Chapter Text
A Long Time Ago, In a Galaxy Far, Far Away...
That which is most hidden,
Reveals itself most easily.
That which is most strong,
Contains the greatest weaknesses.
Where there is dark, there is light.
And where light is cast, shadows follow.
In discerning void where there is substance,
The substance of the void may be understood.
And in seeing the many possibilities,
The single path of the Force is known.
Thus, when the Force is revealed,
Its unchanging course may be altered.
This is what the Je’daii call Shatterpoint.
-- Holocromnibus of the Benevolent Teacher Ketu,
Je’daii Master of the Great Temple of Balance, Akar Kesh.
Year 25,802 BBY (Before the Battle of Yavin.)
I.
The Star Destroyer had been renamed the Rebel Dream. A fact which Ben Solo did not overlook when he traced its corridors over and over again in his mind.
Down the metal hall, he could hear the sounds of blasters ringing out, ricocheting off of the walls. They were coming up to the command cabins, working their way through the rooms. Ben tensed, fear coiling in his gut as the security alarms blared above his head. While he couldn’t hear footsteps, he felt something he couldn’t name. It was twisted and thick, like a rot spreading through the ship, infecting the air around him. The taste of acid lingered in the back of his throat, and the noise around him began to fade away.
Winter, his mother’s attendant, said something as she barricaded the cabin doors, but the words were muddled. Then there was a sharp copper tang of blood inside his mouth, and a girl’s terrified wail. Ben ran.
The next scream was his own.
In the dim light of the room, Ben Solo watched the scene unfold - at once present and absent. Details he shouldn’t have remembered leapt out at him, but important pieces — the larger chunks — were gone. Shadows against the walls twisted, ravaging the steel interior of the ship, and his eyes stung with hot tears that weren’t his own.
They were his sister’s.
Padmé Solo cowered before a mercenary, her wide eyes magnified in fear. She wailed, crying out for her older brother as the man between them advanced on her. At three years old, Padmé had known nothing but the safety of being her older brother’s shadow - had always been at his side. Except this night. Except for the time he hadn’t been right there.
Hatred threaded itself through every fiber of his being as he’d reached out towards the man before him. He was thirteen again, only thirteen that week, and he’d known what the force could do, but not how much he could control. The intruder’s ribs cracked loudly as he reached out and wrenched them hard against the far wall. Blood bubbled forth from their broken nose, and Ben shielded Padmé, blocking the intruder from reaching out for her.
“Leave her alone!” he shouted, feeling heat pricking underneath his skin, demanding his attention. Without a second thought, Ben outstretched his hand, and curled it into a fist. When he squeezed, the man before him began to writhe, face turning red and lips going blue.
“Who sent you?” he demanded, as Padmé clung to his leg, whimpering against his knee. “Who did this?”
The other man’s eyes rolled heavenwards before he heaved and coughed. Blood ran over his mouth, slippery and shining red. “I am one of many,” he rasped. “-who sees a future without the so-called destiny that was promised to us by your family. Without freedom, or democracy—”
“Liar!” Ben said, twisting his wrist and pulling on something invisible that had the man howling with pain. “Why are you doing this?”
“First comes the day, then comes the night, young Jedi,” he said, breathing heavily. “You cannot stop it. There are no more prophecies left to ravage us with. There is nothing!” He reached for the blaster he’d dropped, freezing only when Ben moved again, twisting back his arm.
The man laughed.
He laughed harder when Ben clawed through his mind inexpertly, and when Ben’s fist tightened again, pressure building against his windpipe. There had been shouting, other voices, others in the room later that dragged Ben and Padmé away, but Ben could only hear the assailant’s voice. It was sweet and sickly, ringing in his ears, watery with blood, sharp under his skin.
“Power won’t save you,” the man shouted at him.
Ben screamed.
