The whirling crowds of Canto Bight have never held much of an appeal for Ben, an irony that borders on the ridiculous if he lets himself think about it for more than a moment or two at a time. The shrieking, overwrought cackles of joy, the overflowing flutes of bubbling champagne, the clatter of credit chits dropping onto gaming tables. It’s all so much useless noise and it gives Ben a headache nine visits out of ten. And on the tenth, he usually finds himself in the pit boss’s office proving he’s not the guy responsible for their latest security breach, another annoyance that’s just become a part of the job that he’d somehow accepted the same day he’d so very stupidly sliced the first Master Codebreaker’s various encryption protocols like they were so much nothing and earned this persona as punishment.
The pit boss’s office is, incidentally, just a different sort of headache. So, really. He comes out with a headache one-hundred percent of the time.
Lucky guy, he is.
“It’s him,” a woman shouts, barely audible over the din and chatter, the groans of defeat and the cacophonous peals of disbelieving laughter as his latest roll of the dice bears fruit. Her elation is sharp in the Force, as efficient as an awl at getting his attention. If her words hadn’t drawn it, that would have done the job all on its own. “The Master Codebreaker.”
He glances down at the gold plom bloom pin affixed to his deep, deep black jacket, tugs at its high, starched collar, widens his eyes as a handsome, harried man nearly mows her down and in turn is almost knocked to the ground as Canto Bight’s finest thugs grab both of them and haul them away.
“Did you see that?” he asks Lovey, her attention entirely on blowing on the dice in his hands. A completely ridiculous farce of an act, he’s well aware, but she’s as much a part of the show as he is. Ben hates dice games and he hates the feel of Lovey’s moist breath on his skin. All it does is make him want to wash and sanitize his hands. But it’s part of the mystique of Canto Bight. See the Master Codebreaker luck his way through games of chance. Make sure you keep an eye on him, though, this time he might try to slice his way into the casino’s mainframe.
He’s looking forward to the day when she tries to take the title from him.
“See what?” she replies, pretending disinterest.
He throws the dice, doesn’t bother to see what he’s won this time. It’s all just credits in the end.
*
“—break you into old man Snoke’s b-b-boudoir,” DJ’s saying, loud enough to raise the dead, and how his young man and woman found their way into his cell is just a phenomenal piece of bad luck on their part. He’s the only other man in Canto Bight who can do what Ben does, only worse and more unscrupulously. DJ could do what they need him for, but he will fleece them for it.
It’s a good thing Ben had shown when he did. It’s only a matter of time before DJ decides to split and makes these shiny-eyed newcomers think he’s some kind of god with that stupid slicecard of his.
“You’ll do absolutely no such thing,” Ben says, waspish, short. For effect, he crosses his arms. Both the young man and woman throw themselves at the bars, wrap their grease and dirt-encrusted fingers around them. Ben doesn’t take a step back, but he wants to.
“I’m Finn. This is Rose,” the man says, breathless and so painfully earnest that Ben can’t help being a little enraptured by it. He hasn’t met someone so vitally, fundamentally, obviously good in a long, long time. It pulses in the Force, how good he is. It hauls Ben up short, would put him on his knees if he let it. There are no good people in Canto Bight; he’s lost the ability to interact with them on any honest level. “We need your help.”
Ben laughs, dry and harsh. “You’re gonna need more than that if you’re trying to do what DJ so very stupidly said out loud where anyone who walks past could hear.”
“We’re with the Resistance. Maz sent us,” Finn says, not caring about discretion as a virtue, leaning as far forward as the bars allow. Which isn’t much. Though it’s close enough for Ben to get a perfect eyeful. His first assessment had been accurate. The man is handsome. Ben swallows back the words on his tongue, the ones that want to stop Finn’s words and give him what he wants. “We’re on a mission vital to the—”
“Save it. Someone’s always on a vital mission. My mother wouldn’t want me within five light years of a Resistance mission.” His eyes snap to DJ’s face. “If you open your mouth to anyone, I will release that thing we agreed to never talk about again and you’ll regret ever being born. I’m also reasonably sure there’s tape sitting up in the chief’s office of you planning to execute treason against the First Order and I will get it and give it to them and let you squirm while one of their enforcers comes looking for you. Are we clear?”
