#ben solo vs. the darkest timeline

[nonasuch]

also i wrote another 1500 words of ben solo vs. the darkest timeline and I have no chill and no patience so here you go:

The recruiting campaign started slow and quiet, taking them through parts of the Inner Rim that had never wavered from the Republic. Ma wanted to build a support base that could muster troops and amass supplies on their own steam, and without drawing too much of the First Order’s notice. Ben knew that was how Ma liked to work: tell her people what was needed, and trust them to do it right.

The First Order didn’t work that way, of course. There were reports already of worlds stripped bare for metals and water, shipyards driven to their limit, whole populations pressed into service. It was mostly vague, though, mostly broad strokes. Not much news of their internal politics ever made it to the free parts of the galaxy, and what there was came mostly from a small-but-steady trickle of low-level defectors. 

Apparently the new Supreme Leader wasn’t big on having his praises sung, at least compared to Snoke.

Ben wasn’t the one who suggested Naboo; that was Connix, who was shrewder about politics in his own universe, too. “It’s time for a statement,” she said. “They know we’re building up forces, so let’s show we’re not afraid to do it in public.”

Ma didn’t like it, Ben knew. She always felt a little guilty about recruiting from Naboo. Ben had never agreed with her about that. Sure, they were towards the pacifist end of things, historically, but it was a wealthy planet that could afford to help, and didn’t need much convincing. They had a weird mix of guilt and pride, there, that came from producing both the old Emperor and the mother of the Rebellion, and there had always been plenty of Naboo recruits in the Rebellion and the Resistance.

She agreed to it, eventually. They took the Falcon, and about half of the little convoy they’d managed to build up so far: not really a fleet, yet, but on its way there.

“While we’re there,” Ben said, “are we visiting Grandma?”

Ma gave him a sharp look. “I haven’t done that in years,” she said. “But if you want to.”

She couldn’t make time for it right away. They had a bunch of audiences with the current queen and the ruling council, which meant a lot of very formal dinners that Ben was thankful to be excused from. Apparently they were impressed by Rey and found Finn and Rose just terribly inspiring. Nobody mangled their pronunciations enough to upset the Gungan councilors. When Ben went walking in the lower city, there were a lot of people agreeing with each other that something had to be done, that Naboo had never turned its back on the free galaxy before and they weren’t about to start now.

After a few days of that, Ma could take an afternoon off to visit the tombs of Naboo’s queens.

Ben’s grandmother had a mausoleum that was almost half again as big as any of the others, a florid pile of early-Empire excess. It was, frankly, pretty ugly from the outside, but one of the first queens under the New Republic had ordered all of the Imperial symbols and regalia stripped out, and the result on the inside was spare and clean and peaceful.

The lid of the sarcophagus was carved to look like Padmé lying there atop it, eyes closed, hair fanned out around her face, hands resting on her round belly. When he was a kid, Ben had studied her, looking for a resemblance; he could see it in Ma, but not really in himself. Now Ma was so much older than her mother had ever been, with lines on her face that Ben couldn’t imagine in the smooth, serene marble.

At the foot of the tomb there was a brass-colored bowl, with a blue flame burning forever in it. Ma knelt down in front of it, and Ben knelt down beside Ma. He watched her unpin her hair, pluck a few strands free, and coil it back up again. Ben yanked out a couple of his own -- he hadn’t cut his hair yet in this universe, and he probably needed to -- and handed them to Ma.

She wound them up into a little knot, and dropped it into the blue flame, and lit a stick of incense to cover up the burnt-hair smell. “There,” Ma said. She brushed a bit of incense off her hands, let Ben brace her as she stood. Ben had done this with her a dozen or so times, and she never wanted to stay any longer than she had to.

But there was something Ben wanted to try. It had only ever worked the once, at home, but -- Ben had a feeling. “I’m going to stick around,” he said.

“If you like,” Ma said.

Alone, Ben sat down on the floor again, his back to the tomb, and listened to the Force. It was calm here, with hardly any living sentients nearby. There had been a time, once, when people came here to heap the floor with offerings of flowers and fruit, to spill out their grief and anger at what had been lost to the Empire. But that was long ago, and the Force had long since carried all of that emotion away. Ben could just pick up the echoes, if he tried, but they weren’t what he was looking for.

You don’t belong here, said a voice.

Ben opened his eyes. “Hi, Grandpa.”

You know I’m not really your grandfather, said Anakin Skywalker. For one thing, my grandson hasn’t listened to me for years.

“I know,” said Ben. “I’m sorry about that. Things turned out -- better, for me.”

Yes, said Anakin. He looked like the man he’d been before his Fall. Younger than Ben, except around the eyes. The Force is always bigger than we expect it to be, isn’t it? Turns out there’s enough room for everything to happen, somewhere.

“Yeah, I was surprised about that, too,” said Ben, as dry as he could make it. He didn’t get a laugh, but the corner of his grandfather’s mouth ticked up, just a little.

So, grandson who listens to me, what do you want to know?

Ben shrugged. He had his big heart-to-heart with his own version of Anakin already, and it had been weird and cathartic and nothing Ben ever wanted to repeat. “I was hoping -- do you know how I get home? Or even how to just, I don’t know, send a message, tell them I’m all right.”

But Anakin shook his head. Sorry, kid. For a moment he flickered, blurring into the way he’d looked at the end of his life, bald and scarred. There are paths in the Force to everything that’s ever happened, or could happen. But I’ve been dead for a long time. If I left this universe I don’t think I’d find my way back. And if I were going to go -- nothing against your universe, but there are other ones I’d look for.

“That’s fair,” said Ben. He could imagine the kind of universe Anakin would look for. Maybe one where, if there was still a tomb here at all, the effigy on the lid was a woman with more lines on her face than her daughter. How big a change would that universe need, to exist? As far as Ben knew, the only thing separating Ben’s universe from this one was that he hadn’t lost his shit at Luke and burned down the Temple. 

Was there a choice some other Anakin made, or didn’t make, that sent his whole galaxy down a brighter path? Which one was it?

“Do you know what he did, that I didn’t?” Ben asked. “I mean, besides the obvious. Why he did -- that -- instead of anything else he could have done.”

I think you’d have to ask him yourself, Anakin said.

“If we’re ever in the same star system, I’m going to be too busy trying to fucking kill him,” said Ben. “So if you’ve got any suggestions for how to stop wanting to do that, I’m all ears.”

I’m definitely the wrong person to ask about that, said Anakin. I think you might actually be this galaxy’s leading expert in not falling to the Dark Side.

“No,” said Ben. “Ma has more practice.”

Yeah, but you were pushed harder.

“Tied for first, maybe,” Ben allowed.

Sure. If you like. Anakin pushed up off the floor -- Ben noticed that, standing, his blue, semitransparent feet floated about a half-inch above it -- and said, I wish there was more I could tell you. But he’s been closed off to me for a long, long time.

“I get it,” Ben said. Which wasn’t exactly true, because Force ghosts never made any fucking sense, not really. But he knew that this wasn’t where his answers would come from. “So, uh. Should I go, or…?”

Leia’s waiting for you, Anakin said. He reached out to the tomb, his spectral hand floating a half-inch from the peaceful, unlined marble face. It’s okay. I’m going to stay for a while. May the Force be with you, Ben.

“Thanks,” said Ben. He left his grandparents to their rest.

[ao3feed-obikin]

Get Away from Vampires

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2TTutk7

by Cinawolf

When Buggler was won the war, Ava Bomber completely falls in darkness(Turned into a vampire), forbidden love and possessive on his Wife, his Silver Bomber. Dark fantasies behind them while he went to wood of darkness.

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Star Wars, Super Bomberman R, Plants Vs zombies, Sally Face, Rayman, Sly Cooper, Ratchet & Clank, Jak & Daxter & Ash Vs Evil Dead crossover. Jedi, Sith, Bomberman and almost everything does actually exists expect Bounty hunters. But Cad Bane is not disabled.

