Your prison is walking this world all alone

[jedi_librettist]

Ben watched out the window as the ship dropped out of hyperspace. He took a shaky breath. It was time. He wouldn't burden his brother anymore. He walked back to his cabin. He didn't know how what he would do after he left. It didn't matter. This was the right thing.

Comments

[middleoftheforce]

"For you to actually talk to me?"

Which was weird, all things considered, but it was how he was feeling.

[jedi_librettist]

"What's left to say? What do you want me to say?"

If only Bail had never found him. It would have been easier to never have had the possibility of being with his family again.

[middleoftheforce]

"Just... talk!" Another irritated sigh. "You keep closing up and I can't help if you do that."

[jedi_librettist]

"Help." He made a sound that could have been either a laugh or a sob. "How do you think you can help? You can't change the past."

[middleoftheforce]

"But the past doesn't need to be the future." And right now, it felt like he was trying to make it that way.

[jedi_librettist]

"You can't change what I've become."

No one could make Tattooine become a jungle.

[middleoftheforce]

"Who you've become doesn't need to be who you'll be."

[jedi_librettist]

"You have no idea what you're talking about."

[middleoftheforce]

"Because you won't talk to me to let me know!" It came out in a frustrated groan. How was he meant to help in any sort of way if his brother kept closing off and keeping him out. He couldn't even find out much via their Bond, which meant that he was being deliberately locked out.

[jedi_librettist]

That was definitely a sob this time. Ben squeezed his eyes shut, trying and failing to stop the tears. "You want to know what happened to me, what I am? I'm the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa and I'm a slave. Do you understand what that means? You how I know what the winner's perks in the pits are? I was one of them. And even after I made them forget who I am... You want to know where Ani came from? I'm a whore, Bail. I... There's no coming back from that."

[middleoftheforce]

That threw him for a half a second. "That... means nothing, Ben. That's what they did to you, not who you are."

[jedi_librettist]

Ben clenched his fists. The bunk freaked dangerously. "You don't understand. You can never understand. They destroyed me. Every part of me."

[middleoftheforce]

"Of course I don't understand," he replied, "but I'm trying."

[jedi_librettist]

The bond opened, flooding with memories. Bail had said he wanted to understand so Ben shoved memories at him. Just fists, chains, whips on fair skin at first. A teenaged boy in scant black and gold placed on display like a rare statue. Jedi robes given in mockery and then taken again. Kneeling by the hutt holding his chain, grateful for whatever he was being hand fed this time even though it wasn't something humans were meant to eat because he was just so hungry. Increasingly creative ways to cause pain. Through it all, there were taunts about his family. And he never fought back.

[middleoftheforce]

It was like being pushed to the floor with how strong the feelings were accompanied by the memories being shoved at him through the Bond. He wasn't entirely sure what to do and he wasn't entirely sure how he was still standing. A moment, a deep breath. Push to the side to deal with it all later. Try to focus on the here and now.

"No one deserves what they did to you," he said slowly, keeping his gaze fixed on his brother. "But it in no one makes you what they tried to make you."

[jedi_librettist]

There were more memories. A slightly older Ben leaned against a different hutt, doing nothing as it groped him. Kneeling in front of a trandoshan bounty hunter, face held against its groin, struggling to breathe around him. Chained against the wall, naked, trying to hide his face as a needle pierced his skin repeatedly, the pattern on his exposed hip already present. Crushed under the weight of a pirate, pleading for mercy in broken Huttese because that was all he was allowed to speak, a tally mark carved into the small of his back as the man finished. Thrown to a pit fighter, hair grown out and braided, dressed in a replica of the red and gold outfit they'd seen in their mother's nightmares, gold chain laced through rows of rings down his thighs. Screaming as a different fighter hoisted him into the air by hooks through skin and muscle.

[middleoftheforce]

"Ben!" He snapped it, forcing his voice into a tone similar to their mother's whenever she was wanting their attention. It was all he could think to do.

[jedi_librettist]

The flood of memories stopped, bond closing tightly again. The bunk cracked down the middle. "You said you wanted to understand. I told you they destroyed me."

[middleoftheforce]

"Not completely." If they had completely destroyed him, the bond wouldn't be there.

[jedi_librettist]

The bunk ripped away from the wall. "They. Took. Everything!</> The brother you lost? He's dead. He died in the desert on Tattooine. They sold his corpse when they realized it wasn't as interesting."

[middleoftheforce]

"If that was true, we wouldn't have the Bond anymore."

[jedi_librettist]

The bunk snapped in half as Ben let a cry of rage. "You don't know what the kriff you're talking about!"

He turned around, letting the bunk drop to the floor. He pinned his brother against the wall. "You still think I'm him?" he asked before leaning in and kissing him.

[middleoftheforce]

Solo immediately threw Ben off him.

[jedi_librettist]

Ben wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stood back up. "Would the boy you knew have done that?"

[middleoftheforce]

He couldn't do anything but stare. He knew the point his brother was trying to prove, but if he wanted to be away from them so much, why had he ran with him in the first place? Was all this just to get freedom under any means necessary? Solo didn't understand at all.