Saga - ST Kylo's Metaphysical Life Day Journey [A Multi-Chapter Fic Gift for gizkaspice]

Title: Kylo’s Metaphysical Life Day Journey

Author: devilinthedetails

Characters: Kylo Ren/ Ben Solo; Vader; Han Solo; Leia Organa Solo; a festive medley of Original Characters.

Genre: Drama; Humor; AU; some time travel.

Timeline: Saga-ST with AU and time travel elements.

Summary: A series of ghostly visitations take Kylo Ren on a metaphysical journey that just might set him on the path of redemption before Life Day.

Gift-Fic Note: This story was written for @gizkaspice in fulfillment of the following wish:

“A ST story where Kylo Ren is pulled into a different dimension or an alternative SW timeline–the writer gets to decide. The story must include something bizarre that happens, whatever this is up to the writer. It may or may not include a cat.”

Happy Holidays to @gizkaspice ! Thank you for the opportunity to write this odyssey across time and space. You truly inspired a tale I never would have imagined or told otherwise. I hope you enjoy receiving this fic as much as I enjoyed writing it and giving it to you. Best wishes for a happy 2024!

Author’s Note: This work is heavily inspired by the classic Charles Dickens novella A Christmas Carol. Please consider this work an homage to that as well as to Star Wars rather than any sort of attempt to steal credit from a literary master.

Rejected Invitations to Charity

It was the day–as near as one could approximate a day aboard a military vessel hurtling through the black void of hyperspace faster than the speed of light, so that one was continually leaving time, space, and light behind one in a sense–before Life Day.

Not that Kylo Ren, mercurial and imperious second-in-command of the First Order that sought to rule over the entire galaxy with a clenched durasteel fist, cared that it was Life Day Eve. He sat holed up in his office. Hunched over his desk as he plotted more ruthlessly efficient ways to track down vile enemies to and traitors of the First Order.

His turbolaser sharp concentration had already been interrupted when a misbegotten batch of troopers in berry bright off-duty fatigues had arrived at his door. Had regaled him with the first horrid strains of a wretched Life Day carol before he could slam it in their obnoxiously cheery faces.

He had screamed at them until the throbbing veins in his temples threatened to burst. Then dispatched them all to a punitory round of extra sanitation duty. Effective immediately.

The troopers had all gone off to empty moldering trash bins into the noxious waste compactors and to scrub the stinking communal freshers into inspection-passing sparkly cleanliness. Their arms wrapped like wreaths about each other’s shoulders. Still singing a horrible holiday tune at top volume as they vanished down the corridor to the miserable labors to which they had been so recently sentenced.

A scowling Kylo Ren had returned to his desk. Glowered at the blue-lit screen of his datapad as his furious fingers pounded out an irate communique to General Phasma. Berating her for not keeping a tight enough leash on her troops. For loosening her grip around Life Day of all times when revelry could so easily overtake solemn duty. Ordered rather than suggested that she give her soldiers less to sing about. Less to be merry about at Life Day or any other date on the calendar.

He had felt a vindictive flare of satisfaction watching his communique fade into the ether. Knowing it would instantaneously materialize in Phasma’s inbox across all her synchronized devices. Tagged with the angry, dangerous red flag that marked it as urgent. Unable to be ignored unless she was foolish enough to risk the ignominy of an unceremonious execution by his lightning-fast lightsaber.

As if the unhappy memory of this disturbance had conjured another, a second knock sounded on his door.

Kylo pressed a button hidden beneath his desk that unlocked his door. Snapped in a tone that he hoped would be enough to make even the most stout-hearted officer flee, “You may enter!”

His tone not a sufficiently menacing deterrent, two officers strode bold as Resistance scum into his sanctuary. His lair.

They were each wearing outfits that would not have been out of place on Resistance scum either, Kylo thought with a contemptuous curl of his lip. They had both for some unfathomable reason affixed sprigs of greenery to their uniforms. Obscuring the lapels and badges that should have indicated their ranks.

He considered demoting them both two ranks on the spot for their flagrant disrespect of military dress codes but found the motley hats with gleaming silver bells they both wore instead of their smart, crisp caps in what was doubtlessly some bizarre, tasteless tribute to Life Day too distracting.

“Would you like to donate to the Galactic Companion-Animal Rescue Fund, sir?” asked one of the officers. Lifting what Kylo realized to his ever-mounting shock was a feline with scarlet-and-white stripes. Scarlet-and-white stripes like the sweet and sticky peppermint sticks he had delighted in licking as a child before he had come to hate Life Day and all its attendant festivities, pageantries, and charities.

“Get that furry monster out of my face,” snarled Kylo. Retreating from the feline before it could cough up a hairball, scratch him, or leave striped fur on his clothes. He did not want his pristinely black outfit marred by any beast. “I might be allergic to it for all you know!”

“Are you allergic to it, sir?” The cat-wielding officer looked abashed for the first time. Cocking her head in evident concern. The silver bells on the tip of her ridiculous hat jingling in accompaniment to the motion.

“I might be.” Kylo glared at her and her peppermint stick feline for good measure. “You certainly didn’t bother to ask before you thrust it in my face. And I see no reason why I should donate so much as half a credit to your precious Galactic Companion-Animal Rescue Fund.”

“Because millions of companion-animals like poor little Stripes here find themselves abandoned on cold streets throughout the galaxy at this time of year,” explained the officer with what Kylo could only cynically regard as unseemly passion. “The shelters need money to feed them. To give them warm blankets and medicines for their sicknesses and wounds.”

“Their owners never should have abandoned them!” Kylo raged. The topic of abandonment a sensitive one for him. A trigger. A bitter reminder of how his parents, whom he had once loved and trusted, had abandoned him at Uncle Luke’s Jedi Academy so many years ago.

He was the second most powerful man in the First Order (that second most starting to grate more with every passing week) but in the dark recesses of his heart he remained that vulnerable boy abandoned by his parents. The small boy who felt so unloved and alone in the universe. He pitied that small boy he had been. That small boy he still was.

