It happens to everyone - sometimes, you have nights where you just can't fall asleep, no matter what you do. It could be for a number of reasons, or no reason at all. And this is what's happened now: you've been laying in bed for what feels like hours, just tossing and turning, and nothing seems to help. So what's left to do? Get out of bed and go wake someone else up, of course. If you're not getting any sleep, then why should they?
i n s t r u c t i o n s • Post with your character (note the name and fandom in the subject).
• Other people reply to you by generating a number from 1 to 10.
• Have fun!
o p t i o n s 01 • FEAR. Maybe you're hearing strange, indeterminable noises; maybe there's a severe storm happening outside; maybe you watched a scary movie before bed? Whatever the reason, you're terrified and it's keeping you awake. You just want to wake someone else up so they can protect you from the monster in your closet.
02 • HUNGER. Your stomach is growling and it just won't stop. Or perhaps your throat is so dry you could cough up a tumbleweed? Well, you've gone to the kitchen to remedy this and hey, that was a pan that just dropped on the floor. It was loud enough to wake the dead! Oops.
03 • PAIN. Your body is completely worn out, be it from exercise, battle, sickness, or what have you. Either way you're in enough pain to keep you from sleeping, so maybe someone else has a home remedy or something, or can at least help you take your mind off of it.
04 • SOLITUDE. For some reason, your bed just feels so empty at the moment. You're feeling terribly lonely and really just want someone to keep you company for a while. Maybe it'd be easier to fall asleep if you're with them...
05 • DISCOMFORT. Your room is an oven. Either that or a freezer. Or maybe this bed is just really uncomfortable? Who knows why you can't get to sleep, it feels like it could be anything. Why even bother trying? Maybe someone else can preoccupy you until you feel tired enough to ignore your discomfort.
06 • PENSIVE. Something's on your mind, and no matter how hard you try to focus elsewhere, it's just not going to work. Your body may be tired, but your mind is incredibly busy and it's virtually impossible to get to sleep. Surely, talking it out with someone else will help?
07 • SADNESS. Something terrible has happened that day, perhaps; or you could just be severely depressed. Either way you're trying your hardest not to cry yourself to sleep, and it's not working at all. Better find a way to get it out of your system somehow; you need a shoulder to cry on.
08 • ANGER. You are just... fuming. Who knows why - that annoying dog is barking again, or maybe the people next door are getting busy and keeping you awake. Whatever the reason for your ire is, you'd better put an end to it so you can get some damn rest already! Go wake up a friend so you can complain to them.
09 • RESTLESS. You're far too energetic to sleep right now. Maybe you're just trying to do so out of necessity - you have to be up early tomorrow! But you just don't think you'll be able to fall asleep for a while now, so why waste the time trying to sleep when you could be doing something else? Namely bothering someone else - you're totally jealous because they're getting more sleep than you.
10 • WILDCARD. Choose one of the options above, or make up your own scenario. |
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bakerstreet2016-10-03 07:05 pm
Combo of several things with Mom. X3
And while Han was gone Leia had fallen back into old habits. Bad habits, she knew; she'd never been one to fool herself into thinking that burying herself in work was exactly a healthy way of dealing with problems. But far too often her mind simply wouldn't settle. Old fears, new worries, day to day stress, it could be any number of things, but Han's presence had always been... reassuringly simple, for lack of a better term, in the face of such complicated things. He was solid and grounding, and was one of the few who could match her will to will. They... balanced each other, as Luke put it.
Luke had taught her mediation long ago, to help deal with her nightmares, and she was always grateful for that. Even more so that he hadn't pushed her into much more when she wasn't ready, as she wasn't sure she ever really would be. But while the Force helped, and was a constant presence reassuring her that she wasn't truly alone, the Force wasn't a person. It couldn't provide a hand to hold, or warm arms around her, or one of those kisses of Han's that still took her breath away, even after all these years. It could provide peace, but not comfort. And comfort, as Mon Mothma had once told her, was something everyone needed.
So in the absence of comfort, Leia was working, hoping that going over reports would eventually either exhaust or bore her enough that sleep would come. Morning would come sooner than she'd like to admit, and she'd like to get at least a few hours sleep before then.
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His mind was always churning, unsteady like turbulent sea waters, dregging old things to the surface and mixing them with the new, seeking connections that may or may not have been there. He was always thinking and always feeling, too intently, and the only thing that helped, the Force, was now a reminder of how much he had betrayed his family by falling to the Dark Side. He wondered sometimes how long he could keep pressing on before he simply drowned in the weight of everything. Like both his parents, he was more than fine with pushing his own limits - it was living with the consequences he hadn't planned for, and now he wandered from place to place at night, trying to find anything to do or any adequate place to meditate. Anything was better than laying awake thinking in circles.
When he found his way to his mother's presence, he decided not to comment on the hour, merely deadpanning, "You are no longer allowed to tell me 'bedtime means bed, Ben'."
Not that it had worked even when he was a kid, but still.
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She felt his approach before he entered the room, but only looked up when he spoke to her, smiling slightly. His was another presence she was very glad to have back. "I'm your mother," she replied, equally deadpan. "I'm always allowed to tell you things like that. But I know how effective, or rather, ineffective they are, so I won't bother."
She gestured to the seat next to her on the couch. If neither of them could sleep, talking was probably a more pleasant way of passing the time than wandering or reading reports.
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Leia Organa defended her own honor. Even moreso now that she was General Organa. So he perched on the arm of the couch, catlike, enjoying the sort of haphazard look of the common room. The First Order did not tolerate a hair being out of place. Here, there was work stacked on top of work stacked on top of work.
"I take after my father in terms of obedience," he shrugged, stretching his legs and cracking his ankles to get comfortable. "I guess now I know where I get the all-nighters from."
no subject
The common room was never not haphazard, despite efforts to keep it at least somewhat orderly. It managed to avoid becoming truly messy, but it was always lived in. Datapads here, a half-finished holo-novel there, someone's jacket draped over the back of a chair and forgotten in either haste or tiredness... She'd always preferred it that way; it gave the place character, and reminded her pleasantly of the Falcon and its perpetual state of semi-disrepair. The ship was always a bit scruffy, just like her owner.
