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Ben Solo is seven years old, and he is ill. He has barely set his feet on the floor when he realizes that his throat is raw and his eyes are itchy and all he wants to do is crawl right back into bed. So he does what any self-respecting seven-year-old would do: he calls for his mother.
(His father was called away last week; he’s important enough that he’s doing the kind of thing Ben’s mother tells him he’s too young to understand. He promises he’ll be back soon though - as soon as possible - and Ben believes him, though he knows his father’s definition of soon is relative.)
She hears him and comes quickly, sweeping Ben up into her arms and brushing his dark hair away from his forehead. Her hand is cool and firm and perhaps he is too old for this, but he melts into her touch anyway, letting her coddle him while he voices his complaints into the crook of her neck. “I don’t feel well,” he tells her, fingers plucking at the bun at the back of her head. “My throat hurts." He coughs for emphasis, and she shushes him.
"My poor Ben,” she mumbles soothingly, and Ben allows it, feeling very sorry for himself. He is still a child, after all, and he may be dying, he thinks.
She spends the remainder of the day caring for him, bringing him soup and toys and his favorite holobooks to entertain him, and Ben swears he feels better just for knowing how treasured he is.
(What he doesn’t tell his mother is that the dreams were worse than usual last night, that he still heard the voice inside them a little even after he woke up. She doesn’t need to know that part, and he’s certain if he tries just a little harder, he can will the voice back to his dreams, where it belongs. It’s just too hard when he’s sick.)
—
Ben Solo is twelve years old, and he is definitely not ill. He is tired, perhaps, has been training too hard under his Uncle Luke. Uncle Luke always warns him to listen to what his body is telling him, to will it to do as much as it can, but not to ask more than it can give. But there isn’t time for that, and he doesn’t understand how his uncle can’t see - Ben’s body isn’t his friend and it doesn’t know what it needs.
His body is all awkward angles and gangly limbs and he hates it so much he can barely stand to look at it, pulls his robes on as quickly as he can when he’s sure the other boys aren’t looking. He loses track of his feet, trips over himself during lightsaber training more than of his sparring partners, and that just tells him he needs to train more, needs to focus harder, needs to teach his body to obey him. Then maybe he won’t care that he doesn’t know what to do with the space he occupies.
So although his limbs burn and shake, he wills his focus to stay true. (“Weakness,” a voice in the back of his mind supplies, and Ben twists his fingers in his hair until he doesn’t hear it anymore.)
His Uncle Luke finds him when they break for lunch, alone as he prefers it, his long legs folded up underneath him and his food untouched because his stomach is rolling precariously. “Ben, you should have told me you weren’t feeling well,” he admonishes. “Take the day and rest. You need it." His face is kind and worried, and Ben feels something inside him snap, a pressure building behind his eyes that feels suspiciously like tears, though he has no reason to cry.
"No!” Ben lashes out harshly, his breathing ragged, and the tray holding his food rattles with the force of his anger.
His Uncle Luke is taken aback for a moment, though Ben’s inability to keep his temper has become legendary throughout the academy. The other children tease him for it, call him things like crazy and unstable when his back is turned and sometimes when it isn't - but Ben is sure everyone knows better than to say that in front of Master Luke. “There’s something else,” his uncle presses. “What is it?” The man’s eyes narrow, and Ben’s anger is gone as quickly as it came, replaced with a sort of raw hopelessness that makes his chest ache with more than just illness.
“It’s nothing,” he mumbles, forcing himself to take a bite of his lunch and chew it, despite the way his stomach clenches in protest. How can he tell his uncle that the voice no one hears but him is loudest when he is alone? That sometimes now not even his Uncle Luke’s voice is enough to drown it out? That it is only through his training that he will ever overcome the pull of his own dark thoughts?
(That one moment he knows the other children are right about him and the next the urge to destroy them all is so strong it leaves him reeling and shaken.)
In the end, Ben bites his tongue, and his Uncle Luke sends him back to his quarters despite all of his protests. He spends the day with his face pressed into his pillow, alternately sweating and shivering, feeling someone else’s fingers passing through the pages of his mind. When he reaches for meditation, tries to imagine his uncle’s voice guiding him to somewhere lush and green and calm, he finds instead that he is lying on his back in the snow, looking up at unfamiliar stars. His face is stinging and there is blood in his eyes and, when he sees the outline of the woman who left him there, hair wet from the snow clinging to the side of her face, he thinks this is what death feels like. “Compassion,” the voice whispers, and Ben shudders so hard the cot beneath him rocks with it.)
The next day he knows to feign wellness more convincingly.
