Ignite the Stars | Reader x Ben Solo / Kylo Ren

Ch. 1 | Resurrection

The dark is generous, and it is patient,
and it always wins
but in the heart of its strength
lies weakness:
one lone candle is enough to hold it back
Love is more than a candle.
Love can ignite the stars.

Matthew Stover - Revenge of the Sith

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Batuu isn't a popular hangout for law-abiding citizens. If someone is on Batuu, it's for a reason, and that reason usually isn't a legal one. The focal point of the planet is the smuggler's haven, Black Spire Outpost, which is why you're currently sitting in Oga's Cantina, waiting for a job opportunity to present itself.

Unfortunately, that means you have plenty of time to look around at the various ruffians you surround yourself with and contemplate how you became one yourself.

********

Some may say the last five years have been tough on you but you don't completely agree, not when you compare them to the rest of your life. Personally, you think you've done pretty damn well on your own for someone who has been on the run since you were fifteen. Technically you had some help at first but you don't attribute your survival skills to that.

For as long as you can remember, you've been alone in one way or another. You aren't sure what happened to your parents only that when you were six they left one day and never returned. You remember begging them to take you with them, then watching them leave when they didn't. When you were younger and trying to sleep, you'd replay what happened, hoping to remember something that would at least tell you why they left you behind.

The only thing you can remember is a man's voice saying, "I'll come back for you sweetheart. I promise." You assumed it was your father's voice because there were no other men in your life. For the longest time you believed your parents would eventually come back for you.

Being on your own meant you had to grow up quickly in order to survive and growing up meant being realistic. You knew they were probably dead somewhere. Even if they weren't, they weren't coming back for you. What happened to them and who they were didn't matter to you anymore. At first you would tell yourself that to make yourself feel better, but now it's true. You're genuinely okay being an orphan and a 'nobody.'

After your parents left you wandered around your empty house for days. It didn't take long for someone to notice you were alone. For a few years you stayed with the nice couple that had found you, Amee and Caben. They had always wanted a child of their own but couldn't conceive and were rather thrilled to have found you.

Caben fixed ships for credits but what he really enjoyed was building various things like droids and speeders from scratch. The work he did fascinated you. You were like his shadow the moment they took you in and tried to learn as much as you could from him.

One day, Caben asked you to go to the nearest outpost and pick up a part he needed for the speeder the two of you were working on. When you returned, both Caben and Amee were dead and their house was on fire. You grabbed the few belongings you had that weren't destroyed and left. Once again you were on your own but this time it was for a lot longer than before. That all changed when Luke Skywalker found you and in turn, changed your life forever.

*******

Shortly after turning fifteen, you managed to come to an agreement with a spice-runner you had accidentally run into. You agreed to help him fix his ship in exchange for food and a place to sleep. While working on his ship, an older man in tan robes approached you, claiming to be Luke Skywalker.