Chapter 10: If I Break For You

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The wind stung his eyes and numbed his ears. It was harder to ignore than it should have been. In the weight of the impending moment, even the insignificant seemed enormous.

There was something surreal about his mother's transport landing alongside his father's freighter, the glossy elegance of one emphasizing the scorched humility of the other. So too was his mother's appearance in contrast with itself, an offsetting image of regal bearing and humble dress. Ben was trapped, enslaved by the sight of her, able only to bear witness as Leia Organa Solo took her first steps upon the windy hillside of Ahch-To.

She looked small. She had looked smaller the last time he had seen her, hunching over a balcony to watch as he was sent into exile. She looked old, but not as old as he had imagined. There was still a sheen of tawny brown in the gray of her braided hair, still a flush and vivaciousness under the frown lines and crow's feet.

He was so lost in the details of her face as she neared that it took him by surprise when she stopped, suddenly and finally there. She was not two paces out of reach, too solid to be a fantasy. Real the way Rey was real, in the erratic and impossible dream that was his life. The frown on her face as she looked at him was frank and familiar.

"Well..." The ability to speak seemed to be giving her a struggle, but she was stronger than him. "You look better than you did the last time I saw you."

Ben couldn't work his lungs. Beside him, Rey squeezed his hand, then let go and stepped away.

When it was clear he wouldn't answer her, Leia took a breath, put her hands on her hips, and scolded. "Did you forget all those manners I taught you?"

He tried very hard to say hello. He pulled in air through his nose and let it build up under that single word until the only way left for it to go was out, but the word that escaped him instead was "Mother."

"Oh, Ben." The mask she had worn, thorough yet fragile as a piece of paper, fell to pieces. She took the last two steps and Ben fought not to flinch away when she reached up. A panic rose in his chest when he thought she would hug him, but she only put her hands on his arms and stopped there, tense with restraint. Perhaps she sensed his terror, or perhaps she was fighting her own. "You've grown," she said, and the words cracked like firewood. "I didn't think you would get any taller."

He didn't feel tall. He felt like a child waking from a nightmare, shaken and unsure of what was real and what was a dream. He wanted to fall to his knees, to put his arms around her and press his face into her skirt, to hide there until she touched his hair, until she told him that it was okay. Then, perhaps, he would look up and see the bedroom he had slept in when he was six. He would see his toys and his clothes, his collection of datapads and holovids full of adventure stories his dad had given him. Then he would tell her about the voice in his head, and she would tell Han and Uncle Luke, and they would make it so that he never had to hear that voice again.

None of this happened. He was not a six-year-old boy. He did not go to his knees before her. He stood unmoving, and Leia indulged herself only a little longer in the comfort of physical contact, reaching up at last to touch the scar on his face—the same place where Han had touched him in their final moments. Maybe she sensed that too.

Then she stepped back, and neither of them knew what to do next.

"Leia, do you want to come inside?" Rey put in an effort to rescue them both. "Who flew the ship? They can come too."

"I asked Greer to wait on board," Leia answered, barely audible over the sea and wind. "She doesn't need to see a weepy family reunion, trust me." She spared another sad-eyed glance at Ben and then stepped around him, letting Rey lead her to the cooking hut.

"Did you bring anyone else?"

"C-3PO, but he's powered down at the moment." There was a touch of slyness in her tone, faint and fleeting, but Ben knew it when he heard it. The timing on the droid's downtime had been intentional.

"Not Artoo?"

Leia's eyes tightened with a smirk that failed to reach her lips. "Oh, he tried. The hardest part of leaving was keeping him from stowing away. He misses Luke."

"Luke misses him too."

"And I told him he can come back when the fighting's done," Luke said, managing to look dramatic as he stepped from the hut. "Hello Leia."

"Luke." The siblings embraced, Leia sinking into it with all that she had held back from Ben. "Thank you for this." She wasn't talking about her visit.

"He's my nephew. I wouldn't be much of a Jedi if I turned him away when he wanted help."

Ben recalled what Luke had said during their training—that he wasn't a Jedi at all—but he swallowed the temptation to sass his uncle about it. With Leia there, he'd barely be able to pronounce the words anyway.

