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WHEN the voices of children are heard on the green,
And laughing is heard on the hill,
My heart is at rest within my breast,
And everything else is still.
‘Then come home, my children, the sun is gone down,
And the dews of night arise;
Come, come, leave off play, and let us away
Till the morning appears in the skies.’
- Nurse’s Song, William Blake
**
When Ben Solo was young, his limbs not yet long, his arms not yet strong, and his heart still red and whole and full of hope, he had night terrors.
His father, Han Solo, attributed it to the boy’s youth. All children had unreasonable fear of the dark. He would grow out of it, surely. I mean just look at the boy’s mother, and what a fearless woman she is!
His mother never noticed. The real terrors she worked night and day to hold at bay were too great for her to diverge her concentration. Ben would be fine by himself. Why just look at his father, and what a free and independent soul he is!
But Ben Solo wasn’t like his mother or his father. Where his father felt nothing, and his mother saw nothing, Ben saw blue, ethereal younglings, of the same age as himself, standing in silent rows in front of his well-made bed, staring, accusing, the accompanying stench of blood and burnt flesh nauseating in his nostrils.
They were cut down as budding flowers in their most carefree days. Why were they dead and forgotten, and this scion of their murderer still alive and beloved? Where was the fairness that their masters had preached about?
**
When Ben Solo grew older, his limbs long and slightly gangly still, his chest not yet filled out to its full broadness, and his heart darkened and damaged and full of spite, he screamed awake in the night.
His peers cared not for his screams. One’s weakness could be another’s gain.
His master chided him. Steel your heart, the old wise creature said. When sympathy and remorse and fear are removed, the passion and power that remain would chase away all your ghostly shadows and set your new self free.
But even when Ben Solo had cut out his weak old self, and stared out at the night as Kylo Ren, he still saw those ghostly forms, familiar faces all, staring right back at him from the dark, hush in horror and disbelief, howling in hatred and detestation, their stench of death now more familiar than the sweet smell of Ben’s mother’s hair.
They were cut down as saplings before they could grow to reach the heaven and shelter the earth. Why were they dead, and this traitor still alive? Master Luke, why Master Luke was wrong. They should have never let this woodworm, this gnawing parasite into their midst.
**
When Ben Solo felt the pull of his family, ever stronger with each passing cycle, his master gave him a gift.
A gift of family. New, unconditionally trusting, innocently loving, and non-judgmental, never judgmental. Two new bright sprouts in the durasteel citadel that was the First Order.
**
Young plants were so easily trampled, not in malice, but in carelessness.
**
Three days after a successful New Republic and Resistance joint strike on a First Order weapons manufacturing facility, Leia Organa received a message from an unknown sender with several file attachments.
The images were grisly, the autopsy reports even more so.
The message itself was brief and unsigned, but left Leia with very little doubt on the identity of the sender, for the man might as well have signed it in triplicate and stamped it with his personal seal, as his familiar cold malice oozed from every line.
**
“It is quite alright General Organa, they are just collateral damage and necessary sacrifices for your greater good. Like my aunts and uncles on the Death Stars, like my sisters and mother and father.
Hosnian Prime was my revenge for my family.
I wonder what Lord Ren would do for his?”
**
Identical anonymous tips were sent to New Republic, neutral space, and First Order news outlets and tabloids on the same day.
A family of child killers, General Organa’s opposition in what was left of the Senate called the Skywalkers.
The New Republic’s true face, the Outer Rim reports exclaimed. They would not rest until all of the Empire’s struggling children are wiped away.
**
Ben Solo’s limbs were well-muscled, his chest solid and broad from the swing of lightsabers. And he still looked young under his new helm, but his face was scarred, his eyes tired and old. And his heart was black and dead and full of rage. He lay motionless at night on his hard bunk.
His father, his mother, they were gone. For Kylo Ren had no father or mother.
His son, his daughter, they were gone. Kylo Ren had held them and walked with them and went through basic katas with them, on rare leave from his duties, by the grace of his master.
Now the children stood at his bedside whenever he lay down to sleep, sad and silent as they never were in life. One’s entire lower body was crushed. The reports spoke of how she had lasted so many long hours, gripping onto life, but modern medicine could not work miracles. The other held his crushed head in his broken arms, his once handsome features no longer recognizable.
Flower and sapling, both cut down. Now the scions of murderers and traitors were finally where they belonged.
**
General Organa increased security around all Resistance installations. She knew her son, and she knew the shape of his rage.
But her son never came.
**
Kylo Ren’s master restrained his apprentice before he could go on a wild rampage, to destroy and destroy himself in turn, and redirected him to deep meditations with a stern hand.