He woke to the sound of his wooden practice saber clattering against the far wall of his room. Cold sweat broke out over him, and he rubbed at his eyes vigorously. He hadn’t meant to reach out with the Force — not that fateful day years ago, and not that night. It was lucky that this time he’d only reached for a training weapon. That there had been no one around to see him lose control even when unconscious.
He shivered, sleep still dragging at his body as he reached for the twisted blankets at his feet. It wasn’t happening again. His mouth was painfully dry, but he was on Yavin 4, not the Rebel Dream. And Padmé was safe on Hosnian Prime, guarded by Winter and his parents.
They were all safe.
Ben pulled his knees to his chest, blocking out the chill as he breathed in slowly. He closed his eyes, and repeated the words again in his mind.
They were all safe.
_______________
Dawn on the moon Yavin 4 was often more shadowed that it was full of light. The sun was slow to filter through the dense canopy of Massassi trees and the jungle floor tended to wear a delicate mantle of fog until midmorning. And when warmth finally arrived it did so lazily, lulling the inhabitants of the moon into a false sense of moderate weather. On better mornings, sunlight would sheer through water crystals hanging high in the atmosphere, dazzling the skies with Prism storms.
Ben, however, knew better — Yavin 4 could be more tempestuous than temperate. Early morning meditations were chilly, exhausting, and filled with birdsong. But the alternative was stormy, stifling, and sticky. So instead of avoiding sunrise, Ben met it most mornings, meditating under the boughs of the Jedi Temple tree.
This morning, however, he was struggling to lose himself to the flow of the Force. His meditation had begun to dance a line between calm and asleep — and the tree’s heady fragrance wasn’t helping.
“Focus, Ben,” Luke said warmly, circling around the seated teenager. Ben exhaled in the humid jungle air of Yavin 4, sensing his master’s movements with his mind.
“Inhale,” Luke directed.
Ben straightened, and fought off a tingling itch in his nose. He needed to only last a little while longer before the end of the meditation —
— instead, he sneezed, hunching over as he did so. Dark brown curls spilled over his eyes, and Ben blinked dizzily once.
Luke sighed. “I guess we should postpone meditation under the Temple tree until pollination season wears off,” he said. “Is it like this under the Dameron’s tree, Ben?”
“Mm,” Ben swallowed, struggling to recall the one thing about the Dameron’s that didn’t hold his attention. A twin to the tree he sat under now, theirs was magnificent to behold: its leaves tugging threads of the Force around its branches, glowing ethereally. It just wasn’t as interesting as other things - or persons - to be found on those grounds. “There’s the same dust everywhere,” he filled in, as the memory surfaced.
“Well,” Luke said. “You’ve done enough today. We can end it here.”
“Are you sure?” Ben said quickly, pulling his knees towards his chest. “I can continue —“
Luke held up his non-biomech hand. “It’s fine. Ben you haven’t had any—“ Incidents. Problems. Disasters, Ben filled in silently, biting the inside of his cheek. “—issue with meditation lately. Besides, I overheard Ros mention a piloting race this afternoon.”
Ben pulled himself to his feet, the crown of his head brushing some of the Temple tree’s lower leaves. Of course Ros would be the one to let slip to Luke that there was a race planned. The other padawan was sharp, quick on his feet, but much too talkative.
“I wasn’t going to race,” Ben said, taking the subject change in stride. If it was out of pity, his Uncle didn’t show it too obviously. Luke had been right — he hadn’t had issues lately with meditation. He’d been calmer, more at ease, more able — which was why he’d been so eager to keep at it.
“So watch with the other padawans,” Luke said, brushing pollen off of his robes. “I heard Poe is racing. Not that I’m encouraging it, but if I had to make a gamble…” Luke grinned at his nephew, before turning to walk back to the Academy.
Ben felt the warmth of a flush travel the back of his neck, but kept silent as he followed behind Luke. Betting wasn’t supposed to happen on the small Yavin 4 races, but putting credits on Dameron was something more like an investment. Not that he invested anything personally.
“I’m surprised you don’t race,” Luke said, filling in the silence as he picked his way through the path. “What with all the piloting genes in the family.”