Rey suggested again that they move inside, and Luke rather too gleefully started serving tea. He had been trying for a long time, Ben recalled, to convince Leia to pay him a visit. For his own part, Ben haunted the doorway until Rey sidled up and put her chin on his shoulder to whisper, "you okay?"

"No."

"Sit down."

That sounded like an order, whether she meant it to or not. In his stupor, he almost thanked her for it. Being told what to do made the daunting prospect easier. He sat crosslegged as close to Leia as he dared and wrapped his hands around the hot cup of tea Luke passed him.

"Were Finn and Poe and Rose able to get away?" Rey asked, sitting across from Ben.

"Get away?" Leia echoed. "Oh, their honeymoon. No, I'm afraid not. We couldn't spare them."

Rey looked crestfallen. "I guess when the war's over, then."

"We'll all be celebrating then." Leia aimed a tentative smile at Ben. He couldn't return it, but he met her eyes for most of a second. Then she was focused on Rey again. "How goes the training?"

"Well, I think." Rey turned the cup in her hands, idly. "I know Luke keeps you updated."

"Luke doesn't tell me everything." There was a lilt to the words and a tilt to her smile that made the statement teasing. Ben wondered in dread what Luke had told her, whether or not an exiled murderer had the privilege of privacy, but he was far from ready to brooch that subject, and Rey was pretending to be distracted by her tea.

"Classen. Brell." The guards had turned up as a pair to observe the arrival of their general, but had so far been exercising their talent for being inconspicuous. Their gazes snapped in unison to Leia when she addressed them. "How are you holding up? Do I need to send a relief team?"

"It's boring out here," Brell said frankly, "but the company could be worse." She tilted her head towards her partner. "Classen?"

The more stoic of the pair said, without inflection, "I'm enjoying the show."

Ben pressed his lips shut on a suggestion that Classen enjoyed it more because he'd won credits on it.

Leia answered with a dry smile. "As long as you're all getting along here, I'm inclined to leave things as they are. Let me know if you change your minds."

Ben kept his eyes fixed steadily on the table and hoped they wouldn't. Bets and playful jabs aside, he could hardly expect anyone else to be as tolerable, let alone as tolerant.

The conversation continued sporadically, littered with false starts and flighty topic changes. Ben caught himself making an effort not to listen, to drown it out with his own thoughts, waiting for a chance to escape from the sideways glances of his mother, too full of hurt and hope. The longer he brooded as the others talked around him, the more he was convinced that inviting her here had been a mistake. There were too many frayed edges, landmines under every road of thought, and he wasn't the only one who felt them. Ben wondered, wistful, if it would always be this way. Some wounds that never healed, regardless of what Rey and Luke thought. The best Ben could hope for was that the scar tissue would be thick enough, one day, to block out the sting.

Rey was on the edge of his mind, probing at his discomfort. She said nothing of it, she barely looked at him, but when one of the frequent breaks in the conversation gave her an opening, she offered to show Leia around the village. Ben expected Leia to ask him along, but she seemed to catch on to Rey's intent. With a mercifully brief parting, they were gone.

Luke afforded him one pointed glance and then went about clearing the table. Taking the unspoken offer, Ben made his escape.

His first instinct was to go to the garden, but surely that would be included on Leia's tour. He turned instead in the opposite direction, intending to find some quiet, insignificant place in the maze of crumbling stonework.

He hadn't made it out of sight of the cooking lodge when C-3PO jostled into his path with trademark bad timing. The droid must have finished his nap. "Oh! Master Ben! How good to see you. Are you well? The princess has been worried sick about you!"

"You know she hates it when you call her that." The response came automatically, tailed by a jolt of memory from his youth, uttering the same reminder on too many occasions. He shouldered past the droid, regretting that he had responded at all.

"Well, I don't see why," Threepio rambled. "It is her title. As it is yours too, if you want it."

"Princess Ben?" He was teasing again despite his better judgment. Perhaps it was the release from his muteness in Leia's presence, making his tongue wag unchecked.