Send the great-grandchildren of Darth Vader on in the Force. Ease their sufferings in the afterlife. Have patience, child of mine, for vengeance would come.
**
A year after the disastrous attack, a certain Lord Ren was assigned to shadow yet another First Order project.
Kylo Ren sneered underneath his helmet. As much of an opportunistic heathen and sycophant as one General Hux was, the man at least had more fire than the few other commanders forced upon Kylo in the aftermath of Starkiller. Again he had to deal with yet another one of these droning bureaucrats.
The commander overseeing the project was just as dull as Kylo had predicted. And the man’s officers even had the galls to laugh at Hux as a veiled jab at Kylo himself.
“Oh Lord Ren, what a disgrace your old co-commander had become, a drunkard stripped of his rank and responsibilities, responsibilities he was obviously too unqualified to handle! Why rumor has it he could not even instill discipline on his own ship!”
Ren choked and threw the officer with the widest unfriendly smile right into a console.
**
Kylo scoffed at the communications from the director of engineering, one Brandon H. The man presumed too much, to think he could summon a Knight of Ren to air his petty displeasures.
Kylo seethed as he stomped towards said director’s office. The refresher in his unit mysteriously malfunctioned, and engineering refused to send maintenance until a certain scheduled meeting was conducted.
Kylo stared, disbelieving, at one ex-General Hux sitting behind the director’s desk, with blueprints and plans suspended in ghostly holo all around him.
The orange of his uniform clashed horribly with the orange of his scruffy hair, Kylo thought. And that beard. Since when had Hux allowed himself to grow any facial hair other than those ridiculous sideburns? How had he convinced the Supreme Leader to allow him back into a position of power again after the catastrophic failure at Starkiller? Since when was Hux in engineering? Since when had Hux worn glasses?
But when Kylo opened his mouth, what came out was a dumbstruck question, “I thought your first name was Brendol?”
The ex-General pushed up his wireframe spectacles and glanced at Kylo with mockery in his eyes, “Brendol was my father’s name. How like you, Lord Ren, to not bother with the names of us lesser beings.”
And Brandon not-Brendol Hux rose up from his seat and strolled around his large desk to stand shoulder to near shoulder with Kylo, “Lord Ren, since you have finally deigned to show up for this meeting, though you’ve rudely never deigned to even confirm my name, let me explain, as the subject expert and true project lead, about this great new endeavor we are about to disembark upon.”
**
Hux had despaired. Hux had been disgraced. Hux had even temporarily fallen to alcoholism, that vice which had finally taken his father’s life after years of war and exile could not.
But Hux was not a man of idleness. And before he was thrust into the role of a military General, his core training was that of a tinker, not fighter.
And thus the idea of Starkiller II was born. A finer tuned weapon of mass destruction, a more stable energy core, a mobile platform, at a quarter of the power of Starkiller I, but with sixteenth the recharge time, energy storage and rapid firing capabilities, and mobility no lesser than that of a third generation Star Destroyer.
And the past year had seen Hux work with such fervor and sudden inspiration (and a touch of deranged desperation), that the initial model was finalized and approved by the Supreme Leader and First Order high command both three months prior, and Hux, under his own much lesser known name instead of his father’s, became active within the First Order once more, now in a position that was his true calling all along.
The scruffy engineer huffed self-deprecatingly into his cup of strongly brewed caf, and said to the Knight sitting across him thus:
My family left no ghosts, had no illustrious name or great legacies save for a half-failed Stormtrooper program, and I myself was never a man of great passions. But I too, Lord Ren, once had family. I too knew the biting need for revenge.
And Ren knew then the tears at Starkiller’s first and last successful firing were not tears of fanatical joy.
And Ren thanked his master for handing him the promised sword of retribution in the form of this slim shouldered and unassuming man, this key cog in the First Order’s yet strong war machine, a great sword hundred times the strength of Ren’s own sabers.
**
Ben opened his eyes to the dull grey durasteel ceiling above Hux’s bed. He slowly sat up, careful not to wake the fatigued form sleeping deeply on the other side of the bed, and looked out into the dark of the room.
But the dark was simply that, the dark. There were no wailing babes, screaming youths, or weeping children tonight.
Next to him on Hux’s nightstand, a holo flickered on as if brushed by ghostly hands, and in the silence two children laughed and ran around in the range of the holodeck’s projection, their hair wild and unruly, their eyes bright, their ears adorably oversized. The boy had large hands and feet, but was slight for his age. The girl’s thin face was covered in sun-kissed freckles, as numerous as the constellations in the sky.
**