Ben inclined his head. His uncle was something of an ace — bold, efficient, always on the nose. And his father was — well, his father was a force to reckoned with. Never mind the Kessel Run, Han Solo did things in the skies that shouldn’t have been possible. And his grandfather, Ben knew, had been a real Podracer, on tracks more dangerous than fun.
Ben was a fair pilot, but there was something else that drew him to the races.
“I prefer being in the pit,” he said, thinking of the purring engine he’d installed custom on a repulsorcraft. He was more fond of design than engineering, but what he couldn’t do himself, he dictated to others. “Less collisions to worry about. Mom always did say Dad was knocked on the head a few too many times.”
Luke laughed.
_______________
There were many things that could be predicted by attuning to the Force. Poe Dameron was not one of them.
Ben spluttered as the impact of being shoved up against a wall winded him. Not quite the greeting he’d expected from the older boy. Not the reaction anyone else in the room seemed to have expected either. Ben raised a brow.
“Poe, calm down—“ Tamora called across the room belatedly. “—At least let Ben explain,” she said, wiping down the engine of Poe’s racer with a rag. Ben wondered how long the petite gearhead had been trying to knock sense into Dameron. She shrugged at him, brown shoulders reaching her ears.
“What did you do?” Poe said, excitable energy coiling in his arms. “The racer. It’s—“ he struggled to find the word, then settled, “I said fix the engine, not replace the whole kriffing craft.”
“You said make it better,” Ben countered, meeting Poe’s gaze levelly. “The controls are all the same—“
“Oh the controls are the same? Benji, I’m looking at a whole new vehicle,” Poe huffed, easing his weight off of Ben’s shoulders.
“It needed it, Poe,” Tamora injected, skirting past them both as she walked over towards her toolkit. “We both thought so.”
Ben licked his lips, and then straightened. He was already taller than the other boy, but he didn’t have quite the same swagger Dameron had. In lieu of Poe’s outstanding ability to stare down anyone, Ben made do with an actual downwards glance.
“I worked on the design of the body in addition to your engine—“ Ben began, fighting the urge to reach out to Poe and project calm through the force. He’d tried that tactic before, and it had produced…mixed results. “—but I checked the dry weight of the engine. It’s not the only thing messing with your speed, and Tamora agreed with me.”
Poe turned to glare over his shoulder at the mechanic. Ben took the opportunity to breathe deeply.
“Look, the swoop racers are great, but it’s obvious you prefer real aircrafts over glorified land speeders. So I looked into older podracer designs, borrowed some blueprint holos—“ Ben explained, nudging Poe back towards the racer. “We changed out the flaps, modified the curves a bit for aerodynamics, fixed the engine, put in a new nacelle, and best of all, got rid of that clunking noise you told me about.”
“You fixed the clunk?” Poe said, tension easing from his shoulders. “How fast do you think it’ll go?” he asked fervently.
“Don’t crash.”
“How. Fast?” Poe repeated, tapping the metal body of the airspeeder, as if to read the machine with his fingers.
“I wouldn’t attempt the Kessel Run, but—“
“Under forty parsecs?” Poe asked, still running his hand feverishly across the newly installed engine cowl.
“Please,” Ben gave him an affronted look. “Under thirty. At least.”
Tamora looked up from her kit, and sighed. She tucked a stray black curl back towards the bun she’d twisted the rest of her hair back into. “I told you, Dameron. He also upgraded the stabilizer when I mentioned it. You should get in the cockpit, even the thruster responds better. Feels good in the hand.”
Poe looked back and forth between Ben and Tamora for a moment, before he lifted his hand off of his speeder’s gleaming brown and blue body. “You’re kidding,” he said easily, all remnants of upset gone as he wriggled to glance into the cockpit.
“I think,” Poe announced after a moment of scanning the interior of the speeder. “I love you. I might even have to propose.” He pressed his cheek against the craft, wavy brown hair splaying out over the metal.