“Quite so, sir!” The feline-holding officer nodded her approval of Kylo’s vehement condemnation of those who would abandon their companion-animals on the galaxy’s cold streets. “Will you be donating then?”

“I will not be donating,” growled Kylo. Marveling at how obtuse she was. “Their owners are responsible for feeding them. For giving them blankets and medicine. Not me.”

“Perhaps you would prefer to extend your charity to the First Order Orphan Support Fund instead?” suggested the second officer in a swift, placatory manner. “There are many orphans throughout First Order space–some the sons and daughters of fellow soldiers killed in the line of duty–who need a roof over their heads. Provisions. Access to education and medical care.”

“Can they not enlist in the trooper training program?” Kylo arched an eyebrow. Children enrolled in the trooper training program received free provisions in the mess or in carefully portioned field rations, board in the trooper barracks, and First Order uniforms in exchange for their lifelong military service. Desertion punishable by death of course.

It was a truly generous program. An embodiment of how benevolent the First Order under Snoke could be. Kylo was certain that the New Republic had never implemented a program so sweeping in its charity. Probably even the Old Republic at the apex of its glory had never contemplated such charity. And here was an officer of the First Order begging on behalf of lazy, ungrateful children. The insult was not to be tolerated.

“Not all wish to enroll, sir.” The second officer sounded as if he were convinced Kylo was a shuffle short of a playing card. “Nor do all have the talents and physical abilities to ensure that their enlistment applications are accepted. Many are rejected for a lack of strength or other such issue.”

“Then they are useless to the First Order!” Kylo’s jaw tightened. “I never slack in my duties to the First Order. I will not aid and abet any indolent ingrates who wish to evade their responsibilities to the First Order. Nor will I coddle those weaklings who are not strong enough to serve the First Order. It is the way of the universe that only the powerful survive, and we would be worse than fools to seek to interfere with how the universe operates. Its laws cannot be broken by anyone. So, I will not be donating to your stupid charities. Now get out of my office before I have you both court-martialed.”

This threat spurred the two officers into a hasty retreat. Leaving a fluffy trail of peppermint stick striped fur in their wake.

Kylo muttered and swore under his breath as he noticed the cat hair. He would have to call in one of the janitor troopers to tidy it up. Yet another intrusion on his important work. Force, did he loathe Life Day and its eve.

 

@earlybird-obi-wan Thank you so much for reading and commenting! There should be some more fun and hilarious moments to come as the various ghostly apparitions call on Kylo, and also some more serious and emotional moments as well in keeping with the spirit of the Christmas Carol story that inspired this one. Kylo Scrooge is indeed an apt name for Kylo in this fic, as it was none other than Ebenezer Scrooge that inspired him. And the cat did have quite a knack for leaving hair behind in Kylo's orderly office As to what happens next, we might just find ourselves getting our first glimpse of who will be slotting into the role of Jacob Marley in this tale

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Thank you so much for reading and reviewing! It would indeed be a great accomplishment if Kylo can be redeemed, and probably would require quite a long tale to tell Longer even than I would have time to finish this month or next at latest, so this story might end more with Kylo starting down the path of redemption and change rather than being completely redeemed and changed...

I did get a chuckle out of writing Kylo's very snarky encounter with the officers seeking donations to charities because it really shows how nasty and selfish Kylo is at this stage just like Scrooge's encounter with the men who come to his shop asking for donations shows how cold-hearted Scrooge is at the outset of a Christmas Carol. I always felt that was such an important scene in the Christmas Carol that I wanted to provide my own version of it here to really define where Kylo is at the beginning of this story and hopefully show how he is starting to change and improve at the end of the tale. At least that is the current vision!

Kylo definitely isn't a cat person (or a people person) at the start of this story, but perhaps that is another area where Kylo can grow and improve before the story ends. We can always hope

---

Dark Masks and Feasts

Kylo did indeed summon a janitor-trooper. Ordered the menial to perform a deep clean of his office so that not so much as a fluff or single strand of cat fur remained when he returned to his office the next morning.

The cat the officer had held out to him, he remembered with an internal shudder as he left his office, had been a stray. Probably hadn’t been bathed in months. Likely was infested with fleas. Infected with a cocktail of contagious diseases.

He stormed down the corridor. His dark cape billowing behind him like a thundercloud. Troopers and officers alike parting before him like stalks of grain bowing before a strong wind. They saluted him, and he ignored them as if they were insignificant bugs to be crunched beneath his bootheels.

He reached the door to his private quarters. Punched in the alphanumeric combination–changed on a biweekly basis to ensure maximum security–into the keypad that granted access to his inner sanctum. Strode inside, the door automatically hissing shut in his wake.

His housekeeping droid–he had never bothered to learn its designation because it made no sense to care how a piece of machinery created only to serve identified itself–rolled over to him as he entered. Inquiring in a solicitous but tinny tone, “Should I fetch you a plate of dinner, sir? The officers’ mess is serving a feast of roast nuna, redberry sauce, mashed purple tubers, and seeded squash pie for Life Day Eve.”

“They are serving a feast tonight in the officers’ mess?” Kylo glared at his housekeeping droid as if it were to blame for the outrageous menu decisions of the officers’ mess. “Aren’t they stuffing themselves enough at tomorrow’s feast that they should be fasting tonight?”

“It is traditional to feast both on Life Day Eve and Life Day itself, sir,” the housekeeping droid explained. Foolishly answering what Kylo had deemed a rhetorical question. Causing vivid visions of dismantling it into smoldering cross-sections of disjointed spare parts to swim in Kylo’s brain. “Part of embracing the holiday spirit of bounty.”

“The holiday spirit of bounty.” Kylo jeered. Searching his quarters for convenient objects to smash in his fury. “They’re a bunch of gluttons! Making themselves fatter than the roast nuna they devour! Gorging themselves on the spoils the First Order raids throughout the galaxy!”