Words: 624, Chapters: 1/100, Language: English

Fandoms: ボンバーマン | Bomberman - All Media Types, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Clone Wars (2003) - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types, Sally Face (Video Games), Rayman (Video Games), Star Wars Original Trilogy, Plants vs Zombies, Sly Cooper (Video Games), Ratchet & Clank, Ash vs Evil Dead (TV), Jak and Daxter, Super Bomberman R - All Media Types

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death

Categories: F/M, M/M, Multi

Characters: Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka Tano, Quinlan Vos, Satine Kryze, CT-7567 | Rex, CC-2224 | Cody, Asajj Ventress, Barriss Offee, Ashley Campbell, Sal Fisher, Larry Johnson, Todd Morrison, Rayman (Rayman), Globox (Rayman), Uglette (Rayman), Murfy (Rayman), Barbara (Rayman), Hego Damask, Sheev Palpatine, Padmé Amidala, Savage Opress, Darth Maul, Qui-Gon Jinn, Original Male Character(s), Original Female Character(s), Yoda (Star Wars), Dooku (Star Wars), Durge (Star Wars), Grievous | Qymaen jai Sheelal, Leia Organa, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Jango Fett, Boba Fett, Sunflower (Plants vs Zombies), Peashooter (Plants vs Zombies), Cactus (Plants vs Zombies), Chomper (Plants vs Zombies), Penelope (Sly Cooper), Murray (Sly Cooper), Sly Cooper, Carmelita Fox, Ratchet (Ratchet & Clank), Clank (Ratchet & Clank), Captain Qwark, Alister Azimuth, Sasha Phyronix, Ash Williams, Jak (Jak and Daxter), Daxter (Jak and Daxter), Klunk (Ratchet & Clank), Dr. Nefarious, Lawrence (Ratchet & Clank), CT-21-0408 | Echo, C-3PO (Star Wars), R2-D2 (Star Wars), White Bomber (Bomberman), Black Bomber (Bomberman), Red Bomber (Bomberman), Blue Bomber (Bomberman), Green Bomber (Bomberman), Yellow Bomber (Bomberman), Pink Bomber (Bomberman), Aqua Bomber (Bomberman), Magnet Bomber (Bomberman), Golem Bomber (Bomberman), Phantom Bomber (Bomberman), Pretty Bomber | Karaoke Bomber, Plasma Bomber (Bomberman), The Buggler (Bomberman), Ava Bomber - Oc, Silver Bomber - Oc, Plo Koon, Kit Fisto, Cad Bane

Relationships: Padmé Amidala & Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, CT-7567 | Rex & Ahsoka Tano & Asajj Ventress, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Satine Kryze & Quinlan Vos, CC-2224 | Cody/Anakin Skywalker, CC-2224 | Cody & CT-7567 | Rex, Barriss Offee & Anakin Skywalker, Barriss Offee & Ahsoka Tano, Ashley Campbell & Sal Fisher & Larry Johnson & Todd Morrison, Ashley Campbell/Larry Johnson, Sal Fisher/Larry Johnson, Ashley Campbell/Sal Fisher, Globox/Uglette (Rayman), Hego Damask & Dooku & Sheev Palpatine, CC-2224 | Cody & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Maul & Savage Opress, Qui-Gon Jinn & Ahsoka Tano, Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker & Yoda, Dooku & Qui-Gon Jinn & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Asajj Ventress, Anakin Skywalker & Asajj Ventress, Grievous | Qymaen jai Sheelal & Obi-Wan Kenobi, Durge/Asajj Ventress, Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Satine Kryze & Anakin Skywalker, Anakin Skywalker & Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa/Han Solo, Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker & Ben Solo & Han Solo & Original Female Character(s), Luke Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Luke Skywalker, CC-2224 | Cody & Jango Fett, Boba Fett & Jango Fett, Peashooter/Sunflower (Plants vs Zombies), Sly Cooper/Carmelita Fox, Bentley/Penelope (Sly Cooper), Alister Azimuth/Ratchet, Clank & Ratchet (Ratchet & Clank), Ratchet/Sasha Phyronix, Daxter & Jak, CT-27-5555 | Fives | ARC-5555/Anakin Skywalker, CT-21-0408 | Echo & CT-27-5555 | Fives | ARC-5555, OFC/OMC, Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker, Sheev Palpatine & Anakin Skywalker, Kit Fisto/Aayla Secura, Kit Fisto & Plo Koon, Cad Bane & Obi-Wan Kenobi

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, No Fluff, Bisexual Female Character, Bisexual Male Character, Minor Character Death, Violence, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Heavy Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Comfort/Angst, Rating: PG13, Protective Anakin Skywalker, Serial Killers, Manipulative Sheev Palpatine, Threesome - F/M/M, Blood and Violence, Aftermath of Violence, Blood and Gore, Blood Drinking, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Vampire Hunters, Forbidden Love, Crossover, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dark Fantasy, Movie: Army of Darkness, Dark Character, Possessive Behavior, Possessive Obi-Wan Kenobi, Sith Obi-Wan Kenobi, Cell Phones, Phone Calls & Telephones, Dog!Threepio, Dog!Artoo, Both Threepio and Artoo are good dogs, Vampire Obi-Wan Kenobi, Fallen Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, All Siths are Vampires, Jedi and Clones are Vampire Hunters, Vampire Buggler (Bomberman), Character Turned Into Vampire, Grievous is adopted by Vampires, Jedi Master Dooku, Vampire Serial Killer Ava Bomber, Padmé Amidala adopts Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, Young Luke Skywakler, Young Han Solo, Young Leia Organa, Anakin is Luke's and Leia's Uncle, Disabled Bounty Hunters, Protective Obi-Wan Kenobi, Protective Ahsoka Tano, Cad Bane isn't disabled, Anakin Skywalker is a good friend, Anakin Skywalker Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, Gangsta Ava Bomber, Gangsta Black Bombet, Black Bomber don't smoke, Girly Pretty Bomber, Girly Pink Bomber, Sunflower and Peashooter are married, Sassy Anakin Skywalker, What if Chuck-Pea | Linn & Sweet Peater | Maiara are Anakin's Adopted Brother & sister, Never made When The Hope Jedi Plant Exist, What if Ahsoka Tano never gets captured, Rex & Cody are best brothers, Kenobi Family! Darkmoon | Plasmia, Kenobi Family! Durion-Scron, Detectives, Detective Cody, Detective Rex, Detective Fives, Detective Echo, Single Parent Padmé Amidala, Good Uncle Anakin, Good Dad Jango Fett, Father-Son Relationship, Kit Fisto is a good man, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Dark Obi-Wan Kenobi, BAMF Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ava Bomber! That kills people, Jedi Master Simona, Padawan Durion-Scron, Master & Padawan Relationship(s), Foursome - M/M/M/M, Everyone is minor, Terrible minor characters death, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Torture, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Suicide, Everyone Needs A Hug, Obi-Wan Kenobi didn't kill someone, POV Multiple, POV Minor Character, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Psychological Torture, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Character Death, Gore, Blood and Torture, Killing, Out of Character, Original Character Death(s), Oh My God, THIS IS FRICKING PG13, it's a trap, Dark Past, Darkest Timeline, The Dark Side of the Force, Murder, Attempted Murder, Murderers, Murder-Suicide, Murder Mystery, Mystery Character(s), Pain, ow the pain, painful, PaIn AnD pAiNfUl!, eventual angst, Cody/Obi-Wan/Anakin/Fives, Detective Clones, Why Did I Write This?, Anakin Skywalker is Main character, Cody is main Character, Echo is main character, Rex is Main Character, Obi-Wan is Later Main Character, Obi-Wan Kenobi is more Darker, Gun Violence, Forced Relationship, Use the Force, That's Not How The Force Works

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2TTutk7

[nonasuch]

hm. since I did not manage to finish ben solo vs. the darkest timeline before ep ix, I am now tempted to steal the bits from it that I don’t hate.

not least because it would be kind of hilarious to send Ben home to his own universe to immediately go ‘hey ma, the zombie emperor’s building a ghost army in the unknown regions, we gotta hustle, chop chop’

[nonasuch]

thank u all for your many mosquito bite home remedies; to show my appreciation, please have 1500 more words of ben solo vs. the darkest timeline. 

continued from here and here.

