A Boy Named Ben

For most of his childhood, Ben Solo is half-raised by a protocol droid. He sees more of Threepio than his own parents—Father too busy with his adventures to much bother with his son, Mother so embroiled in the Resistance that she never prioritizes him over her political responsibilities. The droid is fussy and irritating, but at least he's present.

Ben knows that his mother and father love him. Just not quite enough to put him first.

His father is off-world again. Mother won't tell him what he's up to, or where he's gone, so Ben can only imagine what's important enough to call Father away the day before his birthday.

It doesn't matter, he thinks. I don't need him anyway. This isn't true, but Ben has always been good at lying to himself.

At least when Father is gone he doesn't have to listen to his parents argue.

Mother makes his favorite breakfast for him the morning he turns ten, but she's called away for an emergency meeting before he can take the first bite. She kisses the top of his head and says, "Be good for Threepio."

"Yes, Mother," he says.

"I promise I'll be home before you go to bed."

Ben stays up until midnight, but she doesn't make it back before his birthday fades into the early hours of the morning.

It isn't the first promise his mother has broken, and it won't be the last.

Father returns almost four weeks later. He takes Ben for a ride in the Falcon and allows him to co-pilot (on the condition that he doesn't tell Mother about it). This is his way of saying he's sorry without having to voice the words. In their month apart, Ben had imagined being silent with his father, refusing whatever apology he managed to make, but he's too happy to see him to maintain his cold front for longer than a minute.

After they've landed, Father ruffles his hair, then pulls him into a loose, barely-there hug. It's the sort of rare show of gruff affection that makes Ben remember why he'd do anything in the world for just a moment of this man's attention.

Mother returns from her Resistance duties early and catches them as they're exiting the Falcon. She stalks over to Father and hits him on the arm hard enough to draw an indignant noise from him.

"You let Ben co-pilot, didn't you?" she asks.

"'Course not," Father lies smoothly. "I was just spending a little time with him. You're not gonna fault me for that, are you?"

"How could I?" she asks sweetly. "You're never here to see him."

"That's rich coming from you," he says.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Mother asks.

Father shrugs, his smile lopsided and sharp. "I'm sure a smart woman like you can figure it out, Princess."

They fight all night, and when Ben goes to bed he can hear their raised voices through the thin walls of his bedroom. He tries to meditate, the way Uncle Luke taught him to do years ago, to shut out the sounds of broken love coming from the next room over. But he never has been any good at clearing his mind. He feels everything too much, feels it viscerally and violently. Lying there, alone and angry, the bed begins to shake and the knick-knacks on his dresser shiver and clatter. It ought to scare him, Ben thinks, but somehow this tangible expression of his anger calms him.

By morning, Father is gone again.

Sethi Revna, one of his meaner classmates, says his father isn't a war hero at all, just an up-jumped criminal.

"What does your father do again? Cleans droids, doesn't he?" Ben asks, voice polite, even as he smirks.

Sethi's golden cheeks flush pink. "At least my father can stand to stay on the same planet as my mother for more than a week!"

It's as if the sound in the room is extinguished, and all he can hear is his own harsh breathing, all he can see is Sethi's self-satisfied grin. Ben feels a familiar anger well up inside of him, a rage that makes him feel stronger and more vulnerable at once. And without thinking, he pushes Sethi against the school building. Only he doesn't have to use his hands at all; he just wills the boy to be flung against the metal wall, and it happens. Bone breaks through the thin skin of his arm, startlingly white underneath all the red, and Sethi screams.

Maybe he should feel guilty, but Ben can't find it in himself to feel anything but satisfied.

Later, Mother looks at him like she doesn't know who he is. "This isn't how an Organa behaves," she says, frowning.

I'm not an Organa, Ben thinks. But he doesn't feel much like a Solo either, not really. So what does that make him?

If his mother wasn't the general of the Resistance forces he'd have been expelled from school for the stunt he pulled with Sethi. Head Professor Ulthu allows him to return to classes, not that Ben has much interest in them. History is so obviously skewed to show only the best of the Rebellion and the worst of the Empire that it just makes him curious about the untold stories. Chemistry, biology, mathematics, and engineering courses are so easy that he could sleep through them and still pass every test with full marks.