Spoils that should have been the sole purview of himself and Snoke to savor. To determine how to best employ. The officers were entirely too self-indulgent, especially around Life Day and its wretched eve, to be capable of the sacrifices true service to the First Order demanded.

Their softness only hardened him. Rendered him more resolved to fast. To deny himself pleasure. To make himself suffer. To reject all pathetic indolence and distracting indulgence.

Fasting made one hunger. Hunger with desires only the Dark Side could satisfy. Suffering was the ragged road to strength. To power. To mastery of the Dark Side. Snoke had taught him all that. Incising the bitter lessons into Kylo’s flesh and blood with the aid of that most memorable teacher: pain.

“Fetch me a bowl of gruel,” Kylo snapped at the housekeeping droid. “Unsalted. Nothing else will pass my lips this evening.”

“Yes, sir.” After this routine acknowledgement, the housekeeping droid bolted out of Kylo’s quarters as fast as its swiftly-spinning wheels would allow.

In a penitential, brooding mood, Kylo wandered over to the dark altar he had built to the blackest relic he possessed. The charred remains of the helmet–black as midnight, as soot, as outer space–that had once defined the most horrifying visage in the galaxy. The black mask that had haunted the nightmares of children from one star-studded spiral arm to the other. The black mask that was the only remnant of Darth Vader to survive the incineration of the second Death Star. The black mask in homage to which Kylo had crafted his own. The black mask of his maternal grandfather.

He knelt before it as he would to his Master. As he would to Snoke. Drinking the Dark Side that still emanated from it into his veins. Into his spirit. Drawing strength from that black lineage. That darkest of inheritances.

“Help me grow in power, a seed planted in dark ground.” He murmured his twisted prayer to his grandfather’s mask. “Infuse me with the strength to resist the Light. To reject all its treacherous temptations. Guide me along the path of the Dark Side so I may fulfill your destiny. Finish what you started.”

His door slid open as his housekeeping droid whirred in, bearing a tray laden with his unappetizing bowl of gray gruel.

Not wanting to be discovered in so humble a posture as kneeling even before so revered a relic as his grandfather’s mask by the non-entity that was his housekeeping droid, Kylo rose. Berated it with acidity vinegar would envy for neglecting to knock before it entered his most private of domains. Threatened to have it torn apart and abandoned in a dingy scrapheap on a backwater world where even scavengers wouldn’t find it if it was ever guilty of such disrespect again.

The droid emitted a stream of pitiful apologies as it placed the tray it carried on Kylo’s sleek, dark dining table and left Kylo to his miserable meal.

As the droid departed, Kylo slipped into the seat in front of the tray. Lifted his spoon. Dipped it into the bowl of gruel. Brought its lukewarm contents to his lips. Swallowed the gruel without tasting it. A mercy in disguise because it was unsalted as he had specified and watery to boot. As bland a meal as could be found in First Order territory that night, no doubt.

Bland but perhaps tainted with a peculiar breed of hallucinogenic pathogen that acted on him immediately. Making him hear the tinkling of bells as annoyingly merry as the ones affixed to the tips of the motley hats the irksome pair of officers who had invaded his office to beg for charity had worn.

Then, as if the bells were a herald, he heard heavy breathing. Distinctive and unmistakable in its terrifying cadence though he had never heard it before.

The breathing that had rattled and rumbled from Vader’s mask. Instinctively, his gaze flew to the altar where the charred husk of his grandfather’s mask lay, but the heavy breathing hadn’t emerged from there.

It had come from a dark figure floating in from the transparisteel viewport that sealed Kylo from the black vacuum and void of hyperspace. His besuited grandfather visiting him across time and space.

 

@earlybird-obi-wan Thank you so much for reading and commenting! Yes, Vader is coming to teach Kylo a most stern lesson indeed, and even Kylo's poor housekeeping droid isn't safe from Kylo's temper. But the housekeeping droid is lucky to be able to flee after serving Kylo that disgusting bland gruel, which Kylo is going to increasingly regret eating!

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Thank you so much for reading and reviewing! I'm so glad that you thought Vader was a terrific and perfect selection for a visitation because I know many fans (including myself) were wondering why Anakin never appeared to Kylo to tell him how misguided he was being during the ST, so I figured that Vader would make the ideal figure to slot into the Jacob Marley role in this story inspired by A Christmas Carol

@gizkaspice Thank you so much for reading and commenting, and I'm so thrilled that you are enjoying your gift fic

It's always fun for me to experiment with something new, and I am flattered that you think I am doing an excellent job with the prompt that you appreciate the Christmas Carol twist I am putting on it! And as soon as the idea for this story came to me I knew it had to be a multi-chapter one because there was no way I could fit everything into a one shot in a way that would do justice to my vision for this gift fic.

Yes, Kylo likes to display all his Vader memorabilia in his office and private quarters. He is a big Vader fan about to have the shock of his life when he meets his idol.

Kylo's childish temper tantrums are definitely a huge part of his character and will be a recurring feature in this story. At least until he starts down the road of redemption and reform. Then he might start to get a little more control over himself.

Kylo is a very whiny character indeed, and I imagine that Phasma like Hux is used to ignoring most of his tantrums with an eye roll

Kylo's thought processes, especially in fhe first chapter were exceedingly amusing to write since he overreacts so ludicrously to everything and his absurdly sensitive to the slightest perceived offense.

Oh, Kylo would have a lot of childhood insecurities and issues that he fixated on that he could discuss in great detail with a therapist. Which is really what he should have done instead of turning to the Dark Side.

Kylo in his Scrooge and early chapter mode is very much not a cat or people person. He is definitely a huge brat and jerk as his reaction to being asked to donate to charities indicates, and it is hilarious to see him try to mask his fears with the excuse that he could be allergic to cats.

Kylo does have quite the tendency to martyr himself and perceive himself through rose-tinted glasses and to think he works harder than everyone else and is better than everyone else. Just more Kylo Ren arrogance

Kylo definitely had a very active imagination picturing what the cat could be infected with. Once again showing his over the top, childish tendency to overreact and his inability to actually mask his fears.

