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As the transport approached the ruins of Hanna City, Kylo Ren held his breath. While he didn’t have the most wonderful associations with Chandrila he could still remember a few things he loved.
They came in close to a landing area and passed over a fountain that had sat outside of a large building that had served as an office block for some senators when Chandrila was still the Republic’s home world. His mother’s office had been there. All that was left beyond the shattered fountain was a burnt pile of brick.
They touched down and Kylo Ren let the breath go. He had asked Hux if he could visit the ruins before the New Empire moved in to rebuild the area. Hux had been confused for a moment, and then just gave him a nod. Hux tended to keep expressions off of his face but in that moment he looked sad. Ren recalled how Hux had reacted when they visited Arkanis after the war was won. He’d hated that planet, but much like Ren there were still things that had been home.
The gangplank was lowered and Kylo walked down into the ruins of the city. Even though the fires had burned out the whole place still smelled like smoke and ash. Every now and again came a breeze that carried the scent of rotting bodies. Where they had landed had been relatively free of people at the time as many had evacuated knowing the First Order was coming. They didn’t expect the bombardment of the villages or the destruction of all signs of intelligent life.
On either side Kylo Ren was flanked by the Royal Guard. He had told Hux that it was unnecessary, the planet was barren and he was one of the most powerful force users ever, but Hux reminded him that he was an emperor now, not a warrior. As such, he had a royal guard. They were smart enough to give him distance against the orders of Hux when the redhead was not around.
As Kylo picked his way through the crumbling streets here and there memories ghosted across his mind. There was a bakery that his mother always bought his birthday cake from. He’d suspected that they had begun reminding her when it was. Kylo couldn’t recall how many times when he was very young that his mother had celebrated his birthday days late, but by the time he was 6 the cakes began showing up the morning of. He recalled the baker’s look of sadness when Kylo reminded his mother of his birthday days prior while they were getting rolls for a dinner party that she was throwing. She’d been appropriately embarrassed outside, but she seethed inside. Misguided anger blaming Han. She had thought Kylo couldn’t hear, but he could. As could Snoke, who had become fond of reminding him of his mother’s negligence and lack of willingness to take responsibilities for her own short comings. Kylo walked faster and the bakery’s destroyed front was out of sight.
Kylo caught his breath for a moment and swallowed the tears that had begun to burn at the corners of his eyes. The guard was well behind him. Kylo suspected that Phasma had given them orders to remain even further behind him than normal; by virtue of the location they were not necessary, and this trip was personal in many ways. Phasma, for all her coldness, understood how to keep people ingratiated to her. Hux had toyed with executing her over the years, but refrained, opting instead to have Ren monitor her thoughts. She was an excellent captain.
Kylo was pulled out of his musing when he came upon a street sign. The majority of them at the cross streets had been melted and were illegible. But this one, the intersection of Mothma and Ghost, still stood starkly against the grays and blacks of the charred world around them. On top of its pole, plain as day and blazing yellow: somehow almost spotless. Anger rose in him. It was as if this one thing had been here to mock him. A moment later he heard his saber hum to life in his hand and before he knew it the sign was nothing more than a melting pile of blackened metal. Both names gone from this place. He had heard the guard stop. A glance behind them indicated that they had turned away from him as he exploded. They knew their place.
He began moving down Mothma, counting the damaged row houses here. Somewhere in his memory he heard the laughing of the neighborhood children as they played chase when he was young. They had always been kind to him, and they had always invited him to join them, but he could sense their fear. The son of generals, named after a hero, untouchable, and strong in the Force. He was separate from them and always would be. He could never be close to them because any time he tried to, they pulled away as if he were fragile. Kylo felt himself sneer against the hurt. Somewhere in the back of his mind he understood that it was Snoke’s doing, but if he let himself dwell on that he’d break. He would hold that away until he was in the privacy of the emperor’s chambers. Hux was the only one he’d ever let see that hurt.
He counted to eight and turned to the row house. Here it was with stoop still intact. The roof had been damaged and all of the windows were shattered, but it still stood sandwiched between two houses that were much worse for the wear. Kylo glanced over his shoulder at the guard.
“Stay out here. I will call if I need you,” he said, holding his voice from cracking the best he could. The head guard just gave him a salute as acknowledgement. Kylo turned back to the short set of stairs and took a deep breath. He felt as if he were walking to his own doom. An empty house haunted by memories that he wasn’t fully equipped to handle. He had to do this though, he couldn’t turn away.
He pushed the door open by leaning his weight against it. The bookcase his mother had placed in the entryway had fallen down in the bombing and wedged itself against the door. Once the door was open just enough for him to slip through he did so, climbing over the shelf and into the foyer.