Since he broke Sethi's arm, the other students give him a wide berth. Even the few children he once got along with are too scared to approach him any longer. Maybe they're remembering that, although he's Leia Organa's son, he's also the grandchild of Darth Vader.

At first this only makes him feel even more lonely, but as the weeks pass, Ben embraces the sense of isolation. So what if no one likes him? They fear him, and there's a certain strength in that.

Once, when Threepio wouldn't shut up, he took a toolbox to him and reformatted him to speak only when spoken to. He's helped Father make repairs on the Falcon before, and when Mother allows it, he likes to hang out at the mechanics' bay and assist the experts as they fix broken ships. Ben loves to take things apart and put them back together, to dissect a droid and see how its individual pieces work to make the whole function.

This isn't much different, he thinks, as he lures the therrok lizard toward him with a piece of jerky. The skinny animal looks at him with wide, golden eyes, its scaly little trunk sniffing the meat warily before reaching out to accept the offering.

Ben snatches up the lizard, takes it into the woods behind his house, heart pounding hard in his chest. He won't be cruel. He'll slit its throat first.

An hour later his fingers are knuckle-deep in the therrok's abdomen as he examines its organs. Dark blue blood colors his hands, wet and slick, and when he hears the snap of a twig beneath a boot he jumps, guilty and nervous. This is something he knows he shouldn't be doing, but he did it anyway, and now he's gotten caught. When Mother gapes at him, dark eyes wide with horror, Ben shrinks away from her.

"What is this?" she asks. Mother takes him by the arm, careful not to touch him below his wrist. "Answer me, Ben."

"I just—just wanted to know how it worked," he says, and he hates how thin and afraid his voice sounds.

"So you killed it?" Mother asks.

Ben bites his lip, looks down at his feet. Specks of inky therrok blood dot his shoes. "I'm sorry."

Uncle Luke arrives six days later. He's grown stockier than he was the last time Ben saw him three years ago, and grey strands pepper his hair and beard. He smiles, but there's more worry than warmth behind the expression.

After dinner, he takes Ben aside and says, "Your mother tells me that the Force is strong in you, but that you need a teacher."

"So you're going to stay with us?" Ben asks. He sees little of his legendary uncle, and when he thinks of having Luke all to himself he can't help but grin.

"No," Uncle Luke says carefully. "You're coming back to Valloyi with me."

Ben wants to cling to Mother and promise he'll be good, to beg her not to send him away, but even at ten he's too prideful to do this. When she hugs him and promises to visit when she can, he doesn't hug back. Father is still gone on his latest run, so Ben doesn't even get to say goodbye to him.

Where his home planet was green, populous, and humid, Valloyi is dry and nearly deserted, colored in shades of brown. His uncle's new Jedi academy has been built on a golden savannah, its sandstone walls baked white under the red sun. The days are even hotter than those he knew on Savoss, if arid. He prefers the nights, the canvas of black sky scattered with white stars, the triple moons—Luoko, Penthe, and Einosa—brightening the shadowed landscape in shades of silver.

The other Jedi-in-training range from children as young as Ben himself to grown men and women. Mostly human, but there are three Twi'leks and a Miraluka girl among his uncle's apprentices.

On his second day at the academy, a dark-skinned boy of eleven or twelve approaches him and asks, "You're Master Luke's nephew?"

"No," Ben says, deadpan.

The boy grins and holds out his hand. "I'm Aza Kezidan."

He takes Aza's hand and shakes it. "Ben Solo."

Aza laughs. "I know your name."

As the weeks pass, he and Aza spar together, eat together, meditate together. It takes Ben a whole month to realize that the older boy has become his friend—perhaps because he's never had one before.

Ben quickly proves to be the strongest of the Jedi initiates. His sensitivity to the Force is remarkable, Master Luke says. But he lacks focus and restraint, and until he learns how to control his emotions they will rule him.

Still, he bests everyone he faces in combat. By the time he turns twelve, Ben is tired of his training saber, a low-powered child's toy incapable of inflicting true damage. He asks to hold the blue lightsaber that once belonged to his grandfather, Anakin Skywalker, but his uncle just shakes his head and says, "When you're ready for The Gathering you'll search out a kyber crystal unique to you and craft your own lightsaber. Until then, be patient."

