"Luce?" My brother's voice came calling to me through the darkness of the night, the two of us in our shared bedroom on the Millennium Falcon.

"What is it, Benny?" I asked into the dark, using my brother's much-hated nickname in a form of subtle revenge for him waking me.

"I can't sleep," He said, his voice shaking slightly, and it didn't take being a Jedi Padawan for me to sense his fear.

He didn't need to say anything else, as I immediately knew what was wrong with him. A nightmare, again. Any annoyance I had for the situation had gone, and so I pulled myself out of bed, stumbling though the darkness to the other side of the room where his bed was. I hit my hand against the lightswitch, not trusting my sleep-fogged mind to focus enough to turn the light on with the force. As the room lit up I squinted through the brightness to see Ben huddled under his sheets as if using them as a barricade from his fear. He hadn't been crying, I could tell, so it wasn't as bad as usual, but he looked bright red, and the nervous look in his eye told me it had still been awful. I sighed, gesturing my head for him to move up and once he'd done so, I climbed under the sheets with him, wrapping my arms around his boney shoulders tightly and protectively.

"I don't want to feel scared, Lu," he said shakily, as if it was a confession. I shushed him gently, ruffling his hair reassuringly.

"There's no need to be scared, Ben," I told him, the way I'd told him many times before. "It was just a dream, and I'm here, I'm not going to let anything hurt you,"

"But... what if you get hurt? How can you protect me then?" He worried, to which I let out a single laugh.

"You think I'm gonna let anyone hurt me if their coming for you?" I whispered, fighting off a small smirk as every protective instinct in my riled at the thought of someone threatening either of us.

"It was the dream about... About Vader again," he whispered to me fearfully and I tried my best not to flinch, knowing the stories of the Sith lord vaguely from what our mother and uncle had dared to tell us. "He kept telling me to join him, to finish what he started. He said that there's more to or story than we know, and that there's so much we haven't been told,"

"Ben, our Grandfather was one of the most talented Jedi of his era, he was a celebrated hero of the Clone Wars, an excellent pilot, a cunning warrior and a true friend, remember Uncle Luke telling us?" I began telling him the story again, feeling him sigh against me. "Anakin Skywalker was a hero, and so is our Uncle and our parents, so we can't let Vader frighten us. He's nothing to us. Whatever he said, whatever wild connection you imagined to him is just a dream, just a silly little dream and you're better than a common Sith. Now try and get some sleep, alright, or Dad won't let you fly the Falcon tomorrow,"

"At least I'll still be a better pilot than you," he joked, his tone still serious until I gasped out a laugh which made him chuckle, especially as I elbowed him in the side.

The two of us fell asleep like that, the room light still on, wrapped in each other's arms, not knowing Ben's dream was the truth, that there was so much more to us than either of us could have known.

I jolted awake, tears pricking at my eyes as I took in a few deep breaths, trying to separate myself from the dream. I wiped my face quickly, sniffing as I pulled myself upto sit on the makeshift bed in the smuggling pit. Ever since I'd found the Falcon I'd refused to go near my old bedroom, our old bedroom, knowing it would just remind me of Ben. That seemed futile though, since I had still dreamed of him. I tried to force my mind away from him, reminded myself that it was a new day and distracted myself by rooting through the pile of clothes on the floor of the pit. I picked out a white dress once used for training, pairing it with black baggy trousers before attaching my weapons belt around my waist, making sure both my blaster and lightsaber were hanging from it, pulling my old Jedi Academy jacket on to finish the look, though even once I was dressed I couldn't stop thinking of the dream.

It was such a cruel dream, even worse than the ones that reminded me of how naïve I'd once been, because the only thing worse than my foolishness was seeing the memories of my brother's temptations and knowing I'd failed in every promise I'd made him. I'd promised him Vader had no hold on us, but only a few years later did we discover he was actually our grandfather, Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader being one. It was always kept a secret from us, hidden away by our parents and Uncle in order to protect us, but if anything it damaged us more.

The reveal wasn't made by our parents, but some sleazy politician hell-bent on ruining my mother's political career. One of the kids at the academy had heard the announcement, and so instead of Ben and I finding out about our family in a protected environment, we found out when Alec called us both Darth Solo and refused to train with either of us in case we tried to choke him. The nickname spread like wildfire, and though both of us swore it was all a lie, the morning we saw the Falcon land outside the Academy grounds with both of our parents saying they needed to talk to us with Luke, we knew it was true.

It was a hard thing to go from being trusted by our fellow Padawans, top of every class, excelling in the force, to everyone now thinking that anything we did was because of our bad blood. Some of our friends got over it, forgot all about our connection to Darth Vader or at least pretended as if they'd forgot about it, but for some they never forgot, and never let us forget either.

