Published December 26, 2018

Parents and Parties

What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? ~ James 4:1, New International Version

Most schools in the galaxy gave students a vacation to celebrate the anniversary of the end of the war. Luke Skywalker's Jedi training temple was no exception. Of all the teachers that could have exercised that privilege, it was thought he had more right than any other to do so.

As a child, going to school on Chandrila, Ben Solo had felt as though this break was a birthday gift. Now, he was all but indifferent to it. His parents were usually too busy to spend much of the vacation with him. They were always being invited to ceremonies or celebrations related to commemorating the war they had fought in.

So when Leia asked him to come home for the vacation, and Han came to pick him up, Ben was surprised and a little suspicious. At some point in his adolescence, he had come to distrust unsolicited attentions and gestures of kindness from his parents. He had recognized a pattern over the years: they usually did special things for him when they felt obligated to make up for something they had done or planned to do. Ben wondered if they had already done something, or were going to ask him to endure something they planned to do.

"I have a bad feeling about this," Ben muttered to R2-D2, who had been keeping him company as he waited for the ship. The little droid did not understand why the Millennium Falcon would make him feel this way.

Han disembarked and approached his son with a smile more tentative than his normal, cocky grin. "Hey kid."

"Dad. I thought Uncle Luke would drop me off, or Mom would send her pilot to pick me up," he said neutrally, not matching Han's friendly smile. Ben had actually hoped he might be able to fly himself home. He enjoyed flying, and he rarely had the opportunity to do so under Luke's training schedule.

Han feigned indignation. "Excuse me, but I think I can claim that job title."

"Aren't we all her pilots—you, Ben, and me?" Luke came up to them, smiling and holding a hand out to his brother-in-law.

Han shook his hand and clapped his shoulder. "How're the padawans treating you?"

Ben tensed at this question. He knew at some point Luke would tell his parents about his latest episodes—the fight he got into outside of training hours, the times he lost control while sparring, the stupid spin-the-light-saber game that had gone so horribly awry.

But Luke did not mention any of this now. He just smiled thinly and said, "They haven't gotten me down yet."

"Good. Leia's hoping you'll come around at some point, maybe around Ben's birthday."

"I'll try." Luke turned to his nephew. "You have everything?"

"Yeah." Ben hefted his one bag of worldly belongings onto his shoulder.

"Have a good time."

Ben grunted and started toward the Millennium Falcon. Han glanced at his son and then back at Luke, who lowered his voice and spoke in a more serious tone. "Han, I was wondering if you and Leia are planning to do it soon."

Han's demeanor changed immediately, becoming more somber. "I'm going to talk to her about it."

A beat passed before Luke spoke again. "Alright. I'll come visit later in the break. Take care until then."

"You too."

Just inside the Falcon's entrance, Ben could not hear the exact words, but he sensed the two men's unease and apprehension. He intuitively knew it had to do with him, but it also concerned something else, something he did not know. Realizing the conversation was over, Ben skirted away from the entrance, dropped his bag on the bench, and hurried to the cockpit. When Han reached it a moment later, he found Ben sitting in the copilot's chair.

Han glanced between the seats and suggested, "Why don't you take the pilot's chair?"

Ben's almost perpetual frown softened in surprise. "Really?"

"Why not?"

Ben had flown plenty of vehicles and even co-piloted when Han flew the Falcon, but he had never been trusted with the task of piloting the beloved freighter.

He tried to appear nonchalant as he took the pilot's seat and surveyed the controls that he had practically memorized as a child. When he glanced up, he saw Han's gold dice hanging just where they were supposed to be. The sight made Ben smile, almost feeling like he was coming home. For a moment he began to entertain the possibility that this vacation might be different, might actually be enjoyable.

Ben's relationship with his parents was complicated at best. As a child he had idolized them, and even now he envied their confidence and self-assurance. But as he had grown older, Ben had noticed more and more flaws in their personalities and differences between the three of them.

Han had taught Ben what he could about being a pilot, a mechanic, a smuggler. Regarding this last occupation, he had insisted that even if Ben never became one, which he shouldn't, he still should know the tricks of the trade in order to outsmart any he ran into. But Ben's Force-sensitivity and Han's lack of it had always seemed like a barrier, preventing them from truly connecting and understanding each other. Leia's power in the Force was not much help, since she had chosen not to hone it to the extent Luke did. Her power manifested itself in subtle ways, not like Ben's uncontrollable outbursts.

