Note: guys! i'm so sorry this took so long to finish, but here is an extra long chapter to make up for it. as always, much love to StormSkye, Emperor Andross, Perian Swan, Reaper2908, Velk (several times!), mathgirl92, xcislyfe22, sonsofdurin, and a couple of guests for reviewing, and thanks to all who are reading. :)
CHAPTER TWELVE:
agonistes
Lisbet woke all in a lurch, filled with the distinctive feeling that she had overslept. The first thing that fully registered was how much her back and neck hurt from the odd angle she'd been in – and then she saw the man-shaped pile of blankets on her couch across the room.
She bolted to her feet, shedding her own blankets carelessly to the floor as she closed the distance in two quick steps. Ben hadn't moved at all from where he'd fallen asleep the night before, but he was breathing much more deeply now. Tentatively, she pressed the knuckles of two fingers against his forehead; he didn't stir in the slightest, and he wasn't too warm. Some of the tension drained from Lisbet's shoulders. Surely if there was an infection, he would be feverish.
Just then there was a rapping on the door – definitely Solstice, based on the tempo. Lisbet glanced at the chrono and saw that it was almost eleven o'clock in the morning. Despite the late hour, she was a little irritated at what felt like an intrusion.
Don't be ridiculous, she told herself sharply as she went to the entry hallway. She keyed the door open to reveal Solstice on the other side, little Corr in his usual wrap against her chest.
"Are you sick? I went to the shop expecting you to be elbows-deep in weaving already," Solstice said by way of greeting.
Lisbet very casually angled her body to block her from entering, just in case. "I'm fine, I just– I thought I'd sleep in a little today."
"Oh good, I was worried. I wouldn't have disturbed you, but Myles commed me just now. There's a storm headed straight for town." Solstice waited expectantly, as if that was all the explanation Lisbet needed.
"A storm?" Lisbet asked, imagining the manufactured rainclouds that periodically appeared in Coruscant's skies.
"A sand storm, silly," Solstice said as she gestured in the general direction of the center of town. "We have to move everything from the stall in the market back to the shop so it isn't spoiled. This one looks like it'll be vicious – it's big enough already that one of the farms farther north evacuated. Come on, the sooner we start the sooner we finish."
"I don't understand." Lisbet helplessly grabbed her headscarf from its peg by the door, but she didn't step outside. She couldn't just leave him.
Solstice paused a couple paces away. "Surely this isn't your first sand storm here, is it? They're terrible, Lissy, we'll all be shut in for the duration once it hits. Myles thinks this one will last most of the night."
"It won't reach as far as Mos Espa, will it?" Lisbet asked, thinking of her brother and everyone else who was at the race today.
"Maybe, but not until after nightfall. And it shouldn't affect them coming back to Anchorhead tomorrow – if anything it will send the Sand People into hiding. Come on!"
"I'll meet you in the market," Lisbet said. "Let me just… um… just get myself ready. I'll only be a moment."
"I'll pick up the grav cart from Auntie's, then," Solstice replied with a wave of her hand as she turned away.
Lisbet closed the door behind her and went back into the main room. Ben still slept soundly, his face not quite peaceful but at least relaxed. Knowing that she didn't have long before Solstice would wonder at the delay, Lisbet pulled out some of Gareth's clothes and laid them neatly in a pile on the armchair where she'd slept, then grabbed a sheet of flimsi. Tatooine was so backward that they still used the old-fashioned method as much as the modern, so she hastily scribbled a note.
Ben, she wrote. I have gone to the marketplace. In case you wake, here are some fresh clothes, since yours are so badly stained. I won't be long.
She stopped herself from adding, Please don't leave. For all she knew, she would get back before he even knew she had gone. Propping the note neatly on top of the clothes so that he couldn't miss it, she tucked her scarf over her head and across her nose and headed for the door.
The marketplace was all hustle and bustle when she arrived. Sand storms, she soon learned from old-timers delighted to regale a newcomer, were not terribly common on Tatooine but left a swathe of devastation behind if no one prepared. The entire market would have to be cleared and stowed, since everything not nailed down would blow away or be spoiled by the driving sand.
Solstice soon appeared with the grav cart, and she and Lisbet got to work loading up all the bolts of fabric normally stored in Oona's little market stand. It was hard to imagine what the sand storm would actually be like, since the sky was clear and impeccably blue as they worked.