For a few blissful weeks, Rose did almost nothing but eat expensive gift-basket food and work on the Falcon. It turned out things went a lot faster when someone with deep pockets green-lit all your parts requests, almost before you made them. Rose was going to have to figure out who L. Indecipherable Squiggle was, and thank them.

They got the power relays sorted out, replaced the worst of the jury-rigged repairs with permanent fixes, and finally solved the mystery of the persistent rattle in the vent nearest the fresher.

“See?” said Ben, holding up a single earring triumphantly. “Told you. It was the same earring, too, only we found it before Ma got rid of the other one.”

“Huh,” said Rose. “How deep in there was it?”

“Deep enough that he couldn’t have done it by hand,” said Rey. “Not with the hook caught in the conduits like it was. He cheated -- used the Force to find it, and to float it out.”

“You could tell what I was doing? That’s not bad,” Ben said. “And it’s not cheating, it’s using the right tool to solve the problem before me. We’re supposed to do that.”

“Seems a little frivolous,” said Rose.

“The only frivolous use of the Force is that which benefits none but he who uses it,” said Ben, in tones that made Rose think he was quoting someone, and also making fun of that someone a little bit.

Ben didn’t work on the Falcon every day, which was sort of a shame: he knew the ship better than anyone but Chewbacca, and when he was around they usually got a lot done. And he was easy to work with, surprisingly so. Especially when you considered that, according to Finn, the First Order had a permanent detail of troopers whose entire job was to clean up after Kylo Ren, every time he got a little bit upset.

Apparently Ben didn’t share that short temper, somehow. Maybe that was why he’d turned out differently.

She wondered about that, and kept wondering. It seemed terribly rude to just ask, it, flat out -- so, any thoughts on why you’re not a murderous fiend? -- but Rose couldn’t help but think about it. She kept circling around the idea: there was another universe, one where the Resistance was still strong and the Republic was still whole, and somehow the difference between there and here all hinged on one person.

Here, Ben Solo had fallen to the Dark Side, and Rose’s sister was dead. There, he hadn’t, and she wasn’t.

So she wondered. How could she not?

Once they dragged the Falcon up to basically spaceworthy, from its previous state of actively trying to fall apart, Rose found herself with new responsibilities.

“Sorry,” said Ben. “Vacation’s over, kids. The General’s got a job for you.”

“We spent five hours flushing coolant yesterday,” said Finn. “You call that a vacation?”

“Yes,” said Rose and Rey, in near-unison, with Ben a half-step behind.

But the job wasn’t all that bad, as it turned out. For a few days in a row, the General brought Rose and Finn with her to meetings and interviews, even to a couple of parties. The interviews flustered Rose a little, but it was no worse than a debriefing, even though the questions were more personal. The parties made her nervous at first, but they were nothing like the gilt-over-rot of Canto Bight. The people she met were mostly ordinary, friendly, easy to talk to. They asked about her, about how she’d ended up in the Resistance, why General Organa had brought her along, but Rose felt rude just talking about herself.

So she asked questions, too. Where were they from? What were their lives like? Had the First Order hurt them like they’d hurt Rose, and Finn, and the General, and so many others?

Certainly it wasn’t anywhere near as physically taxing as working on the Falcon. Mainly, Rose just didn’t understand why the General wanted her for it, or why it was even a job that needed doing.

When she asked, the General said, “Because I shouldn’t be the only face of the Resistance,” and Rose was still a little too intimidated by her to ask what that meant.

It was Ben who explained it. “You’re not Force-touched,” he said, “and you grew up on a planet that the First Order was grinding down to nothing. But you got out of there, and you joined up, and you spit in the First Order’s eye.”

“So did a lot of us,” Rose said. “That doesn’t make me special.”

“No, but you’re good at talking about it,” Ben said. “About why you’re fighting, why it matters. Ma needs people who can do that, and they shouldn’t all be Jedi.”

“Does that mean I can be excused?” said Finn. He tended to go very stiff and formal at the interviews, and nervous at the parties, and when he got the chance to go do Jedi things with Rey and Ben he always went with a palpable air of relief.

“Nope,” said Ben. “You used to be a stormtrooper. People need to hear what you’ve got to say. And Jedi’s not the only job in the universe for the Force-sensitive. Ma’s not a Jedi, not really, and she wants you to see how she does things.”

Which made sense, more or less. Rose thought there were probably other people who could have done it better than her, but when she tried to come up with some she remembered just how few had survived Crait, and how busy they all were. Connix was running practically their whole comms network single-handed. Poe was training new pilots as fast as they could find ships for them to fly. Rey had enough pressure on her, without adding a spotlight to it. Everyone had so much to do, while they had a reprieve to do it in.

Ben didn’t seem to have an official job, or a title. He split his time between Jedi lessons

for Rey and Finn, and taking over a lot of the day-to-day work that Connix had been doing for the General. He said it wasn’t so very different from what he did in his own universe.

“You don’t do the public stuff?” Rose asked. “The stuff you’ve got me doing?”

She’d assumed that Ben was keeping a low profile because there was a chance someone would notice that he looked like the General’s son, who was supposed to be long dead. Or the First Order’s new leader, who was supposed to be half a galaxy away, and evil.

“They don’t really need me for it,” said Ben. “And thank the Force, because I’d be awful.”

“Really?” said Rose. “It hasn’t been that bad.”

“That’s because you like people and you don’t get a lot of questions that need to be tactfully lied about,” said Ben. “I’ve been told that I take the Jedi prohibition on lying too literally, especially when the person who needs a tactful lie is annoying me. And while there isn’t a Jedi prohibition on having an awful sense of humor, Luke did threaten to enact one the last time I gave an interview. Usually I say I don’t want my personal opinions to be taken as a statement on behalf of the Jedi, and if they don’t take the hint I just leave.”

“Does that work?” said Rose.

“Not really,” said Ben. “But back home, there’s usually another Jedi around who I can shove between me and the microphone.”

He’d picked up the habit of saying that, back home, as if the universe he came from was just another homeworld, a place you could point to on a starmap and reminisce about.

She didn’t ask him do you want to go back there? Will you leave, if you can? because she thought she knew the answer. It would have been rude, anyway, just to blurt it out like that.

But he stiil read it off her, maybe in the Force, or maybe just from her face. “I do miss it,” he said. “Having someone to shove between me and the microphone.”

“Of course you do,” said Rose. She knew what he meant: not just other Jedi to shield him from the spotlight, but everything that went with that, all the people who were dead or scattered here, all the ways that things had gone right for Ben, and his version of the universe.

She couldn’t say she blamed him for wanting that. There was a Paige in his universe. “I’d be tempted to go with you, if you found a way back.”

“No you wouldn’t,” said Ben.

“What do you know about it?” Rose said, louder than she meant to. “Why not?”

She was pretty good, most of the time, at keeping her anger packed away until she needed it, but suddenly she felt like the safety catches had all snapped. Ben was from a place where nothing had ever gone wrong, not the way it had for her, for the General, for everyone who was safe and happy and alive in the other universe. Why wouldn’t she trade up, if she could?

“Because the people who need you are here,” said Ben.