Ben made a strangled noise in the back of his throat.
Tamora helpfully clapped his back as she walked past him. “A bit sudden, don’t you think?” she said dryly as Ben struggled in vain not to flush.
Poe scoffed, coiling his way into the pilot’s seat. “What do you know about the pure, sudden love of a speeder?”
“Shrike.” Ben managed, after he cleared his throat. Of course Poe meant the speeder. He was a pilot, through and through. And really, Ben wished he knew better.
“Benji, you say something?” Poe asked, strapping himself into his seat.
“I’ve been calling it Shrike. I thought it was fitting. Lighter, faster—“
“Sexier,” Poe supplied, as he revved up the ignition.
Tamora groaned. “It’s a machine,” she said, glaring as Ben as if to accuse him of egging Poe on. Ben took a half step back, letting her grab a repurposed Rebel helmet that Poe wore in flight. She handed it over the edge of the cockpit to Poe with a roll of her eyes.
“A tight little machine that makes my ass look amazing, Tamora, and don’t you forget it.”
Tamara shook her head. “I’ll be in the hangar if you need anything,” she said, before turning on her heel and walking away.
Poe laughed, warm and rich. “You promise this baby will run?” He asked, leaning over the side to meet Ben’s gaze.
“Jedi shouldn’t deal in absolutes,” Ben replied, lifting his chin. Poe merely grinned in response as he tugged on a pair of flight gloves. He wiggled his fingers, adjusting to the feel of the fabric and then lowered his voice. He was just audible over the thrum of the engine warming up.
“Fly with me, Ben?” he said, and Ben bit the inside of his cheek. Poe was not — well he didn’t use the Force. Still, in spite of this, Poe Dameron seemed to know more than a few mind tricks. Several involving a glint in his eyes, a well placed pout, and thick brown eyelashes that were difficult to ignore.
Ben wavered.
“Please? Just for the test run,” Poe pressed, biting his bottom lip. “I didn’t mean to actually bruise anything earlier…”
“You know if Master Luke figured out I was doing this,” Ben warned, already feeling his resolve being eaten away.
“What, you’re going to tell him?” Poe said, darting a glance to the far end of the hangar where Tamora had gone back to work. “Master Luke,” he imitated, “-I thought you should know I like watching Poe fly, but inside his brain, because I find it more…exciting that way.”
“I was thinking more, ‘I've been abusing my ability to use the force’,” Ben replied weakly. Ever since Poe had figured out how easy it was for Ben to slip against people’s minds, to rest on the surface of other’s thoughts, he’d been insatiably fascinated. And Ben had found it incredibly difficult to deny him when he asked so baldly for a little extra guidance in his practice run. Worse, thrill was the least of what Ben worried about accidentally oversharing.
Ben peeled a soft leather glove off of his hand, before he raised it. “Fine,” he said. Poe gave him a wicked grin, as he dipped his head down to meet Ben’s hand. With his visor still up, Ben felt for Poe’s temple, accidentally brushing his thumb over the other boy’s mouth. He tried not to shiver, and instead breathed in like he had done earlier that day.
He just had to focus, to glean the very top of the other boy’s mind. To ignore the warm, honey feeling that slid over his senses that marked the edge of Poe’s mind whenever he was ready to pilot. Poe raised a brow, and this time, said nothing with his relentless mouth.
You feel like one of those Jedi crystals, you know.
I— thank you?
Ben stepped back from the Shrike, and watched as Poe leaned over to flick on a few more buttons as the craft began to hover. The speeder’s body curled on itself, with organic lines that flowed like the vines of the jungle waiting outside. It hummed, and light caught the sides of it, throwing off sunlight against Poe’s cheek. Ben replaced his glove, and watched.
It’s a compliment. You’re like a little warm spot of energy in my head.
As if to emphasize the point, Ben saw the image of a glowing saber in his mind’s eye for a brief moment, before it faded quickly.
It was...nice.
