reylofinn - forcebabies When the darkness plucks at Ben, it wakes them both. Finn's eyes meet Rey's over Ben's contorted face, the dull floorboard lights of the ship tracing lines across their faces. Finn brushes his hand over Ben's forehead, fingers tickling against the thick scar that crosses his face, and he presses his lips to Ben's temple. "You can do this," Finn whispers. "You've fought it before. And we're here." But it isn't about fighting anymore, and they all know it. Rey stretches her arm across Ben's chest and tucks her face into the crook of his neck as she curls her fingers in Finn's. The gray sleeve of her sweater cuts across Ben's black and Finn's white. Balance, she thinks with a smile, like Master Skywalker keeps telling them. They have to find balance if the Force is to survive. Ben's eyes fly open. He twists toward Finn, then Rey, chest fluttering under her arm and s vein at his forehead throbbing against Finn's lips. "I saw it." Finn and Rey look at each other, then back to Ben. "We have to go to the temple. All three of us." His voice is clotted with sleep. "But I don't know if we can all survive." "No." Finn shakes his head. "That's just Snoke lying to you. It has to be. If one of us falls--" "The balance is broken," Rey finishes. "Would be a lot easier if one third of the Force weren't always trying to kill the other two," Finn mutters. Ben laughs, but it sounds dried out. "I'm stronger than that now." "I know," Finn says, kissing his temple again and smoothing back his sweat-soaked hair. "We all are now. I know." He isn't sure if he means it, and the hardness in Rey's face echoes it. But they must be. They'll have to be, if the balance is to hold.
Ben curled into a tight ball in the darkness, knees under his chin, his mother’s arms around him and his father’s hand on his mouth. The compartment they hid in reeked of oil and coolant steam and matted fur, but more than anything, he smelled his family’s fear. It radiated off of them, all four of them, pressing against the insulated pipes. He wanted to scream. The smell was choking him.
But then the boots fell on the metal compartment’s lid above him, and he understood why he had to be still.
Four sets of feet, five—he couldn’t tell for sure. Not from the sound. He sensed their bodies, though, moving around above them—sensed in a way he couldn’t explain. They were searching for him. They spoke to each other in crackles and hisses that he couldn’t interpret—comlink static or an alien tongue, or something in between?
Then he looked at them—no other way to describe it except for peeking inside their skulls—and he knew what they wanted. That’s where the dream diverged.
Sometimes they wanted to kill him.
Others, they wanted to rescue him.
Either way, he was afraid.
*
Ben jolted from sleep, feeling as if his body had dropped out from under him. Through the transport’s window, the blur of hyperspace slowed and collapsed on itself as they prepared for an approach. Dayya, buckled in across from him, swung her legs, kicking him in the shins.
“Bad dreams?” she asked, though her fangs always garbled it when she spoke Basic.
Ben hunched into his harness. “No.”
“You were whimpering.”
He looked back toward the window. Where was the master taking them? The planet slowly growing around them was a murky fog with pockets of green. A gas planet, or a swamp?
“You wouldn’t have bad dreams if you did our exercises before sleep.” Dayya kicked his shin again, then clasped her hands together before her. “‘Clear your mind,’” she intoned, in the overly dramatic voice their master sometimes used. “‘Abandon your fears, your hopes, your self—’”
“I told you, it wasn’t a bad dream.”
Varick, next to Ben, nudged him in the ribs. “You miss your mommy? Want us to read you some bedtime stories?”
“You’re all assholes,” Ben said.
Then the master entered their passenger hold, and all eyes snapped toward him. Master Skywalker. Uncle Luke, though Ben wasn’t allowed to call him that. Luke wore his hair loose, as if he was beyond material concerns like proper grooming, but his beard was always impeccably trimmed. He always donned the same blissed-out expression when he was teaching, as if he carried an endless well of patience inside of him. But Ben had seen beyond that façade. He loved to chip at it in their lessons—loved to watch it crack.
“A Jedi must be able to quickly read any situation they’re presented with.” Luke gestured toward the window as they approached the planet’s atmosphere. “I’m quite confident none of you have ever visited this system before, let alone this planet. But I want you to read it for me. Tell me everything about it that you can.”
Crispin, a scrawny, pale little kid who always clung to Ben’s side, answered first. “It’s damp.”
A faint smile flickered across Master Skywalker’s face. “Good. Anyone else?”
“I sense a few different life forms,” Dayya said. “Aquatic. They’re thinking of food sources. Fish, mainly.”
“Thick vines,” Varick said. “Lots of little rodents living in them. Snakes, too, I think.”