The work begins to pile up before his eyes. Force, he’ll have to scrub so many records today. Even if he doesn’t help them—and he’s got a heavy stone of certainty sinking in his gut that says he will—there’s gonna be clean up. Ben should be more upset than he is.
Both Finn and Rose’s eyebrows furrow and Ben’s not even the slightest bit surprised by their confusion.
“Maz didn’t tell you who I am, huh?” He considers smiling and immediately discards the idea as a bad one. “That’s nice of her. Sit tight for five minutes.” Pointing at DJ, he adds, “If this man leaves, do not go with him. I’ll be back.”
Finn’s mouth falls open, but it’s not until Ben’s almost out of earshot that he says, “You can get out of here?”
Whatever nonsense DJ spouts is lost to posterity and devious camdroid recordings, but when Ben comes back, four minutes and fifty-two seconds later to find DJ gone and the pair of them sitting on the edge of one of the cots, he can’t say he’s disappointed. “Nice to know you’ve got a little bit of sense. Come on, then.”
*
“Sit,” Ben says, gesturing expansively at the Mirrorbright’s sumptuously appointed lounge. Neither Finn nor Rose obey his request, not until he tells it to them a second time and takes a seat himself. “Explain.”
Ben’s already requested a disembarkation slot from the Canto Bight Docking Authority and is only waiting for confirmation to get going. But neither Finn nor Rose know that. And so they try to sell him. Hard. Fast. He can admire that, sort of. These are absolutely the sort of people his mother would recruit for one of her mad schemes.
Or, as he soon finds out, the kind of people who would pull mad schemes in her absence.
He does not let himself dwell on the fact that she’s been injured and neither Finn nor Rose can tell him if she’ll be okay. Focus on the job, he thinks, unwilling to believe that he wouldn’t know already if she was gone. She’s going to be fine.
Theirs is a scheme that, less than a day ago, became infinitely less mad. Who would ever have thought his mother’s paranoid paramilitary force would become the only thing that stands in the way of galactic domination by jumped-up Imperial cast-offs?
Ben shoves down every ounce of guilt he feels at not taking the threat more seriously when he could have. But now—he swallows—now maybe he can do something to help.
“What do you need?” He raises his hand to stop them from launching into a fresh recruitment speech. “The short version.”
Finn, serious, sober, answers, “We need through the First Order flagship’s shields. And we need to disrupt the tracker that’s allowing them to follow us through hyperspace.”
“I can’t do trackers.”
“You don’t have to,” Rose answers.
Good. He sighs in relief.
Force, it’s still a lot. It’s so much that it staggers Ben to think about. They’ll need to stash the Mirrorbright somewhere in an enemy hangar bay where they’ll have a chance of getting it back out again. They’ll need uniforms. They’ll definitely need an escape plan that will likely end up blowing up in their faces.
Finn might as well ask Ben to buy him a moon and drag it across the galaxy for him.
But there’s something about Finn that makes Ben want to do just that. Or maybe it’s just the way Finn’s looking at him like he could be a hero instead of a puffed-up splicer who slums it on Canto Bight instead of doing all that good his mother had always insisted he’s capable of. Throat dry, he nods toward Rose. “You think I can borrow that medallion, Rose?”
She hesitates, hand wrapping protectively around it, but instead of denying him its use, she pulls it free and hands it over.
*
Ben is rooting around the dubiously appointed kitchen cabinets when Finn finds him. It’s unusual for Ben to have anyone else on the ship and so footsteps that aren’t his own sound strange to his ears, foreign, but not unwelcome in this case. Taking stock, he finds nothing of use save for a half-finished bottle of brandy. Fingers wrapped around its neck, he turns and rocks it back and forth, sloshing its contents. “Maybe for after we pull this off?” he suggests, possibly feeling Finn out, possibly not.
He senses nothing that suggests Finn is interested. Nor should he be, really. They don’t know each other after all. And Finn has no reason to think of Ben as anything more than a useful tool in the fight against the First Order. Whatever Ben is thinking and feeling is Ben’s problem alone.