And that -- that was true, unfairly so; Rose couldn’t even resent it for being true. If she left, people who needed her would be hurt. Would die, maybe. 

It occurred to Rose to wonder, for the first time, if there might be a universe where she left the Resistance, or never joined: a universe that had hinged on her, where things fell even further to pieces in her wake.

“If you go back,” Rose said, “If you find a way. Will you tell Paige about me?”

“Of course,” said Ben.

“Only good things,” said Rose.

“There’s nothing else to tell,” said Ben.

Ben said that Jedi weren’t allowed to lie. Rose only had his word for that, but she believed him.

[nonasuch]

I’ve seriously had the first thousand words of this sitting in my drafts since January, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ apparently I knocked something loose at the holiday market? idek.

Anyway, here is 4k of Well-Adjusted Adult Jedi Ben Solo having a very bad time in the worst parallel universe. More to come, probably?

1. the island

Sometimes, Ben decided, the Force could be downright vindictive. All he did was think, for the barest moment, that it would be nice to be alone for a little while, and -- boom. Wish granted, in the worst, most baffling way.

In the days after he was stranded, Ben did his best to piece together the sequence of events that got him there. So far, it went something like this:

A couple of months ago, out on D’Quar, Ma got word that the First Order wasn’t going to settle for badly aping the Empire’s most tedious displays of fascism, and had gone full Death Star.

She warned Luke, who sensibly evacuated the Temple and the training school.

The First Order, acting on their leader’s insane priorities, blew up the planet shortly after Luke finished evacuating. This alerted the Republic to its own badly misplaced priorities, at least, and netted Ma a whole lot of urgently-needed pilots, ships, materiel, and pissed-off new volunteers.

Not that Ben was any help with that side of things, because Luke dragged him along to Ach-to with the baby Jedi, and there had been no word from anyone since.

Presumably Ma did something about the new planet-killer, anyway, since Ach-to remained in one piece and nobody had felt anything too horrible through the Force yet.

After a few weeks of this Ben, plagued with baby Jedi and stuck on a very small island, stomped off to be alone with his thoughts, and rather than properly meditating, allowed himself a moment to be petty.

He thought to himself, this would be so much nicer if I were alone, and the Force gave him a massive, disorienting shove, and -- very abruptly -- Ben was alone. Somehow. He wasn’t too clear on that part, yet.

What he knew was that there were no other people on the island, anymore, and every sign of their presence had vanished with them. The ship they’d landed in was gone, and all the gear they’d unloaded. The caretaker’s village was deserted. The sacred tree was burned to nothing. The only sign of life Ben found at all was some not-quite-spoiled food and well-worn gear in a couple of the buildings -- signs that someone, at least, had been living on the island until recently, and for much longer than Ben or Luke or the baby Jedi.

And there was a tantalizingly useless antique X-wing, sunk just offshore. Ben was fucked.

He’d searched every inch of the island for comms equipment, and found nothing. He’d reached out with the Force to the absolute limits of his ability, over and over, and every time he did it his feelings of unease got worse. Either he was cut off, somehow, from every Force-sensitive person he could think to look for, everyone whose mind he knew well enough and who knew him, or-- something else had happened. To them, or to him.

He couldn’t even hear Snoke, anymore. The old bastard had mostly stopped trying, once Ben wised up and Snoke started sounding like a wizened Hutt offering speeder rides and candy. Even so, Ben ought to have been able to goad him into another cackling rant about the true power of the Dark Side.

But he couldn’t. The place Snoke had occupied in Ben’s Force-sense was empty. Every such place was empty. Ben felt like half his teeth had fallen out, and couldn’t stop prodding at the gaps.

So that was Ben Solo: confused, alone, and facing a lifetime of roasted porg dinners for one. Honestly, if he thought turning to the Dark Side might have helped, he would have seriously considered it.

But he’d learned that lesson years ago, and it had only been reinforced back when Luke first found Ach-to. The mirror in the borehole was, to Ben’s mind, more literal than it needed to be, but it had driven the message home.

Ben stared glumly into his little campfire. Just then, he would have given just about anything for the chance to have another rambling, circular argument about the nature of the Force with his uncle.

“That’s a faulty metaphor,” he’d say, and Luke would say “well, they’re all faulty metaphors, that’s not the point--” and they could debate Light versus Dark and order versus chaos and selfishness versus detachment ‘til the nerfs came home.

He could almost see it. Luke would sit across the fire from him, and the baby Jedi would fill out the rest of the circle, watching them argue. They’d giggle when Ben or Luke changed sides and started arguing the other’s point, and eventually Ben would say “Is this why Ma decided not to become a Jedi? Because that would explain a lot,” or “Y’know, this is why I almost fell to the Dark Side that one time; I bet the Sith at least can pick a position and stick to it,” and Luke would huff out a laugh and, just to be contrary, choose another tangent entirely and start arguing that.

All their arguments had been familiar and worn as old socks, and Ben missed them desperately. He’d never in his life felt it so keenly. All he wanted was for someone he knew to be here with him, for someone he loved to come and say it’s all right, I came back, you’re not alone.

Ben let himself sit with that feeling until he couldn’t bear it, and then let it go into the Force.

That was when, finally -- finally! -- he felt something in response.

There was someone out there, someone who’d felt him in the Force and reached back far enough for him to grab at. Ben didn’t recognize them, but honestly he didn’t care -- they weren’t a Sith and they could hear him. That was plenty.

Ben closed his eyes and ignored his other senses, tuning out everything but the Force. The other mind, whoever they were, was wary, guarded, and the connection between them was cobweb-thin. It didn’t matter. Ben would build them an antigrav suspension bridge in the Force if he had to, he’d tunnel through metaphorical hyperspace, if they’d just come get him off this Force-forsaken planet.

The other presence felt, very suddenly, a lot closer.

For a moment everything went sharp and clear and quiet. Ben opened his eyes, startled. There was someone sitting across the fire from him: a woman, young, no one he’d ever seen before. Her face was pale and shocked.

“You!” she said. Anger boiled off of her like heat haze, so strong it could have knocked Ben back if he’d been standing.

And then she was gone again, as quickly and strangely as she’d come.

There was nothing else after that, not for days, no matter how Ben tried. Once he thought he got a hint of something, some other presence, but it was there and gone, no more than a faint flicker. He decided, finally, to try and get the old X-wing out onto dry land and see how hopeless it was -- but before he’d managed to haul it out of the water, he heard the most welcome sound in the galaxy.

Ben would have known the sound of the Falcon’s engines from the bottom of a black hole, with earplugs in. There was only one place with enough room for it to land, and so he went running over the island towards it, hurtling pell-mell down the steep hills. If the Force didn’t want him to lose his footing and go tumbling off a cliff, he figured, he wouldn’t -- and it seemed that in this, at least, the Force was on his side.

He staggered to a stop just as the Falcon touched down. He was winded from the uphills, and dizzy with relief, but he’d regained enough composure by the time the gangway was down that he could tell, very clearly, that something was wrong.

Chewbacca came out first, with his bowcaster up, and then the young woman he’d reached through the Force. She blazed even brighter in person; either she was hardly bothering to shield at all, or there was just too much of her to be contained. With her was someone else Ben didn’t know, as young as the girl, with enough Force-presence of his own that he’d have made quite an impression if not for the supernova in front of him. And then a couple of familiar faces: Poe Dameron, of all people, and Paige Tico’s little sister, whose name Ben always forgot and felt guilty for forgetting.

And that was all. And that was wrong.

“What’s going on?” Ben said. “Where’s Dad?”

That got a reaction. Chewbacca howled how dare you and trained the bowcaster on him. Dameron and Tico both raised blasters, their faces grim and set, and the girl’s Force-presence became a pillar of blazing light. She drew a lightsaber -- a homebrew job, it looked like, but a good one, no waver or fizz at all to the blue-white blade.

