and doubt. When he opened them again, his way forward was clear, unclouded by shadow.

"It's about my training. My Jedi training."

"Oh." Han Solo ran his hand through his hair, his eyes groping around as if looking for something else to settle on. Look at me! Ben thought desperately. But his father did not hear the mental anguish. "Shouldn't you be talking to Luke about that?"

"I need to talk to you." He could sense his father's resolve wavering; that panicked look in his eyes returning at the thought of additional responsibility. Ben bit his lip, hard enough to draw blood, and the sliver of pain spurred him on. "Now."

"Now? Ben, you got really bad timing. Must get that from your mother. Chewie and I should have had this bird in the air an hour ago. You wouldn't believe how many generals are waiting to receive the technical report on the new engine's performance."

"That can wait," Ben had assured him. "Please. This is very important."

"Alright, I tell you what; I can't delay this test flight without getting an earful from half a dozen people even more obnoxious than me, but after I get back, you and I will have dinner with your mother, and you can talk to us both about your training. How does that sound?"

"It's not good enough."

His father gave him a sad half-smile. "Sorry kid, but that's life. You'll understand, one day, when you have responsibilities of your own. You can't just walk away from your job." A heavy hand clapped Ben on the shoulder. "Tell your mother I'll be back in less than three hours. We'll talk more then. It's not as if you won't be here, right? You're not going back with Luke until tomorrow."

And with that, Han called for Chewbacca to get the engine started, shouted out to flight control to clear the deck, and stepped into the ship, closing the airlock door behind him.

The candle went out. The shadow came rushing in like water too long held back by a weakening floodgate. It crashed into him, through him, filling every pore, every fibre of his being, with an anger and hatred so pure he could taste it in his mouth. And it tasted sweet.

He left Ben Solo in the hangar, staring out at a ship that was quickly becoming a speck in the sky. He shed his weakness as easily as a snake shedding its skin. And when he stepped out of that hangar, and made his way down to the space-port in the city where a ship was waiting to receive him and bear him away to a better life, he emerged, a butterfly from its chrysalis, as Kylo Ren.

Thank you, mysterious Guest reviewer, for pointing out a massive faux-pas I should have caught myself.