If you just make the track like usual, I can keep up with you, Ben thought, as the engine began to throw off heat. I don’t know how far I can go beyond that.
The nacelle slid over the top of the cockpit, and without much warning, Ben felt the sudden surge of the Shrike before he saw it. The force of the engine sent dust flying in the hangar, and billowed his training uniform. Never one to fly low, Poe had already begun to ascend, tugging at Ben’s sense of gravity.
His head began to swim.
“Dizzy?” Poe asked loudly, and Ben could feel the rough rub of Poe’s harness against his own chest as Poe leaned forwards in his craft.
Ben breathed in deeply, steadying himself against another speeder’s outer shell.
You don’t have to yell, he reminded the other boy. It was difficult to maintain a connection like this, but Poe was practically a beacon in flight. He vibrated inside of Ben’s mind, and when Ben closed his eyes, Poe’s own line of sight began to materialize in a blur. With a smooth gesture, Dameron dipped the repulsorcraft’s wings in order to make a sharp turn, avoiding a canopy of trees.
The move sent a sharp tug through Ben, and he felt his stomach drop. Then, a pricking at his bottom lip. Poe was biting his own lip, and biting it hard enough that even Ben could feel it while still on the ground. He suspected Dameron didn’t even notice what he was doing. Ben hoped Tamora was still uninterested in waiting around to see how the test run went. He could sense her working under the body of a different repulsorcraft, but didn’t dare open his eyes to catch if she was watching him.
I know, Poe responded over their telepathic link. But it feels better to say something.
Just like it apparently felt better for Poe to start breathlessly singing to himself in the cockpit, providing his own bass line in between notes. The rhythm picked up, and Ben tried to fight off a small smile as he felt Poe’s voice in his ear. Dameron was always pushing the limits.
Then, something jolted Ben, and he trembled as he felt the nose of Poe’s speeder dip down. Poe laughed at the sensation of shock spreading over him, and corrected his angle.
Testing the maneuverability, he explained.
Testing my patience, more like, Ben shot back, mentally regaining his balance. It was like this every time — Poe would do something without warning, and Ben would be the one reeling. But it was hard to deny the rush, the way adrenaline surged through Poe and spiked at Ben’s senses. And each time Ben had followed on a flight, it had gotten easier, more exhilarating. And each time, Dameron would get more…showy.
Keep your hands on the controls, Ben warned, with an added huff. It wasn’t that Poe had strayed any, it was just that Ben could feel the itching in his fingers, the slight lean he made when he reached for something else, something —
Well it’s not like you can handle the shaft for me, up here, Poe echoed back, playfully pushing forwards on the acceleration. Ben felt the intense pull of force snaring on his connection for a minute, heart beating harder as he struggled to maintain the link.
Handle the—
He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to ask. Dameron’s answer would only make him more off balance.
Get a grip, Flyboy, he managed, as more warm laughter echoed in his ear. Ben shivered, biting back a gasp that let him know Poe had begun to sharply tilt his speeder, and then —
Unable to remain steady on his legs, even balanced against the other speeder in the hangar, Ben down slid against the metal body as his knees gave out under him. It took him a moment before his mind registered the sensation his body had already processed, the intoxicating feeling of being upside-down as Poe barrel rolled. Ben swallowed tightly as he gripped hard at the speeder he had sunk down next to, too lost in the sensation that coiled in his stomach to bother to chide Poe for making the world turn inside out.
It began to right again for a brief moment, before Poe shouted out a warning, yanking them both into a second spin. The sheer power of the roll overrode his senses, and blood pounded in his ears. Pressure built in his lungs, and for a moment Ben thought he might choke — from gravity or from the way Poe’s mind was overwhelming his own — before he gasped, shaking on his knees. Poe’s rush was inescapable, and it set his teeth on edge to be overloaded by it. It managed to be both too much and somehow still not enough, leaving Ben clinging to the link, desperate for — something. The tension pulled itself unbearably taut as he struggled to breathe against the pressure, before it finally, mercifully, broke. The world rolled back upright in a fierce wave, and his senses flooded back to him.
