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They had lied to him. They had hidden his true heritage. He was boiling with rage.
The moment he found out the truth everything had gained sense.
The voice in his head. That voice that had accompanied him for most of his life finally had gained an identity.
It was his grandfather.
Darth Vader.
‘Find me. Follow me’.
The voice had said to him when he reached for it after he found out who his grandfather had been. A series of images filled his mind. They were instructions, to find his grandfather burial place.
He took a decision then.
The moment the ship landed softly on the soil he felt a spark lightning for a second before vanishing into nothing again. He had felt that light before, his chair twirled around. How come he hadn’t felt it before?
He sighed frustrated, “Come out, I can feel you” the push of a box sounded in the silence of the ship before a small head appeared behind it. A sheepish face presented before him. It was the girl. Of course, it was the girl.
“How you learn to hide your force signature?” the girl eyes brightened and with childish proud she jumped at the opportunity to tell him, as usual.
“I saw you and Master Luke when he was teaching you, and I tried by myself, did I do it wrong?”
He looked at her with a certain mix of proud, jealousy and annoyance. It had taken him a lot to learn to do that, and his uncle had accepted to teach it to him only after he passed his first trials, and then this little girl succeeded at learning it basically by herself and she is not even half the way from her own trials. “No, it was pretty good.” For all the loathing he sometimes feels against her it was always easy for him to fall in her net of praising. She was like a magnetic pull of light; one he never could totally avoid.
She beamed at his response, that make him smile slightly. ‘That was the reason’ he thought bitterly to himself ‘That was the reason he always finished accepting her antics because at the end he will get to see her smile.’
“Why are we here?” she asked while walking next to him through the damp forest of Endor, she was half chasing him half trying to avoid the tricky roots of the trees that tried to tramp her feet. Finally, she managed to reach his hand clasping hers to it like a vice. “Ben…”
“I’m here to look for my grandfather,” he said to her without turn to look at her but dropping her hand neither “You are here because you manage to smug yourself in my ship and denied to stay in it after all”
“Oh…” she got quiet for a while, a small while. “Do your grandfather lives here?”
“He is buried here” she looked at him with big wide eyes “It means that he is dead”
“I know what it means,” she said angrily, he smirked. For such a small child she was certainly feisty “Master Luke said that my grandfather is also dead”
“I know”
They keep walking in silence. One of the roots manage to trip her left foot and she would fell face first in the muddy soil if he wouldn’t be holding her.
“I can feel him,” he said, although he didn’t receive any vocal response he could feel her budding expectation and her childish excitement at the encounter of the results of their treasure hunting or whatever she had decided to call his mission.
There in the middle of a circle of trees in the thickest part of the forest lay a bed of rocks and burned remains. There it was not much left. They got close. He let her hand go and touched the pyre with reverence. At the head of the rock bed there it was a half melted mask. He recognized it immediately, everyone had seen pictures of the old inquisitor of the Empire.
There in the middle of the forest with only a couple of children as witness lay the last remains of the last Sith Lord.
Darth Vader.
Ben Solo kneeled and prayed.
A leather covered hand loomed over the thin marks that covered the wall, they were indentations on the metal, small white lines covering the walls of her prison, they were a representation of her life. they did not demark anguish or misery, they denoted hope.
Hope.
It was something she should not feel, not now, not ever.
“Dreid Ren,” said a voice behind her. She had heard the quick footsteps getting near, the living presence beating behind the door, the door whooshed when it opened “Kylo Ren demand a conference with yo-“
“How much time you had been in the Menace, lieutenant Varell?” the man tumbled over his words.
“Almost a year, Dreid Ren”
“And, in that year, lieutenant, when in that year I gave you the idea that you could enter my chambers without permission?” The lieutenant turned pale for a moment, but he recovered his color and his gut quickly.
“It was an urgent call according to the general and you are a guest in the Me-” he faltered, the air leaving his lungs, the man clasped both his hands against his neck trying to remove an obstruction that was not there.
“I am not a guest, lieutenant. You better find your right position in this chain of command or I will give you a more permanent position outside the ship.” she let him go. He doubled over himself trying to gather all the air it was stolen from him before. She walked pass him leaving the chambers and walking toward the holo-communicator.
It was not a secret that almost all the crew of the Menace feared her, as neither was the fact that Lieutenant Varell had come to the destroyer with the weird idea that he was the best that happened to it, disdaining everyone that was under him and treating her as a freak, that he directed to her just because he was commanded to do it. He did not understand that this ship was hers. It had been hers since she was posted in it five years before. The ship was even known as ‘Dreid Menace.’ A fool he was. An arrogant fool.
She kneeled in front of the hologram of her master.
“Dreid Ren,” said the mechanic voice that made her heart beat hard in her chest. “I had a mission for you. Come to me, join me in the Finalizer and catch me a traitor”
“Yes, master” she was finally going to see her master after five years of separation. Her chest bumped harder against her ribs.
She was going to see her master again.
Hope flared inside of her again.