In the end, it was most of the day before Lisbet made her way back to her own house, and by then the air was getting hazy and dim even though it was just past five in the afternoon. Clearing the fabric stall had only taken her and Solstice about an hour, but they got caught up in helping others in the marketplace who didn't have enough hands with so many gone to Mos Espa. Even though half of Lisbet's mind had been fretting in her living area, sick with worry about Ben, she couldn't think of a good excuse to abandon her neighbours when their merchandise would be ruined otherwise.
"Do you want to bunker up with us tonight?" Solstice had asked before they parted ways when the task was finished. "I can make up the couch, and Corr doesn't cry so much in the night anymore. I hate to think of you shuttered in alone during a storm."
"Thank you, but I'll be alright," Lisbet had said, colouring a little. "I have some books for company."
Now she couldn't fumble with the keypad fast enough, heart in her throat as the front door swished open. The first thing that hit her was a marvelous smell of stew cooking, which was so out of sorts with what she had expected that she faltered on the doorstep.
Still, she hurried into the living area. Both the blanket that she had carelessly discarded that morning and the one that Ben had used were folded neatly in the seat of the armchair, but Ben was nowhere to be seen. Lisbet followed her nose into the kitchen, where she found a tatoe stew bubbling cheerfully in the oven. She realized that she hadn't eaten all day when her stomach growled.
Leaving the beautiful supper behind, she headed for the only remaining room in the house. She stepped into her bedroom just as Ben stepped out of the adjacent refresher, and she pulled up short so quickly that she almost lost her balance. He was shirtless and had changed into Gareth's trousers – except Ben wasn't as tall or broad as her brother, and the waistband sat rather low.
"Oh," she said, finding the creases of her knuckles absolutely riveting as she willed her face not to betray her with any hint of pinkness.
"I hope you don't mind the intrusion," he said. "I saw your note when I woke, but I took the liberty of using your sonic shower."
"That's alright," she said, risking one fleeting glance at him but quickly looked away again. "You, um, you stank."
"I suppose I did," he replied with the suggestion of a grin in his voice as he put his hands into the sleeves in preparation of pulling the shirt over his head.
"No don't," Lisbet blurted out, then coloured when he arched a questioning brow at her. "I mean, let me look you over before you do that. Oh no– I mean– look over your injuries."
He paused as if considering, but nodded. Lisbet looked at him for a long moment before realizing that such an examination would be best in the kitchen with better light, and she was in his way by standing in the doorway. She bolted.
Calm down! she berated herself once she was back into the wonderful-smelling kitchen. You're acting ridiculous. Just… just calm down. Repeating it in her head like a mantra helped a little, and by the time Ben followed her in, she felt a little less flustered.
She reached for the medkit again, since he had removed the bacta patches. He obediently sat down in the same chair as the night before, shirt folded neatly on the table beside him. This time, without the panicked pressure of treating him before he bled out, she noticed how lithe and muscled he was, all lean sinew and quiet power. She also saw the thin silvery markings of scars along his torso and arms.
"You look much better than you did last night," Lisbet commented as she went around behind him to start with the wound on his back.
"A good night's sleep and a little bacta do work wonders," he replied.
Lisbet began to trim down the one remaining bacta patch so there would be enough for his side, too. "How are your ribs? You're awfully bruised, but I don't know how to check for breaks."
"Just sore," he said. "I've broken them before, and this isn't so bad."
She gently pressed the edges of the patch down around the wound on his back, wondering if this was a story he would actually tell her or dodge like so many others. "I didn't think pilots saw much ground combat in the War."
"When all went to plan, they didn't," he said, and that was all. Dodge, then.
"I take it the stew in the oven was your doing," she said to change the subject as she nudged his elbow out of the way so that she could see the wound under his ribs. Some of the bruises across his torso already had a hazy fringe of green around the edges, although there was a nasty one near his hip that had gone almost black in the center. She very studiously did not notice the coils of muscle on his stomach, or the lithe obliques that disappeared into his waistband.
"I hope it wasn't too presumptuous of me," he was saying.
Just then, Lisbet's stomach growled. "On the contrary," she replied with a wry glance up at him as she finished applying the second bacta patch. "I think both of us could do with a meal." She stood and brushed her hands off on her pants even though they were still clean. "There. You should be well on your way back to good health."