Upright. They were upright.
Ben coughed, hard, desperate not to wheeze in case Tamora had thought to look over at his newfound inability to remain standing. He steadied himself against the nearby speeder before his focus on Poe - and the Shrike - returned. But where Ben expected to find the presence of another mind, his conscious stumbled. There was nothing but the Force.
Oh — “Bantha shit.” Ben hissed loudly enough for Tamora to tap a wrench on the floor of the hangar in response.
“Did he crash?” she asked, scooting out from under one of the repulsorcrafts just enough to see glimpse Ben's feet.
“I don’t know,” Ben replied, feeling more agitated than he cared to admit. What if that blasted faffleswarm-brained idiot had crashed? Or, what if he’d been the one to lose control and caused something?
“You don’t know?” Tamora said doubtfully, reaching for another tool in her kit.
“Something -- it -- I felt the Force,” Ben replied hotly, marching to the hangar’s entrance. “Wait here,” he added, knowing full well Tamora had no intention of dropping her work on a hunch.
“Does the Force even work that way?” she called after his retreating form.
_______________
They’d done this before without much incident, Ben thought, but that didn’t bring him much comfort. Picking a single soul out of the seething ocean of energy that was the Force was tricky at best. At worst it was a pounding headache that was more annoying than it was helpful. He’d known other students at the Praxeum to try it, only to dry heave from the pressure of the migraine it caused.
Ben scanned the skies, marching out into the clearing that lead up to the small hangar. If he was honest with himself, Ben knew that clinging to someone else’s mind was dangerous. But it was easy, it felt so…right. Ben quietly excelled where other students struggled with more basic mastery of Sense abilities. And telepathy, he knew, even only with Poe, was far more than most human force-wielders could manage. It was why he was loathe to admit to it.
He was probably some sort of freak.
Ben closed his eyes — and threw out his consciousness, probing the moon’s atmosphere. It unsettled him to feel so much, but if Poe had crashed because of his recklessness…
Somewhere in the jungles, Ben could feel a nebula orchid bloom, its petals stretching out towards the sunlight. The distant chatter of piranha beetles rose and fell, and the rustle of a pack of woolamanders seemed to brush against his senses. He reached further, the fingertips of his mind scaling the heights of a nearby tree — and hesitated, suddenly overwhelmed by a twisted mire of despair that seemed knotted there. Bitterness welled in his throat, and Ben released his grip.
The tree was — dead? Rotting. He couldn’t be sure, but it made him shiver, before he pulled his robes tighter around him.
Ben felt the Shrike interrupt his thoughts before he heard it, a grounding hum that signaled its descent coming towards the hangar. And then, the tree was all but forgotten to his annoyance as Poe’s speeder crested over the trees and dived perilously close to him on the landing strip.
Dust rose off the strip, and Ben fought back a sudden wave of relief as Poe lifted the hatch and stretched out.
“Damnit, Dameron,” Ben said, as he came within punching distance. Poe winced as Ben’s fist made contact with his shoulder. “You need to warn me—,”
“Ow. I did warn you, and it was amazing—,” Poe said, raising his hands up in front of him. “So why’d you drop out?”
“I didn’t drop anything—,” Ben huffed. “You got showy, and forgot that I end up,” he dropped his voice down to a snarled whisper, “-I feel what you do, except that I’m not strapped in to anything.”
“So?” Dameron asked, rubbing his shoulder. “That was the point, Benji!” He leaned forwards, temporary pain in his arm forgotten as he removed his flight helmet and dragged his fingers through his hair. Setting the helmet on top of the Shrike, he made an easy gesture towards the speeder.
Ben struggled to frown. “Which is fine when you don’t barrel roll, but being upside-down is-is - it’s dangerous is what it is! What if I’d held on to the link and you’d crashed?” He demanded, face hot.
