Written for mother's day
Title from Pray for You by Sara Evans, summary from Rock Me to Sleep by Elizabeth Akers Allen
"Hey Ben?"
"Yeah?"
"What's your first memory?"
There's a long pause.
"We used to spend a lot more time together when I was really little, me and my parents. I think I was… three or four, and we were on some planet that's all lakes and meadows, it was beautiful. I was laying in the grass with my mother, and she was trying to teach me how to make daisy chains, but I couldn't do it, and we ended up just spotting shapes in the clouds till I fell asleep."
"That sounds really nice."
"Yeah." He sighs. "Yeah, it was."
It's raining the day of Shara Bey's funeral, just as it should be. When Poe steps up to drop a handful of dirt into her grave, the dirt is mostly mud, and when he goes to wipe the tears off his face, he leaves streaks of it across his cheekbones. Leia's hand on Ben's shoulder is tight, almost too tight, but he doesn't mind it at all, because he can't stop thinking about the fact that Poe's mom is in the ground, and she's never coming out, and if that can happen to her, what's to stop it from happening to his mom? It makes his head spin and his heart get all jittery, but not in the good way like when Poe grins at him, in the bad way like when he's in a lot of trouble.
After they finish talking over her grave, everyone starts to wander off towards shelter, huddling and chattering, and Ben sees Poe still standing by himself at his mom's graveside, rain pelting him mercilessly. He slips away from his mother's grip while she's distracted and runs to his friend, pushing his hair out of his face where it sticks wetly to his forehead.
"Are you okay?" he asks quietly, reaching for the older boy's hand.
Poe yanks his hand away from him. "My mom is dead, what do you think?"
Ben shrinks away from his friend, not sure what to do, what to say. He's only six, he can barely wrap his head around Poe's mom being gone forever, much less figure out how to make his friend feel better. "You…" he starts quietly, hesitantly. "You can share my mom, if you want."
Poe's head snaps towards Ben, his face going from surprised to furious in the space of a heartbeat, and then he's lashing out, pushing his friend down into the mud. "She's- she was my mom you can't just- you can't replace her, Ben, don't you understand?" he shouts. "She's gone!"
And then Poe's running away, Ben sitting in the mud staring after him.
That's how Leia and Han find him, ten minutes later, his knees drawn up to his chest and his tear-streaked face buried in his arms. His nice clothes are filthy and ruined and he's soaked through, shaking with the cold and his sobs.
"Oh, Ben," Leia sighs, bending down to pick him up, heedless of the mud on her own black dress.
"I ju-ust wanted to h-help," he hiccups into her shoulder, his little arms wrapped tightly around her neck.
Leia ducks under the umbrella Han holds out for her, rubbing Ben's back gently. "I know, baby, but… sometimes we just can't make it better. Sometimes people just need time."
"It's not fair," Ben says, his tears slowing.
"No, it's not."
"...and then who should come running into my cell but-"
"Uncle Luke!" interrupts Ben, at the same time as Poe says, "Luke Skywalker!"
Leia laughs. "That's right, Luke, dressed as a stormtrooper. But I didn't know it was him at first-"
"You said he was short!" Ben cuts in. "My uncle told me that part," he says to Poe.
"Yes, I did, now are you going to let me tell the story or are you going to tell the whole thing?"
"Sorry, Mom." Ben grins sheepishly, showing off the wide gap where two of his top teeth had fallen out.
"Apology accepted," Leia says, tapping him on the nose. He makes a face, and Poe laughs. "Now, where was I?"
"Luke showed up to rescue you," Poe offers, tucking his knee up against his chest. He's nearly thirteen and he's started growing out of his pants faster than anyone can hem them, so he shows off a lot of skinny ankle all the time.
"That's right, Luke came in and said he was here to rescue me, but as soon as we make a run for it, there's Han getting shot at by a dozen stormtroopers! And of course he's not hitting anything, because his aim has always been more luck than skill-"
"Dad has great aim!" cries Ben, offended.
"We let him think that," Leia replies with a wink, and Poe snorts at the dismayed look on Ben's face. "So there we are, trapped in a dead-end detention level, nowhere to go, Stormtroopers firing at us, and-"
"You jump into the garb-!" Poe claps his hand over Ben's mouth.
"Shh, let your mom tell the- gross, don't lick me!" He tries to wipe it on Ben's shirt, but the smaller boy catches him by the wrist and holds his hand away.
"Then don't put your hand on my mouth!" Poe grabs Ben's hands, and then they're laughing and wrestling on the floor.
"Do you wanna hear the story or not, boys?" Leia asks with a fond roll of her eyes.
"Sorry," they both chime, scrambling to sit up straight. Poe's hand darts out, swiping his palm across Ben's sleeve, and Ben smacks him on the wrist, but then they sit still.
"So we're cornered and trapped, nowhere to go, blaster bolts flying. Well, someone's gotta save our skins, and there's a garbage chute, so I shove the boys down into it and then I jump in after them, landing on top of Han."
"Dad always says he caught you."
"Dad likes to embellish the details, sweetheart."
"But how did you get out of the garbage chute?" Poe insists.
"That's a story for another night," says Leia. "Right now it's time for you two to get some sleep."