“Yeah,” Finn says, awkward and clipped as he scrubs his hands over his arms and refuses to meet Ben’s eyes. “Sure. Whatever you want. I just—wanted to thank you. For helping us. I’m sure your mom will pa—”
Annoyance fans itself into genuine anger in the cradle of Ben’s chest. “Don’t insult me.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I’m sure you didn’t.” Returning the brandy to the otherwise bare cupboard, he sighs and leans heavily against the cramped counter before pushing off and skirting past Finn. His steps are plodding, heavy, like his feet want to fight him on his desire to escape Finn’s orbit. “We’ll be there in less than thirty minutes. I suggest you get ready.”
“Ben,” Finn says and there’s a plea in Finn’s voice that Ben wills himself to be strong enough to resist.
“It’s fine. Most things are about money,” Ben says. “You’re better off making that assumption than believing the best about people. It’ll get you a lot further in life.”
Before Finn can say anything else, even though Ben wants him to, he strides toward the back of the ship where the handful of private rooms that served as Ben’s quarters and guest housing reside. Finn doesn’t follow.
Ben doesn’t expect him to.
*
“Did you know Haysian smelt is the best conductor in the galaxy?” Ben asks, handing the pendant back to Rose. She clutches it to her chest and nods. There’s no time for her to put it back on, so she shoves it into her pocket and gets on with working on the tracker.
Finn’s eyes settle heavy on the back of Ben’s neck. Ben very deliberately does not turn around to look at him. He’s not good with trackers, but he feels the need to keep an eye on her work. Just in case there’s something nasty up the First Order’s sleeves that he can help with. That’s definitely why he doesn’t acknowledge it.
Rose works quickly and efficiently, offers a victorious shout just as alarms begin to sound. Finn’s already shouting over the comms at Poe until he, in turn, is shouting at General Organa that they’ve got time.
Six minutes. Enough time for the Raddus to jump. Not enough time for the three of them to make it in time for that jump.
“You can’t give me the rendezvous coordinates over comms, Poe,” Finn is saying, exasperated, hushed now as they sneak their way back to the Mirrorbright. Right under First Order noses. Should a lucky patrol catch them, they’re toast. And it’s obvious that Finn doesn’t like that fact one bit. If there’s one thing Ben has noticed about Finn, it’s that he does not like improvisation. He doesn’t like not being in charge, not knowing exactly how his plan is going to play out. It makes him cranky. He lashes out.
Ben kind of likes that about him, that impatience.
“I’ll get you back,” Ben says, fierce, full of certainty. What’s left of the Resistance will jump and he’ll scour hell itself to find them for Finn. His eyes find Rose’s, too, and he nods at her as well. “Finn, you’ll make it back, I promise.”
Finn only pauses for one moment before saying, “Poe. Do it. We’ll find you. Tell—tell General Organa it’s her son helping us.”
Whatever Poe’s answer is gets lost in the shouts of stormtroopers, in blaster fire and explosions. They race and race and race and suddenly the Force is very much with Ben Solo as they reach the ship, as he disengages every safety feature known to galactic kind in order to go to lightspeed from within the Supremacy itself, and punches it, shooting the ship into space just quickly enough to see the Resistance’s capital ship go to lightspeed, safe for another day.
Ben wastes no time; he might not be able to ride their coattails exactly, but he can get them in the vicinity and from there…
From there, they might get somewhere.
*
Ben’s nerves are still jangling even once their safe in dock on a neutral, isolated station, out of the way enough that Ben can relax if he wants to. They have room to rest and regroup while the First Order tries to figure out how they managed to lose a limping, useless capital ship that was nearly out of fuel and allow a glorified pleasure yacht out of its own hangar without managing to take anyone down in the process.
They’d all pay for it one day, Ben feels that, but it’s not today and that’s the only thing that matters.
Today, the Resistance has a chance and Ben has managed to accomplish something more important than performing parlor tricks for rich idiots who only live to fuck over other rich idiots for riches they don’t need or for cachet that they also don’t need.