Luke nodded. “What about civilizations? Can anyone sense them?”
The students fell silent. Muyl’ri held up one webbed hand, but then quickly retracted it with a shake of her head.
“No,” Ben said. He met Luke’s gaze. “But there are echoes.”
Ben waited for Master Skywalker to prompt him further. He wanted it—to put into words what he felt. An echoing cry, the echo of souls, moving around like ghosts in his head. As the thick atmosphere swallowed up their transport ship, the echoes deafened him. He had to let them out. Release them like a pressure valve—the one that was always clogging up on his dad’s ship.
The one that, if they didn’t vent it often enough, tended to burst.
Maybe Luke sensed what he was feeling. But he only nodded, one slight dip of his chin. “The echoes,” he said, “we’ll save for later.”
Ben grimaced and looked away.
Varick ran his fingers through his hair. “Great. So we’re on another flower-picking expedition.”
“We are here to test your reflexes in a new environment,” Master Skywalker said, with a glare toward Varick and Ben. “First, I want you to familiarize yourself with your surroundings. Then I’ll give you a list of tasks to complete. We’ll wrap it up with one last trial. Nothing you can’t handle, I’m sure.”
“Skywalker?” the pilot called, from the cockpit. A Republic woman, Tynde something or other. She was always hovering around their new order, running odd jobs for Luke, even though she was supposedly busy helping the new government run. “I think we’re picking up something on the scanners, but the moisture is garbling it.”
Luke’s brow furrowed. “You think we were tracked?”
“N-no.” Her gaze swept over the students, and she smiled. A false smile, Ben thought—she was afraid of something, but didn’t want them to know. “Mind checking it out?”
“I’ll be right there.” Luke turned back to the students. “Clear your minds. Prepare yourself for anything. Let the Force flow through you.”
Ben watched his uncle’s retreating back. Let the Force flow through him. He sighed. That had never been the problem.
The problem was when it flowed too much.
*
Three hours climbing vines around some shithole swamp, and Ben was bored out of his brainpan. Luke had made them all crouch inside some mud hut and “read the Force’s echo” from it. Right, he got it, some great Jedi master lived there once and his energy lingered still, it was all very exciting. But the only echo Ben could pull from the place was visions of some shriveled-up little creature fixing an endless parade of stews. Not exactly the inspiring vision Uncle Luke was going for, he suspected.
The only interesting feature he’d found around the whole damn swamp was a thicket of tree roots, snarled together in the rough shape of an archway. The echoes grew louder as he approached, ricocheting. They burned inside him like kindling. There was something waiting for him beyond the tree roots--something that had been waiting for a long time.
Then Master Skywalker had appeared from the forest and took him by the arm. “Not yet, Ben.”
Ben shook his arm loose. The thought of not entering the hollow sent a shock of panic through him. He needed to go in. He couldn’t put into words how desperately he needed to see.
But no. Luke wouldn’t be swayed by something as foolish as human wants. Only a calm, rational appeal ever worked with him. Ben was learning.
Sometimes he felt he was learning how to appease Uncle Luke more than he was learning the ways of the Force.
“You’re right.” An embarrassed smile—Ben had mastered that one. “I’m not ready yet. But I will be soon.” He risked a sideways glance toward Luke. “How can I prove myself to you, Master?”
“Just have patience. You’re nearly there.” Luke nudged him back toward the training grounds. “But first, your practice.”
And so it was back to the same old tasks: levitation, clearing his mind, mastering obstacles. Never the combat training--they only ever did that back at the temple on Yavin 4, and then only with painted sticks. Ben closed his eyes, let his instincts do the work for him, and tried not to let that sense of yearning tear him through.
Until the screaming started.
Ben froze; the crate Muyl’ri had been levitating crashed dangerously close to his foot. “Was . . . was that a bird?” the translator box at her throat asked.
Ben clutched a dried length of driftwood and headed into the marsh.
Other apprentices were stepping out of the forests as well, eyes cast into the thick mist overhead. Instead of searching through their surroundings, however, Ben closed his eyes. His mind wanted to circle around the entrance to the hollow some distance to his left, but he forced himself to make a broad sweep around them. There was Dayya and Crispin, Varick, Niero Antares--no.
Niero was in pain, and the sensation of it sent a sharp twist into Ben’s gut.
And he wasn’t alone.
Ben charged across the swamp, the earth trying to suck in his shoes, and ran past Dayya and Varick. “Wait,” Varick shouted. “Don’t go by yourself!”
