Lullaby
He was a beautiful baby – porcelain skin, a shock of curly black hair, a rosebud mouth – and during the day he giggled and cooed like any other baby. The first time he smiled at Leia, she felt like it was the first time she had seen a sun rise. But at night-
Colic.
Such an innocuous word for something that made a baby shriek, high and piercing, all night, every night. The doctors – human and droid – assured her it was normal, but Leia worried. She knew he was Force-sensitive because sometimes she got overwhelming messages that weren't words, just feelings, but that she understood to mean: HUNGRY! WET! HOLDME! She didn't sense anything specifically wrong, but still…worry. Foreboding. Like something out there might be looking at her infant with malicious intent. But try as she might, search as she might, she couldn't find anything, and neither could Luke when she asked him, so she shook it off as post-partem paranoia.
Motion and contact were the only things that soothed Ben at all; left lying in the crib he was inconsolable. They took turns, his mother, his father, pacing, pacing while his stomach tightened and his back arched and stiffened and he wailed and thrashed in their arms. Days, they were building a government to replace the Empire they had defeated, a job that was never done, as so many people were looking for guidance, for help, for leaders. Nights, they paced.
In the time since his birth, he hadn't slept for more than an hour stretch, so neither had they, and it turned out that sleep deprivation had the same effect on the human body whether it was administered by an evil empire or an innocent infant.
Leia's nightmares, the ones she had had since the Death Star, intensified. When she was nursing, rocking gently back and forth, crooning an almost-forgotten Alderaanian lullaby, warm and full of cozy hormones and almost dozing off, she would be back in that cell, cringing away from that orb of torture, cringing away from him. And when she didn't sleep, they came anyway, as daymares that she didn't have the energy to fight. She snapped out of it to find Han holding her shoulders or her face, shaking her gently, staring into her eyes to bring her back. He wrapped his arms around her and Ben, and for a while she was okay again, but at night, when she paced the floor alone, the terrors returned and she drifted through them, unaware that she wasn't alone. Ben swam through his mother's nightmares, too, had since he was in her womb, finding something like comfort in the familiarity of the cell, the dark, the pain, the man in the helmet. It wasn't until he was old enough to form words that she realized he had been along for the ride the whole time.
She had just handed him off to Han and collapsed onto the bed, not bothering to get under the covers, instantly asleep, but also instantly back in her nightmare. Vader (she never thought of him as Anakin or father – he would always be Vader to her) was standing over her, and she knew pain was coming and she was scared – so scared – knowing she had to withstand it to protect the Alliance, but she was so very frightened….and then something else, something new, frightened her even more - a tiny voice, a sentence fragment: "Mama sad?"
She jolted awake. "Ben!"
Ben was snuggled on Han's shoulder, only whimpering and fussing a bit. She took the baby from Han, hugging him close, smoothing his hair, cooing and soothing and hoping he didn't remember what he saw in her dream. Her voice was soft, lilting, and Ben nuzzled into her shoulder.
"Han. We need to go see Luke. Now." She was pulling on clothes with her free hand.
"What? Leia, it's the middle of the night."
"So?"
"So? The common folk don't like a royal summons in the middle of the night, Your Highness." He looked at her – she had that expression on her face, determined and intent, that let him know she wasn't amused and wouldn't be dissuaded. "What's wrong?"
"I had another nightmare.."
"I know."
"…and Ben was in it with me."
"With you?"
She nodded.
"Luke can help. I have to fix this. I can't have him seeing...that."
Han touched her shoulder. "He's going to find out sometime."
She swallowed. "Sometime. Not before he learns to walk. I have to fix this."
Most days, Ben went to work with one of his parents. Today was especially nice, because he was with both of them on the flight line. He liked being there; he liked the rush of activity; the feeling that everyone was contributing to something bigger. He liked when the pilots ruffled his hair and swung him up on their shoulders and let him try on their helmets. Daddy was pre-flighting the Millennium Falcon and Mommy was briefing a group of pilots on their next training mission. Even though it was peacetime, flying was a perishable skill, and training never ended. He shuffled along the edge of a circle of pilots listening to his mother's authoritative but well-modulated voice, when he heard a familiar phrase: Death Star. He had heard that phrase before, and always, when he heard it, a picture popped into his mind; the man in the black helmet from his mother's subconscious. Who was he? Ben had asked before, but not in a long time, because she wouldn't ever tell him, and because when he asked, it made her sad. He didn't like seeing Mommy sad. But still…he was five years old. He was a big boy now; that's what they kept telling him when they tried to convince him he would like going away to school with Uncle Luke. So maybe now she would tell him.
He walked over to her, waited for the briefing to end and asked, "Mommy, who's the man in the black helmet?"
She froze. "What, baby?"
"The man in the black helmet. From your dream. From the…" he tried out the words,"…Death Star. Who is he?"
"Nobody, sweetie. Those were just dreams." Why did he have to remember?
"No they weren't. I know that kind of dream. It was real. Who was he?"
"No one you need to worry about, baby. He died a long time ago."
"But I want to know. He's always there."
She stopped what she was doing and knelt to look into his eyes. "I'll tell you one day, sweetie, when you're older. It's….something that happened during the war."
He frowned a little, and a tiny, stubborn line formed between his eyebrows. "But I want to know."
A whisper swirled in the back of his mind: You don't have to asssk. Jussst…puuuussh.
Really? He scrunched his eyes together and clenched his teeth and pushed.
A cell, a bunk, cold and no light and no sleep and a machine humming bristling with pain-terror-hurt…Mommy screaming…being marched into a control room with a wide view of stars…a planet called homemummydaddylovemineobliteratedgone.
A world made of ice. A world made of clouds.
Darth Vader.
Uncle Luke…he's Uncle Luke's father.
A world made of sand. A world made of forests.
And Mommy's. Mommy's father. My…
Mommy screaming.
"BEN! STOP! GET OUT!" She had yelled. Calm, serene, kind, unperturbable Mommy had yelled. Verbally and inside his head, and it was LOUD.
He jumped back, eyes enormous, breathing hard.
Mommy clutching the side of her head.
Daddy and Uncle Luke and Uncle Chewy and some other people, running over.
"Don't you ever do that again!" Mommy wasn't as loud now, but still MAD. "You will not use the Force that way – to intrude. It's wrong. And it hurts."
Hurt? Hurt Mommy? "I didn't mean to…didn't mean to…"
"What happened? What'd he do?" Daddy, looking at him like he was…like he was bad. Mommy waving Daddy away.
"But we talk like that…" he barely whimpered.
"No. It's not the same. Not the same. That is an invasion. You. Will. Not."
He stepped back, staring at his scuffed boots, lip quivering. "I just wanted to know."
"There are some things you don't need to know." Her voice was shaky and scared. And that, that terrified him. Mommy was never afraid – but she was now, and so was he, to the point of tears that he held back because a big five year old boy was too old to cry. But all the grown-ups were staring at him in a not-good way, fear and disapproval rolling off them.
He backed against the hull of a ship and sucked in deep breaths, tried to calm down, tried to latch onto something that wasn't afraid. There was one thing, a leftover image in his brain.
The man in the black helmet.
Darth Vader. That whispery voice again. Your grandfather was ssstrong.
Grandfather.
He had never even known he had one.
A/N
Edited to add a line break between sections. Thanks to reviewer Purple Shamrock 17 and pointing out that it needed one. :)
This story is sort of a 'prequel' to my other, longer story, 'Things Fall Apart'.