Ben nods and says, "Yes, Uncle," even though he doesn't feel patient at all.

Aza is his closest competition, the second-best fighter amongst the trainees. He's calm, tranquil even, with his lightsaber in hand, and he envies his friend's innate understanding of the Force. He can't match Ben in pure power, but Aza's level head sometimes gives him the upper-hand anyway.

Today, they're meditating side by side. Ben is supposed to be watching the purple sunset, mindful of the light, the clouds, the fading sun and ascending moons. But he can't concentrate on the beauty before him, because his mind is full of home. He misses Savoss, his parents, even that irritating droid, C-3PO. Despite her promise to visit, he hasn't seen his mother in almost two years. He wonders whether that's Master Luke's doing or if this absence is her own initiative.

Ben has the dream for the first time the night before his thirteenth birthday. He's walking in the snow, all in black, holding a red lightsaber with crossguards. The air around it is distorted with energy, and the saber feels unstable in his hands, humming with some violent but precarious force. It's cold, and he can see his own breath fogging in the air before him. He's hurt, feels blood seeping through his dark clothes, dripping red into the white snow (tainting it). But somehow the ache of the injury only fuels his power. He strikes his side with his fist, and with the burst of pain comes a surge of strength.

A voice echoes in his mind, as cold as the icy air around him—

He wakes, cloaked in sweat, and the ghost of the wound still stings. Ben sits up, puts his head in his hands, and takes deep, calming breaths, trying to clear his mind. He tells himself that it was just a nightmare, no more meaningful than any other he's had, but he can't shake the chill of the probing voice.

I see you, it had said. I see who you are truly are, Kylo Ren.

Life on Valloyi is simple and isolated. During the day he eats bland food, and at night he sleeps on a simple cot. Possessions beyond basic necessities are not allowed, and attachments are discouraged. At first, used to the plethora of things he once owned on Savoss, Ben hated these rules, but after three ascetic years at the academy he's grown used to having nothing.

He knows that there's a small city, Tsafik, just a few hours' speeder trip away, but Master Luke doesn't allow the initiates to travel there. Supplies are brought in bi-monthly, and the only time anyone leaves the academy is to go to Ilum's crystal caves for The Gathering.

Ben has the same dream, again and again. He walks a familiar path through the snowy forest, wounded and furious, his red lightsaber humming in his hand. And each time, right before he wakes, he hears the voice. Sometimes it calls him that foreign name, Kylo Ren, and sometimes it tells him things he already knows to be true. It says he does not belong; that he will never understand the way of the Jedi, a way of weakness; that if he wants to find true strength, he's looking to the wrong Skywalker.

Master Luke goes off-world for a full week just before Ben turns fourteen, and when he returns, he has a small girl in tow. A child no older than three with hazel eyes and fine, chestnut hair. She clutches a stuffed doll to her chest, and when his uncle sets her down on the ground, she clings to his leg.

"This is Rey," he says, smiling down at the girl fondly. "She's our newest initiate."

Ben stares at her, incredulous. "She's a baby."

"Am not!" Rey says.

Master Luke laughs. "Her age is of no consequence, Ben. She's strong in the Force. And I expect you to look out for her."

"Me?" he asks.

"Yes, you." Master Luke claps him on the shoulder and says, "I can think of no one better for the job."

That's a lie, Ben is certain, although kindly meant, so he doesn't hold it against his uncle.

He means to ignore Master Luke's order to watch over Rey, but the girl seems determined to shadow him wherever he goes. Perhaps because she has no children her own age to play with; before her arrival, Ben was the youngest of the initiates. She sits with him at meals, watches him train, even practices her meditation at his side. To his great annoyance, even with a child's short attention span, she's already better at it than he is.

But the longer she follows him around, the less irritating he finds her presence. She has an oddly calming effect on him, and when they're together it's easier for him to understand his uncle's lectures about the peace that immersing yourself in the Force brings.

Aza goes to Ilum and finds his kyber crystal a few short months after Rey's arrival. His light saber is a vivid blue, not unlike Master Luke's, and Ben has rarely been so jealous of anyone in his life. He thinks of the saber in his dreams—red, like the ones carried by Sith Lords. He pushes away this uncomfortable thought and congratulates his friend.