And the Force-touched young man, who Ben had never seen before in his life, said “Wait. Wait, wait! I don’t think that’s Kylo Ren.”

“Who?” Ben said.

The young man darted forward to tug on his friend’s shoulder. He didn’t lose the arm for his trouble, but Ben thought it was a near thing. “Rey,” he said, “c’mon, put that thing down. You know I’m right.”

Rey, apparently, had a better grip on her emotions than her Force-presence might suggest. She did turn the blade off, but she didn’t holster it, or even lower it. “Finn, look at him,” she said. “What makes you so sure?”

“Well,” said Finn, “To start with, I looked at him. You said he had, you know,” and he gestured vaguely across his face. Ben didn’t think Finn meant the admittedly terrible facial hair he’d been growing since his stranding, but he was a little offended nonetheless.

Smells like him, said Chewbacca. But different from the last time. Strange.

“Hey,” said Ben. “I’ve been stuck here for weeks, washing in seawater and stepping in porg shit every ten paces. Last time I saw you was, what, the party after the ceremony for this year’s Mastery candidates? That’s not exactly a fair comparison.”

“What?” said Rey. She was wavering, now, the Force around her like a candle in a drafty room. “What are you talking about? Who are you, if you’re not Kylo Ren?”

“I’m Ben Solo,” Ben said. “Well, Solo-Organa, really. Uh. Hello.” He gave an awkward little wave, and regretted it immediately. He saw Paige Tico’s sister do the same in return, reflexively, before she remembered herself and leveled her blaster at him again.

“Look,” said Ben. “I don’t know what’s going on, and I don’t know who you’ve got me mistaken for, but I’d rather not be stranded here if it’s all the same to you. Can one you of you please tell her you know me? Chewie, Poe -- I’m sorry, I should remember this by now -- Ruth? I thought it was Ruth.”

“Rose,” said Rose.

“Right,” said Ben. “Rose. You were at the last all-hands meeting on D’Quar, yeah? I got in an argument about engine mods with Paige, afterwards, and you told us we were both wrong.”

But Rose’s face went cold. “You keep my sister’s name out of your mouth,” she said.

Shit, Ben thought. “Did something happen? Up until everyone else just fucking disappeared a couple of weeks ago, there hadn’t been any bad news.”

Everyone just looked blank at that. Rey shook it off first, and took control of the conversation again. “What do you mean, everyone else? Who else was here?”

“You know,” he said. “All of us. Me, and Luke, and the Jedi-in-training. We evacuated the school, and we were waiting on Ma -- on General Organa -- to tell us the coast was clear.”

The reaction that got was equal parts bafflement and rage. Rey lit her saber again. “Luke’s school was destroyed,” she said.

“Yeah,” said Ben. “Because Snoke’s a lunatic. But it’s just a building. We took everything important with us, and the rest of the planet was uninhabited. Luke and I were talking about where to relocate, before the Force went sideways on me.”

Luke’s school burned, said Chewbacca. You burned it. Years ago. Killed his students, too.

Something in the pit of Ben’s stomach turned to ice. He didn’t need the Force to know that Chewie believed what he was saying. But that had never happened, except in Ben’s nightmares.

“No,” Ben said. “That didn’t -- that isn’t what happened.”

“It is,” said Rey. “You destroyed the Jedi. You destroy everything you touch.” She meant every word, the truth of it burning in the air. The Force around her was so bright with righteous fury that it couldn’t even curdle into hatred, and let the Dark in.

But he didn’t know her, and he didn’t know the person she was talking about, the person who’d done those things. That wasn’t him. It never had been.

But -- there had been a time, once, when it could have been.

“Oh, fuck me,” said Ben. “Am I in a parallel universe?”

2. the falcon

They let him onto the ship, eventually.

Rey insisted that Ren, or Ben, or whoever he was, surrender his lightsaber. He did, but he grumbled about it a little, before he flung himself down on the bench behind the dejarik table with an audible sigh of relief. Finn had already been pretty certain that this guy wasn’t the Ren they knew, but that sealed it: he couldn’t really imagine Kylo Ren grumbling good-naturedly about anything.

Chewie and Poe fled for the pilot’s compartment as soon as they boarded, and Rose muttered something about preflight checks. She disappeared in the direction of the engines with the droids, shushing BB8 and R2’s distressed-sounding whistles and beeps. They were all ill at ease, even the Kylo Ren lookalike.

Rey stayed in the main cabin, as far as she could get from their new passenger while keeping him in her line of sight, and sat frowning over the lightsaber he’d handed over. So Finn sat down beside her, and watched Ben Solo, while Rey stared at the weapon in her hands.

“It’s the same one,” she said, “or almost,” and didn’t offer any further explanation.

That didn’t sound right, to Finn: this one had lit up green and steady when Rey turned it on for a moment, and it didn’t emit the perpetual stuttering hum that Finn had learned, back in the First Order, to listen for from rooms and corridors away.

Ben Solo’s lightsaber just looked like an ordinary lightsaber, if you allowed for the fact that there were only a handful of lightsabers left in the galaxy at all. It didn’t look like a blood-red beacon of menace, any more than its wielder looked like a murderous lunatic who went around cloaked in the Dark Side and wanted to burn down half the galaxy.

Mostly Ben Solo looked tired, and worried, and confused. He kept glancing around the cabin with his brow furrowed, like he expected to see something that wasn’t there.

Something went pop! in a junction box in the corridor, and sent up a shower of sparks. Rey and Ben both shot to their feet, but Rey fixed Ben with a hard stare and said “Touch anything and I’ll shoot you.”

He raised both hands before he sat back down, palms out, a peace offering. “Sorry,” he said, a word that Finn never thought he’d hear in a voice that sounded so much like Kylo Ren’s.

“I can get it,” said Finn. The power relays weren’t in great shape, and he’d had plenty of practice rerouting them on the way to Ach-To.

But Rey shook her head. “I can do it faster,” she said, which was true. “Watch him for me?”

“Of course,” said Finn. He raised his voice, and added, “I’ll shoot you if you touch anything, too.”

Ben Solo shrugged. “Yeah, I figured as much.”

With Rey gone, the quiet started to bother Finn. Ben folded his arms and leaned back against the bench, resuming his study of the cabin, and staring at Finn when he thought Finn wasn’t looking. He wasn’t exactly subtle, which was something he had in common with Kylo Ren.

“What happened to the Falcon?” Ben asked, after a while.

“What do you mean?” Finn couldn’t help but bristle a little. Sure, the ship looked like she had been through the wars, but that was because she had. He and Rey and Rose and Chewie had spent every free moment working on her. There was still a lot of work to do, but that didn’t mean Kylo Ren’s friendlier lookalike had any right to criticize.

“All the upgrades are gone,” Ben said. “I helped Dad reupholster this bench, a few years ago, and he replaced all the cracked panels long before that. He said he’d be done with the power relays by next year. And now she looks worse than she did before he started.”

“Well, she did sit in a junkyard on Jakku for ten or fifteen years,” said Finn. “And we haven’t exactly had time for cosmetic improvements.”

Ben looked genuinely baffled. “On Jakku? What was she doing on Jakku?”

Getting me and Rey the hell out of there, Finn almost said. “That’s -- a long story,” said Finn. “But it sounds like you remember it differently.”

“Well, yeah,” said Ben, with a little disbelieving laugh. “Of course I do! Dad wouldn’t leave the Falcon in some junkyard in the back of beyond, you’d have to kill him first--”

Finn didn’t say anything, but Ben got it.

“He’s dead, isn’t he,” said Ben. “The -- the version of Dad that was here.”

“Yeah,” said Finn.

Ben put a hand over his face for a minute, and went quiet until his breathing evened out. Finn wasn’t sure what to do: how did you comfort someone for a death that hadn’t happened in their version of the universe? Especially when, in this version of the universe, he was the one responsible?