Everything was covered in a dusting of ashes that had poured through the windows. He shuffled through the front rooms, hearing the crunching of glass beneath his boots. All of the random knick-knacks his mother had collected were here. Once the New Republic established itself on Hosnian Prime she’d moved there. Ben was a man by then and Han Solo long gone back to smuggling, but she kept this house. She had told Ben that her best memories were here.
Kylo came upon an old painting hanging above an ancient hearth that he couldn’t remember Ben and his family ever using. It was Leia, Ben, and Han. She had commissioned the painting shortly after they moved into this house. Kylo had memories of Ben talking about how the artist made his ears look even larger than they were. Leia had insisted that he would grow into them and that they were perfect. Kylo felt a tear drift down his nose, cutting through the grime that had covered him as he moved through the city. He turned away and moved to the stairs.
The shelves that had long held various vases usually filled with reproductions of flowers from Alderaan were smashed and the shards littered the area. Many of the flowers had been made of wax or similar and they had melted into the carpet from the heat. Either the weather itself or the flames that raged in the streets when the bombs fell. The splatters of pink, and white, and red stood out against the green carpet, as if it were sprouting itself.
Something caught his eye, an opalescent cream color shined from behind a fallen table. Kylo Ren rolled it out of the way to find one unbroken pot with a singular unmelted fake plant. It was a starblossom sapling. One of Ben’s memories came to Kylo, of his mother spotting it in an art store downtown shortly after they moved here. She had broken down into tears in the shop. Ben had been scared, not understanding why his mother was upset. She explained when they got home and she set the plant on the table. Ben had always marveled at the beauty of the thing. Kylo Ren just viewed it coldly, noting that it was missing a bloom.
At the top of the stairs Kylo Ren turned to the right. The door to Ben’s room was hanging off the hinges, but the various starships he had stuck there still clung to the wood. Kylo Ren pushed the door in and stepped into the space.
The roof had been heavily damaged in the bombing and the whole place had been exposed. Many of Ben’s old belongings were charred from the fire, everything else was damp from the rains that occasionally fell on the city. Kylo Ren stepped forward and into the center of the room. He looked around at the belongings of the boy he had killed and felt tears rising in his eyes. There were storybooks that were little more than ash and waterlogged scraps that he recalled being well loved and dog eared from being read so many times. Model fighters that Ben had slaved over and hung with pride were smashed and melted across the floor. The desk in the corner had one the boy had never had the chance to finish before he was sent away with his uncle.
Kylo Ren fell to his knees. The unfinished starship was what broke him open and he began to sob, wrapping his arms tightly around himself. That was the last happy memory of Ben’s he’d had. Han had visited them between races and handed Ben that box personally. It was a limited edition fighter that he’d begged for but hadn’t been able to acquire. Somehow his father had, and when Ben had ripped away the paper he had never admired his father as much as that moment. Han played it off as having won it in a game against some pirates, but in Ben’s mind he could see his father traveling to the furthest corners of the galaxy to get this one thing for his son. Kylo Ren shivered there for what seemed like ages, sobbing until his body ached.
He was drawn out of his thoughts by the smell of death. The wind had picked up in the fading light of Chandrila’s dusk and the smell tugged at him. He suddenly felt that he wasn’t alone in this house. He stood up, hackles raising on the back of his neck and focused. There was no feeling of life in the Force, but the feeling that he wasn’t alone didn’t leave him. He placed a hand on his saber strapped to his waist and slipped out of Ben’s room, leaving the memories and the half finished ship behind once and for all.
He drifted down the hallway, following the stench. It steadily grew more overwhelming as he came upon the door to the master bedroom. Holding his breath, Kylo Ren pushed the door open. The sight that met him made his stomach clench. It was Leia’s long dead corpse. Most of her features had melted away, but the buns on the sides of her hair and the white dress gave it away. She had come back here to die.
Kylo Ren approached the form, putting the smell from his mind. He’d existed in battle zones, one dead body was nothing. The watering of his eyes was normal, and so was the clenching of his guts. He stood over the bed where the dead woman lay and noticed that where the hands had rested on her chest was the missing starblossom. Kylo Ren clenched his teeth so hard that he swore they would crack. He stood over the woman’s body for a moment and turned, storming out of the house and back to the transport.
When he arrived back at Hux and his shared quarters at the imperial palace he had been unable to speak. He’d touched this side of Hux’s head to share the memory of the trip. Hux said nothing, wrapping his husband in his arms and holding him as he cried long into the night.