"Thank you," he said, pulling on his borrowed shirt with only a little bit of a wince. "You must allow me to repay you in some way for your kindness."
Lisbet had already opened the oven to take out the stew. "You already have by making me supper," she said as she set the steaming dish on the countertop. "Gareth is gone more nights than he's home, so I've mostly cooked for myself. I can't tell you how nice it is to eat someone else's cooking."
"I cannot promise how edible it will be," Ben said.
"If it tastes as good as it smells," she replied, serving up two bowls of it, "then you'll have nothing to worry about."
This was nice, she decided as she sat down across from him. This felt natural, and easy, and right. She blew a little on her first spoonful of stew to disperse the curlicues of steam rising from it.
"Well," she said seriously once she had taken a bite, "your cooking passes the test. I won't kick you out."
Ben smiled. "Even so, I plan to pass the night in one of the spare rooms at the cantina. I'll gather my things after we've finished eating."
"You can't," Lisbet said, a little taken aback. It hadn't even occurred to her that he would leave already – although he had healed much faster than she expected. "There's a sandstorm moving in. You would have to leave this minute to get anywhere, and even then it might be too late."
There was only one tiny window in the whole house, presumably because transparisteel was too expensive for wider use. It was set into the back door with a shutter over it, and Lisbet rose to look through it. Sure enough, the air outside was so thick and hazy that she doubted visibility was any more than a meter at best.
She returned to the table and folded her legs up crossways beneath her as she sat back down. "I'm afraid you're stuck."
"So it would seem," he said, his expression hard to read.
"I think I've gotten the stains out of your tunics," she said quickly. "The holes will still need to be mended, but at least you won't permanently look like you've been in a fight."
"Do you have much experience with removing blood from clothing?" he asked with a look of surprised curiosity.
She quirked her head a little, trying to decide if he was serious or teasing her. He looked completely earnest as he waited for her answer. "Well," she said, "more than you might think."
Now he really was intrigued. "Are you getting into brawls that I don't know about?"
"Something like that." She looked down at her stew in a pretense of being coy, although it was mostly to conceal a smile. "It happens about once a month, I'd say."
The slow dawning of realization across his face, followed immediately by a chagrined "ah," was worth laughing at. He smirked reproachfully at her as she hid her laughter behind both hands, shaking his head with a smile when she only laughed harder at his expression.
"I'll put your clothes into the pulse cleaner overnight," she said, taking pity on him. "They'll be ready in the morning."
"I really cannot thank you enough," Ben said.
"You really don't have to," Lisbet replied. "It's what– um, friends do."
"Even so, it's fair to say that patching up a friend after an attack by Sand People is a little out of the ordinary," he said dryly.
"True," she conceded, then brightened as a thought came to her. "If you want to repay me, will you read aloud again? I have some mending to catch up on, and you have such a good voice for it."
He dimpled faintly down at his almost empty bowl of stew, his eyes soft, and she hoped he was remembering when he had read to her in the weaving shop two months ago.
Just then a howl of wind roared around the house, and impossible as it was, it almost felt like the synstone walls shuddered under the pressure. They shared a look at the sudden, ferocious onslaught.
"It seems the storm is here," Ben said, arching a brow.
Lisbet stood and gathered both of their dishes, dodging his attempt to help. "You're still healing," she said firmly. "I'm no nurse, but I'm pretty sure you should still be on bed rest after being injured so badly."
Looking at him, it was hard to believe that less than a standard day ago, he had been bleeding out and half-delirious with pain and exhaustion. Either he was very, very good at hiding his discomfort now that he had gotten a little rest, or he was an exceptionally quick healer.
"I suppose this is not the time to mention how little I care for medical professionals," he said dryly, but he didn't insist on getting up to help her.
"You did say you endeavor to be a model patient, though," Lisbet countered as she scraped the stew leftovers into her now-flourishing composter and threw a pointed look over her shoulder at Ben.
"So I did." He smiled slowly, and his eyes were a deeper blue than she ever remembered seeing them. Something in his face made the muscles in her belly tauten, and she looked away to hide her blush. Was the nanowave stove still on? The air seemed a little warmer than a moment ago.
"Well," she said as she finished cleaning up, her tone brisk mostly for her own benefit. "I don't intend to sit in these uncomfortable kitchen chairs to do my mending when there's an armchair in the next room."