And speaking of Han, the way Ben sat on the arm of the couch like that reflected his father too much for her not to to give him a proper smile. "I think you take after both of us in that regard," she said. "I'm sure I caused my parents more than a few headaches when I was growing up. And my nannies, and my tutors, and pretty much everyone else in the palace who had a hand in raising me. You definitely get the tendency toward insomnia from me though, unfortunately." Even before... everything, she'd always had it. The events of her life had only increased its severity.
She saved what she'd been working on and closed out the pad, focusing her full attention on Ben. "I have a feeling there's a little more to this than just general restlessness, though," she said. Given their lives there usually was. She didn't ask him outright yet, waiting to see if he would volunteer anything specific that was troubling him on his own first.
no subject
At least there wasn't a droid present at the moment. Resistance, Rebellion, these people loved their droids. He'd already seen someone with an espionage mouse droid named Darrus they took on walks at night. He'd grown up with C3PO popping up in the background of his life, but droids were uncomfortable for Ben now that he associated them with torture and medicine, which was the next closest thing to it. Ben had sometimes moved things to see if anyone noticed. They did, they just also usually blamed someone else come morning. Squabbling was, after having Han and Leia as parents, like the crashing of waves on the rocks and the soothing cries of seagulls.
Rolling his shoulders, he twisted his arms back and forth until they popped, flexing his fingers. Sometimes he felt he had nothing in common with either of his parents; tiny though these things were, he was eager to absorb them, to liken himself to the people he allegedly came from after such a long period of time without them. "To be fair, I've heard from those with children that it comes with the territory. It seems to be a matter of degree. And I shudder to guess at Father as a child. If nothing blew up, I will be stunned." He sighed at getting her full attention - a thing he both tried to do and avoided in equal measure, unsure of how to handle it now that so much had changed between them.
"...Mother. You are already under a lot of pressure. It would be for the best if you didn't add anyone else's load to your own." Force knew he wanted to throw his problems at her, cry onto her shoulder, let himself be the lost young man he actually was, but what felt like a lifetime of 'there is no peace, there is only passion' had been forced into him like a poison. He no longer knew how to lean on someone.
And after what he had put her through, what right did he have to look to her to begin with? Unable to hold her gaze, his dropped to the floor.
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The prevalence of droids was part preference and part necessity. Both the Rebellion and the Resistance had limited resources and droids were not only far easier to come by than living recruits, but could allow the people they did have to operate to their fullest potential. She hoped Ben would be able to get used to them again one day; despite his intelligence duties 3P0 was as much of a well-meaning pest as ever and she didn't want him making Ben uncomfortable if it could be avoided.
Leia smirked slightly at the talk of herself and Han as children. "Remember when I told you the story of Queen Berilla, the fairy tale from Naboo about the Queen who walked the length of her kingdom to find out what her people wanted?", Leia said. "Well that was one my father told me too, and according to him, at five years old, I'd thought that emulating it would be a brilliant idea. I apparently pilfered some food from the kitchens and a map of Aldera from the library and got as far as climbing a tree to get over the garden wall before I was caught."
"I'd tell you some of the later mischief I got up to, but I don't want it getting around; it might give people ideas," she said. "As for your father, I'm sure explosions were involved. The only question is whether they were intentional or not."
She became more serious however, as Ben tried to sidestep er not-quite question, seemingly unable to meet her gaze. Alright then; the more direct approach it was then. "Ben," she said, "if I was interested in what was 'best' I wouldn't have become a rebel and married a smuggler. It would have been 'best' if I'd become the kind of simpering Princess my aunts wanted me to be. But 'best' wasn't what was needed then. And it's not what's needed now."
She reached out and laid her hand gently on to of his nearer one, adding a physical connection to the background one they'd always shared through the Force. "A very wise woman once told me that comfort is something everyone needs," she said. "And I have a feeling that right now you need it more than usual. I'm here, Ben. Talk to me."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAtvCIx_l9o <- came on my iTunes as I was tagging
The droids treated him with more warmth than some people, people who were not so willing to take him back. He didn't want the cold comfort of machines, even well meaning and gentle ones, he didn't want to be exiled to the level of non-person many viewed droids as. For the most part, he'd found other things to volunteer for to keep him busy and build a tiny bit of respect in the eyes of some people, though his harshest critics were unmoved.
He snorted despite himself at the mental image of his mother. "Should've dug under the wall beforehand, Mother. That would have ensured you at least got a little farther." Ben raised an eyebrow at her. "If what they do know hasn't given them ideas, nothing will. You've never been terribly good at following rules. It makes your relationship with Father make sense in retrospect. Where else were you going to find someone who gave as little a damn about tradition as you?" His voice was light, but the levity stopped when she addressed him by his name.
"I have been trying to connect to the Light Side of the Force. But progress has been slow, and I..." Ben's eyes lock onto her hand on his, and the human contact just about broke him. "Rey will likely tell Uncle Luke, who will tell you. You might as well know from me that I - I starve myself to get closer to the Force. The less energy my physical body has, the more the Force fills me up, the more I can draw upon it, so I've been... Mother, I'm just trying to get back on track, but it's. It's hard." He could feel tears building and bit the inside of his cheek, refusing to let them fall. Why, he didn't know. Stubbornness, maybe, or frustration with himself. "Rey thinks what I do is a waste of food. She does not understand how it helps me."
How could she? How could anyone? She, they, weren't broken like Ben. Starvation meditation had to be introduced to Ben by Snoke because he was falling behind expectations, just like always. Functional people, better people, could never know what it was like to be running ragged just to make the bare minimum of normal progress.
Appropriate song is appropriate. And also FEELS. ;_;
"It wouldn't have worked," she said. "I tried it a few years later, once I'd managed to slice the lock on the storeroom where the gardeners kept their tools; the wall extended too far underground. And yes, I'm sure my aunts would have been thoroughly scandalized by my choice. Though I think my parents would've been able to bring them around eventually."
