GIDEON (Star Wars)

A Plan to Save Home

Gideon's chest suddenly grew so tight she could barely breathe, her eyes widening slightly at her mother's statement.

They wanted to talk about Ben? About the cold blooded murderer who had the face of her own brother? Who went by the wretched, feared name of Kylo Ren? Never in a million years did she think this conversation would come. They never talked about her brother, not since they got word that he went to the Dark Side.

"What... what about him?" Gideon asked, her voice wavering only slightly. The thought of her brother used to bring her a sense of comfort, even when she knew he had turned dark. Before she had come face to face with him just a few days ago, she had never known what he was up to.

Like what she did with the rest of her family, she cooked up pleasant stories about where they were in their lives.

Now, after seeing how cold and cruel he could be, even to his own sister, the thought of him made her sick with mixed emotions.

"I know you saw him." Leia wasn't mad, or even upset for that matter. She seemed both curious and empathetic for her daughter, who was trying to suppress the bitter hurt she was feeling by the thought of Ben.

"Tell us what happened." Han offered.

Gideon shook her head, "There's nothing to talk about. He's gone... just like you told me all those years ago. I was stupid to think any different."

"You know that's not true." Leia reasoned, "You think there's good in him. I do, too."

To hide the glassiness in her eyes, the young woman trained her eyes on the floor, working her jaw as she remained silent. She was afraid that if she opened her mouth right now... she'd lose it.

Gideon didn't know what to think at the moment. She saw the good in Ben on their mission for the First Order. Even when he was cold and closed off, he showed her kindness. When he found out she betrayed him, he was hurt by her actions. He wasn't the heartless monster the rumors of the galaxy made him out to be, yet all she could think about was the pain of him ripping her mind apart with the very gift that was meant to bring balance.

"I did." She admitted, "But I'm not sure anymore, Mom. I don't know."

She remembered the look on his face on Nowhere, when she had cried out his name in a last act of desperation. For all that time they spent together, he had no idea who she was, and when he did it obviously shook something within himself. When she begged him to stop, he didn't see the criminal that he'd called her time and time again, but the little innocent sister she was when he left.

Tears clung to her cheeks, which Gideon wiped away before they had the chance to fall. She was ashamed of crying in front of her parents about something as hopeless as this. The captain had cried more times in the last seventy-two hours than she had in seven years, all because of her family.

"He's lost, and- and alone..." The woman started to explain, the words spewing from her mouth like vomit, "Whatever's happened to him... it's eating him alive, and he can't..."

Gideon shook her head, unable to say anymore without risk of flat out sobbing. Her hands were clenched into tight fists at her side as she held her breath, unable to look up and see the looks on her parents faces.

"We can bring him home." Leia grabbed Gideon's white fists, uncurling her fingers before the young woman had a chance to break through her palms with her fingernails, "If you still think there's a chance we can get him back, then there's hope."

"We should never have sent him to train with Luke." Han wrapped an arm around his daughter, "That's where we lost him."

He exchanged a look with Leia, who seemed to know where those words came from. Gideon looked between her parents, her dark eyes desperate for a shred of normalcy in her life. All she wanted after all these years was her family back, all in the same room.