It was easier for me, my roommates at the academy deciding it didn't really matter. I turned my focus onto trying to prove everyone wrong, trying to be the best Jedi I could be, and for a while that seemed in reach. Except Ben's reaction to the news was much worse. The dark dreams seized him again, this time much worse, temptation striking him in ways I couldn't understand. I tried to talk to him, to get him to push away those emotions, but in the end it was all for nothing.

The last time I saw Ben, he tried to kill me, and I've been running from him and that memory ever since. Running was tricky, given the multitude of scars he left me with, never truly being able to forget him or come to terms with him not being Ben anymore. He'd tried to get me to join him, and my decision of refusal had nearly cost me my life.

I shook my head, rubbing my hands across my face in an attempt to clear my mind, but I knew it was useless. Being alone on Jakku had left me with nothing but my thoughts to keep me occupied, and there was only one real way I could deal with that. With a small sigh, I jumped up out of the pit and walked into the living quarters. I sat cross-legged on the floor, closing my eyes as I attempted to find my focus. I'd always been good at meditation and connecting to the force that flowed within and around me, and it was a skill I'd refined in my exile. I felt a wave of calm wash over me, before the force tingled around me, and I knew my attempt of summoning had been successful. I opened my eyes, and sat across from me was the force ghost of Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, young and handsome the way he'd looked in the Clone Wars and the sight of him made me feel so much better, knowing that I wasn't alone anymore.

"I'm sorry to summon you, Master," I said carefully, knowing that he was a figure that deserved respect. "But I had another dream last night, and it didn't feel as though it was one I could deal with alone. It was... It was Ben, Master,"

"Lucinda, you know dwelling on those dreams will do you no good," he sighed, offering me a reassuring smile. He was dead, long gone, but to hear someone else's voice, to hear someone say my name so kindly reminded me of what life used to be like before the sandy wasteland, and it was almost nice, if it wasn't for the situation. "Dwelling on dreams and on the past will lead you to nothing but suffering, to the Darkness you swore to fight,"

"I know," I said, my voice hoarse as I tried to control my emotions. I wanted my brother back so badly, yet I could barely think of him, knowing the thought of him could drive me to the dark. "I know that if I let them consume me I'll end up like my Grandfather. Ben is my brother though, Master, and I know there's still light in him. Surely it's not the Jedi way to give up all hope on him? Anakin Skywalker came back to the light, whose to say Ben can't be turned back too?"

"He may come back to the light, but that is his destiny, not yours," Obi-Wan said calmly, and the idea of not being able to help Ben frustrated me, something the force ghost sensed as he continued, "During my exile in Tatooine I often questioned myself on whether I could have brought your grandfather back to the light. You only want Ben to leave the dark side because you care about him,"

"You were exiled on Tatooine and I'm stuck on Jakku, convenient that it's always a sandy wasteland," I commented, flashing a small smirk, though my thoughts drifted to Ben and his temptations and I realised that there were still so many questions I had about the whole thing. "Why Snoke took an interest in my brother but not me? Why did Ben feel the call to evil when I didn't?"

"Temptation seems to target the men in your family much more than the women," he told me, and I frowned, thinking through my family history. "Your grandfather Anakin as tempted to the darkness and upon acting on his impulses became the strongest sith lord the force had ever seen, and even your Uncle Luke was tempted through his anger against the emperor. Perhaps Snoke saw the family pattern and thought your brother would have been a more formidable apprentice,"

"Ben always heard our grandfather, but never as Anakin, always as... Vader," I remembered, cringing as I spoke the Sith's name.

"Snoke's manipulation, I'm sure," Obi-Wan nodded, and my heart sank, my mind considering all the nightmares he had as a teenager, especially after we found out the truth "Ben was called to the darkness because of Snoke using your family as a weakness, a pressure point,"

"That bastard," I hissed. "But why didn't I feel it?"

It had always bothered me, why Ben was manipulated to the dark side, yet I felt nothing, no temptations, no voice in my head telling me to turn my back on my training and become something else. The last time I saw Ben he told me that the only way for us to fulfil our potential was to go to the dark side with Snoke, and if that was something Snoke had told him, why had Snoke never told me that directly? Ben and I were a pair in training, we worked better together, and I was also the grandchild of Darth Vader. I had as much of a connection to the dark as Ben, and though the thought of that terrified me, I had to know why I was left behind whilst Ben was taken.