The light mood vanished suddenly though, as if a cloud had moved across the sun. She picked up on Ben's distress even before he'd started speaking, and on the tears he was trying to hold back as he spoke. The Force, simple maternal instinct, or a combination thereof, she couldn't be sure, and frankly didn't much care. All that mattered right now was her son. Her son who was suffering, and who she was finally able to help through that suffering after so long.
"Ben," she said, "I hope you know that there's no set time for you to be 'back on track' by. And if Luke or anyone else has tried to set you a timetable for your recovery, you tell me and I'll have words with them." Likely of the unprintable variety, at least partially. "One thing I've learned over the years is that recovery is a different process for everyone, and anybody who tries to shame you for not meeting some arbitrary standard of progress, emotionally or with the Force, will damn well answer to me for it." She remembered all too well being accused of being unfeeling because she hadn't broken down into some sort of hysterics following Alderaan's destruction, and would be damned if she let others try to force such arbitrary emotional standards on her son.
The rest of it though, was worrying, if only because of Ben's mental state. She'd heard of the technique, and under the right circumstances didn't doubt that it could be useful. But she highly doubted that being traumatized and somewhat desperate were those circumstances. At what point did an extreme form of meditation become a method of punishing oneself, either for past wrongs or a perceived lack of progress?
She got to her feet, her hand never leaving Ben's as she moved to stand in front of him. "I'll talk to Rey," she said gently. "If she's worried about the food going to waste, we can arrange something. But that's not what concerns me." She paused. "Ben, how often have you been doing this? And how long a period have you been going without food for?"
All aboard the feels train.
"I'm sure you would have pretended to care that they were scandalized for a bit," he snarked, smiling faintly for a moment. "But I doubt it would have lasted long. You've never reversed your position on any important decision you've ever made that I know of." Perhaps he'd broken the mold with that. Or maybe, like his father, he was just bad at impulse control.
He remembered when the light had closed and he had stood on the bridge, illuminated in angry reds, the moment where he finally surrendered. His will, once so strong, was undone by the love in his father's eyes. He knew his mother loved him too, never had given up on him. Facing her after admitting to such practices was more than he could take; she was displeased and he had failed, again, in all new ways. Why was he so often the cause of his mother's distress?
"At this rate Rey will be going to war against the First Order as the only Jedi. I know what it feels like to have the weight of everyone's hopes and expectations on your shoulders, their whispers at your back. I can't let her go through that alone. If I can make up for nothing else, I won't let anyone isolate her the way I was made to be alone in a room full of padawans." He folded his free arm protectively around his own ribcage, feeling under the thick layers of fabric the ridges of rib bones. This was his comfort, his company when he was alone and in need of denial of that fact. "It's not all about the Force, either. Things are... complicated."
He shook his head, gently. "No. Rey - I think it was her way of saying she's worried. I know what she means best when she doesn't say it. We're developing our own language, I think. Or maybe decoding each other's." Ben's silence at being asked that question, the stretch in which he tried to find answers, was one of the longest ones of his life. He felt a spike of anxiety course through him, dual urges to lie and be honest, genuine uncertainty as to what the right thing to say even was. Should he further wound her with the truth or attempt a lie to temporarily spare her some pain? He swallowed and picked his words carefully. "I - I don't eat much when I do eat, so that's. Those are both hard questions to answer. But six days. After the second or third the Force rushes in, and after the sixth or seventh, that is rarely enough to keep me on my feet still." He shut his eyes, not wanting to see her reaction. "I truly am sorry."
The feels train; non-stop to Sadsville.
The comment about feeling isolated and alone among Luke's other padawans stung unexpectedly, though. That had been her doing, in a way; it had been her choice to send him away when she had, and look where it had gotten them. So much suffering caused because she'd been clinging to her fear of and hatred for Vader... She'd been running from a ghost, and her son and the galaxy had paid the price for it. "That isolation was my fault," she said. "I should never have sent you away. Not the way I did. I thought I was helping you when all I was doing was putting you right where Snoke could get his claws into you. You would've needed to at least learn the basics eventually, but I shouldn't have let my fears convince me to push you into it before you were ready."
And then there was that silence. Leia knew silences like that and knew that she inevitably wouldn't like the answer that came after it, because truth or a lie, it would confirm her fears. And the sudden spike of anxiety she felt from Ben only added weight to her concerns.
In the end, the only minutely encouraging thing about Ben's eventual reply was that he'd trusted her enough to tell her the truth. She brought her free hand up to gently cup his cheek, her expression full of compassion and concern. "Ben, look at me," she said gently. Whether he complied or not, she continued after only a brief pause. "I wouldn't normally tell you how to practice with the Force, but... I think this stopped being just mediation for you a while ago. Pushing yourself is one thing, but knowingly putting your health in danger and driving yourself to the point of collapse is another."
"Ben... you don't need to punish yourself because you think the Force isn't coming back to you fast enough," she said. "Or for anything else either. I love you, Force or no Force, and right now just having you back is more than enough."
And with that she leaned in and wrapped him in a hug, grateful that their relative positions eliminated the largest part of their height difference. In this position she too could feel the ridges of his ribs and other bones, how thin he'd truly become disguised by layers of fabric and the fact that he'd always been on the lean side to start with. How long must he have been doing this to himself for it to get to this point? But no more. She was here now, and she'd take care of her boy.
The Greater Sadsville Metropolitan Area, yes.
He forced himself to look at her. He wished he took after her more, wished he had hair even just a few shades lighter, a nose just a bit smaller, anything that would make her look at him and think 'Ben' and not 'Vader'. Poe had once been charitable enough to say they had the same laugh, but Ben suspected he was lying to be kind. Looking at his mother's face now and seeing the hurt he'd caused, he wanted, not for the first time, to redo his entire life, to go back and make better decisions, to be someone who wasn't a burden like this to the very people he most loved and wanted in his life.