I am so glad that you liked the corridor scene and felt it was able to so quickly capture both Kylo's arrogance and how he is perceived in the First Order.

Yes, Kylo is indeed about to receive a stern word from his grandfather!

I am so happy to hear that you loved everything about this story! And you are so right that Kylo can indeed give Scrooge and the Grinch a run for their money, and I can't imagine a greater compliment than that you could hear Adam Driver's voice speaking Kylo's lines in this fic because I did want to try to keep him in character so far despite the humor and zaniness of the plot line.

I do hope you continue to enjoy seeing Kylo on this ragged road to redemption complete with some humor and zaniness along the way. And I am so glad that you enjoyed Kylo's conversations with Vader's mask and his grandfather visiting him in the role of Jacob Marley.

Thank you again for the super kind words, and I hope you will enjoy this next installment as much as the first two

---

The First Unwelcome Visitation

“Ben Solo,” the black specter spoke in a voice that rattled with doom and portent. Sweeping further into the chamber.

“That’s not my name,” snapped Kylo. Ben Solo no longer existed. Had died the night he slaughtered his fellow students at the Jedi Academy. Had, like the other pupils, been too weak to survive. Too soft. Loathsome for that softness. That lack of a shell. Kylo Ren was strong. Growing in power every day. His dark mask his shell.

“My name–” he enunciated the syllables sharply as lightsaber strokes–”is Kylo Ren.”

“Your name–” If the specter had any expression or emotion, it was hidden beneath his mask; absent from his tone– “is Ben Solo. That is your true name. The one your parents gave you at your birth. The only one the Force recognizes no matter how much you deride and deny it.”

“My parents are fools.” Kylo’s lip curled petulantly. Sulky because he had never imagined that if his much admired grandfather did appear to him after so many prayers for guidance it would be to address him by a pathetic name by which he no longer identified and to take his parents’ part against him.

The very implausibility and injustice of this made a sudden hope rise inside him. This couldn’t be his grandfather’s black spirit after all. His grandfather would never act in such a way. Whatever temporary break with reality and the Dark Side might have torn through Vader like a tornado before his fiery end aboard the second Death Star. They only had lying Uncle Luke’s word that Vader had ever even suffered such a temporary divergence from sanity and the Dark Side.

This must be a hoax, Kylo decided. His ever present paranoia swelling like a bruise within him. Some trick devised by Hux and Phasma not in the jocund Life Day spirit (which Kylo despised as frivolous) but in the icily ambitious fashion of attempting to undermine and shatter him. To question his sanity. To undercut his authority and influence within the First Order. To challenge him. Their ambition would ruin them, not Kylo.

He could see beyond the petty snares in which they so jealously sought to entangle him. He would avenge himself on the treacherous pair of them. Longed to launch them into the nuclear furnaces of a thousand blazing suns. Realized with a ripple of disappointment that he would have to content himself with launching them into a sun once as that single launching into the inferno of a sun’s heart would be enough to incinerate them forever. Unless he discovered a way to manipulate the space-time continuum to such happy effect that he could travel back in time to relive a thousand times over that single, shining moment of triumph when he launched them into a sun.

Somewhat emboldened by the lustrous vision of Hux’s and Phasma’s flaming demises, Kylo sneered at the figure who was impersonating his grandfather. Not Vader. A lackey who would die for his temerity. Who would be executed along with Phasma and Hux.

“How can you be wearing that intact–” he lazily indicated the figure’s mask before drifting his finger to point at the charred one that served as the holy centerpiece of his shrine to Darth Vader–”to breathe and speak when it was roasted in the fires of the second Death Star?”

“The Force renews and restores all things,” the figure rasped, and Kylo rolled his eyes. Thinking that he had not asked for a Force philosophy lesson from a fraud. “Creates all things. It made me a new helmet so I might speak to you, grandson. Begin to set your steps on the right path again. Though it will be your choice whether you want to walk that rugged road to redemption.”

Kylo sputtered with inarticulate indignation at the preposterous notion that he would ever be so weak as to seek something as ignominious as redemption.

Snarled in an almost rabid manner once he regained the capacity for speech, “Who are you to presume to lecture me on the nature of the Force? You are a charlatan. A hack. A henchman of Hux and Phasma. You can no more touch the Force than a wriggling worm drowning in a puddle can spout feathered wings and fly.”

“I can touch the Force.” The figure lifted a fist. Clothed in a glove black as space. Silencing Kylo just as he regained his speaking prowess. “I will show you how powerfully I can touch the Force. How strongly I am one with it, and it is one with me.”

Before the specter had even finished this grim pronouncement, Kylo felt his throat squeeze as if tightly trapped in the suffocating embrace of a fatal noose. His lungs strain and spasm in a desperate quest for un-arriving oxygen. His eyes bulge like a warty toad’s. His very cells and blood revolt inside him. Screaming for air.

Stars swam silver in his vision, and he regretted making his last meal a bland bowl of unsalted, penitential gruel. He should have ordered that vexing housekeeping droid to fetch him a plate of roast nuna, redberry sauce, purple tubers, and seeded squash pie. Even though he did find the very concept of a Life Day Eve feast an almost ludicrous affront to his sensibilities.

Then, as abruptly as the strangulation had begun, it came to a close. His body collapsing to the floor in relief had the resumed flow of oxygen. His lungs heaved. Working overtime to make up for the breaths he had missed. His throat burned. Either from the cessation or restoration of breath. He massaged at it with a tenderness he had never displayed toward another living creature.

“It burns, doesn’t it?” The figure seemed somehow attuned to Kylo’s agony. As if the Force allowed him to read what was written in the secret corners and crevasses of Kylo’s mind. “Like I burned on Mustafar when most of my limbs were chopped off. When my skin and most of my organs fried. Forcing me into the suit that became my long prison and penance.”

