Work Text:
✧
It was becoming familiar now, that warmth which accompanied her arrival. As Ben lifted his head from the desk, Rey was sitting across from him. She appeared as real as the pen in his hand even though she was parsecs away.
“Have you any idea what triggers these meetings?” Rey asked.
“No,” Ben replied, putting away his calligraphy set. The force didn’t reveal much of the other’s surroundings during these encounters, but he preferred a clear space anyway. When it was done, Ben looked her over. A few hours had passed since the force had connected them last. Her hair and clothes were now dry.
Rey broke the silence. “Did you want to train under Luke?”
“No,” he answered again, pushing the thoughts of his uncle to the back of his mind.
“Someone else then?”
“No.”
Rey’s eyes slowly narrowed into slits, something that seemed to indicate confusion for her. “You...didn’t want to be a Jedi?”
“Yes,” Ben said, the truth spilling from his lips before he could even consider the answer.
Rey sat with his answer, confusion still evident on her face. “Neither a...?”
He filled in her blank. “Jedi, Sith, First Order… Nothing of this.”
She straightened, her body becoming alert. “Your conflict isn’t what I thought.”
Ben took a long breath in through his nose. He placed his forearms on the desk and leaned closer to her. Rey’s eyes shone back at him, wide with understanding now, and it was under that gaze he decided to tell her one more story from his past. “It wasn’t always this way. I remember...a woman...with flowers in her hair.”
✧
Ben’s chest heaved, desperately trying to supply his body with enough oxygen. Behind him he could hear his parents shouting his name, but their pleas didn’t stop his legs from running. Nothing, it seemed, could stop them. Not the tears clouding his vision, nor the tangle of tree roots covering the forest floor. Only when he could no longer hear his name echoing around him, did his legs crumple underneath him. His knees skidded against the mud, and he wrapped his arms around himself as his shoulders shook with sobs.
“Oh, little one, what’s the matter?”
Ben raised his head and saw a woman dressed in white approaching him. Her brown hair fell over her shoulders as she sat beside him, and he saw that there were flowers intertwined in the curls. Ben knew she was not real, just like all the other ones who visited him weren’t real, but he felt comforted by her kind eyes.
Through his sobs, Ben told her what happened, “I... My family we were...having lunch and-and my elbow hit my glass of moof milk...and I tried...I really tried to catch it with my hand, but the Force caught it instead.” With his confession, Ben’s sobs grew harder.
The woman reached out to him and took his hands in hers. They were very small like his mother’s, and Ben found his shoulders relaxing. “Well it seems to me you hadn’t made a mess in the kitchen. I’m sure your mother was very pleased.”
Ben almost smiled a little. Instead, he wiped his nose on his sleeve and explained, “That means I’m a Jedi...and I don’t want to be a Jedi.”
“Why not? I think you could grow up to be a very successful Jedi.”
“Can you keep a secret?”
The woman smiled. “I am very good at keeping secrets. I kept my marriage secret for many years.”
Ben’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. That was a big secret, so he decided to trust her. “I see people like you all the time. Mostly in my dreams...or I hear them in my head.” She nodded for him to continue, and when he saw no disappointment in her face, he did. “They show me...me. But bigger. And when I’m bigger, I am...bad.” Tears began to rim his eyes once more. “I hurt people with the Force. I was never gonna tell my parents I was a Jedi like my uncle, but they saw! They saw! And I have tried so hard to be good, but now I will be bad like in my dreams.”
“Little one, I am so sorry for your bad dreams. For the things they have tried to tell you. And the weight you carry on your shoulders. My husband had nightmares just like yours.”
“Really?” Ben could not believe he wasn’t alone.
She nodded. “And he believed that they were the only truth. But I will share a secret with you as well, Ben. Every choice you make creates new paths for you to take. A dream may show you one possible path, a possible truth, but only you can make it real .”
“I have a choice?”
“Yes, little one, yes... You should go back to your parents.”
His parents. Ben wrapped his arms around himself once more. They were going to be so mad that he ran away. “What if I make the wrong choice, and they don’t love me?”
“A parent’s love is unconditional. It stretches past wrong choices.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I never met my children, and I love them with all of my heart. No matter what.”
Ben rose from the ground and the woman along with him. They walked side by side back to his home. When his house was visible again, he looked up at the woman and said, “I’m sorry you didn’t get to meet them.”
The woman looked over to where his mother was pacing frantically, tearing up with grass with every step she took. Then back at him. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Sitting and talking with me. Conversation can heal many wounds.”
Ben smiled now, revealing his dimples and missing front tooth. He did feel much better. He hugged the woman as tight as he could, and she did the same. “Can I ask you one more question?” he said against the soft fabric of her dress.
Without letting him go, the woman replied, “Yes.”
Ben backed one step away from her. “Is your husband okay?”
“He...was lost for quite some long time, but he came back to me.”
“And you still love him?”
The woman laughed, and a warm breeze surrounded them. “Very much.” She waved her hand at him. “Run along. Your mother is worried sick.”
Ben didn’t hesitate. “Mom!” he called as he broke through the trees.
Leia spun towards her son and ran to meet him halfway. “Ben!” She scooped him up in her arms and turned to call for her husband. “Han! Han! He’s okay. He’s safe.”
Han came running out of the trees to join his family. Ben followed the treeline down to where he had last seen the woman. He saw her there still, and Ben could’ve swore he saw a man beside her. Before he could make him out completely, his view was blocked by his father’s face as he looked him over for any injuries, and when Ben looked over his father’s shoulder, they were gone.
✧
Ben searched Rey’s face, and all he found was that same understanding. Instead of comforting, it now lit rage in his stomach.
“She said some beautiful things.”
“She filled a young boy’s head with lies .” Ben’s voice rose for the first time in front of her. The anger making his words punctual. “I never heard of choices again. Just legacy and assumptions. ”
The connection was broken then, and Ben was alone in his quarters once more. For as many times as he thought over that story in his life, he had forgotten that last conversation with the woman until now, telling it to Rey.
He was lost for quite some time…
His comm crackled to life. “Sir?”
Ben hit the button. “Proceed.”
“The...Millennium Falcon has sent a pod to us, sir.”
It was then Ben realized that warmth had not left. “No one goes near the vessel without me. I’ll be there.”