Chapter Text
Ben Organa Solo looks down at the BB-4 unit lying in pieces on his workbench with something close to disgust.
“Of all my children, you are the biggest disappointment,” he tells it seriously. BB-4 chirps indignantly up at him, still trying to wriggle around despite its head being detached from the ball of its body. “The fuck do you and your pilot even do to be in here every other day? None of the other BBs are in here half as much,” Ben chides, picking through his toolbox carelessly.
He’ll admit to himself that his griping comes from a place of love; the BB droids are his creation after all, an improvement on the old R2 units that he’s certain R2D2 resents him for.
“You know they say 4 is an unlucky number among some species,” Ben tells it as he gets to work repairing its damaged power core. “You just couldn’t leave it to BB-13, could you?” The droid shrieks at him angrily, and Ben allows himself a fond smile.
Ben knows the other Resistance personnel think he’s weird for hiding away in his workshop, talking to droids. That’s okay. He prefers the company of machines to people; organic lifeforms are just so loud in the force, their minds chattering away even when their mouths are shut. There’s no filter to internal thoughts, either. He’s heard all kinds of insults about his person that would never be voiced aloud. Droids are so blissfully quiet in comparison, and so direct with their opinions when they have them.
He ties his dark hair back and tries to concentrate on the soft humming of BB-4’s processor, rather than the background noise of emotion from passing technicians outside. He feels the flow of energy snaking through the droid’s components, follows it along each path in his mind until it leads him to the frankly alarming number of faults in its hardware.
“I’m going to confiscate you from Wexley,” Ben mutters to it.
He feels Rey approaching long before she comes barrelling into his workshop.
His baby cousin is one of the few people he can stand to be around; her mind is always so endlessly full of love and light and happiness. He’s not used to those feelings being turned towards him, but she looks up at him like he’s her big brother. He’d tried his best to feel resentful of her when he’d had to give his training up, but even he can’t bring himself to feel anything negative towards Rey. Instead, he dutifully plays the part of the overprotective older brother, taking somewhat malicious joy in trying to chase Poe and Finn’s attentions away from her.
“Ben!!” she shouts as she comes tumbling in through the door. For all of her Jedi training, she’s never quite learned any grace.
“Back from the mission already?” he asks mildly. BB-4 is chirping happily at Rey from where it’s still unassembled on his bench. Rey comes to throw her arms around his shoulders, peering over his head to look at the BB unit making a valiant attempt at rolling off the bench.
“4 again?” she says knowingly.
“Wexley is no longer allowed a BB unit. I’ve decided it,” Ben says by way of answer. Rey loses interest and starts bouncing on her heels behind him. He makes a great show of sighing loudly. “Go on, what do you want.”
“I have brought you the best thing,” she grins, excitement rolling off of her in crashing waves. Ben frowns, attempting to read her thoughts more clearly- “Nuh-uh!! No peeking, it’s a surprise! Come on, come on, follow me!”
Rey rushes out the door before he can respond. Instead he glares down at BB-4 before standing up and dusting himself off.
“Consider this a time-out,” he tells it.
*
At the age of 10, Ben has his first vision.
The vision comes with absolute certainty that this is his future if he continues on his current path: him, older, masked and dressed in black, red lightsaber in hand and dead children underfoot. He surfaces from the vision gasping for air, lungs on fire as he desperately tries to choke oxygen down.
He hands Luke his training saber after that. His uncle doesn't say a word – just draws Ben in for a tight hug, and sends him back to his parents. There is too much of the dark in him; they both know it.
Ben tries not to be upset. He never quite fit in with the other padawans anyway, and his father takes it as an opportunity to spirit him away in the Millenium Falcon for a few years, to his mother’s chagrin. (He feels her secret relief when she finds out; the First Order is gaining power across the galaxy, and he’ll be safe with Han. Still, he feels her missing him in the force now and then).