And Ben is so on edge, even locked away in his own quarters while Finn and Rose make themselves at home everywhere else, that when the door chimes, he startles. His heart climbs his throat and lodges itself there, threatening to choke him. He’s not sure he can breath around it or speak and there’s really only one person it can be and that, that just makes his palms sweat as he rises, unsteady, to open the door, still unsure how he’s supposed to say anything when his blood is throbbing in his ears so loudly that he can’t hear anything…
“Finn,” he manages, an effort of gargantuan proportions, so much harder than pulling off this ridiculous job. “Hey.”
He steps back, let’s Finn in like any good host would, hopes Finn makes this quick. But Finn is curious, he looks at everything around him, reaches out to touch the miniscule desk, the empty shelf above it. Ben had always intended to make the ship his own, he just hasn’t had time yet or the care to do it.
“You’re something else,” Finn is saying, though Ben’s having a hard time processing what he’s saying because he might have lost the First Order jacket, but he’s still got the undershirt on and that’s just… not entirely fair from Ben’s perspective. Not when it’s so clear that his training has served him well in at least one respect.
“You want a change of clothes?” Ben blurts because he’s not very interested in finding out just what else he is in Finn’s eyes and the best way out of conversations you don’t want to have has always been changing the conversation entirely.
“What?” Finn’s voice grows sharp, concerned, like he’s the one who’s been pushed off-keel and he’s not happy about it. “I…”
“There’s probably a shop on the station promenade,” Ben says. “Or you can borrow something of mine. You’re both welcome.” Wincing, he shrugs. “Might not fit very well, but those uniforms aren’t all that comfortable either.”
Finn considers this for a moment and shakes his head. “That’s… thanks.” His throat bobs and his eyes cut away. “I’d appreciate that.” When Ben moves toward the closet, though, Finn lifts his hand to stop him. “Just. Not right this second. I just—want to get something out first.”
“Oh?” Ben shouldn’t want to know. But he does. Oh, how he does.
Finn’s stopped him when they’re within feet of each other. Only a few more steps would bring them within arm’s reach. Ben does not take those steps.
“What you did back there,” Finn says. “It was a lot to put on you in a short amount of time. And I don’t even know why you did it. Hell, even I was only doing it to help my friend at first.”
“That’s a noble goal,” Ben points out, unsure where this is going, but knowing that it seems like Finn needs some encouragement.
Barking a laugh, Finn shakes his head. “I don’t think Rose would agree with you on that. But I—somewhere along the way… it’s important to do things because it’s the right thing to do for everyone. Even when it scares the shit out of you. It’s not enough to run and maybe save one other person in the process. Rose showed me that sometimes you have to do more than that if you can. You, uh. You showed me that, too.”
Ben rolls his shoulder, turns away to hide the flush that begins creeping up his neck. “They must be special to you, your friend. Most people don’t get past the ‘scares the shit out of you’ stage.”
Finn laughs again. His boots brush against the carpet as he takes a few steps forward. “She is. But my point is you risked your life for us and you didn’t even blink.”
“I’m sure I blinked,” Ben says, purposefully misconstruing Finn’s meaning to break the tension that is building as surely as a storm rolls in on a summer evening, set to start wildfires in the brush. Sucking in a deep breath, he places his hands on his hips. “Finn, what is this?”
“Maz said you had a good heart,” Finn replies, no answer at all. Maz always had had a soft spot for Solos and scoundrels. “I want you to know I see that. I admire it. I—”
Ben’s heart throbs, seems to flip itself over and restart itself, pounding so hard Ben could’ve just run miles by the feel of it.
He feels that breathless suddenly, too, every ounce of air in his lungs utterly consumed, annihilated. “You what?”
“I don’t know,” Finn admits, a little lost sounding. “But I like you.”
A smile hooks itself in the corner of Ben’s mouth and pulls. It aches a little, bit in a good way. “I’m glad. You’re not so bad yourself. Could learn to relax a little maybe, but not so bad all the same.”
Finn tips his chin up in challenge, lip jutting as he firms his mouth into a playful scowl. “I can relax.”
“Not according to those shoulders, you can’t. You look like you’re going to snap your collarbone in two.” And Ben wants to help with that, he really does, but the key to becoming a galaxy-class slicer is knowing when to execute a command and when to hold. And now is definitely the time to hold.