Through the Force he felt all the love and compassion his mother had for him that he just simply did not deserve. It was as warm as her embrace, which so stunned him, was simply so unfamiliar, that it took him a long pause before he remembered to wrap his arms around her in return, unsure of where or how to place his arms. Her smallness was evened out by their positions, but he knew that meant she had better access to assess the damage.
"I know it did," he acquiesced without argument, trying to rub her back soothingly as he'd seen pilots do for each other in the Resistance. It was a bit clunky, but he did his best. "I - you don't, I don't think you understand why I do it, though. Sometimes it just." He sighed, frustrated with himself and his mistakes. "I don't know how to explain without hurting you more, Mother. I am so, so sorry for this. When I was Snoke's apprentice, I swear it made sense, it was presented in a way that made it seem like just another kind of exercise. No one ever warned me that it could go wrong. I don't do this to hurt myself. Snoke told me once Vader was never able to do it, and I don't want to be Vader's second coming to you, I wanted to be better than Vader to Snoke, and it's an accomplishment, you don't- you can't, understand. Not unless you've done it yourself."
And connecting trains to Hugstown and Familyopopolis.
"I know you don't blame me," she said. "But it's still my doing. I was afraid of what I saw in you because I feared the same things in myself. I was afraid that whatever had made him turn, whatever had made Vader into the monster I'd hated and feared might be in me too. So at the first signs- rather than than talking to you or considering that there might be some other explanation- I reacted out of that fear. I thought I had to protect you from the legacy you'd inherited from me, and that training with Luke, who'd pulled Anakin back into the light when no one else thought it possible, was the way to do it. He'd already faced the darkness and come through it, where I still felt that Vader's darkness was a part of me, just waiting for the right trigger to assert itself. I thought you'd be better off there with him than with me."
"Your father could see it, I think," she said. "That I wasn't really thinking things through and just acting out of fear. But I was stubborn, as usual, and wouldn't listen when he tried to tell me that. That was one of the few times were really fought and meant it, and in hindsight, I think that's when I lost him. That's when I lost you both. Because I was so afraid of Vader's memory that I let it make my decisions for me."
But through it all, she never saw Vader when she looked at Ben. She didn't even really see Kylo Ren. Both of them were just masks, artificial constructs that buried the real people beneath them and only had power as long as those people allowed it. When Anakin had chosen love, Vader had ceased to be, and the same was true for Ben. She saw Han's strong nose. She saw her ears, though few agreed with her. And so many other things that were uniquely Ben. And a certain someone had informed her that Ben's dark hair and a number of other features bore more than a passing resemblance to those of his great-grandmother, Shmi Skywalker, though Leia had no way of proving that unless some previously unknown image of Shmi turned up.
And that was the strange thing about unconditional love; it was there, whether or not it was deserved. And as Ben awkwardly returned the embrace, Leia privately vowed to make certain he never doubted that fact for a moment. And his efforts, clumsy though they were, were appreciated. They had a great many hugs to catch up on, after all, so best to get started sooner rather than later.
After a long moment, Leia pulled back from the hug enough that she'd be able to look Ben in the eye again, though she didn't break contact, her hands lightly gripping his arms. The expression on her face, while still compassionate, now had a measuring look to it as she weighed his words in her mind, matching them against her years of experience and filtering them through her perceptions in the Force, feeling out their meaning and their honesty before replying.
"First of all Ben," she said after a long moment, "you are not now, nor have you ever been 'Vader's second coming' to me. You are, were, and will always be my son; no force in the galaxy can change that. And I'll say it as many times as it takes for you to really believe it."
"Second, the only reason Vader wasn't able to do it was that it was physically impossible for him," she said. "Unlike Kylo Ren's, Vader's suit was as much a mobile life support unit as it was battle armor. It regulated most of his bodily functions, likely including supplying him with the necessary nutrients for what was left of his human body; I'm not certain he would have been able to eat anything even if he'd wanted to. I don't know whether he ever tried such a thing as Anakin, but frankly I doubt it; he really doesn't seem the type."
"And finally, while I'm not inclined to trust anything Snoke might have introduced to you, you're right. I've heard of the technique, but I don't really know what it's like. One thing I do know though, is that whether or not you intended this practice to hurt yourself it is hurting you. And I won't allow that to continue."
"You say you're doing this to help Rey, but you can't do that if you're confined to medical due to malnutrition. And make no mistake, I will confine you to medical if it gets to that point; your health is more important than your training and what you're doing right now isn't healthy. Not because of the practice itself, but because you clearly don't know how much of it is too much."
And the Snuggleton suburb.
He felt a brief flare of anger followed by a pang of loss and loneliness as he listened to her. How much of this could have been avoided if he hadn't been terrified of becoming Vader, if he hadn't felt like his mother and uncle saw Vader when they looked at him? If he had ever felt like Ben and not a shadow of someone else, if he had ever felt like a person and not a reincarnation, maybe he might have been able to keep to the Light Side. But he had always been nothing more than an echo of the past. No one had ever told him otherwise. Perhaps they'd thought it was a given. To Ben, it wasn't, it was the ultimate uncertainty. Even now, he was like Anakin in having returned to the Light.
Being Ben Solo was hard, being Kylo Ren was madness, but being Anakin's grandson all the time was wearing him down like the oceans of Manaan wore away, eventually, every landmass that used to be on the planet.
He felt something indignant rise up unexpectedly. The life support system was not the point. The point was Anakin had failed it every time he tried it as a padawan, he was never able to last more than two days. Ben could do four, five, six. He could do anything he wanted. He was controlled, he was willful, he was a better Force user and a better student, a better person than his oh-so-powerful grandfather at this. He was a master at it. There were so many times he'd made leaps and bounds of progress while his body was supported only by the Force, because he was pure in the Force, strong in it, aware of all the life and emotions around him, aware of the flow of energy in all things. He had made his own lightsaber while his spine's ridges grew visible, the first to make a lightsaber from scratch in over a generation. He was not simply a glorified spawn of Vader, he was someone new. He was someone, period, a person, and how could his mother dismiss that-
But she didn't understand. She never had. Perhaps she never would.