Kylo didn’t know much about what had happened on Mustafar. Only knew that the planet was an extremely volatile, volcanic one on which Vader had built a fortress of evil. A temple to the Dark Side. Perhaps as a memorial to the place where he had been born from fire.

“It was a very menacing suit,” Kylo remarked as if commenting on a fashion choice rather than a medical necessity. Then drew upon the platitudes that Snoke had hammered into him for wisdom on how to proceed in the conversation. “And suffering makes us stronger when we obtain victory over it.”

“Suffering only makes us stronger if it makes us more compassionate toward others.” The specter shook his masked head as if Kylo had spouted folly like a geyser. “Toward their suffering. Toward their weaknesses and frailties.”

Kylo had no idea how to respond to such a statement that proved beyond a shadow of doubt that his grandfather had indeed lamentably gone insane and rejected the merits of the Dark Side when death claimed him on the second Death Star.

Kylo was spared the struggle of devising an appropriately biting reply when the black figure went on in a grave tone as if pronouncing some terrible sentence, “You will be visited by three more spirits tonight, Ben Solo. Expect the first as your chrono strikes ten. Expect the second at eleven on the dot. The third at midnight as Life Day Eve wanes into Life Day itself. These three spirits will offer your chance at redemption.”

“Couldn’t the three spirits come calling on me all at once?” Kylo didn’t bother to prevent a facetious edge from creeping into his voice. “Get my chance at redemption over with quickly?”

This ghostly version of his grandfather lifted a black-gloved hand. Used it to Force-shove Kylo against the wall before Kylo could summon his Force-shields. A slip Snoke no doubt would punish him for severely if present to witness.

“You mock the three spirits and the redemption they offer at your own peril.” His grandfather stared at him, and if there was sympathy beneath the mask, it was impossible to see. “You will suffer tonight, grandson, but whether your suffering makes you more compassionate to others only time and your own choices can tell.”

“Will you not leave me in peace?” Kylo clambered to his feet. Searching for his fallen dignity. “Until your wretched spirits come to torment me?”

“I will leave you to think. To reflect on what I have said.” The specter drifted back toward the viewport. Toward hyerspace. Toward the streaking sterling stars that were the millions of stars that comprised the galaxy. Providing life for billions of whirling worlds and trillions of beings absorbed in the tedious trivialities of their own lives. Lives Kylo saw as hollow and worthless. Especially in comparison to his own. “To await the arrival of the first spirit at ten sharp.”

 

@earlybird-obi-wan Thank you so much for reading and commenting! I'm so glad you thought the last chapter was great, and I hope you will enjoy this next one just as much! Anakin Skywalker did indeed give his grandson a strong lecture, and now Kylo will face another lecture from his next ghostly visitor, who will be revealed in this next installment...

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Thank you so much for reading and for the kind words! I'm so flattered that you thought this chapter offered spectacular dialogue with wisdom and insight on Anakin's side and petulant, ignorant bravado on Kylo's side. Our next ghostly visitor will also have some important wisdom to offer to our blustering Kylo Ren!

@gizkaspice Thank you so much for reading and commenting!

Kylo does indeed like to act as if he has the right to judge everybody by his warped standards

Kylo is extremely paranoid and does not trust Hux and Pharma, so he is constantly suspecting them of plotting against him, and his mind immediately jumps to the theory that this is some hoax they have concocted against him as you say. Even though in this case Hux and Phasma have nothing to do with these ghostly visitations.

I am so glad that part gave you such a big chuckle since I was amused writing it. Kylo definitely has his over-the-top tendencies that are on full display in the fact that the first plan that springs to mind for him as a way to get rid of Hux and Pharma is to shoot them into a sun. But then, being his over-the-top self, he thinks firing them into a sun once isn't enough of a punishment, so he gets to thinking about how he could manipulate time itself so they could experience being fired into the sun over and over again

Kylo would be quite skilled at writing really bad, over-the-top poetry; it would come naturally to him

And, yes, we see the first hint of a Kylo regret when he thinks he is dying. Even if his regret is only for a more delicious dinner. It is perhaps a starting point.

I'm so happy to hear that you had fun with this entry, and that you appreciated seeing Kylo being in denial that this was his grandfather, and Anakin teaching him a good lesson.

And in this next chapter, we will meet our next spirit...

---

The Ghost of Life Days Past

Once the menacing black-masked apparition had vanished, Kylo immediately set about convincing himself that it had not been real.

That it had been an unpleasant figment of his imagination induced by the swift onset of food poisoning from the spoonful of apparently spoiled gruel churning in his gut. Or else a hallucination conjured by some strange substance the treacherous Hux or the equally vile Phasma had bribed his housekeeping droid to lace his bowl of gruel with before bringing it to him. A housekeeping droid he would happily reduce to sparking, sizzling spare parts for betraying him.

Yet, did figments of imagination and hallucinations leave him with a sore neck from choking him?

It was an unfathomable mystery with depths he couldn’t plumb, he mused, massaging his throbbing neck gingerly with his dark-gloved fingers. Touch tender and tentative as a feather.

After his impromptu neck massage, he tossed the gruel that he blamed for all his current pains and problems into a garbage bin where some lackey janitor trooper could haul it to the trash compactor at what passed for tomorrow morning aboard ship. A stinking Life Day present for the janitor trooper in question. His backstabbing housekeeping droid would certainly not be in one piece long enough to do the honors.

After the offending bowl of gruel had been launched with extreme prejudice into the garbage bin where it belonged, Kylo swept into his adjoining sleeping chamber. Still scowling sulkily as he told himself that he could not have encountered the true Darth Vader. That there was no way the grandfather he had emulated and admired for so many years could prove to be as disappointing as his father and mother.

He huffed over to his closet. Yanked open the doors with a dramatic, temperamental air. Tugged a pair of pajamas off a metal hanger. Changed into them. They were midnight black like most of his wardrobe. Black was very much his aesthetic and style. He never had to worry about wasting time mixing and matching his clothing when it was all the same hue of intimidating black.