Finn wasn’t even all that sure of how to comfort someone for a regular death that they hadn’t caused. When something reminded Rose of her sister, it seemed to help if Finn sat next to her with his arm around her, and let her curl up against his side. Sometimes he rubbed her back a little, because he’d seen someone do that in a holo once. He wasn’t sure how much good it did. He certainly wasn’t going to try it with Ben Solo, who seemed nice enough, but still looked exactly like the guy who had Force-choked troopers to death in Finn’s presence on no less than eight separate occasions.

“...Okay,” Ben said eventually. “So it sounds like there are -- a lot of big differences between this universe and the one I’m from.”

“I guess,” said Finn. “I don’t have any basis for comparison. I didn’t even know parallel universes were a real thing.”

“You and me both,” Ben muttered. Then he shrugged, a little helplessly, and said “But all things are possible in the Force, huh?”

He looked as if he expected Finn to know the answer to that. “If you say so?” said Finn.

Ben frowned, as if that was the wrong answer -- like Finn should know more about the Force than the little he’d picked up secondhand from Rey -- but that wasn’t important, and Finn set it aside.

“I know a little bit about Kylo Ren,” Finn said. “Tell me about yourself, and maybe we can figure out why you aren’t him.”

“Hang on,” said Ben. “I guess Poe and Chewie trust you, and I know them -- but I’ve never met you before, and I know just about everyone in the Resistance. How’d you end up on the Falcon?”

“How do you know everyone in the Resistance?” Finn shot back. He wished there was a checklist he could follow, or some kind of questionnaire. He’d done the interrogation training module, and scored highest in his unit, but he wasn’t sure how much of it applied to a situation like this.

Ben leaned back and crossed his arms again. It was weird. Finn hadn’t seen much resemblance between Kylo Ren and his father, but suddenly there it was: this was a guy who’d learned to slouch from Han Solo.

“I’m the official Jedi liason to General Organa,” Ben said, “and her aide-de-camp when I’m not in the field or with Luke. Also I’ve known most of the high command since before I had teeth.”

And there, again, was Han, in the crooked smile and raised chin. Bizarre.

“So you’re a Jedi,” said Finn. That was too obvious, probably.

“Yeah,” said Ben, “but it sounds like there aren’t a lot of us left on this side of things. So there’s Rey, and you, and Luke, and Ma says she only counts in emergencies, which this definitely is -- who else?”

“What? I’m not a Jedi,” said Finn. “And neither is the General. Just Rey.”

“Of course you are,” said Ben “If Luke didn’t insist on training you, he -- this universe can’t be so different that he wouldn’t insist on training you.”

“I never even met the guy!” said Finn.

They stared at each other for a minute. Ben looked -- not good. Bad enough that Finn was reconsidering the back-rubbing thing.

“I’m sorry,” said Finn. “But I think a lot of the people you’re expecting to see -- aren’t here.”

“Yeah,” said Ben. “I’m starting to get that.”

3. hyperspace

So Dad was dead, and Luke was dead, and most of the names Ben listed off to Finn prompted either a blank look or a sorrowful one. The other version of him had fallen to the Dark Side years ago, and eventually killed Snoke and seized control of the First Order for himself. The Resistance was in tatters, the Republic was crippled. There were no Jedi to speak of, only Rey with her staggering, instinctive power, and Finn who hadn’t even known it was the Force that was guiding him when he cast off his trooper’s helmet.

So really, Ben was just as fucked as he’d been when he was still stranded on the island. Just in a much more excitingly terrifying way.

Ben wondered if it was the other version of Finn, back home, who’d gotten word to Ma about the First Order’s planet-killer. He hoped so. He hoped he would get to find out.

Ben would have given his right hand -- in accordance with family tradition, was the joke he would normally make -- to have any of his fellow knights here with him. Even the ones he didn’t get along with, the ones who got all sanctimonious about the purity of the Force and never laughed at his jokes. What he’d give for Ara, who’d spent their entire adolescence one-upping him, or Indri, who’d been called by the Force late and complained about everything all the time because he was the oldest, grumpiest man in the galaxy. He’d even take the baby Jedi back.

But there was just him. And he had to pack twenty years or so of Jedi teachings into the heads of two people who already didn’t trust him, because he shared a face and half a history with a murderer.

Fuck. The other Ben killed Dad. Ben wanted to hunt him down and stand over him and demand to know how he could do such a thing, how could he possibly -- but he knew. He’d just grown up and past it, and the other Ben hadn’t.

They were three days in flight on the Falcon, and for most of it everyone left him alone. Finn offered him some clumsy sympathy, and Rey had a disconcerting habit of staying just within glaring distance. But he hardly saw Rose, and Poe looked like he might throw up if they spent more than a few minutes in proximity.

Chewie came and sat with him, in companionable silence, while he was meditating. That helped. Before he got up, he ruffled Ben’s hair with one massive paw and said I’ll comm the General and tell her about you. Be a bad surprise otherwise, which pretty effectively shattered most of the calm Ben had managed to pull together.

But: Ben was a Jedi. He’d spent his whole adult life walking into other people’s bad situations, and listening to the Force until it told him how to make them better. This situation was particularly terrible, and some of the people wore familiar faces, but his job was the same.

He took all of the awful feelings that were boiling away inside himself, and laid them bare to the Force. It wasn’t an easy kind of meditation. You had to scrape out all your failings, all the grief and guilt and fear, the inadequacy, the anger, and offer it up to the bright implacable heart of the universe. You had to say, I’m not strong enough to bear all of this. Can you carry it for me, until I’m ready to take it back? And the Force would accept it, would never refuse what you asked of it sincerely, but nobody actually enjoyed being that honest about themselves.

The alternative was a lot worse, though. Ben had never known how much worse before, but what he heard about Kylo Ren gave him a pretty good idea.

When Ben stood up and stretched, setting off a chorus of popping joints, Rey was staring at him from across the cabin.

“What was that?” she asked.

“Um. Meditation?” said Ben.

“How’d you do it?” Rey asked.

“Fuck, did Luke teach you anything?” Ben said, and winced almost as soon as he’d said it. “Sorry. Sorry. Sit down, I can talk you through it.”

Rey looked wary. “Kylo Ren kept saying I needed a teacher.”

“Well, even a Darksider piece of shit has to be right about something eventually,” said Ben. “Here, sit like this, and don’t slouch.”

[nonasuch]

“ben solo vs. the darkest timeline” is not a real title but it’s what I’ve got for now. continued from here.

4. coming in for a landing

Most of the Resistance -- the survivors of Crait, their allies, the new recruits who’d flocked to them in the days since -- had gathered in a handful of bases and camps, scattered through territory that was far enough from the First Order’s reach to be safe. But someone needed to be the public face of the fight, still, again, and so the General was working her way through the Core, meeting with planetary leaders, negotiating, giving interviews: all her least favorite parts of the job.

When she sent Poe on the Falcon with Finn and Chewbacca and the others, he protested. She only had a handful of trusted staff with her. She only had a handful of trusted staff left.

But she held firm, like she always did. “You’ve been overclocking your engines as much as any of us -- more, even,” she said. “Go fly the Falcon for me for a few days. It might be nothing, but if the Force is telling Rey she needs to go back to Ach-To, I’m not going to argue with it. And maybe we’ll have some X-wings for you, by the time you get back.”

What she didn’t say, but Poe heard clearly anyway, was: they weren’t fighting for their lives every minute, any more, but Poe was having a hard time acting like it. He’d already gotten people killed. If he didn’t get his head together, he’d be the kind of liability that the General couldn’t afford.

So Poe went. And when they got to Ach-To, they found someone impossible.