Maybe he wasn't doing quite as well as he would like her to believe, because standing up clearly cost him more effort than it should. It was less that he looked pained, and more that he was so rigidly expressionless that Lisbet knew he must be hiding it. She tried her best not to hover as they transitioned to the living area. He moved stiffly, like he was much older than his actual age, but he soon was safely ensconced on the sofa again.
"Here," she said, handing him the holobook she'd been reading the night before. "Didn't you call it your variation on singing for your supper?"
"Didn't I just make supper?" he retorted, but took the holobook and turned it to the most recent page before she could form a retort of her own. It was a classic novel that Solstice's mother had loaned to her, and Ben's voice was perfectly suited to the slightly old-fashioned style.
Lisbet curled into the armchair opposite him, and curled her mind into the story as he read. After a few minutes, she remembered she was supposed to be working. She hastily grabbed the mending basket at her feet and pulled out whatever was on top.
They passed most of the evening in this way. At some point, Ben switched from sitting to stretching longways across the couch without dropping a word of narration, his head cushioned by one armrest and his feet propped up on the other.
The chrono had just switched to ten o'clock when Ben finished the last chapter. Lisbet had been done with her mending for at least an hour, but she'd unnecessarily reinforced three sets of closures and buttons just to prolong the need for him read. Now he switched off the holobook and rubbed his eyes. He looked sleepy, perhaps lulled by the familiar story and his comfortable position.
Lisbet put away her mending and tried not stare at him. "I'll fix some tea," she decided, then threw out a hand to stop him. "No, don't get up. I'll only be a minute."
He relaxed back onto the couch reluctantly, but didn't offer protest as she stood and went into the kitchen. While the water was heating up, she tossed his clothes into the pulse cleaner and put away the uneaten stew now that it was cool. She remembered that he took his tea plain, so she stirred sugar into only hers before taking both cups back into the main area.
Bu he was already fast asleep, one arm thrown over the armrest above his head and the holobook still on his chest.
An ache that she couldn't quite place swept down Lisbet's spine. He was so beautiful, and his sleep looked peaceful and relaxed – a stark contrast to the night before. She set down the tea on a side table and shook out the blanket he had so neatly folded earlier. Careful not to disturb him, she spread it over him and slipped the holobook out of his loose fingers.
"Goodnight," she murmured, turning the illuminators down to one-tenth power. She lingered in the doorway to her bedroom only one or two moments longer before closed the door behind her.
The wind outside really was ferocious. She somehow hadn't noticed it while Ben's pleasant voice kept her company, but now she couldn't ignore the strange wailing and constant, driving sound of sand lashing against the house. It made for an unnerving symphony as she quickly changed into her nightclothes and slid under the covers, and she ruthlessly crushed down the temptation to return to the main room.
He's fine, she told herself, and so are you. As nice as it sounded to not be alone on an eerie, stormy night like this, there were limits.
Still, she couldn't relax into more than a restless doze for several hours, jerking awake every time the wind howled louder. Finally, when a particularly powerful blast rumbled around the house, she sat up with a grumbling sigh. The chrono flicked to half-past two in the morning.
Tea would settle her nerves. She hadn't gotten to the cup she made earlier, and a fresh one sounded perfect, anyway. I can go through the living area without waking him up, she reasoned with herself. I won't even turn on the illuminators in the kitchen. I know where everything is without them.
Decision made, she drew a cozy wrap around her shoulders to ward off the night-chills and slipped out of bed. She hovered a moment at the door, but pressed the control pad and stepped through.
Ben was still asleep, although he had shifted to his uninjured side and curled into himself a little – almost in a defensive posture. The room was too dimly lit to tell, but Lisbet thought that his brows were drawn together even in sleep. She paused. Were his injuries bothering him? Should she wake him, if only to get some pain relievers into his system?
A shuddering gasp racked across his body, his face twisting with misery as he drew in a breath to cry out, and Lisbet's heart dropped out of her ribcage. All at once she realized that the pain had nothing to do with his injuries – he was having a nightmare. Any hesitation forgotten, she closed the distance and knelt beside him.
"Ben," she whispered, laying a hand on his arm, and that's all it took.
She saw the layers of reflexes flash across his body as he bristled in self-defense and made it almost all the way to his feet, before he relaxed into a sitting position when he recognized her. The grief flooded back into his features and he passed a hand across his eyes, looking more tired than she'd ever seen him.