Once he had donned his cozy black pajamas, he curled beneath the dark blankets of his sleep couch. Impeccably made by his housekeeping droid that morning because he most definitely did not have time to squander straightening his own sheets to strict regulation standards as if he were some lowly trooper.

His mattress was firm to the point of rigidity though he could have indulged in a plushier one as many of the First Order’s highest ranking officers did. He did not want to be too comfortable even while he slept. Comfort risked making him soft. Weak. Worthy of being overthrown by a cunningly-plotting foe.

As he drifted into dreams, he briefly wondered about the three spirits he had been warned would visit him in the night. He brushed away the fear by sternly reminding himself that he had no more tainted gruel to consume and so no more hallucinations or figments of his imagination would materialize to strangle or scold him. On that fortifying notion, he allowed sleep to swallow him.

After what seemed only seconds, he was awakened by a piercing bright light that cut through even his shut eyelids. Opening his eyes to the almost blinding brightness, his squinting vision beheld a figure dressed in a robe white as fresh, untrampled snow. A figure holding a torch that shone with the orange-yellow burning radiance of a thousand suns in one hand and a long, cone-shaped silver cap in the other.

A cap, Kylo thought blearily, that might be large enough to snuff out the insufferable light emanating from the torch.

“Go away,” Kylo spat. Shielding his face from the light with upraised palms. “You’re ruining my sleep. Disturbing my much-needed slumber. I should have you executed–”

“Some things are more important than your beauty sleep, Ben Solo.” The figure’s voice, interrupting Kylo’s tirade, was unfazed by the threat of death. Which Kylo supposed made sense from a spirit that must technically be disembodied whatever form it appeared to assume. Beyond the mere mortal concerns of execution.

“I’m Kylo Ren, not Ben Solo,” snapped Kylo. Irritated that yet another alleged spirit was presuming to address him by a name he no longer used. A name that was dead to him. Connected to no meaningful identity.

“Your true name–given to you by your mother at your birth–is Ben Solo.” The spirit’s tone sounded uncannily like his mother’s wryly lecturing one. There was something in the spirit’s sharply beautiful face and keen brown eyes that was disconcertingly reminiscent of his mother as well. “And your true awakening–the awakening of your long dormant spirit–is far more important than your beauty sleep as I told you already.”

“Who are you to presume to advise me?” Kylo glowered at the affrontary of this too-bright spirit. “What is your name, oh most unwelcome guest who haunts and interrupts my sleep?”

“The Ghost of Life Days Past,” the spirit replied as if this were a perfectly sensible and straightforward name instead of a preposterous mouthful of gibberish.

“Of Life Days long past?” Kylo sneered. Mocking the spirit.

“No.” The spirit chuckled softly as if the joke were on him. “Of the Life Days of your past, and you are not ancient.”

Kylo was about to boast that he felt ancient, timeless, because of the strength of his connection to the Force when the spirit continued with a cool implacability that brooked no argument, “Come, and I will show you who I am. What I mean. Cast the bright light I carry onto your occluded past. Your history. Prove it is not so dark as you wish to remember it.”

Before Kylo could growl that the presumptuous spirit ought to leave him in peace to recall his own memories with whatever bleak bitterness he pleased, he found himself flying with the spirit. Back over the twin intersecting vectors of time and space. Tracing their glowing trajectories to a Hosnian Prime living room he recognized from his childhood. Would always recognize from the memories of his childhood. A living room merrily decorated for the Life Day holiday.

“It still exists?” Kylo sputtered. Gawking at the evergreen tree planted in a corner. Strewn with silver strands of tinsel. Glass-blown baubles of glacier blue, stardust gold, berry red, and mint green hanging from its branches. A pile of festively wrapped and beribboned gifts arrayed around its skirt.

“All things exist somewhere in time.” The spirit wasn’t looking at him, or at least not the present iteration of him. Was instead gazing as though transfixed at a baby being rocked in his mother’s arms as she crooned a traditional Alderaanean Life Day melody at him. A baby boy who had to be a past version of him because that was his mother, years younger and with far less careworn wrinkles etched into her features, rocking him. Singing in a voice he remembered from the cradle and crib. “Somewhere in space.”

Kylo stared. Deriving a strange solace from the idea that this moment still existed and endured suspended somewhere in time and space, as the baby boy he had once been was transferred from his mother’s arms to his father’s as the song came to a close.

His father took up a tune. A boisterous Corellian carol that could have roused pilots to lift tankards of ale in a spaceport cantina. That made a young Ben Solo clap his pudgy infant palms together in delight though he understood none of the words.

“That was your first Life Day,” the spirit narrated. As if Kylo needed someone to tell him his own life story. “Let us see another.”

They did not travel now–shuttling through the vortex of time and space–but the room around them shifted and changed.

The Life Day decorations remained much the same, but Ben Solo grew into a black-haired boy sandwiched between his parents on the sofa as they watched a holiday holovid together. Savoring an iced snowman cookie.

He remembered the crunch and the taste of that cookie now. Recalled how he had carefully nibbled off the snowman’s head. Then the remaining limbs. Only then devouring the snowman’s rotund stomach. He had always been meticulous. Precise. Attentive to details.

“I was so happy and innocent.” Kylo felt a cresting tide of inexpressible rage, resentment, and grief swell like a symphony inside him. “Before they took my happiness and innocence from me.”

“How–” the spirit arched an eyebrow– “did they take your happiness and innocence from you?”

“They didn’t give me everything I wanted. Everything I deserved.” Kylo felt the durasteel of old grudges solidifying within him. Hardening his heart against his parents who had once rocked and sang to him. “They sent me away from them because they thought I was dangerous. Little did they know how dangerous I could be after I had been scorned and spurned. They destroyed our family. Tore it apart. Then tried to pretend the fault was mine to balm their broken, guilty consciences.”

