Don't Leave

Chapter Seven

"Ben," Leia's body language was tight, "we always wanted to tell you, when the time was right."

"Tell me what?" Ben scoffs. His body language is dangerous; he has he hands clasped together tightly resting on his knees.

You sat there in silence. You knew of Darth Vader – everyone did. The turmoil that he had caused across the entire galaxy was enough to ruin generations; even you had felt the ramifications that he had brought to your home planet.

"Ben, it's true." Leia closed her eyes tightly, "Darth Vader is your grandfather, but you should know –" before Leia could finish her sentence Ben had stood up and darted into a room off to the corner, you could hear him pacing and decided to follow him.

Leia never opened her eyes as you passed by her to get to the room Ben went into.

He was pacing quickly from one end of the room the other while digging his fingers into the tops of his legs. He never looked up as you walked through the doorway, you stood in the doorframe and watched him, pondering what the best approach to comforting him would be.

"Ben," you say softly, keeping your eyes on him to make sure he doesn't do anything rash.

"Go away." He never picked his eyes off the ground, if anything his pace only quickened with the knowledge of your presence

"You know I'm not going to do that." You push your voice to be a bit sterner, "You said yourself if things got tense we would leave." Your eyes follow him as he slows down, "I think it's time to leave Ben."

Ben shakes his head 'no', turning to finally face you and picking his gaze up from the ground to meet your face.

You can feel every emotion he is feeling at the moment as if he is projecting them onto you. You feel his disappointment, his anger, his betrayal, and more importantly you can feel the darkness flowing through him more than usual.

You take that as an indication that you needed to do more than just stand and stare at him as if to just be waiting for him to act upon his emotions. You slowly walk across the room, keeping your eyes on his as he watches you carefully as you approach him.

You grab his wrists tightly and pull them away from his thighs. His eyes haven't left yours, but his lips have opened just slightly. You pull his wrists up to your waist where you carefully place them around you, you take a step closer to him and allow yourself to wrap your arms around him, embracing him completely.

As soon as you wrap your arms around him his entire body drops and you can feel him shaking as you hear him sobbing into your shoulder.

"I'll never be good (y/n). I no longer have that choice." Ben says between tears.

Your body freezes and you push Ben off of you, locking your eyes with his you can see the panic in his face, "That choice is yours Ben. No one else's. Especially not a dead relative – even if that relative is Darth Vader."

Ben tries to push himself back into you, to be held again, but you keep your distance.

"I'm not going to sit here and let you throw away everything we've worked together on just because of this bump in the road." You grab his head in your hands and tilt his head up. "If you're going to embrace the darks side it better be for something better than this." You spit out.

He watches your face as you never falter in the words you say, it's as if he is waiting for you to keep talking but you had said all you needed to say.

You weren't going to tell Ben he couldn't embrace the dark side – you thought the Jedi and the Sith both had their flaws, and you weren't sure which one was the better of the two – but you knew Ben's conflict, and this wasn't the right time for him to throw away all the progress he has made in the last fourteen years.