That night he has the vision again. It's so familiar now: the cold, the snow crunching beneath his boots, the pain in his side. He follows the same path he's trekked a hundred times before, but before he reaches his destination, the voice from the darkness says, Go to Tsafik. You'll find the answers you seek there.

He wakes, trembling all over, and the meager furniture in his cell shakes with him.

"Ben?"

Rey's little voice pulls him back to reality, to the present. She's standing in his doorway, clutching her stuffed X-wing pilot, tears streaking her cheeks.

"Rey," he says, "what are you doing here?"

She closes the door behind her and climbs up onto his bed. Rey knuckles away her tears, still holding onto her doll, and scoots closer to him. "Had a bad dream," she says.

"Me too." Ben reaches out, hesitant, and ruffles her soft hair. "What was yours about?"

"I was in the woods," she whispers. "It was cold."

Dread settles in his stomach like a stone. "Was it snowing?" he asks.

She nods, eyes wide. "Yeah! How'd you know?"

Ben leans closer to her, puts his hands on her narrow shoulders. "What else do you remember?"

"Blood," she says, "in the snow."

"Did you see me?" he asks.

"No." She shakes her head. "Not you."

For all the similarities, maybe it's not the same dream. He can hope.

But then Rey says, "He looked like you, but wasn't you. He was somebody else."

Kylo Ren. The thought surfaces with such certainty that he knows it to be true.

Now, every time Ben has the dream, the voice gives him the same order: Go to Tsafik.

He doesn't, though, because he understands that the moment he steps outside of the academy's grounds, he'll be leaving the path of the Jedi behind.

Even as he resists this temptation, his place amongst the other initiates becomes less and less secure. His uncle's patience with him dwindles, and no matter how he excels in his manipulation of the Force, Master Luke refuses to grant him the title of Padawan or allow him to craft his own lightsaber.

"You're not ready yet," his uncle says, so many times that the words lose all meaning to Ben.

At night he counts the stars and wonders how many stand between him and Savoss. He wants to fly a ship off this dry, brown planet and return home. He wants to smell the lilac scent of his mother's perfume, feel the strength of his father's embrace.

I'd take Rey with me, he thinks. For some reason, the thought of leaving her behind is intolerable.

But this is a fantasy, Ben knows. Master Luke would never let Rey go, and besides, he doubts his parents would welcome their son with open arms. His mother was so disgusted with him that she sent him halfway across the galaxy, hoping that her brother could shape him into something different, something cleaner. And Father—well, he never did have much interest in his only child.

No, what he's looking for isn't back home on Savoss. It's in Tsafik, but he's too much a coward to go there.

Lately, he has been thinking about his grandfather, Anakin Skywalker. (Darth Vader, some small inner voice corrects, and Ben isn't quite sure if it's his own.)

He's heard the tales of Anakin's fall from grace and ultimate redemption since he was a child, and the stories have always fascinated him. He envies the power the man wielded, so great that it inspired the fear of a whole galaxy. Ben has never been able to decide whether it was strength or weakness that led his grandfather to betray the emperor, but he hopes that, whether renowned or reviled, he is someday as widely remembered as Darth Vader.

He's been told that Uncle Luke favors Anakin, and Ben knows without even glancing in a mirror that he doesn't take after the Skywalkers. He's a darker, plainer-faced version of his own roguish father. A Solo through and through, in looks if little else.

"You've got big ears," Rey says, one day when they're supposed to be meditating.

Ben can't help but smirk. "And you've got no front teeth," he says.

"I do so!" Rey opens her mouth and proudly points at her newest incoming tooth. "See?" she asks.

He nods solemnly. "I see. Now close your eyes and shut your mouth and get back to meditating."

She heaves a great sigh, rolls her eyes, and then settles back into the sort of perfect, silent, tranquility that Ben can never seem to achieve.

Later that day, he teaches her some of the basic steps of one of the defensive combat forms. She's lithe and graceful for a four-year-old, quick on her feet. Rey listens well and learns fast, and Ben is certain that by the time she's grown she'll be a formidable Jedi.

When they're finished, she wipes her sweaty face, looks up at him, and asks, "Have you got any parents?"

"In a manner of speaking," he says. "Everyone has parents, Rey."

"I don't," she says.