"It's helping me stay alive," he corrected her, with surprising intensity. "You don't know what it's like to be stripped of the Force and have to rebuild the connection. Without it, I wanted to die. I couldn't function, I could see no future - only Father being there for me when it happened kept me from taking my own lightsaber and running myself through with it. For years, I've used the Force to navigate every step of every day. If I didn't have a way to bring the connection into focus, I would be as lost as a blind man on the featureless icescape of Hoth.
"I would break out of medical for Rey. I would do anything for her. She is the only Light in the galaxy to me, sometimes, the only one I know has always been honest with me, has never seen me as anyone else. She accepts that my past is a part of me like I don't tiptoe around her scavenger origins the way the rest of you do, as if surviving against all odds is something you want her to be ashamed of. What I'm doing is under control. I haven't done the stupid things I used to in vain attempts to break my own records like I used to. You may not like it, but I am at my healthiest in years. And I know exactly how much I need. Perhaps I need larger meals inbetween, but I know what I'm doing. I've learned through trial and error in the past... which is not helping my case, perhaps, but the past is in the past. I can feel myself on the cusp of a major breakthrough. I am so close to regaining my Force Healing abilities I can feel it buzzing in my head, in my hands, and once I have those back I'll be able to keep Rey and myself alive if something happens so I... so I don't have to be alone again and neither does she." He swallowed, feeling the urge to cry again, which startled him. "I won't lose anyone, and I - I'll find a way, to keep everyone safe. We'll all be okay, this way."
no subject
In truth, Ben's fall had been a wake up call that had caused her to examine a great many more things about herself. She had realized how much she'd been clinging to hatred to avoid feeling fear and pain, and how much suffering it had brought to those around her, and even to the galaxy at large. It had taken much meditation and soul searching, going through her mind and tearing Vader out of every memory he had tainted, every place where he didn't belong. It had been a long, and in some ways brutal, process, but it had been a necessary catharsis and had left her with a much greater clarity of vision. She sometimes wondered if it was similar to what Luke had felt on the second Death Star, in that critical moment of decision when he'd thrown his lightsaber aside. And it was what had let her finally see past the monster to the man, and open herself to their father's Force-spirit.
She remained surprisingly calm in the face of Ben's indignant response, allowing it to break over her like a wave over a rock. She took a deep breath and exhaled. "You're right; I've never been stripped of the Force. I was unaware of it in any conscious way for a good portion of my life, but it was always there. But if you think I don't know what it's like to lose everything, to have to scramble for something to cling to just to have a reason to go on and not put a blaster bolt through my head, you're very much mistaken."
"When Alderaan was destroyed, I lost everything," she said. "My home, the only family I'd ever known, millions of innocent people, a world and a culture that were in part my responsibility, all gone. Not for anything great or noble, but just because that piece of Sithspit who had the nerve to call himself a human being, Governor Tarkin, thought it would make a good show, and because he wanted to punish me for refusing to give up the Rebel base's location. He made me watch while he did it, and even with my Force abilities dormant, even if I had no way of understanding it at the time, I felt it. I felt it all, every living thing on Alderaan die in that instant." She'd nearly fainted; and probably would have collapsed if not for Vader's iron grip on her shoulders. In the present, she was forced to close her eyes for a moment, as the memory became a bit too real for a moment.
"I told the commander of the Yavin base that there was no time for sorrows," she continued after a moment. "I was accused of being cold and unfeeling, even by other surviving Alderaanians, because I didn't break down into hysterics. The truth was that there was no time for sorrows because I didn't dare let there be. I clung to my hatred of Vader and the Empire, threw myself headlong into the war, because if I didn't, I'd have gone insane. Probably committed suicide, like a number of other survivors of the Disaster. I drove myself to the point of total exhaustion because that was the only way I could sleep without nightmares. I skipped meals for briefings, lived on caf for days at a time, pushed through illness and injuries against the advice of medics and damn near got myself and others killed on more than one occasion either because I was too exhausted to think straight or because I was so obsessed with destroying the Empire that had destroyed my home that it gave me tunnel vision."
"I thought I was in control," she said. "I thought I knew what I was doing and that I had a handle on things. But the truth was? If not for some very good friends making me see what I was doing to myself, and helping me find some kind of equilibrium, I wouldn't be here today. I'd be a statistic; just another dead Alderaanian, a victim of the Empire and of my own mind."
"I know what it feels like to be so close to a victory that nothing else seems to matter," she said. "I know the desire to desperately cling to anything you have left out of fear that it'll be ripped away from you too. And I know how it feels to be willing to sacrifice your life, your health, your sanity, even your soul if you think it'd give you a chance to just fix things."
"I know all this and I understand all this and it was always my most fervent wish that you would never have to," she said. "But now that you do? I'll be damned if I'm going to let you try to push through it alone, the way you've been doing. Because the circumstances might be different, but I'm here, Ben. And I understand."
She leaned in again for another hug, this one gentler, less fierce, but no less compassionate, and pulled the Force in around them like a warm blanket, the way she had when he was a child. A form of light shielding, Luke had called it, and maybe it was. But she knew what it felt like and remembered how it had soothed away many a bad dream or brought comfort to childish anxieties back when things were simpler. And right now a little of that simplicity was sorely needed.
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Ben stayed silent and listened, felt his gut wrench at the idea of his mother being so close to death's door while also being under such heavy psychological weight and pressure at all times. He wished he could go back in time and be there for her. He also knew that she wouldn't have wanted help back then. So there were shreds of her in him, after all, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary? But some part of him refused to accept it. She was in entirely different circumstances back then than he was now. How they'd been raised was day and night in terms of mindsets. She had always been expected to do well. He was always expected to be a monster. People might have whispered about her behind her back, but she had a lot of support, love, people who cared about her and knew her strength. People who claimed to love him were those most concerned that, like a wild animal, he might snap at any moment.