—
Kylo Ren is twenty-two years old, and his body has betrayed him. He knows it immediately upon waking, because when he throws his legs over the side of his bed, the floor rushes up to greet him. It is only the nearness of his desk that keeps him upright as he staggers to the side, his knees threatening to give out.
When his vision has stopped exploding into tiny pinpricks of light, Kylo curses, smashes his palm against the surface of the desk. He is at the height of his training, and he can hardly afford illness. The Supreme Leader will have no time for it, of that he is sure.
He wants to forego the helmet; he feels feverishly warm as it is, can’t imagine putting the thing over his head right now, but he knows better than to risk it. Knows Snoke likes seeing his face little better than hearing his old name. So he goes before Snoke with knees shaking like they haven’t since those first years in his presence, when he had only played at being Kylo Ren. “Supreme Leader,” he says, feeing foolish, hoping the voice synthesizer hides how wrecked he sounds. “There is something… I…” he swallows hard, his throat clicking. “I am not sure I can train today. I am unwell.”
His Supreme Leader looks down at him, all detached appraisal, and Kylo Ren reminds himself that he is his brightest pupil, the best and most powerful, a weapon more dangerous than any the newly appointed General Hux can build. Snoke has told him so himself. “Unwell?”
Kylo nods, the weight of his robes pulling him down, down, until it is all he can do to stay on his feet, sweat cold and clammy against the back of his neck, where the helmet clicks into place.
“Weakness,” Snoke hisses, and sound of it is so familiar that, for a moment, Kylo Ren could be an adolescent again, still under Luke Skywalker’s tutelage. He flushes in shame under the metal casing of his helmet. “No, I think you are not too unwell to train.” Snoke is not touching him, but he can feel the caress of the Supreme Leader’s consciousness against his own, like icy fingers drawn down his cheek. He lets the familiar sensation anchor him, does not shudder even a little. “Let this be an opportunity, then. Use the pain to fuel you, my Knight of Ren. Nothing will draw you closer to the dark.”
Everyday the light tempts him, turns his thoughts, the way the dark once did, before he killed Ben Solo. Kylo Ren may be aching all over, his head pounding from fever, but his Supreme Leader is right, he thinks - it will be worth it if that temptation subsides for even a moment. Snoke senses it in him, he knows; there is nothing he can do to hide it, not even the helmet enough. And so he nods his head once, ignores the way the world swims sickeningly at the sharp movement. “As always, I know you speak only to what is best for our cause, Supreme Leader,” he says, face upturned in supplication. “Forgive my weakness.”
Two hours later, he passes out in the training room, narrowly avoiding a rather devastating lightsaber burn in the process. When he regains consciousness in the medical bay, it’s to Hux admonishing him for being such an idiot. “Can’t you just be sick like a normal person?” the general chides. “Why must you always make such a spectacle of yourself, Ren? Everything is such a production with you.” He only dares say it because Kylo’s head is swimming too much for him to do more than glare hatefully while pushing himself into a sitting position.
Kylo grits his teeth against the smug look on the man’s face. Hux does little to hide that he thinks Kylo foolish - but more the fool he. It is Kylo who understands what the general does not: Hux may be the Supreme Leader’s general, but Kylo Ren is his weapon.
He is in the training room again by nightfall, and the day he runs Han Solo through with his lightsaber, he remembers what his Supreme Leader has told him and pounds on his wounds until he sees stars.
—
Ben Solo is turning thirty-one years old next week, and he is waking up from a nightmare. He is sweat-damp and shivering, his hair soaked, plastered to his forehead, and his back heaves with effort as he tries to get his breathing under control.
He’d known he was coming down with something last night before bed, pressure building behind his sinuses and an unpleasant tickle causing him to clear his throat compulsively - but when Rey had mentioned that his sneezes sounded nearly painful in their intensity, he’d denied it vehemently. Ben had regretted the way he lashed out at her almost immediately, but he’d already made a show of slamming the door to his quarters, and coming out would have ruined the effect. So he’d curled himself into the corner of his cot, knowing how petulant he was being, and willed himself not to sneeze again. Rey was right: the sneezes did hurt, made his head pound right behind his eyes.
It must have worked, because he’d fallen into a fitful sleep not long after, the memory of the hurt look on Rey’s face fresh in his mind - but now that he is awake, there is no denying how terrible he feels. Biting down on his lip, Ben wraps his blanket around his shoulders and slides to the edge of the cot, lets his long legs dangle onto the floor. Part of him wants to let his mind call out to Rey, if his nightmares haven’t woken her already, as they often do, but this thing between them is so new, he hates to jeopardize it by letting her see him this way.