"Prince Ben."

"What would I be prince of? The dust of Alderaan?"

"Well, it's better than Kylo Ren, if you ask me."

Ben let the name wash over him, suppressing the inner jolt that came with it. Luke and Rey both tended to dance around it unless they were making a point, and generally he appreciated that, but he worried that he was allowing himself to be sheltered too much. If he ever got off this planet, he would doubtless have that name thrown at him along with all the deeds that went with it. "... I think I've had enough of titles, if it's all the same to you."

It was, of course, not all the same to a protocol droid, but Threepio had enough sense to let it slide at merely the cost of a feigned sigh. "I suppose Ben Solo will do." His tone was one of lamentation. "Your father was a war hero and an honorable man, after all."

"I hope you never called him that to his face."

"Of course not." Threepio seemed offended by the suggestion. "Han Solo expressly told me not to call him honorable. Fourteen times."

"Uh huh..." Ben almost smiled, but that would have been giving the droid too much encouragement. "And how many times has my mother told you not to call her princess?"

"Three thousand and twenty-six times, to date."

"That's what I thought."

If it was true that his grandfather had programmed C-3PO's personality, the fool had badly overlooked the concept of taking a hint. "I can't tell you how glad I am that you gave up that First Order business. Princess Leia told me all about how that Supreme Leader Snoke was lying to you. If only it had been brought to my attention sooner, I could have set the records straight. We might have avoided this whole mess."

"You're right." He lacked the energy, suddenly, to be annoyed with the droid. "I should have told someone. It's my fault it went this far."

"Oh, no, I didn't mean it like that!" Threepio backpedaled, hands in the air. "It was entirely Snoke's fault, and besides, it's all over now."

"I'm glad you feel that way," Ben kept his voice flat, his vision focused intently on the paving stones in front of him.

"Of course, Master Ben. And, if I may say so, Princess Leia feels the same."

"I know." They had nearly reached the isolated corner Ben was aiming for, but he wasn't inclined to share the location with the droid. Instead, he stopped and turned to face him, crossing his arms for lack of knowing what else to do with them. "Threepio, do you remember my grandfather?"

"Master Anakin? I'm afraid my memory of him has been erased. I'm terribly sorry. You would have better luck asking R2-D2, but even then, I can't guarantee that he'll be any help. You know how he is..."

"Never mind. Thank you."

"I only wish that I could help more," Threepio lamented. "I am only a protocol droid."

"You've done enough," Ben assured him, struck by a guilty sense of compassion for the machine. "Why don't you go see if Luke needs help with anything?"

"Of course." Threepio's mood brightened. "Now that you mention it, Artoo requested that I pass on a message to Master Luke. He said—"

Ben stalled him with a raised hand. "His message is for Luke. You should go deliver it."

"Yes, of course." C-3PO started to shuffle away, then paused. "It's been so nice talking to you, Master Ben. I hope we can do it again before the princess decides to leave."

"I'll see you later, Threepio." That was, finally, enough to send the droid on his way, and Ben retreated swiftly behind the nearest row of huts to his chosen hiding spot.

"At least droids forgive easily," offered Classen.

"He isn't programmed to hold grudges," Ben dismissed, wondering why the guard had to choose that moment to break from his usual stoicism. He felt exhausted after Threepio's eccentric idea of politeness.

"And he was built by Darth Vader?" Classen prodded.

"Darth Vader wasn't always Darth Vader."

"That sounds familiar."

Ben met his gaze wearily, trying to impart a warning. Classen, unlike Threepio, could take a hint. He squared his shoulders and put on his usual impassive expression. Ben proceeded to ignore him.

He did not meditate—not properly. He sat and let his mind wander, prodding gently now and then at the tender spots. His mother's presence on the island was a source of ceaseless anxiety, lapping at the edges, threatening to overflow and drown out his control if he let it. In counterpoint, there was relief, and something deeper he had no name for. It was something like coming home after a long journey, not having known if it would still be there, nor if it would still feel like home.