What he was doing was different. What he was doing was needed. Without it, there was a horrifying haze that settled over him, that made everything distant unless he was in pain or destroying something just to make it break. The idea of being trapped in that mindset again without an escape sent a rush of fear coursing through him, a quiet horror and then betrayal that she would damn him to that state. Was he always going to be just the ex-Kylo Ren, to be kept on a leash, power limited, movements monitored, every bit of control fought over?
"You don't know what it's like," he murmured lowly, pulling away from her embrace, "Inside my head. There is something terribly, possibly permanently broken within me. Something that has eaten away at whatever soul I had since I was a child, which has nothing to do with Snoke and everything to do with whatever is defective in my mind. If I don't have a way to fix myself in at least small intervals, I am not only lost. I..." Pushing down the instincts to be angry, letting the Force soothe him enough to pry truth from his normally unwilling mouth, "I am not a person. I have never been fully real, never entirely present, except when I find ways to make it so. Even if I have to wreck a room, as something shatters I know this isn't one long, never ending dream. That's what it feels like, like watching myself from a distance, air seeping in and out even though I don't feel my own breathing, everything locked away from me and I can't stand it. Extreme weather, fighting, injuries, an empty stomach, exhilaration - they make me alive instead of existing and if you take this from me I won't be here. Not really. I'll fade away. Just like I used to, as a kid. And no one will even notice... they'll prefer it as I just vanish somewhere even the Force can't find me. And what you'll be talking to, that won't be your son. It won't even be on the level of a droid."
He bit his lip until it bled, then asked quietly, "Or is that the Ben you want?" The doll, the figure on a chess board, the listless, the weapon droid in a human shell.
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But of course nothing had worked out like they planned, had it? Ben was neither happy nor peaceful. Neither was the galaxy. The fighting went on, with their family in the thick of it as usual. And always there was the looming threat of the Empire's bastard offspring, the First Order.
She felt the rush of fear, the sense of... betrayal? But she didn't know what the source of it was. There was something she was missing, some piece of the puzzle that her son had become that eluded her. Why was he so determined to drive himself to the point of collapse?
And as if in answer to her unspoken question, Ben pulled gently away from her and began to speak. Leia allowed him to, though it still hurt to see him in this state; it was her turn to listen now, and listen she did, with both her ears and the Force. She could sense that what he was about to say would be key to solving this mess and she wanted t leave no doubt in his mind that he was being heard.
And it proved to be as illuminating as she'd expected, though not quite how she'd expected, her expression becoming more thoughtful the longer he spoke. But before she could fully formulate a reply, Ben's softly spoken question struck her right in the heart, immediately gaining priority and gaining answer equally immediately. This was one question where the answer was instinctive, requiring no thought at all. "No, Ben," she said, reaching out to lightly cup his cheek, gently tucking a stray lock of dark hair behind his ear. "I would never want that for you. All I ever wanted was for you to be safe and happy, and that's still all I want. I love you, and nothing will ever change that fact."
The rest of what he said, though was both far more complicated and far more revealing. The thoughtful expression returned as she carefully put the pieces together in her mind, at least seeing the whole picture. "I could tell that you were... withdrawn as a child," she said. "We all could, really; you'd have had to be blind, both physically and in the Force to not notice that there was something going on, but I never thought..."
She trailed off for a moment. "That's another reason I thought going to train with Luke would be good for you," she said. "I thought it would give you a chance to be around people closer to your own age, get away from all us adults and all the business and politics and such that we spent so much of our time on. Maybe even make a few friends outside of Poe. I was always glad you did have Poe, but even I had more than one friend growing up." As it turned out, it was surprisingly difficult to meet other kids or arrange play dates when one lived in a palace.
"Given what you've just told me, though, I think we were looking in the wrong place," she said. "We were always looking for some outside source to explain things; Snoke, Vader, the Dark Side in general, our own flaws and mistakes, anything to explain what was going on. We were coming at it as though it were a Force-based problem when it wasn't; if I'm right, it's something a lot closer to home."
"After Mon Mothma and a few others helped me get back to some semblance of a normal, functioning adult following Alderaan's destruction, I started doing a bit of reading on the subject of mental illness," she said, "both in hopes of recognizing the signs if I started to slip back into unhealthy patterns and to hopefully be able to offer a bit of help and advice to any of my fellow survivors who were going though similar things. I learned that while some types of it, like my own, could be caused by trauma- physical, mental, emotional, or any combination of those- there were some that didn't need any such trigger. Some types are simply due to chemical imbalances in a person's brain; their brain produces too much or too little of certain neurotransmitters, resulting in all sorts of issues."
"A standard medical scan wouldn't catch things like that," Leia said. "It takes specialized testing; basically you have to already suspect a problem to find one. But based on what you just said, I think that such an imbalance might be what's causing you to feel disconnected from everything."
"Now I'm no doctor, and I have no intention of pretending to be one, but I think it's at least worth getting the possibility checked out," she said. "Because if it is a medical problem? Chances are it can be treated." And she could practically guarantee that that treatment would be safer than starving himself.
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"The other children knew something was wrong. When I was in control of myself, I tried to be friends with the other padawans, but when I wasn't they said I felt strange through the Force. They knew my lineage. They were afraid of me. Uncle Luke tried to make us into a group, some kind of collaboration, and yet no matter how much I did to try to be a part of that, the others just wouldn't let me. And then there were the times I didn't have it in me to try, which just confused Luke. The switch between passion and dead quiet was something he never understood. I tried to explain. He kept telling me to meditate. Meditation was going to fix everything except it didn't fix anything at all and I couldn't tell him without him telling me to try again."
And how badly he had missed Poe when he was there. Poe managed to snap him out of it most of the time by getting into trouble, with Ben at his side to help. They'd smuggled half a zoo's worth of animals into the house, gotten bitten by a 'monster' that turned out to be just an angry mother rabbit, pushed up Ben's adrenaline levels to places where the good days outnumbered the bad. He still loved Poe, but there was a wall between them now, hesitance and confusion on where they stood, on how to proceed. Ben had offered to let Poe beat him up if he was angry, given what Ben had put him through as Kylo Ren. Poe had just looked at him for a long moment before shaking his head. The one bond Ben had managed to have that wasn't destroyed by his lack of control over his own life, he had destroyed with his limited actual control, but the wall could come down, brick by brick. Right now they just needed time.