Ben leapt over a twisted knot of tree roots, only to miss the sheer drop on the other side of it. His feet hit the mud and he slid down thirty feet into a fresh blanket of fog. A bramble awaited him below—sentient, from the looks of it, its thorns shifting against one another in anticipation. He threw out one hand to levitate himself.
He came to a stop inches from the slithering branches. His khaki coat dangled over his head, blocking his vision. Move slow. Keep control, he told himself. Don’t give in to fear, that old adage of Uncle Luke’s, seemed more appropriate than ever as he eased himself to the sentient bramble’s edge. His breath rushed out of him as his boots struck the soft mud of safety.
But he was anything but safe. Niero’s life force was flickering, while the two figures he sensed beside Niero—strengthened.
Someone powerful in the Force. Ben’s dream echoed around him. The fear he’d wrestled back came rushing over him once more. Powerful, but to what end? Were they friend or foe?
He tightened his grip on the driftwood and moved toward the presences.
“Untrained,” one man said to the other.
“Weak,” the second answered.
“Pitiful. He would rather let them die than run the risk . . .”
Ben raised his arm to shield his nostrils. Something acrid filled the air, charred like meat but overly sweet.
“They’ll never amount to anything, not like this.”
“Better to end it now.”
Ben took one more step closer, cringing at the soft squelch of mud under his soles. Sweat cemented his dark hair to his brow. He could almost make out the figures in the clearing, shrouded though they were in mist. A body sprawled in the mud before them. Niero, a deep gash running the length of his chest. But he was still breathing. If Ben could just get to him—get him away from these monsters—
Niero sucked in a wet, slurping breath. “Master Skywalker will destroy you,” he told the figures. “You don’t stand a chance.”
“Master?” The first man scoffed. “He is an apprentice at best. Untrained himself—he has no business teaching you.”
Ben surveyed the clearing—not the way Master Skywalker taught him to do, but the way his parents had. Check your corners, your angles; know a weapon’s reach.
“But we can be merciful, too. We can end your suffering.”
The first man reached for a weapon at his side.
Ben sprang into the clearing, swinging the driftwood into the closest figure. It connected with a satisfying crack. But it also split the driftwood in two. The figure staggered back, dark robes billowing in the mist. Ben reached out his hand to shove them away—the same trick he’d used when he almost fell—but before he could even think it, his hand snapped back to his side. He was locked in place.
The figure unhooked something at their belt, and the two people circled him, dark robes obscuring their features.
The man he’d heard speak came to a stop in front of Ben and cocked his head to one side. The mask was silvery, curved, unadorned; it looked like a bit of scrap his father might have pried off of a defunct droid. Ben didn’t like not knowing what the man looked like behind that shield. He was angry—angry that these people would invade their work, would attack Niero, would make a fool of him like this. And it made him angrier that he didn’t know who he was angry with.
Anger is a powerful emotion, Master Skywalker’s words echoed. But a dangerous one.
“And who are you, little whelp?” the man said.
Ben swallowed hard, though he was barely able to move his jaw. “Ben Solo. Son of Princess Leia Organa and General Han Solo.” He couldn’t resist a sneer. “Maybe you’ve heard of them.”
Pride, too, is a Jedi’s foe. But Ben didn’t care. These people needed to know who they were dealing with. He needed to make them think twice.
The second figure laughed. A woman. “Should we have?”
The man silenced her with a wave of his hand. “We would like to have a word with Luke Skywalker.”
Luke. He should try to contact Luke. Ben closed his eyes, but as he reached out into the forest, he found only a void. Fear sent an icy finger down his spine.
Fear will strip you of reason.
The power that gripped Ben in place began to tighten around him like a fist.
“Where is he?” the man asked.
Ben squeezed his eyes shut. But the fist around him shifted; it pressed into his thoughts. Burrowing past the surface, shredding his efforts at calm. It didn’t hurt. Not yet. But he had no doubt that would come later.
“Where,” the man hissed, “is Skywalker?”
Ben’s dream flashed around him. He was curled into a ball inside a darkened smuggling compartment. He was straining to read the thoughts of the people who’d boarded their ship—
“He’s as useless as the rest of his family,” the other said. “Let’s be done with them.”
The figure unclipped the weapon from their belt. The orange blade of a lightsaber hissed to life.
Ben’s eyes widened. These weren’t common criminals, then. Not Force-sensitive spies. Someone had trained them—put weapons in their hands. But how? If Uncle Luke had killed the last of the Sith, and their order was no more—
Envy will be your undoing.