And then there was Rey. For Rey, he felt resignation. There was still a part of him that balked at the thought of letting her in, of letting her touch his darkest corners and flirt with his explosive moods. It was a battle he would not win. Stronger than his anxious fretting was his need for her. He had never felt such boundless affection for another being, such constant desire to be close to someone. He considered the possibility that Snoke had been the one to deny him this, had shielded him from such tender, mortal cravings, even for his family. Once the idea came into his head, it was hard to doubt. He argued with himself against the blind certainty of it, in fear of his own inclination to jump to conclusions. Passing all the blame to Snoke was too easy. It was a familiar argument. He was responsible, and no matter how much Rey and Luke tried to comfort him, to forgive him, he had to hold onto that. To start thinking it had all died with Snoke would be a false security. A liability. Even if Snoke truly had a hand in stealing his ability to love, there was a part of him that had allowed it to happen.

He'd had this inner conversation before, but the pain remained fresh. The acknowledgment still stung. He took that to mean that he would need to keep having it, to repeat the dialogue until the wound had faded and set into yet another scar. They were, after all, such useful reminders.

He felt Rey's presence at the door of his mind, knocking politely. She had sensed the spike of his emotion and was checking up on him. He sent a wordless assurance and gently shut her out.

On the subject of Rey, and on love, as tempting as it was to ascribe his former lack thereof to some nefarious manipulation by Snoke, there was the simpler fact that he had never been in love before. He would not have been able to define it, except that the surge of devotion at every thought of her could hardly be anything else. The strange, painful joy at the mere knowledge of her existence was something he had felt for no one and nothing before her. He was thoroughly, indisputably, disastrously in love with her.

He had seen the way others loved. He had felt it when their walls were down. He knew how his mother had loved his father—a stubborn and persistent affection, rueful and joyful at the same time. Han had made Leia feel young and alive. Powerful. Something in his cocky influence had infected her, rekindling her own rebel-born fever and making her feel as if she could take on all the galaxy. Even their bickering she had loved, as frustrating as it had been at times. Leia's love was like a low fire that resisted the wind and the rain, a brooding star that burned cold but long. Leia's love could hunker down, cling to the embers, and wait. Wait for the rain to cease and the wind to slow, until the flames could rise again in undying glory. That was how Leia had loved Han.

Leia's love for her son had the same resilience, but it was more selfless and more singular. She had made him. He was hers and she would protect him, always. She had known him in the first moments of his consciousness, known him in ways not even most mothers could know their children, and she had loved what she had known. Nothing he did or became would change that, as long as some piece of her son still lived. This he had sensed when he was a child, though Snoke had turned him bitter to the knowledge, and this he had felt again on when she greeted him on the mountainside.

Rey's love for him was different. Where Leia was like a banked campfire, Rey was unrestrained. There had been no love of any sort in her life for all of her years on Jakku, and now she had it in abundance. Her love for Ben was not so different from her love for the rest of her new family, but that was changing by the day. Rey lived by adapting to her environment. Likewise, her love adapted to what was offered her. Childlike—for her childhood had been cut short—she was open and willing to change and to experience. As long as her love was nourished, it would grow. Rey's love was a wildfire, strong enough to bare its face to the rain and burn on.

Ben's love was a supernova.

He had suffered lifelong from an obsessive personality, had been prone to fixating, to devoting the whole of himself to a single purpose. His attachment to Rey was no different. While Rey thrived on what was given to her, while Leia fueled her love on the ashes of long-ago things, Ben's love consumed him from the inside out. It would make no difference if Rey spent the rest of her life with him or if he never saw her again. He would devote any purpose to her, would live his life for her memory, or on the hope of doing something that would please her. He would be her willing servant, her guardian, her mentor, or her lover. He would strive to be anything and everything that she needed. He would live or die or kill for her. That was the nature of Ben's love.

"Do you love anyone, Classen?"

"I have a wife," Classen answered, sounding unfazed by the intimate question.

"I didn't know."

"You didn't ask."

"Where is she?"

"Right now, D'Qar."

"It must be difficult being away from her."

"I call her when I'm not on shift." The guard smiled tightly. "Except when you broke the comm. I had to tell her about that."

"Oh," Ben said. "Sorry."