Time was a horrifying concept when each day was the day Ben was certain he was going to disappear into nothingness again. Sparring with Rey, trying to teach her to use a normal lightsaber, helped a bit, but Luke wanted to keep his one sane padawan away from his nephew, which, while fair, left Ben with only one thing to turn to that he understood instinctively would help him out of this. He was a magnificent practitioner of self control, he could stretch days out into a week, he had once gone ten days without a bite of anything, he could count his ribs with his fingers, collarbones sharp, the ridges of his spine aching when he laid down to remind him yes, yes you are real, you are here, you are a person, you are, you are.
The past was a place he usually let his mind dwell because the future was impossible to deal with. He tried to stay in the present. That was normally the most he could manage, even with all his methods. He managed a connection to the Force because ever since he was old enough to process words everyone had made it clear that the Force was important. Ben was really just a vessel for it, a sort of portable package of flesh that could unleash it. His entire life had made him as sure of that as he was of scientific facts. Why was he important, if not the Force? His mother's touch was suddenly desperately needed, and he placed his hand over the one on his face, tears tumbling down his cheeks even though he couldn't understand the cause.
"What if it can't be treated?" he asked, just above a whisper, looking at her as if he were a small, lost child all over again. "What if I - I can't be fixed?" The fear is overwhelming. He had been pulling as many tricks as he knew how just to be present since Han retrieved him. A life of trying to keep everything under control sounded like more than he could do, more than he could take even if he could manage to pull it off. "I'm scared to sleep at night," Ben admitted, not caring how pathetic he sounded. "I know every time I lay down that I could wake up without really waking up and go back to watching from a distance, unable to make a single choice or feel anything. Poe thinks I have nightmares so he's been making me ridiculously strong caf, but now he's started asking questions and he noticed I wasn't really eating at dinner and everyone is going to find out and leave..."
Choking on a sob, he buries his head in his mother's shoulder, exhausted.
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Meditation of a different sort wasn't a bad idea, though. She and Luke had tried joint meditation before and had gotten some interesting results, as well as accidentally discovering that their powers apparently amplified each other. Luke had had to snap her out of her first meditation session with him because she'd been unprepared and gone far too deep; the amount of Force energy that had passed through their joined hands had been so great that it had left burns. They'd been more careful after that, but hopefully that wouldn't be so much of a problem with herself and Ben since they weren't twins...
But that was a discussion for another time. Here and now, Ben was laying his hand over hers on his face tears- probably long overdue- tumbling down his cheeks as he confessed his fears before burying his head in her shoulder. And any mother knew the proper response to that. She wrapped Ben in yet another hug, and gently rubbed his back the motion a much more natural version of what Ben himself had done earlier. Letting him cry as long as he needed while at the same time easing him through it (and trying to ignore how easy it was to feel his spine, even under layers of fabric.)
"Oh Ben...", she said gently as she held him, "I found out. Have I left? Have I gone running for the hills? No; I'm right here, and I'll be here as long as you need me. And more people than you probably think would say the same."
And Poe's 'nightmare caf' was somewhat famous on base. Or infamous, depending on who you asked. Named for both its strength and its original use, it at least partially explained Ben's insomnia. "I'm fairly certain there'll be something that can be done," she said. "But if there isn't, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, try not to dwell on the future too much; it's easy to get overwhelmed that way. I know how hard it can be, but taking things one day, one night, even one hour at a time makes them a little easier. However small of a chunk of time you need to count to make it more manageable."
"For now, let's only worry about tonight," she said, "and tonight all we need to do is sleep. Do you think it would help at all if we slept together? That way I'll be right there with you no matter what."
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That was why he had pushed himself to meditate, to focus, to buckle down under Luke's tutelage to begin with. He had failed, him, the prodigy, the one with a lineage of Force users in his family, the one who should have been the star student. There were many things that Ben did under Snoke's guidance with hatred burning in his heart not for Luke but for himself, straining his mind until he was a hair's breadth away from snapping wildly at people to get results. No matter how mad the goal set in front of him was, for respect and to feel human, he would do it. He was a madman, then, yet he was also the madman that got results, which was what mattered most in the end.
And the Force had rewarded his only moral decision by leaving him when he needed it the most. He had been left more vulnerable to an attack of whatever plagued him than ever, lost and scared. He was being punished, but he could outsmart it, find a way to reforge the connection, he could handle this, he could, he could handle anything, everything, he would be better this time, adhere more to the Light, he could be someone worth loving...
He sobbed freely as he never had let himself do as a child, head spinning with too many panicked thought to voice, choking out, "I just need you to stay. I need - I tried to - all I ever wanted was to be good enough you'd come back for me." Which he hadn't been. He'd been at Luke's for a reason. Now, he had some newly reemerged fear of being discarded. "I don't want you to leave again."
Poe wasn't leaving, Rey was checking in on him enough to know when things were going awry, even Finn was slowly learning to have conversations with him. But they'd only seen him as himself since he returned, not as the thing that remained when he slipped out of his own mind, and that was a very terrifying thing. He knew every episode of sanity had an end to it. It came in bowls, in cups, on plates. It came with stomachaches soothed, a promise of relief from the dizzy spells, a night of good sleep with his body laden down with heavy warmth in his belly. Every time, eating sounded like a good idea. Each time, it betrayed him, threw him back out of himself, left him vowing never again. He had thought he was winning, learning how to go longer and longer and longer without food of real substance, but there was no victory that lasted. Eventually, his survival instincts forced his hand.
Sleep? He wanted and disliked the idea immensely. Having someone beside him was the final nail in the coffin, the admission this was controlling him and not the other way around. But he was too tired to keep on fighting. "I'd like that. I toss and turn a lot, though. I doubt you'll get much rest."