Flying was one of the few things Ben and Han had ever truly bonded over. Han was grateful for that, because it was what he most loved and wanted to share with his son and pass on to him. If Ben had not been Force-sensitive, he might have followed in his father's footsteps, racing for prizes, running a shipping company, or serving in the military. Ben had argued that Force-sensitivity made him a better pilot, the way it had his uncle and maternal grandfather; but true as that may have been, he still needed to learn how to better control and channel his power. So his parents had sent him to train with Luke, and Han had started mentoring other young aspiring pilots, taking strangers under his wing instead of his own son. Leia similarly hired teenagers to be her interns in the New Republic Senate. She said she wanted to be the kind of friend and mentor Mon Mothma had been to her, but Ben suspected she really wanted a replacement son, or a daughter figure.

Ben was positive that if he had been born a girl, his mother would have raised him very differently. The throne of Alderaan had been passed down a matrilineal line, between mothers and daughters more often than fathers and sons. That was why Bail and Breha Organa had preferred to adopt a girl rather than a boy. Leia probably would have schooled a daughter in politics, diplomacy, and culture. Leia had not really known what to do with a boy who showed no innate interest or aptitude for those things. Her life tended to revolve around them.

Seeing his parents after these long intervals apart usually only served to remind Ben of the many things he resented about them. At this point in his life, it seemed as though there was no satisfactory solution: anything they did for him seemed too little, too late.

When they got to Leia's apartment on Hosnian Prime, C-3PO let them in. "Captain Solo! Oh! And Master Ben as well! It is good to see you again."

"Hello, Threepio."

Leia came out of an adjacent room, smiling at the two of them. She hugged Han and then Ben, holding them both tightly. Not for the first time, Ben was struck by how small she was next to him. She had always been short, and he had surpassed her height in his early teen years. "It's so good to finally see you both." From the way she looked at them, it seemed like she meant it, and from the way Han looked at her, it seemed the feeling was mutual between them.

The kitchen droid had already prepared and laid out a meal for them. Somehow Ben ended up sitting on the side of the table between his parents, which gave him the feeling that they were talking over him. They talked easily enough with each other. Even though they often argued and spent most of their time apart, they somehow slipped back into their rapport every time they reunited. When they talked about their respective work, they included their son in the conversation more as an afterthought than anything else.

Leia vented her frustrations about the Senate, which currently was divided into two factions, the Populists and the Centrists, who disagreed on how much power should be held by the New Republic and the individual planets that belonged to it. The problem was decades old by now; it had been the root cause of the Clone Wars as well as the Rebellion. Evidently Leia was becoming fed up with how ineffective the Senate had proven to be since Mon Mothma stepped down as chancellor.

"I'm starting to look forward to retiring," she said, to Ben's surprise and Han's skepticism. Neither of them could imagine her giving up her work. She had always been involved in either politics or military service. That dual calling had taken precedence even when she started a family. Ben wondered how she could have forced herself to do that work during his childhood, yet finally give it up when he was an adult and no longer needed her around.

When his parents tried to focus on him, he had little to say about himself and what he had been doing, because they asked about the things he least liked to think and talk about.

At one point, inevitably, Leia asked Ben, "Is there anyone at the temple that you like?"

Ben groaned at this question. The answer was always the same: "No." There were two or three female padawans who had made him feel nervous, who struck him as particularly witty or talented or good-looking, but he had never formed any meaningful connections with any of his classmates. Most of them eventually came to either resent or fear him, or both.

In a rare show of tact, Han changed the subject from school to vacation. "Is there anything you've been hoping to do during the break? Or for your birthday?"

"No," Ben answered flatly.

"Anywhere you want to go?"

"Where would I go?"

Han thought for a moment. "Well, there aren't any major competitions going on, but I could call some friends together for a race, just for fun."

"You don't have to work?"

"I've, ah, got some errands I need to run over the next few days. I could check on a couple shipments, but you could come for the ride if you wanted."

"Maybe." It would probably be more interesting than staying on Hosnian Prime the whole time.

Leia made a somewhat abrupt announcement. "I was thinking about having a party."

Ben raised his eyebrows, then smirked slightly. "I thought you said you're a Populist."

Han laughed appreciatively. Even Leia chortled, perhaps not so much by the joke itself as by Ben's effort to make a joke. "Not a political party. A birthday party, for you."