Poe knew Ben Solo, was the thing. He’d known him as a spotty, scowling kid with a whipcrack sense of humor. It was a lot easier to imagine that kid growing up into the guy they found than into the monster that still dogged Poe’s nightmares.

But the monster was what had really happened, and so it was hard for Poe to look at Ben Solo and see anyone else.

Ben seemed to sense this, or maybe he’d just grown into someone who could read a room better than he ever did as a kid. If Poe came into the main cabin when Ben was there, he found some polite excuse and left by the time Poe’s palms got clammy. If Ben came in while Poe was there, he didn’t stay long.

Their third day in transit, Poe found Ben sitting on the floor by the dejarik table with his eyes closed. The handful of times Poe had been to the Jedi temple or the school, before they were destroyed, he’d seen people meditating: sitting tailor-fashion, breathing slow, faces peaceful. But Ben had his knees drawn up in front of him and a frown on his face, though his eyes were closed, and he didn’t seem to notice that he wasn’t alone.

Poe was supposed to relieve Chewbacca at the helm, but he found himself caught, stuck there standing in the middle of the cabin and staring at Ben like an idiot. Poe wasn’t Force-touched, but he had the dim sense of something filling the room, some presence bigger than a person could possibly be.

He’d felt it around Kylo Ren, too, only then it had seethed with menace, a thick fog of fear and rage that made it hard to think straight. This was nothing like that. It wasn’t all joy and light, but it thinned out at the edges, bleeding off the turmoil at the center: the kind of cloud his X-wing could skim over and through in an instant, where Kylo Ren had been the center of a cyclone.

After a while, the cloud dissipated entirely, and Ben opened his eyes. He blinked up at Poe, surprised and a little bleary. Poe knew that expression. He’d found the General drooping over reports, half-asleep at her desk, and seen it there.

“Sorry,” Ben said. “I can go.”

“It’s all right,” said Poe. “I have to go take over for Chewie in a minute. What was that? I could feel it, and I’m not even Force-sensitive.”

“I mean, you probably are a little,” said Ben. “Most good pilots are. But I didn’t mean to be that loud, I’ve just -- got a lot on my mind.”

“No shit,” said Poe. Ben smiled, and Poe knew that expression too: the same grim amusement the General wore, when you were both stuck in the same bad situation.

“Listen,” said Ben, “I don’t know what happened, and to be honest I don’t know that I want to. Finn said he helped you escape from the other version of me. You clearly don’t want me around, and I’m sure it’s for a good reason. But you’ve spent more time with Ma -- with this version of her -- than anyone else here, so if you can stand it I’d like to talk.”

Poe’s palms were clammy again. “Talk to Chewbacca,” he said.

Ben shook his head. “He says they haven’t spent much time together at all, since the other me fucked everything up. She’s your commanding officer. You’ve known her your whole life. Is she -- is she doing okay?”

Poe took a breath, and wiped his hands on his pant legs as discreetly as he could. “It’s complicated,” he said. “C’mon, take the co-pilot’s seat and we can talk.”

Ben followed him in, at enough of a distance that he didn’t loom. Chewbacca made a questioning noise when he saw that Poe wasn’t alone, but Ben said “It’s fine, I won’t be long.” Chewie shrugged, and gave up his seat to Poe.

Ben folded himself into the other seat with familiar ease. He studied the console, reached out as though he was about to start flipping switches, and then drew back. He stayed silent, contained, all that Force-presence under wraps again.

Poe looked out through the viewscreen, at the stars flashing by. Having flight controls under his hands was steadying, like it always was. “She took it hard,” he said. “First General Solo, and now her brother. Most of our people who fought in the Rebellion are gone. She’s doing too much, carrying too much, but there’s no one to hand it off to.”

“Yeah,” said Ben. “That sounds about right.”

It was easier to sit like this, both of them looking out at the path ahead. Easier to separate them: the monster, and the man he could have been.

“He fucked with my head,” said Poe. “Kylo Ren. He wanted information, and he wasn’t careful about getting it.” He didn’t turn to look, but he heard Ben sigh, and the chair creaked like he was slumping into it.

“Yeah,” Ben said again. “That sounds about right.”

“Can you fix it?” said Poe, eyes still fixed on the viewscreen.

“I don’t know,” said Ben. “I don’t know exactly what he did -- I didn’t want to look any closer without permission, under the circumstances.”

“Permission granted,” Poe said. It came out sounding a little strangled, but he meant it.

They arrived a few days later, ship’s evening, mid-afternoon by local time. Poe didn’t feel any better, exactly, but he didn’t break out in a cold sweat every time Ben came near him, and he’d unloaded all his worries about the General to someone who might actually be able to help.

So that was something.

As they came in to land, Ben leaned over the back of the copilot’s chair to look out at the view. Rey frowned up at him for a moment, distracted, but Poe had the helm and the Falcon flew steady and true.

Ben said, “You know, I haven’t been back to Chandrila in months. There’s this little Corellian-style noodle joint by the spaceport that’s just unbelievably good, in my version of the universe.”

“Huh,” said Poe. His hands on the controls didn’t waver. “I think we have that one, too.”

5. chandrila

They put in at the edge of the spaceport, well away from the pomp and circumstance of the diplomatic landing zone. Ma was waiting at the foot of the ramp, no one else in sight but Threepio and Connix a little further back.

Ben tried to do the polite thing and keep his shields up, reining in his Force-sense as far back as he could pull it. He saw Rey notice him doing it, and try to imitate him, as they prepared to go out and meet the General.

“Don’t try to stuff all that power into a box that can’t hold it,” Ben told her. “It’ll pop, or scorch, or worse. You can just let some of it go, for, now; it’ll come back when you need it.” He tried to show her what he meant, easing up his hold on the Force around him long enough for her to see.

“Oh! I get it,” said Rey, with a bright flash like circuits connecting. She closed her eyes for a moment. The perpetual spotlight she walked around in stopped being quite so blinding, with some of the extra wattage safely returned to its source.

Ma saw the whole thing, Ben knew, even before he came down the ramp and they could see each other with just their eyes. But she was better at shielding than him, always had been, and the Force didn’t tell him much about her reaction to it.

She looked tired. Thinner and greyer than the version of her he’d seen last. More lines on her face than his own Ma, the one who reigned calmly over the controlled chaos that was the base on D’Quar.

Ben felt huge and conspicuous under her steady gaze, awkward in a way that he hadn’t since shortly after his last growth spurt. “Hi, Ma,” he said.

“Chewie tells me that you’re from a parallel universe,” she said. “That’s a new one.”

“Yeah, for me too,” he said. “Sounds like your version of me is a real shithead. I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she said. “It wasn’t you that did -- any of that. Was it?”

“No, but,” Ben began, and then stopped. It wasn’t, after all. “I’m just sorry, I guess. That it happened. That he couldn’t sort himself out, and he hurt you and Dad.”

“Oh, Ben,” she said, and her shields cracked, enough that Ben could see how much she was hurting. He gave up on propriety.

Ben flung himself across the space between them, and found yet another thing that was the same across universes. He was still so tall that hugging Ma properly meant folding himself up around her in a way that made his back hurt, and was still absolutely worth doing.

Ma was staying in the same neighborhood where she and Dad kept an apartment in Ben’s version of the universe. But this apartment was in a different building and, apparently, on loan from the Calrissians.

“Lando’s okay?” Ben said, with undisguised relief. Ma nodded.

“He didn’t get our distress call from Crait until after it was all over,” she said. “So he’s trying to make up for it with lavish gifts.”

Not the only one, said Chewbacca. The kitchen of the place was crammed with fruit, flowers, baskets of delicacies from Ma’s political contacts and admirers, most of which she hadn’t even cracked the wrappers on. I’m appointing myself your poison-taster again, yeah?

“Sure,” said Ma. “Knock yourself out.”