Ben clenched is jaw. If only Uncle Luke had trained him to wield a lightsaber, maybe he could fight back. He’d be able to stop these monsters. Maybe if Luke hadn’t held him back, he could have been quick enough to save Niero. And now he was going to die to a lightsaber, never to wield it himself—
“Put the boy down.”
Master Skywalker strode out of the mists. Ben crumpled to the ground as the Force-hold on him evaporated. Mud splashed into his mouth, his hair. He shoved himself to his feet, but they refused to hold him. The haze of his dream reached for him again.
“Go, Ben. Get back to the transport.” Master Skywalker raised his blue lightsaber. “Let me deal with this.”
Orange clashed against blue with a shudder of energy. Ben stared at the crossed saber beams, transfixed. He’d only seen Uncle Luke wield his once before, and it had been some time ago. He imagined that energy flowing out of the swords and into him . . . imagined wielding that power for himself.
The man laughed as his blade slipped lower, toward Luke’s hilt.
Luke twisted toward Ben. “Go!”
Ben scrambled toward his feet, fighting against the mud as it tried to suck him in. The other woman was gone—their dark robe darted like a shadow through the fog. Luke wanted him to hide in the transport like a coward. But what if she was after the other initiates?
If I stop her, Ben thought, maybe I can save the rest.
And maybe he could show Luke he was ready after all.
Haste made him clumsy as he crashed into the trees once more. He tried to sense his path, like Luke had taught, but fear was gnawing at the edges of his focus. The woman’s dark robes marked her path, though, and he did his best to follow, even as he clipped a tree trunk, tearing a hole in his robe’s sleeve. If he could just get close enough—perhaps he could hold her in place. Like she’d done to him.
She’d almost reached the clearing where the transport ship waited. Dayya and Crispin, Varick, Muyl’ri—he couldn’t let her hurt them, too. But then she turned. Went back into the woods.
No. Ben swallowed down the bile rising in his throat. She’d entered the archway of roots.
The hollow tugged at him like a rope around his neck. The ghosts stirred. He felt the hot darkness of the smuggling compartment, the grip of his mother’s arms . . . As if she were holding him back. Just like her brother was. Trying to keep him safe.
But he didn’t need to be safe. He needed to be brave. And he needed Luke to see that he was ready. That he was capable of so much more.
Ben’s fingers trailed against the mossy upturned roots. He paused in the archway, drew a deep breath, and listened. The hot, stagnant air turned cold inside the hollow; it buzzed with a deep, aggressive silence. Maybe he’d been wrong and she hadn’t entered here.
But no—he sensed it. Maybe not the woman, but some presence was waiting him in the dark. The fear from his dreams came rushing back. Someone was waiting for him, and once more, he didn’t know if he was going to be killed, or saved.
He squared his shoulders and moved deeper into the hollow.
The dirt walls curved around him, pressing in like a grave. His fear felt thick as fog around him. He imagined the darkness of the compartment. He heard the boots clatter against the metal lid—
The hollow shifted and was gone.
They’d been bouncing around the Outer Rim for weeks now, tracking a ghost ship, or so he overheard his father say. They won’t stop, his mother insisted. We have to find the beacon and kill it.
Bickering in the cockpit as always, when they thought he’d gone to sleep. When did this happen? A memory, or a dream? Ben didn’t recall. But it was real. It was happening to him now.
We have to kill them, his mother said. They want our son and they won’t stop until they’re dead.
Won’t you relax, princess? We have the might of the Republic at our back now. No one can get to him.
She choked back a sob. I just want to make sure.
And then the power had cut out.
They snatched him out of bed and pulled him into the compartment. Chewbacca, his father’s first mate, angled his bowcaster to shoot whoever opened the lid. They were drifting, drifting, reeled in by a powerful force. Metal groaned against metal. The bay door hissed open, and then came the boots.
This time, Ben knew.
He thrashed against his mother’s arms. They were being saved. Why couldn’t she see? This was the help they’d been waiting for. That they’d needed for so long. There was no need to hide. They were being rescued at last.
He slipped out of her grip and shoved the compartment open.
White boots shuffled around; a flurry of comlink static. Orders bouncing back and forth. But then all at once, they fell silent. The Falcon’s corridors filled with a slow, rhythmic click of regulated breath.
Ben looked up, and up. The figure in all black towered over him; even over the other figures around him. And looked back down at him. Despite the man’s mask, Ben sensed he was smiling.
The giant in black reached an arm down toward Ben.
Ben stretched his hand back.
“Ben! Look out!”
Uncle Luke’s voice sliced through the fog of the dream. No cold ship walls, no towering figures. Only the cold dirt of the cave. The buzz of a lightsaber leaping to life. And then—