Knowing he can never allow himself to live up to his potential with the force, Ben tries to find other hobbies to distract himself; he becomes fluent in Shyriiwook, to Chewbacca’s great joy. He tries to learn how to pilot ships from his father, but after crashing into a crowded market and racking up a monumental bill in damages, Ben quickly discovers that he didn’t inherit that particular skill. He does, however, have Han’s talent as a smuggler, making appalling use of Jedi mind-tricks whenever he can (Han gives a good show of telling him off for it, but he can feel the waves of pride rolling off his father, no matter what he claims otherwise).
But what holds Ben’s interest most of all is machinery.
He likes to think he got this from his grandfather – he’s heard stories from R2 of how Anakin rebuilt Threepio, of podracers on Tattooine. (He tries not to think about the other things he inherited from Vader.)
Eventually the war forces Leia to call them all back; Han and Chewie are needed on smuggling and supply runs. He meets little Rey for the first time and trains with the Resistance as a mechanic, specializing in droids and artificial limbs. There’s something beautiful in artificial intelligence, he thinks, of trying to give life to neatly built machines. Maybe it’s that they have the calm, patient logic he so sorely lacks in his own mind, or the jigsaw fit of this joint to that, wire to connector.
The unbearably loud thoughts of everyone else on base, on the other hand, make him nauseous.
He watches Luke and his padawans wistfully. He knows it’s for the best; he has his droids to keep him company. Rey brings him scraps of machinery from all over the galaxy to cheer him up, and he tries to feel content.
*
Ben finally catches up to Rey outside of the interrogation chambers. There’s a crowd gathered in front of the two-way mirror that Poe is trying to shoo away.
“Don’t you all have things to do?” Poe tries fruitlessly, attempting to cover up the view into the room with his body.
Ben clears his throat.
The crowd seems to flinch all at once – he is the General’s son, after all. There’s a kind of grudging respect for him, even as the usual words pass across their minds when they turn to look at him (creepy, awkward, failed Jedi). But those don’t annoy him nearly as much as the one stray droidfucker he picks up on, and he doesn’t even have to pretend to darken his expression at the crowd. They quickly scatter after that.
“Man, what I wouldn’t give to perfect a scowl like that,” Poe jokes, a relieved grin spreading across his face at the sight of Ben and Rey. Over his shoulder, Ben can see his mother and Finn inside the interrogation chamber.
“I thought you said you’d brought me something,” Ben frowns down at Rey. She beams up at him and tugs him closer to the window, Poe neatly stepping to the side to give them room.
Ben suddenly sees that it is not a ‘what’, but a ‘who’.
“Well holy shit,” he says. There, cuffed to the table, sits General Hux of the First Order. The man glowers at Leia with a stony expression. He doesn’t seem injured in any way, though his red hair has been ruffled out of the usual perfect sweep he seems to favour in all the propaganda pictures.
“Look at his right arm,” Rey points, sensing his thoughts. “It’s a prosthetic, I saw it on the ship.” Now that he looks at it, it does seem to just be hanging there limply a few inches below where it should be, bent at an awkward angle.
“And did you break it too?” Ben returns, raising an eyebrow with amusement.
She punches him lightly in the shoulder. “No! He…he broke it himself, actually. He was trying to escape by ripping it off. I bet they’ll ask you to fix it, it looks fancy.”
As if sensing this, Leia turns around in her seat and crooks a finger. She somehow manages to look Ben dead in the eye despite the two-way mirror.
Obediently he enters the interrogation room, hovering by the doorway.
“Ben,” Leia greets him warmly. “We need you to take a look at the General’s arm, if you have a moment.”
From the corner of his eye, Ben sees the General stiffen minutely. “I assure you, that is unnecessary,” Hux says coldly. Interesting. Ben wonders if there’s something good hiding under that sleeve after all. He turns to try and get a read on Hux's mind and comes to a sudden, chilling realisation:
The General’s mind is completely, utterly silent.
“Nonsense,” Leia smiles, all teeth. “We can’t have you claiming that the Resistance mistreats its prisoners, now, can we? Finn, escort the General to his cell, if you would.”
“I’ll get my tools,” Ben says quickly, hurrying back to his workshop. He can’t help but be curious now.