"But I gotta know!" Poe whines, even as he slouches towards the top bunk.
"Don't worry, I'm sure Ben will be happy to tell you if you ask," Leia quips, fixing her son's shirt before nudging him towards his own bed.
"Yeah, but I don't tell it as good as you do, Mom."
"Then you'll just have to wait," she says, flicking off the light. "Good night, boys."
"Night," the two chorus, and the swish of the closing door is followed by a beat of silence.
"Your mom is really brave," Poe whispers into the dark.
"Yeah," Ben replies, grinning. "I know."
When Leia checks the date that morning, she smiles to herself and starts to make a note to remember to holo-comm Ben, but stops halfway through when she remembers. For about a minute she just stares at her datapad, the world spinning around her, while she fights wave after wave of emotion- loss, pain, regret, anger- and then, once she's collected herself, erases the note and makes her way towards the 'fresher to get ready, already trying to forget.
Every time she sees the date, it's the same- a moment of forgetful bliss, and then the crush of sadness. She tries to distract herself all day with work, holing up in her office and staring at bills and sanctions and legal documents till her eyes water, but her mind keeps straying back to painful thoughts, like a bruise she can't stop poking at. She sees the way some of her closer friends and colleagues are looking at her, like she's liable to snap- and with good reason. They don't know the truth, she couldn't bear for anyone to know the truth, so she told them some lie about a dangerous mission, about him missing, out of communication- she didn't say dead, but the story she told them implied it, implied that she knew and didn't want to believe. That much is true- she doesn't want to believe what she knows, doesn't want to acknowledge her failure, her loss. All her mistakes that led to this.
Somehow she makes it through the day, goes home at the end of the night and stares at a bottle of Corellian whiskey, but decides against it. That was always Han's medicine, never hers. She considers comming Han, just to hear his voice, just to talk to someone who might be in as much agony as she is, but she knows in her heart that they're both creatures of solitude when they're wounded, and they've never been more hurt than they are now. So she turns off her communicator and gets ready for bed.
Sleep doesn't come easily- when does it, these days?- so she just lays there in the dark for what feels like years, staring up at a ceiling that slowly reveals itself to her as her eyes adjust, but when she can see enough she has to close them, her chest aching at the sight of the stick-on stars he put up there when he was nine. She'd wanted to yell at him, but he'd had such a proud, self-satisfied look on his face at his little bit of 'decorating' that she couldn't bring herself to be angry.
"I miss you, Ben," she whispers into the darkness, the side of her face warming as a tear slips down it. "Happy birthday."
"Is that all, Dameron?" Leia asks, glancing up from her datapad to where he stands, straight and tall and poised like the soldier he is, despite having just narrowly escaped the First Order, crashed on Jakku, and barely dragged himself back to base. She feels a stab of pride- he's not hers, not technically, but he's her son in the ways that matter, and he's grown into the kind of man any mother would be honored to call her own.
"That's all I have," he replies. "I'm sorry, General, I wish it were more."
"I'm just glad to have you back in one piece," she says, cracking a small smile at him.
He relaxes slightly, grins back. "Yeah, me too."
"You're dismissed, go get some rest. You've earned it."
"Thank you, General." He inclines his head respectfully and turns to leave.
Before she can stop herself, Leia calls out to him. "Poe?" He turns back, question on his face, but doesn't say anything. "How is he?" she asks, softly, gut tight with anxiety and something a lot like shame- the steadfast Resistance general, at the heart of it all still empathizing with the enemy, worried about her son. The look Poe gives her is something so full of sadness she wonders if the man who tortured him could even really be considered her son anymore, or if he was really lost underneath all the hate and rage and resentment that had led him to betray everyone who loved him.
"I wish I had something good to tell you, General," says Poe, quiet and charitable, and Leia can see it in his face, the familiar ache of loss, the Ben-shaped hole in his heart. It hurts, but it's a relief at the same time, to know that they're both suffering, that her heart isn't the only one still broken open over him. "He's… I don't think he's lost, but he's not our Ben anymore."
She wishes it was harder to stay stoic through this pain, wishes she wasn't so used to it. "Thank you, Poe."
"I'm sorry. I really am."
"So am I."
It seems horrifically improbable, that one daisy should have survived a battle. The ground all around it is scorched away, and yet, somehow, that one damn flower survives. Kylo, or maybe Ben, or maybe someone different altogether inhabiting the same tired, scarred body, crouches down next to it and plucks it from the grass.
He remembers a planet like this, but bright and unblemished, without the days-old marks of war on it, his mother lying next to him in the grass, her graceful fingers on his small, chubby ones, trying to teach him the motion of weaving the stems together. He twists the flower between his fingers, watching its head spin rapidly. If he tries, he can still hear the sound of her voice, can still feel her arms around him, and he sets the flower back down on the ground so he won't break it when he curls his hand into a tight fist and presses it against his forehead, willing away the rush of emotion that comes with the memories.
There was a time when he would have reminded himself of all the reasons he had to be angry, all his betrayal and resentment, and there was a time he might have been able to convince himself he really hated her, but that was a long time ago. Now, he just sits in the burned grass, surrounded by the silence of destruction's wake, and misses his mother.