Ben stopped poking at his food and looked up in dismay. "What? Why?"

Leia shrugged casually at the question. "It's been a long time since we celebrated your birthday with anyone other than family."

"Who else would we celebrate it with?"

"Besides Chewie and Luke, I was thinking we could invite your classmates. Then there's Lando and Kaasha, my staff, some of my colleagues in the Senate, some of your father's mentees, and a few of our friends from the war."

With every name mentioned, Ben imagined the scene growing to become less and less tolerable. "No. No way. Absolutely not!"

Leia was not pleased with this response. She had not expected a ready agreement with her proposal, but she had not expected the opposition to be quite so vehement.

"Watch your tone, Ben," Han warned.

Ben rounded on his father. "You seriously support this idea?"

Han shrugged noncommittally. "It's not my favorite kind of thing, but I don't see why I shouldn't."

Ben glared at him, feeling betrayed. He knew how Han felt about politics and formal events, and Han knew how Ben felt about them.

When Ben was younger, his parents' friends and colleagues and other important people they associated with had patronized him, talking about how proud he must be, how lucky he was to have such fine parents, how bright his future was. Ben had heard more than one person say—some to his face, others to the general public—that he was a symbol, the personification of a new era, the archetype of the generation born and raised after the war's end.

Now that he was an adult, he got the feeling they were less interested in him as a person and more interested in how he could help them—as if he had any actual political significance or any influence on his mother's decisions. And although almost everyone said they expected him to be great like his relatives, he could never achieve anything as noteworthy as they had.

This thought made something click in Ben's mind. His birthday coincided with the anniversary of the war's end. This party would be an opportunity for his mother to get her colleagues to interact outside a political context. "Is this your idea for getting the factions together? Celebrating my birthday instead of the peace deal?"

"This isn't about celebrating the end of the war," Leia insisted. "It'll be a night to celebrate you, all you've accomplished. Besides, you've been stuck with the same group of peers at school. This will be a chance to meet other people your age."

"Maybe meet some girls," Han said half-jokingly.

Those ideas were almost laughable. "You want to throw some coming out party for me? Introduce me to high society, like a debutante? Set me up with one of your interns?"

Leia pressed her lips together, deliberating a moment before she admitted, "I do want you to start thinking seriously about what you want to do with your life, and who you want to spend it with. Your father and I aren't going to be around forever."

"I don't need you to be!"

Silence fell after this declaration. The shock on all three humans' faces was accompanied by hurt on the parents' and angry defiance on the son's. Glaring, Ben pushed his chair back, stood and stormed out of the room.

"Ben! Get back here!" Han shouted, standing, but Leia grasped his wrist and held him back.

"Let him cool off."

"I don't care if he talks to me that way, but you—"

Leia hushed him and confided, "I think he really means the opposite."

Ben stomped through the apartment until he found C-3PO. "Threepio, is there a bedroom for me, or should I crash on the Falcon?"

Hearing this, Han shouted indignantly, "Hey, never use the word 'crash' in reference to the Falcon!"

Sometimes Ben truly believed his father cared more about that ship than about him.

He followed C-3PO to a guest room, where a bed had been set up along with various tools and spare parts Ben had collected years ago. It was a welcome sight, something to distract him for at least a few hours.

Technically, Jedi were not supposed to accumulate personal possessions. A Jedi's most valued item was his lightsaber, and anything else was considered shared or borrowed. But Luke had not been strict about enforcing that outside of the training temple, so Leia had allowed Ben to keep some of his personal effects at home. It really was her home, not his. He was only a guest passing through. But the Jedi school was not his home either. Perhaps home for the Skywalker-Solo family was more of an idea than a place, but Ben was not sure he had ever really experienced it.

For a while Ben sorted through the equipment, testing out tools and examining discarded items. He sensed his father's approach before hearing the footsteps and the knock at his door. Ben did not deign to answer, but Han opened the door and poked his head in anyway. "Hey," he said casually, as if there had been so argument or insult just an hour before. "What'cha working on?"

"Nothing really."

Han's eyes fell on one weapon that he recognized. "Is that Chewie's bowcaster?"

"No, but it's one he showed me how to construct." Ben picked up the Wookiee weapon and unfolded it. Though he had not used it in years, it looked to be in working order. Perhaps, over this vacation, he could find a place to test it out, see if his aim was alright without the aid of the Force.

"Can we talk?" Han asked.