Ben’s not sure there will ever be a time to do anything else. Finn sounds pretty hung up on this friend of his and Ben doesn’t want to be a spanner in the works. Not for a night. Not ever. He already likes Finn too much to succumb to his intuitions that they could have fun together.
Ben’s intuitions, whether accurate or not, have never led him anywhere he wants to go. He wouldn’t have found himself gloryhounding his way through Canto Bight if not for intuition.
Finn will be a good friend. That’s more than Ben has ever really had before.
He holds his hand out and doesn’t let himself memorize the smooth, solid weight of Finn’s palm pressing against his own. “Thanks, Finn. For thinking better of me than I probably deserve.”
Rolling his eyes, Finn tugs him forward and for a minute, Ben is sure he’s going to be hugged and he’s not ready for it, not at all, doesn’t want to know what that feels like, too.
And then Finn grins and punches him on the shoulder.
Yeah. Definitely not going anywhere with this one.
Good to know that now though.
*
Ben stands before his mother in his best suit and does his damnedest to keep from fidgeting as she looks him over. He hasn’t seen her in years, not since he’d reamed both her and Uncle Luke out and decided being a Jedi wasn’t for him and told them that they could both kindly fuck off because he hadn’t yet learned how to not be an abrasive asshole.
(He could still use some help in that department, but he can acknowledge that in a way he couldn’t in his early twenties.)
“Well,” she says, and though they haven’t seen each other in more years than Ben cares to remember, he can still read her face as easily as he could a book for children. “This is unexpected.”
Ben glances back at the group next to him. Finn and Rose and Rey. Rey, the infamous friend. And Poe, apparently a little put out by the discovery that his commanding officer’s son is a scoundrel of limited repute. “They spoke with Maz,” Ben answers. “Is it that unexpected? She could’ve put them in touch with the former Master Codebreaker. They still talk as far as I know.”
“Maz is like that,” Han says from Leia’s other side, arm around her shoulder, not surprised in the least. “Been awhile, kiddo.”
“Everyone knew where to find me,” he replies, unable to feel guilty about this at least. He’d needed to go. That he’d ended up in Canto Bight and had successfully navigated those vicious waters was… unusual.
“Glad you’re back though,” Han answers. The last time they’d talked, all Han had said was he could come back when he was ready, that he understood the need to leave, that he left sometimes, too. It wasn’t bad, leaving, as long as you came back.
And so did Leia, even if it didn’t always seem like it. He’d said that, too, and now it seems his father had been right.
“Are you staying?” Leia asks.
Ben looks back at Finn, who gives a deliberate, questioning tilt of his head in response.
“Yeah,” Ben says thickly. “I think I might.”
“Well, that’s something.” Now she’s smiling as widely as Han is. And she steps toward him, arms open, to wrap him in a hug that somehow feels all-encompassing even though she only reaches his shoulder, really. He hasn’t cried in years, hasn’t felt the once familiar sting of tears since before he struck out on his own, still a kid and fragile, the darkness of his thoughts and the Force too much for him. They won’t fall now, even though his nose gets a little stuffy and his features flush with warmth, but the fact that he can still feel this way at all over something as simple as a hug is…
It’s not a bad thing, he doesn’t think.
*
Leia shows him to his quarters, sparse and undecorated, not so very different from his appointment on the Mirrorbright, but nothing at all like the apartment he keeps in Canto Bight, rich and oppressively luxurious, a pain in the ass whenever he comes back to it. He’s comfortable here immediately, though, and wonders at the possibility that he’d been hasty and impatient as a younger man, too fearful to make the right decision, to stay with his family.
He’d become a slicer because it was came easy to him and he was good at it.
He’d become the Master Codebreaker because he hadn’t known any better. Up for a challenge, up for anything that stopped the monsters that crawled around in the back of his skull, he’d broken the Master Codebreaker’s various and myriad encryptions and then he’d said yes. And it had worked for a long time, longer than he’d truly hoped. As much as he now regrets the time he’d wasted, he can’t deny the work had been there at a time when he’d most desperately needed the distraction the danger-tinged frippery of Canto Bight offered.
Keeping from getting arrested or shot or beaten to death for daring to poke into datastreams he had no business being in kept him from thinking too hard about his own life, the dark thoughts that still sometimes swirl in his brain and had only grown worse when he’d tried to stay with Luke and train. They’ve become the faintest whispers over time, easily overcome, easily borne and batted aside.