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But she had to wonder at the timing. From the sound of things, it seemed that Ben had been using the Force as something of a crutch for years now, something to lean on as he struggled alone against his condition. And while the Force was many things, she didn't think a crutch was ever meant to be one of them. Now he was here, back with his family and those who cared for him who would ensure- whatever else came- that Ben wouldn't face it alone. A place where he might find actual healing, not just the illusion of it. Perhaps there was some significance there.
For now, though, it was enough to hold him as he cried. She thought it a good sign; her own recovery had begun with just such a crying fit, and she knew how cleansing tears could be, and how cathartic. "Oh Ben..." she murmured as she turned her head to place a gentle kiss on his temple. How many times had she planned to do just that? How many times had Han gotten as far as performing pre-flight checks on the Falcon? But Ben's own determination had stopped them; surely, if he were that dedicated to his training any attempt to take him away from it before it was completed would be unwelcome.
How wrong they'd all been. "I'm not going anywhere," she said gently. "Wild banthas couldn't drag me away. And if I have any say in the matter, neither of us will ever lose the other again." There were some circumstances she couldn't fight, and somethings were inevitable. But while there was still breath in her body no force in the galaxy would take her son from her again.
Eventually the tears ran out, though she didn't let go, continuing to hug Ben as he settled somewhat. Offering her hard-won strength for him to cling to. "I wasn't getting much rest anyway," she said. "Though to spare our dignity in the morning, maybe we should just lay down here on the couch; it's big enough, and here we can at least pretend it was an accident if someone asks." Plausible deniability was a good thing. Also she wasn't certain Ben would be able to make it back to her quarters and the double bed there; a crying fit like that took a lot out of a person at the best of times and Ben was already exhausted and weakened. Thank the Force for wookie-accommodating couches.
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As much as Ben hated the fact that he was crying, he didn't have enough energy left mentally to fight it off. He barely had enough strength emotionally to tell Leia what was wrong in the first place. He clung to her and wondered how this had all happened. This was not where he had thought he would be when he was last living with her as a child; he'd thought he would become a Jedi someday and that would fix him and everyone would like him. The galaxy had seemed so straightforward back then. He had known something was wrong, but he'd had tremendous hope for the future regardless.
"I had a pet bantha, once," he murmured softly, lips quirking faintly upwards before falling. "Snoke made me kill it to show my devotion. It was a small thing, sickly and skittish. Something was finally stupid enough to trust me, and I killed it." The whole thing seemed fitting, it retrospect, a benchmark of sorts. It was the day he'd learned that when he was out of himself, detached from the world around him, he could do the cruelest of things without ever hesitating.
Ben eyed the couch. It was big enough to work, probably. Fear still nagged at him like an aching wound, telling him not to risk it. Like with food, though, eventually sleep was one of those needs even he couldn't outrun. "If anyone asks, you bored me to sleep with stories about your aunts. That seems plausible enough." The words were a weak attempt at humor, a minor one in the Ben Solo repertoire, but right now that was all he could manage. Mostly he just sort of wanted to collapse on the spot; any energy he'd started out with, he'd let loose trying to have this conversation.
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Though it couldn't be seen due to their current position, her own lips quirked slightly too, but only for a moment. "Animals trust those who treat them with kindness and respect," Leia said. "So I'm sure it had every reason to trust you. It couldn't have understood Snoke's kind of cruelty. The kind that twists and destroys things just because it can." Nature had its cruel side too, as they both knew, but for better or worse, that kind of destructiveness was unique to sentient beings. But fortunately, so was its opposite.
At Ben's next words, though, her lips quirked upward and stayed there. "Deal," she said. She pulled back just enough to look him in the eye, and to brush the last traces of tears from his cheeks. "Come on now, Ben. Bedtime." She gently guided him to shift over to the couch proper and lay down intending to follow suit once he was settled. This conversation had taken a lot out of her as well, and she felt that she could finally sleep.
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He wondered how much animals understood. He hoped it was as little as possible, that it hadn't felt betrayed by him, but it was a sick thing to have done regardless of the animal's awareness level, really. Ben tried to avoid thinking about it. He also kept a distance between himself and everyone else's pets and droids, just to be safe.
In spite of himself, he felt tears well up at just how long ago it was he'd last heard those words. He had replayed them in his head when he was banished to Luke's care, tried to pretend she was there. Old wounds he long thought dealt with seemed so raw tonight. What was worse, though, too much feeling, or none at all? He made no comment and let himself be guided into the entirely unfamiliar position of laying beside another person, unable to recall the last time he had been so close to someone. "I might snore," he warned her. "Poe remembers I did as child, but I don't know if I did when Father was bringing me home." He knew he'd passed out at some point and had woken up with his father's jacket draped over him, and that his father had very pointedly not made a comment about it.
Things were still awkward and new and horribly broken all around. But that could change, they could repair things. Perhaps they could ever repair Ben himself. He tried to let himself have hope.
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The level of understanding animals possessed, she suspected varied both by species and by the individual animal. Of the individual intelligence of Ben's erstwhile bantha, she couldn't say. But she did know that while banthas were known for their loyalty to both their herd and those who raised them, they were not especially known for their intelligence as a species. So it was unlikely that the poor thing suffered much, if at all, before its untimely end.
Not that any of that made Snoke's idea of killing it as a test of loyalty any less twisted. But that was the nature of the Dark Side; ultimately it could only corrupt and destroy. And so it did. It had left its mark on their family and on the galaxy. The trick now was to find a way to make things right. To heal what had been broken.
As Leia laid down next to her son she couldn't help but smile slightly at his comment about snoring. "You couldn't possibly be worse than your father in terms of snoring," she said. "He sounds like a lumber droid some nights." She never thought she'd miss that, but even enduring his snoring again had its charms, since it came along with the whole package.
She wrapped her arm around him gently, protectively, her hand ending up on his shoulder. "For now, just sleep," she said. "I'll be here when you wake up. And so will you."
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