Sometimes he felt like the strays knew his mother better than he did. As much as it strung, as much as he tried to continue on unfettered, the fact of the matter was that he'd been gone a long time and they'd been here an equally long time. He was the outsider amongst their ranks.
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.
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.