That may well have been the case anyway. Perhaps that patch of darkness in his adolescence would always have been bad, but he has no way now to find out if his blame had been appropriately doled out.
The door sensor chimes, less polite than some alarms and definitely intrusive, but not unwelcome for that.
“Come,” he says, expecting perhaps his father or maybe his mother again. He doesn’t expect Finn or the brilliant smile on his face as he enters and surveys the room.
“So you’re staying, too?” Finn asks, like he hadn’t already had it confirmed, like he’s desperate to hear it again. “Seriously?”
“This isn’t the worst place I’ve ever been,” Ben answers. “I don’t see why not.”
“How can anything be better than Canto Bight?” And though Finn is teasing, his tone betraying his hard-won knowledge of Canto Bight’s less-pleasant aspects, there’s a hint of insecurity there, a touch of concern. It’s true enough Ben had gotten to see the best it has to offer, too, but those peaks, high as they are, are ironically shallow.
“Canto Bight is boring. At least the people here are interesting.” He’s not sure yet how true that is. There’s at least two people here who are interesting. He supposes his mother and father are interesting, too. Jury’s out on Rey and Poe, though anyone who idolizes his father and mother as much as they do respectively are bound to be some brand of utterly ridiculous deep down inside.
“And you’re a good man. This is where you want to be.”
Rolling his eyes, Ben offers a compromise. “I do good things sometimes. Maybe. It’s not the same as being a good person. Good people are hard to come by.” You’re one of them, Ben doesn’t say, because he’s not sure how to form the words without giving them more heft than he wants them to have. Everything he feels right now has too much heft, like there are weights wrapped around his ankles and wrists and emotions.
Finn takes a handful of steps into the room. A quiet challenge flares in his eye. “If that’s what you want to believe.”
Ben’s eyes flick down to Finn’s mouth as he mentally forms the words that’ll win him this argument, all sorts of words he’s not able to voice, reasonable words, rational words. There’s no real point in teasing; it’d make things easier if he could cut himself off at the pass, form a cool, professional relationship with Finn. Starting here and now. But, again: not a good man. Not a strong one either. And there’s something about Finn that makes him want to tease. “That’s no way to convince anyone of anything,” he says, equally teasing, unable to help this either. It’s that scoundrel’s blood in him. Gets him every time.
“Do you want to be convinced?”
Turning on his heel, Ben moves toward the miniscule, plastoid table that stands in the corner and nods toward the two chairs sitting around it. “Everyone likes to be convinced, don’t they?”
“I don’t know,” Finn answers, following Ben. “I care if you want to be and if you even can be. But it seems like you enjoy being contrary just for the hell of it.” He sits across from Ben and leans forward, elbows perching on the table. He gets as close as the artificial boundary of the table allows. It’s far too close for Ben’s comfort and not close enough. The smile on Finn’s face gives Ben hopes he shouldn’t harbor.
They don’t even know each other, not really. The only thing Finn knows about Ben is Ben’s willing to help, that he’s related to the biggest heroes the Rebellion ever produced and that means something to him. But that’s not who he is. And Ben knows that Finn risked everything for a girl and found a cause instead. That says a whole lot more.
“You’re sure as hell not hearing what I’m saying.”
Ben’s heart does that thing again where it flips in his chest, emotions slipping easily through his grasp as he tries to keep them in check. What the hell do I have to lose really, the same part of him that got him stuck with the mantle of Master Codebreaker says. “Then say it louder.”
“Only if you buy me dinner first,” Finn says.
Ben grins and ducks his head to hide the first blush he’s experienced in years. “Sure,” he answers, “let’s just liberate a ship. I know a good place on Setith V. Neutral world. No First Order presence to speak of. Best braised ribs you can get this far from civilization.”
It’s a nice dream, a foolish dream. And one that Finn waves away with an imperious gesture. “I think I’d prefer closer to home, but I don’t hate the way you think. What’dya say we hit the mess and go from there?”
He says good and he asks if its a date.
Finn says yes.
And Ben doesn’t even need to bet that it will be. Good, that is.
He already knows.