 

Caught up at last and am really enjoying so far! This is very much in the spirit of the Dickens novella, and Kylo works perfectly as the Scrooge figure. Kylo doesn’t just not understand Life Day and the concept of doing good for people other than himself—we see that he also woefully misunderstands the grandfather he lionizes so much, the sacrifices that his grandfather made in order to he redeemed, and everything that his parents (and uncle) did for him and tried to give him. It takes his grandfather’s reappearance as a ghost-but-not-really to get him just starting to begin to think, “huh, maybe it is me and not just some conspiracy by Phasma, Hux, Snoke, my parents, etc., etc.” (As well as “maybe I should have eaten that feast food instead of the gruel”—sometimes the stomach is where it starts, and that sure did sound tasty!) Of course, he still has a ways to go, as we see in that last chapter, where his takeaway from the Leia-like Life Days Past ghost and warm childhood Life Day memories is “they didn’t give me everything I wanted.” Without knowing it, he’s hit on the whole crux of the matter right there! Great work so far—I’m very interested to see where this will go next and what kind of experience Kylo will have with the Ghosts of Life Day Present and Yet to Come!

 

@gizkaspice As always, thank you so much for reading and reviewing! And, yes, nothing could be a more Kylo typical response than immediately setting about convincing himself his grandfather's ghost hadn't been real as soon as his grandfather leaves him

Kylo is extremely emo indeed. Especially in this story!

I think them watching the Star Wars Holiday Special is a completely valid and wonderful interpretation

That is the million dollar question Kylo still can't answer.

I think Han and Leia probably spoiled Ben a bit but also that Ben had a tendency to take any efforts to reign him in extremely personally as an attack on him and also that adult Kylo has a tendency to retroactively blame Han and Leia for everything so he is very much not a reliable narrator but a man with a twisted perception of his life and past.

It felt important to me to write about a baby Ben Solo because it showed that there was once goodness and innocence in him. Goodness and innocence in him that his parents loved, but a goodness and innocence that got corrupted by rage and hatred. I think Kylo's memories of some of the sweet moments of his past do start to soften his heart a bit (laying the seeds for a journey toward redemption) but he has to right away retreat back to what has become for him the comfort zone of blaming his parents for any suffering or doubt he experiences.

I'm so glad you got a chuckle out of that line as it quite amused me writing it

We will spend some more time with the Ghost of Life Days Past in this upcoming chapter and then the next before meeting our next spirit so stay tuned!

@WarmNyota_SweetAyesha Thank you so much for reading and reviewing this latest chapter! I'm so glad you enjoyed the cozy holiday memories in this chapter. More childhood memories of Life Day are going to hit Kylo and we are going to see him continue to stumble with that final bit that as you say is the crux of the issue. And unfortunately, he does indeed take Han and Leia sending him away for his own good as a rejection and an abandonment when it was not. A lot of his childhood misperceptions have been magnified over the years instead of him learning to take a more mature, realistic view of things. He has stayed a tantruming child in a man's body.

@earlybird-obi-wan Thank you so much for reading and reviewing! Kylo does indeed have some nice memories of his part with his parents, and that can maybe start him on the long road to redemption!

@Findswoman I'm so glad you were able to catch up with the story, and thank you so much for reading and reviewing! I'm so happy to hear that you felt that this was very much in the spirit of the Dickens novella that inspired it (which is one of my holiday favorites), and the more I write, the more I find that Kylo slots into the role of Scrooge perfectly!

You are so right that Kylo doesn't just fail to understand the concept of Life Day and doing good for people other than himself (since he has such a selfish mindset), but he also has misperceptions about the grandfather he lionizes, his parents, and even his own past that he must confront. And I couldn't resist having one of his first thoughts about how maybe he should have done things differently be feast-related because who wants gruel as a potential last meal and that feast did indeed sound delicious!

Kylo definitely still has a lot of room for growth ahead and needs many more wake up calls from the various spirits he will encounter on Life Day Eve. He will need to confront a lot of the fallacies he has harbored for so many years of his life if he hopes to find any redemption at all.

I hope you enjoy this next chapter and all the ghostly encounters still to come

---

A Life Day to Remember

“Let’s go back to that moment when they didn’t give you everything you wanted. Everything you thought you deserved,” the spirit suggested softly. Voice like a gentle melody. A light chimes of bells. “The Life Day your parents decided it was best to send you to train with your uncle.”

“We are before that moment,” Kylo pointed out wiltingly as he stared at the younger version of himself sitting on the sofa. Watching a holiday holovid. Wedged between the two parents who had yet to betray and abandon him. To destroy his innocence. To condemn him as a monster too dangerous to live with them. To ship him off like unwanted goods to be a burden to his Jedi uncle. “We’d have to go ahead in time, not back, to reach that horrible Life Day, wouldn’t we?”

All Life Days were horrible, but that particular one had attained a unique status of infamy in Kylo’s opinion as the one that had changed and ruined everything.

“You travel in time now only because I carry you as a mother does a babe in arms,” the ghost reproached him without rancor. “Do not presume to lecture me on its intricacies.”

Kylo opened his mouth to retort but snapped it shut again as the room shifted and swirled around him. Spinning through time until the scene coalesced into another Life Day past.

One where his younger self laid sprawled across the carpet. Pitching a tantrum. Pounding his fists against it. Legs flailing in the air. Face red as a blaring emergency klaxon from screaming and shrieking his fury.

A pile of opened presents ignored at his right side. A hillock of torn wrapping paper and ripped ribbons on his left.

But he continued to bawl with ceiling-rattling rage that he hadn’t gotten enough presents. That he hadn’t received all the gifts on his meticulously-written Life Day list. That they didn’t love him enough.

His wrath rippled out of him like a flame. Burning the Life Day tree to cinders. Melting the glass baubles to smoking ash.

Gazing down at this more youthful iteration of himself, Kylo saw for the first time how such ferocity of anger might be disconcerting to observe in one so young. Still, he didn’t understand why his parents sat motionless as stones on the sofa. Not rising to cluck over him. To comb their fingers through his hair. Cuddle him against their chest. Whisper words of comfort into his ears. That’s all he would have wanted, he was sure. Consolation. Assurances that he was loved and always would be.