"Do I have a choice?"

Han sat down on the edge of the bed. "Look, Ben. Your mom knows that you and I aren't exactly social butterflies, but stuff like this means something to her. Sometimes it means a lot. She's wanted to do something like this for a while."

"I'm sure she's wanted to try to make peace between the Centrists and Populists for a long time."

"That's not what this is about."

"It's not not about that, though, is it?"

They stared at each other for a moment, Ben daring Han to contradict him. Han's shoulders sagged in reluctance. "It's an … added potential advantage," he admitted.

"I knew it."

Han sighed. "Ben … I don't want the three of us to be fighting the whole time we're together. You know your mom and I want you to be happy."

Ben barely managed to keep himself from scoffing out loud. His parents may have wished him well, but he doubted that his happiness was high on their list of priorities.

"The thing is, we're not sure what would make you happy. Sometimes we're not even sure if you know. How you spend your vacation is just one example. What is it you want from us?"

Ben stopped tinkering, and turned to look at his father. "What did you say?"

"I asked what you want. Would you rather have stayed at the temple?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"I don't know." Ben's voice sounded defensive.

"Do you want to go back when the break is over?"

That question took Ben aback. "What—do I have a choice?"

"Luke thinks you still have a lot to learn, but you're not a kid anymore. You can decide where you want to live, what you want to do, who you want to be."

Ben could hardly believe he was hearing this. The idea that he could choose any of those things was completely new and almost unbelievable. All his life people had told him what he could be or should be. He had simultaneously fought and internalized these beliefs.

Han continued, "I talked to your mom just now, about the party, and I had an idea of my own. I want to offer a deal."

"Oh, great. Those usually work out well for you."

His sarcasm earned him a glare, though Han's lips curled into an involuntary smile as he realized Ben had a point. "If you do this—if you let your mom throw this party in your honor, show up and act nice—then when it's over you can have the Falcon, and you can take it wherever you want to go. It doesn't have to be back to the temple."

Ben stared openly. The Millennium Falcon was one thing he had thought his father would never part with. "That's how much this party means to you?"

"That's how much your happiness means to us. If that would make you happy …"

Would it? Ben wondered, trying to imagine it. A ship of his own, and the freedom to go where he chose … to not have to endure his uncle's anxious berating or his classmates' fear … it was an almost frightening prospect, but the possibilities it presented all entailed relief.

"I … might consider it," Ben said.

Han smiled, satisfied with this answer. "Thanks. In the meantime, I've got an errand that you might enjoy."

"What kind of errand?"

"It's a favor to an old friend, Maz Kanata. She wants some discounted shipments to her castle on Takodana."

Those names were only vaguely familiar to Ben's ears. "Takodana … have I been there?"

Han seemed genuinely surprised. "Do you not remember? We used to go camping there when you were little." He looked forward again, part nostalgic, part crestfallen. "Chewie came with us. He caught and cooked some birds for us, and we went swimming in Nymeve Lake."

Now that he thought about it, Ben dimly remembered sitting on his father's knee in front of a campfire, Chewbacca telling stories in Shyriiwook, Han translating the parts Ben could not understand. He could not recall how old he had been at the time or what else had been happening in their lives. He supposed they must have been pretty happy, at that moment, in that period of their lives. Over the years Chewbacca had taught him how to speak Shyriiwook and survive in the wilderness, acting almost like another uncle to Ben.

"It was long time ago," Han conceded. "You may not remember it, but Maz will remember you. She likes Chewie and me. She's a bit of an acquired taste, so don't take what she says the wrong way. Whatever you do, don't stare."

"At what?"

Han waved his hands, as though to indicate something very general. "Any of it."

Author's Notes

You can skip this if you want, but if you're curious about my process and creative choices, read on.

As I post this first chapter, it has been exactly one year since I saw The Last Jedi, which pulled me fully into Star Wars fandom and made me a wholehearted Reylo shipper. This is the first crossover I've written in years, and the first one I've done with Star Wars characters. The idea of this story came out of nowhere, took root and grew like a weed in my mind. I will be drawing inspiration from different versions of the story of Swan Lake, of which there are many.

Although this is an alternate timeline, I will be using a lot of details from the canon, including material from the books. For instance, in this chapter there are allusions to Bloodline by Claudia Gray (which I highly recommend), and Last Shot by Daniel Jose Older (which I think is only worth reading because it shows Ben as a toddler).