"Perhaps you have, every emotion you felt since the fall of the academy a pull to the dark, but you didn't answer to it, which is all that matters," he said reassuringly, as if he sensed my fear of ending up like my brother, like my grandfather. "Your exile here has helped you deal with those emotions, but it's time to go home, Lucinda. These dreams you suffer from are a call from the force, not telling you to join your brother but to fight him, to fight the darkness. Your ast has brought you to who you are today, and you must not let your past be in vain,"

He was telling me to go home. I didn't have a home though, the First Order had made sure of that when they destroyed any home my family did have across the galaxy when they first rose to power, revenge for my mother trying to put a stop to them. The only home I'd known since then had been the academy and the resistance, but I could not go to either of those. The academy was ashes and rubble, a graveyard for my fallen friends, and the resistance had moved base since the last time I'd been there, no way for me to find them or track them down. I was stranded, alone, and even though at first I'd craved to go home, the mixture of fear I felt for my father coming back for the Falcon and seeing it gone and for the resistance to have left me behind made me stay, too scared to leave.

I wanted to go home though. I wanted to see my mother, to let her know that I was still alive and that I loved her and had missed her. She was my hero, after all. I wanted to see Poe too, my best friend that had helped me though everything. It was rare that I woke up and didn't crave to be by his side, the way we often woke up at base, since he'd sleep at my side to help me through my nightmares. I wanted to see him, and tell him that I was okay, and that I appreciated him for everything. I wanted to be with them both so badly, since they were the only two I really had, but how could I go home to them when I didn't even know where home was anymore?

I wanted to voice all of that to Obi-Wan, but as I hesitated I felt the force flurry around me, as if I as losing my focus and with that my connection to the force ghost. The force was calling me away to something else, and as soon as I felt that call there was the noise of an explosion outside of the ship, the Falcon shaking ever so slightly from the impact. My gaze shot in the direction of the cockpit, and when I glanced back to where Obi-Wan had been, he had disappeared. I wanted to be annoyed at that, since I had actually been enjoying the conversation, it being my first contact to anyone in weeks, but I was far too distracted by the thought of being found to revel in my annoyance.

Jumping to my feet, I ran to the cockpit to look out of the window, but I didn't really need my vision to confirm my instincts. I knew immediately it would be the First Order, who else would have fire power like that on this planet? They'd finally come for me, the way I always knew they would. Maybe they had Ben with them, or Kylo Ren, whatever he went by now. He'd come for me at last. Had Snoke finally told him to put an end to me?

Regardless, I was not going to sit on the Falcon calmly and wait to be taken. A Jedi might have done that, but I was also a Solo, and I wasn't going to go quietly. Glancing up to my father's gold dice, hanging up over the control panel for luck, I held my hand out under them, calling them to me before shoving the into my pocket, hoping they'd bring me luck for the fight ahead. With that, I ran from the cockpit to the ship's door, ready to step out into the Jakku wasteland for the first time in weeks, adrenaline fuelling me for the first time in years.

The door slid open and I sprinted down the ramp, squinting through the bright sunlight, my feet skidding slightly as I hit the sand. Glancing up, I saw in the cloudless blue sky a dozen or so TIE fighters, a sight I hadn't seen in years, though it was still just as terrifying, not to mention the squadron of storm troopers running across the sandy terrain, chasing after two people and what looked like a BB droid.

The sight of the storm troopers was scary, but what worried me more was the fact that I could not sense my brother around them. He was not there, and so they weren't coming for me. I wanted to feel relieved, but instead I was curious, wondering what the people they we re running after had done to deserve such a pursuit. I wanted to help them, the force calling me to them, though I did not understand why. There was something about them that called to me, and though I had no idea what, I knew better than to fight against my instincts in the force.

Those people, however, were running in the opposite direction to me, off towards another ship. There was too much of my father in me to not be amused by that, knowing that if they wanted to get away from the First Order chasing after them, the Falcon was their best bet. That was my bias though, since the Falcon hadn't flown in years, but yet it was still the best ship in the yard. Maybe their droid realised that as he stopped, his head spinning round to look in my direction, and as soon as he spotted me he began rolling over to me, regardless of where his people were going, and if the ship they were running to hadn't been blown up moments before they got to it, they might not have even realised him abandoning them.

The girl, tall, pale, and dressed for the terrain, clearly weathered from years of the harsh Jakku life, noticed the droid first, and in a look of anxious desperation, began to run over to me and the Falcon. I doubted she spotted me, too focused on escaping the troopers as she called to her companion, dark skinned wearing a jacket that looked oddly familiar and an expression of pure fear. As they began to run after their droid, the storm troopers and TIE fighters began to follow, spotting me. I swallowed down any nerves, knowing this was my first interaction with a fight in years, and pulled my blaster out of its holster on my thigh. I took aim and fired, hitting one trooper square in the chest.