His obtuse parents hadn’t realized the patently obvious. Had rejected him at the moment of his greatest need. Had banished him from their lives. First to his room in disgrace. Then to his uncle’s Jedi Academy under the guise of providing him training in the Force. A lie to sweeten a harsh rejection.

His mother offered that first rejection now. Ordering his younger self in a weary, worn tone, “Go to your room. Your dad and I will be in to talk to you soon.”

His younger self had lived long enough to recognize that such a talk spelled trouble and punishment in the imminent future. Stamped his way down the hallway to his bedroom. Shouting against the injustice with every protesting stomp. Pausing only to smash two of his new toys under his feet for maximum effect.

Kylo, accompanied by the Ghost of Life Day’s Past, trailed the boy Ben Solo down the corridor as if he were an apparition himself. Haunting his own past.

Managed to slip through the door before Ben slammed it closed with such fervor that it shook its hinges. Shadowed Ben as the boy sank onto the bed. Punched, sobbing, at a pillow.

With the sharp ears of the Force-sensitive, Kylo listened along with Ben as his parents discussed him in the living room. Heard his mom despair to his dad, “He’s been touched by blackness. Tainted by the Dark Side since he was in my womb, Han. His fury makes him a monster. He has too much Vader in him.”

“He has more of you and me in him than he does Vader.” Kylo could hear his dad reply and so could Ben. “Vader is his grandfather. We are his parents.”

“We are his parents, but we can’t control him.” His mom’s voice trembled, and Kylo loathed her for being so weak. So weak that she couldn’t control him even when he was small. That she would abandon him and label him a monster rather than try. Than risk failing. That she would surrender to her fears.“Can’t guide him as he needs to be guided. He needs to be sent to Luke. To learn Jedi discipline. To grow in peace and wisdom with Force-sensitive peers at the Academy.”

Ben hadn’t wanted to be sent away from his parents. From the brilliant mother who made him laugh with her bedtime stories. From the reckless father who took him flying with Chewbacca in the cockpit of the Millenium Falcon. Lucky dice rattling against the viewport.

Had howled all the louder. Loud enough to raise the dead, surely. To shatter the space-time continuum it was dawning on Kylo that he did not comprehend at all because it truly seemed that all times were the present and everywhere existed all at once in an overwhelming, confusing muddle of emotions and realities.

His mother and father stepped into his room. Claimed positions on either side of young Ben Solo on his increasingly crowded bed.

His mom ran a soothing hand along Ben’s heaving spine. Asked him to sit up so they could talk face-to-face.

Ben, sniffling, obeyed even though he knew what she was about to say and hated her for it.

“Ben, we think it is time you went to study with your uncle Luke at the Jedi Academy on Ossus.” His mother’s words echoed like exile in his ears. In the past and in the present. In the dimly and darkly understood recesses of eternity. “He can teach you things we can’t. Provide you with discipline and control. Help you grow in peace and wisdom.”

“I don’t want to grow in peace and wisdom.” Ben shook his head emphatically. Swiping snot from his nose with the cuff of his sleeve until his mom snatched a tissue from the box on his bedside table and wiped it. “I want to stay here with you forever.”

“It will be good for you to train with other Force-sensitive children.” His mother patted his quaking back. “To make friends with them.”

“I don’t want to make friends with other Force-sensitive children.” Ben pressed his palms together in a pleading posture. “Don’t abandon me. Let me stay here. I’m sorry I was bad and a monster, but I promise I’ll be good if you just let me stay.”

Ben had been such a naive fool, Kylo noted from the cynical dispassion of his greater age and hardened experience. In denial as to his true state. Frantically bargaining to reduce his grim sentence of exile. Promising to be good as if that would avail him of anything when he had already been rejected by his parents. Abandoned by them as a monster.

“We aren’t abandoning you, son.” His dad spoke gruffly. Huskily. Squeezing Ben’s shoulder. Tousling his hair. As if that could atone for rejection and abandonment. “You won’t be alone at the Academy. You’ll be with kids like you and with your uncle Luke.”

“And you aren’t a monster,” his mother added, hugging him to her, but he knew she was lying because he had heard her calling him that when she thought he couldn’t. He could see the black truth lurking in the shadows behind her lies. Waiting to pounce on him like a bloodthirsty monster. “You are good, and Jedi training will make you even better. Help you make the best of your innate talents. Your Force-given gifts.”

But Ben wasn’t interested in making the best of his innate talents and Force-given gifts. He was interested in having everything he desired and deserved. Everything his parents had denied and took from him. His stolen inheritance.

“Your parents wanted the best for you.” The spirit’s murmur made a mist of tears rise in Kylo’s eyes or maybe it was the memory of the boy he had been. Of his exile and abandonment. “They loved you and didn’t forsake you.”

“They sent me off to Luke’s wretched Jedi Academy by myself,” Kylo howled like a wild beast. Stunned that the spirit couldn’t see the gravity of his parents’ transgression. Their unforgivable offense. Their betrayal that meant he could never trust anybody in the universe again. “Where I never felt so alone as the Life Day Eve when I waited for my father to pick me up. To take me home at last.”

 

Oh, Ben… Even now, if his takeaway from the tree-burning episode is that his parents did wrong in not immediately jumping to cuddles and comfort after the destructive Sith tantrum he threw, he still has a LOT to learn. At least there is some small acknowledgment on his part that his behavior was, uh, a bit excessive, and maybe that’s a start? I guess we’ll see. From his reaction to his parents’ decision to send him to study with his uncle, I can see Ben has a lot of that “I hate you, don’t leave me” dynamic going on (which, incidentally, is a big component of some mental illnesses here in RL). The spirit is doing its best to help Kylo see that his parents really loved him and wanted the best for him, but as with Ebenzer Scrooge, it’s going to take several more trips through time before Kylo will be able to understand that for real. Thank goodness these spirits are persistent! Glad this is continuing, and I’m looking forward to more!