"Are they… dead?" Ben asks gently, frowning.

Rey shrugs. "Dunno. Master Luke won't tell me."

That bothers him, and after dinner, he approaches his uncle and asks, "Why won't you tell Rey about her family?"

"She's too young to hear it," Master Luke says.

She's too young and I'm not ready yet. He hates that his uncle has all of the knowledge, all of the power. Every decision in this academy belongs to Luke, and Ben is sick of it.

He makes his choice in the dark of a long, cold night, lying outside beneath a blanket of stars. Ben picks out patterns in the Valloyi constellations, and when he falls asleep he finds himself in the snow-covered forest again.

Go to Tsafik, the voice whispers, same as it's said for a year.

He's been fighting against the pull of his desires for so long that Ben barely remembers what it's like to indulge them. To be himself. He recalls the satisfaction he felt when he saw the white bone peeking through Sethi Revna's skin, the wonder of exploring a fading life as he dissected the therrok lizard, blue blood slick on his fingers. And in his dreams, the raw energy of the red lightsaber in his hand, thrumming with power.

He's tired of waiting, of fighting against his own nature. So Ben stands, dusts the dirt off of his simple robes, and steals his uncle's speeder.

It takes hours to get to Tsafik, and he doesn't even know what to look for when he arrives, but Ben knows that somehow he'll get his answers there.

The little city is built all of white sandstone, not unlike the Jedi academy that he's called home for the last five years. It's one o'clock in the morning, and the streets are deserted—but he feels something, a tug in the Force, that leads him south.

A masked woman, dressed all in black, steps out in front of him, and Ben brakes the speeder sharply. She laughs, the sound distorted by a voice modulator. "Took your sweet time, didn't you, Kylo?"

Only the presence in his dreams has ever called him that, so how does this woman know that name?

"Come with me," she says.

Ben parks the speeder and continues after her on foot. "What's your name?" he asks.

"Essa," she says. "I'm second-in-command of the Knights of Ren."

She slips through the backdoor of a building. Ben follows, asking, "Who's the first-in-command?"

Essa closes the door behind them, turns on the light, and says, "You are."

Five others sit around a table, all dressed in black, all masked, each carrying their own distinct weapon, everything from a high-grade blaster to a simple stave.

"Me?" Ben asks. "That's not possible. I don't even know who you are."

"You know," Essa says. "The Supreme Leader has been telling you for years, in one way or another."

The other five introduce themselves as Othen, Dazek, Ylithi, Faro, and Nalla. Their voices sound remarkably similar, all obscured by modulators, just as their faces are hidden behind masks of black steel.

Essa gives him a lightsaber, and Ben knows before he even ignites it what color it will be. He has, after all, wielded it many times in his dreams. It feels right in his hand. Natural. And he knows without being told what his first mission for the Supreme Leader is: to destroy the Jedi academy.

It's a slaughter. The initiates and Padawans are in their beds asleep when the Knights of Ren descend on their home. There's a part of him that still hates this, that doesn't want to betray the people he considered comrades for so long, but he's made his choice, and there's no going back now.

Aza doesn't even recognize him with the mask on, and he lunges at him, blue lightsaber clashing against red. No, he thinks. He doesn't want to be the one to kill Aza, his only true friend in this place. (Because Rey is too young to be his peer, too important for the simple word friend to describe her.)

Essa saves him from having to do it. Her blaster shot takes Aza in the back of the neck, and the young man falls to the ground, the light extinguished from his eyes. Just like that, his uncle's second most promising Jedi trainee is dead.

Then Shahv comes at him, and Kylo Ren raises his lightsaber. One stroke, two, three, and he breaks through the Padawan's defenses. He cuts off Shahv's head, and it falls to the ground, to the dust, just a heartbeat before his body collapses beside it.

After the first kill, the others come easier. Two, three, four, five, the initiates and Padawans all fall under his plasma blade.

Kylo sees Luke battling three of the Knights at once, his saber dancing in arcs of blue light as they circle him.

If I help, they'll be able to kill the last Skywalker. The last Jedi.

Instead, he looks for Rey. She isn't in her room, but when he thinks about it, Kylo knows exactly where she'll be.

He finds her hiding under the bed in his own cell, her hands pressed over her ears.