"I'm sorry." She carefully sat next to him. He was strung taut as the electrobeam of a bowcaster, and she ached to put her arms around him, to carry as much of his heartache as he would allow. But his sharp awakening had reminded her that he was a soldier, and that sometimes the waking was worse than the dreaming for them.
"I hope– I didn't disturb you," Ben said, grasping at some semblance of civility.
"The storm did." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, if only to keep her hands from reaching for him. "Are you alright?"
At first he didn't answer, staring at the floor with a furrowed brow. After a moment he glanced up to meet her eyes, and the ache she saw in his made her breath catch in her throat.
"I – I was dreaming about – my brother," he admitted in a choked whisper, looking away again. "About when he – died. I was there."
Lisbet hadn't known that, and tears sprang into her eyes despite herself. "I'm so sorry," she whispered, trying not to imagine watching her own brother die. "It must have been some comfort to him, to have you there."
"It wasn't," Ben replied bluntly. "He was too far gone. I should – I should have found him sooner. I spent my entire adult life training him, raising him, protecting him, but in the end, I… I couldn't save him."
Long ago, as her mother lay unresponsive from an incurable disease, Lisbet had curled up at the foot of her bed while her grandmother tended her dying patient. You cannot save people, her grandmother had said, braiding back faded, thinning hair from her daughter's face. You can only love them.
At the time, Lisbet had thought it meant protecting people from physical harm – that she couldn't save her mother from death. But now, seeing Ben bowed by the weight of memory, she knew that she'd been wrong. It meant that you cannot save people from their sorrows, from their demons, from themselves.
I love him, she realized, and it didn't even surprise her – it felt like coming home.
"Ben," she said softly as she finally reached out to cover his hand, slipping her fingers into the hollow spaces between his. His breath hitched almost imperceptibly at the contact, but he didn't pull away. "It wasn't your fault. It wasn't."
He didn't say anything, and just studied their entwined hands. Something was crumbling in him, that protective barrier that he wore like armor, and she stayed very still, waiting to see if he would retreat further into himself, or let her in. But then his eyes met hers and she barely had a second to unravel the raw emotion that she found there before he tilted his head forward and kissed her.
His kiss was a gentle thing, and Lisbet could feel herself unfolding to him. His free hand came up to lightly touch the hollow of where her jaw met her throat, just the pads of his fingers grazing her skin as if he needed reassurance that she was real. It almost tickled, and it made something flip low in her belly. She helplessly reached up to twine her own fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck, wanting to draw him closer, wanting to lie back and drag him down with her, wanting him.
And then he was an absence, and she rocked unsteadily into the space he had just occupied. He had pulled away and now passed a hand across his face, looking heartsick.
"I shouldn't have done that," he said without making eye contact.
" – What?" was the only word Lisbet could form.
"I'm sorry," he said, finally meeting her eyes for a split second before quickly looking down again. For once, his face was easy to read, and stars he looked like he'd been tortured.
"It's alright," she said, although she didn't know why she was the one reassuring him. She stood up quickly, and because she didn't know what to do with her hands, she grabbed her half-evaporated tea from earlier and fled back into her bedroom without giving either of them a second to explain.
As the door swished shut behind her, she clutched the teacup so close against her chest that she thought it might shatter. What was that? He shouldn't have? Her whole face down to her neck was burning hot, though she wasn't sure if that was from embarrassment or Ben's recent… proximity. She pressed cold fingers over her eyes, willing herself not to cry.
Some of the tea had sloshed out of its cup in her haste, but there was still a little left. She glanced down at it and took a half-hearted sip. It was tepid and a little stale, but it reminded her of how tired she was.
Maybe Ben's trauma was still too recent for him to let anyone else in. Maybe he really did want to be a hermit out in the abandoned Wastes of a remote planet. Maybe all the careful seeds of trust she had attempted to sow in their relationship weren't enough. You cannot save people, echoed in Lisbet's mind. You can only love them.
Feeling heartsore and weary, she crawled into bed. The wind howled desolately outside, and she finally allowed herself to cry.
The next morning when she tentatively slipped out of her room, Ben was gone.
agonistes, (n., Ancient Greek), someone in the grip of inner conflict.
the quote you cannot save people, you can only love them is actually by anaïs nin, who i hope will not mind being made into a space grandma for this story.
12.29.16