"Uh huh."

"What's her name?" He didn't care, particularly, but he did not feel averse to the casual conversation, for once.

"Avalee."'

"How long have you known her?"

"We were kids together." Classen was the one beginning to look uncomfortable, likely unnerved by his ward's chattiness.

"Convenient."

"A bit less dramatic than your way."

"Hm." Ben didn't ask any more. Taciturn Classen was not the most ideal person for practicing small talk on.

Without that distraction, it was all he could do not to track Rey's every step through the Force. When he could no longer contain himself, he found the line that lay between them and sent along it a pulse of anxious curiosity. Her acknowledgment came prompt and he heard a mental echo of her voice. She was suggesting to Leia that they turn around.

That had not been his intention, but he didn't know what else he had expected. Too restless to stand still, he paced the worn paths, struggling against the pull in his chest to flee, to run to the border of his island prison and farther, to become the wind, the tide, or the rocky shore. Better not to exist—said his traitorous gut—than to continue this ill-planned reunion. Better to spare her his broken self, his irreparable failings.

He didn't listen. Not this time. He knew what Rey would say, and his mother. He didn't entirely believe that they would be right, but he trusted them both more than he trusted himself, so he waited.

Rey, upon reuniting with him, withheld the kiss she plainly wanted to give and settled instead for tucking her hands around his arm. There was something different… something heavy behind her eyes, but even through the Force, he could not decipher it.

"Come on," she said with too much cheer. "We were going to see the garden."

For all that Rey had lacked in early socialization, she possessed an instinct for what people needed. By taking charge and pulling him into the ongoing tour, he realized that she was letting him be near his mother without putting him in the spotlight. It wouldn't last, but it would give him that much more time to adjust.

Leia seemed to have caught on, or else she felt the same as he did, and gave him only a sidelong smile as Rey resumed the lead.

"Ben's been helping me garden."

"You mentioned that." Leia did not seem opposed to hearing it again.

"He's good at it."

"I'm not," Ben grumbled, and then was pleased with himself for having been able to say anything at all.

"You haven't killed anything except what I've told you to. That counts as being good at it."

It seemed a low standard for judgment, but he let her have the last word.

"Maybe we should have had a garden when you were growing up," Leia mused.

"Hm."

The light was slanting golden over the garden wall, filtering through the leaves in a bright haze. It was too idyllic. It made Ben angry. It seemed unfair that the little plot of land could make itself so welcoming to Leia while he could barely look at her. He didn't think he had ever been jealous of a garden before.

There was another off-putting wave of emotion from Rey. It was not quite nostalgia, and a little too close to regret. She blocked him out almost as soon as he had felt it, which only served to alarm him further, but she was smiling and her eyes were bright, reflecting the green and gold of the garden. Perhaps it was an old sadness. It would not have been the first time he caught her lamenting the desolation of her childhood.

Leia found the bench and sat down while Rey rambled about their exploits in herbology, leaving out the mishap with Ben's hands. Leia prompted her with questions about their overall lifestyle on Ahch-To and Rey talked of fishing and wood-gathering in tones of joy. To hear her tell it, the island was a rustic paradise. It surprised him, though he supposed it made sense that she would form a bias for the place that had become a haven for her. Ben basked in the sound of her voice—his own haven—and eventually, somewhere during a description of Luke's cooking, he found the nerve to sit down on the bench beside his mother.

Leia was plainly trying to contain her pleasure, and kept her tone carefully mild when she asked him, "do you cook, Ben?"

"I try."

"He does fine," Rey said. "He also braids hair." She took the opportunity to show off the ones he had done for her that morning, though surely Leia had already noticed them.

"That brings back memories. I don't suppose..." She trailed off, then, breathing in deep, she straightened her spine. Her smile sobered into the smooth face she tended to wear when approaching a tricky political situation. "Mine's coming loose in the wind." It was not a lie. "If you don't want to..." She was going to say that she would understand, or that she would forgive him if he didn't want to touch her. He opened his mouth to refute the idea, but closed it again without success, relapsing into the muteness of earlier. Instead, he turned on the bench to face her and raised his hands in invitation.