Poe blinked slowly. Realization crossed his Corellian brandy eyes, and he leaned back on the body of the speeder, crossing his arms over his chest. Ben took a step back, annoyed as Poe bit his bottom lip and regarded him.
“Oh.” he exclaimed with a note of understanding. “Benji,” he coaxed, his lips curving into a smile.
“No.” Ben said flatly.
“Benji,” Dameron pressed, leaning forwards to smile widely enough that Ben was tempted to punch him a second time. Instead, he furrowed his brow.
Poe looked up at him. “It’d take a bit more than the Force tripping us up to knock me out of the skies,” he said soothingly.
“You don’t know that,” Ben replied tartly, drawing his chin to his chest.
“I do,” Poe insisted, back now arched off of the Shrike completely. “Benji,” he said softly. “I can handle myself. And I’m fine.” He placed his palms on Ben’s shoulders, not wavering when Ben half-heartedly shrugged.
“Kriff, you’re impossible,” Poe huffed, his sigh tickling Ben’s cheek. It was then that Ben gave him a hard look, taking in the way his wavy brown hair gleamed in the mid-morning sun, and the breathlessness that still injected itself into his voice. Poe Dameron had very little shame, and even less sense, Ben thought.
It was probably why Poe reached for his hand, pointedly tugging off Ben’s glove. The cool air ran over his palm as Poe turned it over in his own gloved hands, before he pressed Ben’s hand to his cheek and temple.
“Ben, I’m fine,” he started, before his consciousness bumped against Ben’s. Warmth and reassurance spilled over his fingertips and slipped into his blood.
“—I know.” Ben said, aftershocks of the flight shivering across his skin as Poe filled in details he’d missed with the immediacy of his presence. The moment hung in the air, Ben finding himself alternating between thinking: safe, idiot, and exhilarating. He stopped only when he felt Poe’s laughter in his mind, and opened his eyes again. Without realizing, he’d moved forwards, cornering Poe against his speeder.
Ben drew back, pulling away his hand. “Don’t try to distract me,” he said, as Poe reached for the Padawan braid that was partially obscured by Ben’s long hair.
“Stop being so fun to distract,” Poe retorted tugging the braid as Ben moved to snatch back his glove. Ben elbowed him in return, pocketing his glove. Within moments, they’d devolved into a shoving match, Poe’s fingers tangled in his hair and Ben’s foot pressing into the inside of Poe’s heel. Twisting his leg, Ben added pressure to Poe’s knee, forcing Dameron to grip at his sides for balance. They nearly stumbled, both scuffling against the Shrike until a voice rang out from the hangar.
“So—,” Tamora called, “Is he dead?”
When Ben registered her voice he fell back, scrambling as Poe released his braid. Tamora’s footsteps fell softly against the paved ground, and Ben struggled to straighten his clothes.
“Because if he is, I’m going to salvage his speeder for parts,” she added, as she stepped out from the shadows of the garage. Tamora stopped, and then looked between them both with a discerning eye, setting her hands on her hips.
“Oh,” she sucked in a breath with a hint of teasing disappointment. “You’re back.”
Poe waved sheepishly as Ben glared back at the interruption. He then looked back at Poe, finding to his dismay that the older boy looked guilty of something. Worse, Poe looked flushed and disheveled, and his eyes were still gleaming with mischief. It was appalling.
“Dunno what you were worried about, Ben, he looks fine,” Tamora said.
“That’s debatable,” Ben said ruefully, making a sweeping gesture with his bare hand. The piloting helmet that had been set down on the Shrike floated upwards at his beckoning, before it teetered above Poe’s head. Tamora made as if to cringe, or warn Poe, but Ben dropped his hand. The helmet landed backwards over Poe’s head with a satisfying thunk that put a merciful end to the older boy’s entirely too-pleased-with-himself looks. Poe gave a muffled yelp, and Ben turned, giving Tamora a curt bow.
“I’ll be back after lunch to help during the actual race,” Ben said politely, willing himself to not look back over his shoulder as he strode away. He didn’t have the time for another distraction.