"Rey," he says, as gently as he can. "Come out from there."

She looks at him with wide, frightened eyes, frozen in place, and belatedly Kylo realizes that he's still wearing his mask. He takes it off, sets it aside, and smiles at her softly. "It's me," he says.

"Ben?" Rey asks, but she sounds unsure, as if she knows already that he is not the same boy anymore.

By the time he emerges from the burning ruins of the academy with Rey in his arms, all the others are dead. It's raining—the first rain Kylo has ever seen on Valloyi. A quick glance around the battlefield reveals an unsurprising truth: Luke escaped.

"Where were you?" Essa asks. She leans heavily on her left leg, as if her right is too hurt to support her weight. "If you'd been here your uncle wouldn't have gotten away."

"I had something to attend to," he says.

Rey clings to him, buries her face in his black robes.

"Who's the girl?" Othen asks.

"No one," Kylo says. "She was never here. Do you understand?"

The Knights look at her, then away.

"Even if we say nothing, the Supreme Leader will know you spared her," Essa says. "He has ways."

"That may be so, but he won't hear it from any of you. Will he?" Kylo ignites his lightsaber, and it glows, menacing and red, amidst the rain and mud and blood.

That message must be clear enough, because the Knights say nothing more.

Kylo doesn't want to leave Rey, but he knows that the Supreme Leader will have her killed if he even suspects the existence of another Jedi initiate. He has no choice but to stow her away on some remote planet, far from the reach of the First Order.

After hours of deliberation, he chooses Jakku. A backwater, desert world inhabited by slavers and scavengers. An unpleasant place in which to grow up, certainly, but too unimportant to ever merit the Supreme Leader's attention. She'll be safe there.

They land in the middle of the day, when the hot sun is burning bright on the golden sands. Kylo holds Rey's hand and leads her to the nearest village, a dreary place called Niima Outpost. The idea of leaving her here turns his stomach, but he's left himself few options.

I picked myself over her, he thinks. My own power over Rey's future.

Living with the guilt of this choice will be his burden to bear, as much as the deaths of Aza and the others.

At least I spared her. At least I saved her life.

Jakku won't break or ruin her. Rey is clever and strong, so much stronger than she knows, and she'll survive. She has to.

Kylo pays a weathered scavenger woman named Hasook half a fortune to look out for Rey. And just in case the money isn't enough to inspire her to fulfill her end of the bargain, he promises to feed her to a rathtar if he ever finds out she went back on her word. Hasook nods and takes Rey by the arm.

He kneels before her and says, "I have to go now."

She starts to grab at his robes, but Hasook holds her too firmly for Rey to be able to reach him.

Kylo stands, turns his back on the little girl he's grown to care so much for, and strides back to his ship as quickly as his long legs will carry him.

"No!" she screams. "Come back!"

Rey shouts those same words, over and over again, and they echo in his mind long after he's far from Jakku.

She'll forget me, in time, Kylo tells himself. It's his only consolation, because he knows that no matter what path he's chosen, no matter how far apart they are, he'll never be able to forget her.

Author's Notes: So my trashy self is officially writing Kylo Ren / Ben Solo fanfiction. I'm endlessly fascinated by this character (although tbh I'm pretty fascinated by all of the new generation in SWTFA, because Finn, Rey, Poe, and Kylo are all awesome in their own ways).

The direction this fic is taking is inspired by a theory I watched on youtube about Rey's origins, speculating that she was in fact one of Luke's students at the Jedi academy before Kylo and the other Knights of Ren destroyed it.

I rewatched Rey's vision sequence about ten times as I wrote this, looking for details, and I noticed something kind of interesting on viewing number eight or nine: the scene where she's shouting, "Come back!" to whoever's leaving her behind is sandwiched between images of Kylo Ren. First, with the Knights of Ren, standing in the rain (which I'm interpreting as after the massacre at Luke's academy); then during her battle with him in the snow. It would be quite neat, imo, if Kylo is actually present in all three scenes, and as I depicted in this story, he's the person who left her on Jakku.

Obviously, this theory isn't perfect, and it has plenty of holes, but I thought that it was too intriguing of a premise to pass up. So my little fic about Kylo Ren's origin story merged with this idea and A Boy Named Ben was born. I hope you guys enjoyed it!