Leia took the hint and put her back to him. As Ben unwound the remains of her wind-ruffled braid and combed her hair with his fingers, she resumed her conversation with Rey. They spoke this time of others worlds visited, trading stories of trivial curiosities. Feeling creative, Ben wove a pair of interlaced plaits along one side of Leia's head, tying them off in a bun at the back while Leia talked of Endor and Ewoks and listened to Rey's tales of outlandish desert-going traders.

He worked slowly, with care and precision, for once he had started, he found he didn't want to stop. More to the point, he was afraid to stop. Braiding his mother's hair gave him a clear-cut purpose while fulfilling the requirement of familial interaction. It was only a pebble thrown into the gaping chasm between them, but it felt good. It was something he could do for her without having to fumble for words, or to fear making things worse.

Although he had feared the end even as he looped the last strands into place, the reduced tension lingered between them when the act was done. He was able to smile while Leia explored the pattern by touch and Rey gleefully described it to her. Then Leia turned to catch his eyes, and for a moment he thought that she would try to hug him, but she only smiled and said, "Thank you, Ben. I think you're even better at that than you used to be. You didn't pull at all."

"I practice on Rey." It was a foolish repeat of what Rey had said already, but at least his voice came easily this time. He took advantage of it while it lasted. "I missed it, Mother."

Now she did touch him, but only with the palm of her hand, sweeping back the hair that hung loose over his face. "Me too."

With that, the tension returned and Ben dropped his gaze, shrinking away as much as his tall frame allowed. Leia retreated in her own stately way, rising and dismissing herself with a comment of, "I should go find Luke. There are things I need his opinion on. Rey, about that matter we discussed, you don't have to..."

"My answer is still yes," Rey said, and Ben felt again that strange sorrow from her, wrapped this time in resolve.

He could read, of all things, a sense of guilt underlying Leia's words when she replied, "talk to him about it." Then she left the two alone but for Classen, who stood in his usual silence.

Ben looked to Rey.

Rey no longer looked gleeful or exuberant.

He prodded at her mind, but she was still closed to him. Forced to make another attempt at verbal speech, he pitched his question low. "What is it?"

"Leia needs me to go back with her."

The words didn't make sense. He replayed them in his head, probed again at her defenses, and still came out lost. "What?"

"You heard her earlier. They need another Force user. She couldn't even spare Finn for a few days."

His brow furrowed as the pieces came together, too slowly. He didn't want to believe the picture they made. "You're leaving?"

"Not forever."

"Rey..." I need you, he didn't say.

She heard it anyway. "You'll be okay."

He was angry suddenly, exploding up from the bench to pace, erratic, five strides one way and three the other. "I thought the Resistance was winning!" His voice echoed off the garden walls, louder than he intended.

"They are, but..."

Four paces both ways this time. "Will you make any difference?"

Rey huffed. He hadn't meant it as an insult, but she wasn't letting him get away with the slip. "Yes, I will. Listen, they've got the First Order pinned down, under siege, but they can't break them. The longer it drags out, the more people die. I can finish this."

Of course she could. (Another three steps.) He didn't doubt that. (And four in the other direction.) With the situation described, he could see it clearly. The First Order was a ship disabled, and Rey would be the missile that smashed through the hull. That did nothing to quell his frustration. If anything, it made it worse. She was leaving and he didn't have so much as a valid argument to make her stay—none except that he needed her, and that fact apparently wasn't good enough.

He stilled his pacing, taking a long breath and releasing it before he tried again. "Please don't go."

"I have to."

"I love you," he said.

"I know." She closed the space between them and reached up to turn his face toward hers, to capture a kiss. There she held him, drawing out the moment as if she meant to stop time, to never let the sun set and never to depart. When time continued in spite of her best efforts, she promised him, "I'll come back."

.

Author's Note: Regarding music, I've been listening to a lot of Vienna Teng. For this chapter, Antebellum and The Last Snowfall.

Regarding art, there is a commissioned piece by Elithien here: post/161642605341/elithien-ren-braiding-his-mothers-hair