My fire attracted the attention of the others, and they began shooting at me. I knew that I could easily deflect their blasts with my lightsaber, but I also knew nothing would attract more attention than a lightsaber, given it was one of the last left in the galaxy. It would raise questions, and even if Kylo Ren wasn't with them, the news of a purple lightsaber wielding woman would spread to him as quick as wildfire. It wouldn't be safe for me to use my saber, so instead I continued to fire with my blaster, thanking my jedi instincts for my practically perfect aim. As I took out three in one shot, I couldn't help but smirk, feeling as if I'd finally escaped the rut I'd been trapped in, adrenaline and excitement flowing through me, especially as I remembered how much my perfect aim annoyed my Dad.

"The garbage will do!" I heard the girl shout to her companion as she ran at me, and as much as her calling the Falcon annoyed me, I was far too focused on the troopers to retaliate.

"The garbage looks taken!" her friend called back to her, seeing me stood, shooting blasts off in every direction, and through the force I sensed fear within him, fear and intimidation.

I took out another trooper, and in a spare second I glanced down to the ground, realising that the little droid had reached me, beeping excitedly in binary code as he spun circles around my legs. I frowned, until recognition hit me. BB-8, Poe's droid. The orange and white droid struck so many memories in me, exciting me to see something from my life before Jakku, and when I remembered the fact that where BB-8 was, Poe wasn't far behind, I felt the excitement surge in me more. Surely Poe had to be close, th force fluttering inside me as I thought of reuniting with my best friend after so long.

I didn't see him though, and as the two people ran closer to me, I decided that he must not have been there before. Maybe these people were also memebers of the resistance and he'd lent his droid to them for the mission, but that seemed unlikely considering how protective Poe was over BB-8, and the fact that nothing felt familiar about these two people that were running at me. There was no time to think about Poe though, no time to talk to BB-8, so I instead turned my focus on the newcomers, knowing we would have to escape the First Order together, no option but to fly off in the Falcon to get away from the troopers and the TIEs.

"Garbage or not," I shot at them, running back up the ramp as the troopers continued to run at us, waving for them to follow me. "You either get in or you die,"

They both followed me up the ramp, and in the urgency of the moment I didn't have chance to look at them properly. I waited for them to get into the Falcon, noticing the way they both looked around in mild shock at how old fashioned it looked, before I hit the controls to shot the doors. It was then that the two seemed to fully register me, and though they both seemed to be wary of my presence, their desperation to get away clearly took over.

"Where's the cockpit?" the girl asked me, a mixture of fear and confidence on her face as she looked at me wide-eyed.

"Down here, follow me," I pointed down the corridor, before my attention turned to her friend. "You take the blasters, they're down there, the bottom chamber seems to fire best, and please don't accidentally destroy this ship,"

At my urgent directions the man looked slightly overwhelmed, but he followed them, running down the corridor, and I couldn't help but notice his jacket once more, realising how similar it was to Poe's flight jacket. I shook my head, desperate to rid him from my mind and focus, but instead I thought of the story my dad told me about when he and uncle Luke escaped from the Death Star after rescuing my mother. I loved that story, and it made me nostalgic to see this new arrival run to the blasters the way Luke and Han once had once done. I didn't have much time to think of the similarities though though, running to the cockpit to see the girl had taken the seat that was usually my Dad's, leaving me to take Chewie's. I couldn't help but grimace as I noticed the many wookiee hairs still stuck to the leather, but I quickly turned my attention to the task at hand, watching as the girl began flipping switches, even if she too looked overwhelmed.

"I can do this, I can do this," she breathed out nervously, and I knew better than to say something back to her, working on the necessary controls closest to me, scowling as I spotted the new addition to the ship that my Dad would have hated.

"Bloody compressor," I hissed as I tried to turn the engines on, glaring at the controls until I remembered my father's sentimentality of the ship. "Come on, old girl, do your thing,"

The girl next to me shot me a small smile, flipping a few switches and soon the engines roared to life. I grinned, letting out a nostalgic laugh as we became air-born, hitting the control panel gratefully, the way I'd seen my father do so many times. I didn't get to savour the excitement for long, the TIE fighters on our backs immediately, but my new companion clearly knew what she was doing. We were jetting off, swerving to dodge the imperial troops, and whilst part of me wanted to ask who this girl was, how she ended up with BB-8, what she and her friend did to piss off the First Order, and why her friend seemed more jittery around the First Order than any normal person was, none of that mattered. My anxiety seemed to disappear too, for once not thinking of my father coming back for his ship to see it gone, my joy of flying and nerves for getting away taking over.

Regardless of everything else, I felt alive again, not stuck in some exile-induced limbo, and I was finally getting off this force-forsaken planet.

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Word count: 4339

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