You three, with me. You all need feeding up, Chewie said.

He herded Rey and Rose and Finn into the kitchen. Poe had already gone off with Connix, and the droids chased Threepio after them. So it was just Ben, and his mother. The General. The version of Leia Organa who’d lost nearly everyone and everything she loved.

Ma looked at him like he hurt her eyes, but not looking would hurt more. She looked small, sitting there on the big expensive couch that, in any of the places his parents had ever called home, would have lasted about ten minutes in its current pristine state.

“So,” she said, “How’re you holding up, kid?”

Ben laughed, the kind that was halfway to crying, and sank down onto the seat next to her. “No offense,” he said, “but I don’t know if I like your universe all that much.”

“Tell me about it,” she said.

Ben mm-hmmed emphatically and tugged at her elbow, until she unbent a little and let him put his arm around her. He could see it, now, how much she was carrying, how much better off she’d be if she let the Force take some of the weight. But he wasn’t sure he had any right to tell her so. She wasn’t his Ma, not really, and he wasn’t the Ben who had broken her heart.

He asked the Force to lend him some of the peace he couldn’t summon up on his own, and when it answered he felt Ma’s wonder at how easily it came.

“You just have to ask,” he said. “It’ll never turn a Skywalker down, you know that.”

“That’s always been the problem,” Ma said. Which was fair enough, considering.

Ben nodded. “The hard part’s knowing what to ask for. That, and admitting you need the help.”

“Tell me about it,” Ma said, wry as his own Ma, but so much wearier.

“Yeah,” was all Ben could think to say. It was easier to just leave his shields down than try to put any of it into words. He’d been so relieved to be rescued, when he was stranded back on Ach-To. Knowing what he knew now, he might have preferred to stay stranded, but for the way Ma was radiating relief, the solace he seemed to be providing somehow.

After a while, Ma nudged him a little in the ribs. “You can, you know,” she said. “Tell me about it. How things turned out, for you.”

“Would that help?” Ben said. If it were him, it would just make him regret the might-have-beens even more.

Which he didn’t say out loud, but Ma still said “Oh, I’ll regret the might-have-beens anyway. Go on, it’ll be nice to hear some good news for a change.”

Ben could feel Rey’s curiosity leaking in from the kitchen, and Finn’s a little quieter behind that. He asked the Force to shoo them back out, and it obliged. This wasn’t any of their business, just yet.

“Okay,” Ben said. “Well. Before we evacuated to Ach-To, I was at the Temple with Luke. We only had a few people get their Mastery this spring, and the new crop of candidates was bigger than usual.”

“You’re one of the teachers?” Ma asked.

“When I’m not doing your paperwork or putting out Force-sized fires,” Ben said.

“It sounds like you’re good at it,” Ma said.

“I do okay,” said Ben. “Honestly I prefer the Force-sized fires.”

“Mm-hm,” said Ma. “That runs in the family, too.”

[sarahthecoat]

That would be a very interesting story!

queenbookwench replied to your post “ben solo vs. the darkest timeline” is not a real title but it’s what…”

I hope Kylo Ren isn’t wrecking havoc in Ben’s timeline!

He’s not, because I’m not denying myself the joy of writing him and Ben interacting, but also – would he even be able to wreak much havoc? Or would everyone who knows their version of Ben (including many fully-trained adult Jedi that he did not murder in their youth) get one look at his presence in the Force, take him down hard, and sit on him until he lets go of his death-grip on the Dark Side?

[nonasuch]

Do you think you’ll write more in the Ben Solo vs the darkest timeline story? I loved it so much I’ve dreamt about it a couple times!

I want to! Ep IX kind of threw me off my groove, but I would like to figure out which bits of it are worth saving to use in fic. Or it might be best to just ignore it entirely, tbh. Hopefully I will figure that out eventually.

[nonasuch]

Hi Nona! I was having a think for comfort fanfic and remembered a story where Ben Solo swaps universe to the star wars sequels and I thought it was by you, but I can't find it on your AO3 - am I making it up then?

it is! or at least one iteration of that concept is. but uh i did not actually finish it so it’s not on ao3.

everything is under my ben solo vs. the darkest timeline tag.

[nonasuch]

so is the dogfather au finished now, or can we expect more works in the future? i absolutely adore the idea of them going to muggle uni - of seeing draco trying to properly interact with muggles beyond two telephone calls. thank you for this sweet story!

I’m not sure -- maybe, but probably not for a while. I don’t have any specific story ideas right now, and I want to finish ‘ben solo vs. the darkest timeline’ before episode IX drops. After that, I’ll probably at least do prompt fills once in a while, and I’m still happy to answer questions.

And of course, if anyone else has a story in this AU that they want to write, they should, and be sure to let me know about it!

[nonasuch]

i'd never think it was possible, but here it is: i'm feeling extremely bad for ben solo. the writing is amazing, and i am *living* for the new dynamics - ben and finn, ben and rey, and oh my stars, ben and leia... thanks a lot for this, i loved every word and it improved my mood by 100% on this gloomy morning

I am glad! I also feel bad for Ben but not bad enough to stop doing this to him.

[nonasuch]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA your new Ben Solo vs the darkest timeline is AMAZING! The line "He was still so tall that hugging Ma properly meant folding himself up around her in a way that made his back hurt, and was still absolutely worth doing" just made my heart- I don't even know. Something large between good and sad and definitely excellent.

thank you! my primary goal as a writer is to make people feel sad when objectively happy things happen to characters.

[nonasuch]

HI are you gonna continue the Adult Ben Solo Has a Terrible Time thing you wrote?? :0 I'm enjoying it immensely. No pressure if not, it's very good as is!! I'm just curious if I should watch this space for more c:

I... may have written another 2k today, so yes.

[nonasuch]

In case you missed it last night!

thank u all for your many mosquito bite home remedies; to show my appreciation, please have 1500 more words of ben solo vs. the darkest timeline. 

continued from here and here.

For a few blissful weeks, Rose did almost nothing but eat expensive gift-basket food and work on the Falcon. It turned out things went a lot faster when someone with deep pockets green-lit all your parts requests, almost before you made them. Rose was going to have to figure out who L. Indecipherable Squiggle was, and thank them.

They got the power relays sorted out, replaced the worst of the jury-rigged repairs with permanent fixes, and finally solved the mystery of the persistent rattle in the vent nearest the fresher.

“See?” said Ben, holding up a single earring triumphantly. “Told you. It was the same earring, too, only we found it before Ma got rid of the other one.”

Keep reading

[sarahthecoat]

EEEEEEE brb reading

thank u all for your many mosquito bite home remedies; to show my appreciation, please have 1500 more words of ben solo vs. the darkest timeline. 

continued from here and here.

For a few blissful weeks, Rose did almost nothing but eat expensive gift-basket food and work on the Falcon. It turned out things went a lot faster when someone with deep pockets green-lit all your parts requests, almost before you made them. Rose was going to have to figure out who L. Indecipherable Squiggle was, and thank them.

They got the power relays sorted out, replaced the worst of the jury-rigged repairs with permanent fixes, and finally solved the mystery of the persistent rattle in the vent nearest the fresher.

“See?” said Ben, holding up a single earring triumphantly. “Told you. It was the same earring, too, only we found it before Ma got rid of the other one.”

Keep reading

[nonasuch]

queenbookwench replied to your post “ben solo vs. the darkest timeline” is not a real title but it’s what...”

I hope Kylo Ren isn’t wrecking havoc in Ben’s timeline!

He’s not, because I’m not denying myself the joy of writing him and Ben interacting, but also -- would he even be able to wreak much havoc? Or would everyone who knows their version of Ben (including many fully-trained adult Jedi that he did not murder in their youth) get one look at his presence in the Force, take him down hard, and sit on him until he lets go of his death-grip on the Dark Side?