He can’t figure out what she sees in him at all, when he’s honest with himself. Why she hasn’t pushed him away yet. He knows he is odd-looking, even on his best days. And if last night proved anything, it is exactly how capable he still is of hurting her. He wakes her up at all hours, Rey’s mind her own personal holoshow of his nightmares, and he cannot even protect her from that. How she can stand to sit with him afterward, knowing what he dreams of, knowing it is of the things he’s done, Ben will never understand.
The sound of her light footsteps in the hallway interrupts his self-pitying thoughts - this situation has replayed itself often enough that he knows she is running, and she skids to a stop outside his door, pushing it open without asking. “Ben,” she says, her voice soft and concerned as she peeks into his quarters, “Is everything alright? I heard you.” Rey has every reason to be angry with him after his behavior last night, but he can tell that she isn’t, and guilt pulls tight in Ben’s chest.
The light that spills in from the hallway burns his eyes, so he raises a hand to shield them from it, something Rey picks up on immediately, because she clicks the door shut behind her, quiet enough that it doesn’t disturb his headache. He can only imagine how he must look right now - his hair is limp and sticking to his neck, his nose running so that he has to swipe the back of his hand underneath of it, and he is currently wearing his blanket like a robe. “I’m fine, Rey,” he says, his voice deeper than usual and grating like sandpaper, “Just another nightmare.”
He clears his throat as he finishes, wincing, and, in the dark of his room, he watches as Rey fixes him with a critical look. “You’re sick,” she says, and still she doesn’t sound angry, just tired and a little frustrated. “I knew it last night. You look terrible.”
Ben’s about to deny it, though he knows it will be futile - no has ever been able to read him like Rey, even without the bond they share - when he’s overtaken by another sneeze so powerful it brings tears to his already watery eyes. He buries his nose in the crook of his arm and just breathes for a moment - it’s difficult with how congested he is - trying to collect himself. Maker, he can’t even look at her right now, but Rey’s hand is on his cheek before he can lift his head, registering the heat there. “You’re burning up,” she says, and Ben knows she must be right, because her hand feels like ice against his skin. He shivers harder under her touch and growls deep in his throat, his hand coming up to tangle in his hair and pulling hard, twisting the dark strands around his knuckles.
Weak, weak, weak, he thinks - no wonder he had been so easily tempted by the dark. He can barely keep himself together through a flu. He tries to use the ache in his sinuses to center himself, but everything is blurry around the edges, and if anything, that makes it worse. “Weakness,” agrees the voice that no longer exists, and Ben pulls harder, imagines the hairs that let go are the last strains of Snoke’s hold over him - though he knows it isn’t that easy. Two years later and still sometimes it feels wrong to be alone in his own mind.
Then the familiar pressure of Rey’s consciousness brushes up against him - not overpowering the way Snoke’s had been, but just there. She has a way of knowing when his thoughts are not something he can bear on his own. Immediately, Ben feels himself relax a bit, the company welcome.
“You’re an idiot, Ben Solo,” she says. The words sting, but there is a fondness to her tone, nothing like when Hux mocked him all those years ago. “People are allowed to be sick. That’s not weakness - it’s called being human. And I hate to break it to you, but as far as I know, you’re still one of us.” Ben opens his mouth to respond - to try to defend himself maybe, he’s not sure - but Rey cuts him off. “Be honest,” She tells him, disentangling his hand from his hair, her touch gentle but insistent. “How badly do you feel?”
He doesn’t have the strength to lie anymore, not to her. "Really awful,” he admits, then turns his face away from her and coughs, dry and hacking. Attractive, he thinks, wishing the ground would just open and swallow him up already. She won’t be able to keep her hands off of me now. "I can’t breathe through my nose and everything hurts and I’m so damn cold.” He can hear how whiny his voice sounds, but Ben can’t bring himself to care. “I think I may be dying.”
The corner of Rey’s mouth quirks up in sympathetic smile. “No, not dying. Not weak. Just sick.” Then, “Wait right here.” A pang of fear blossoms in Ben’s chest when she moves from his side. She wouldn’t leave, he thinks - except what if she does? He wouldn’t blame her - the display he makes really isthat pathetic.
He is a moment away from panic when Rey’s thoughts find his. “Not going anywhere,” they promise, “I’m just in the ‘fresher.” Never has he been more appreciative of their bond. Ben’s heart hammers against his ribs, his relief so intense he feels faint.
When Rey returns, she has a wet cloth in her hand and the softest look he has ever seen on her face. She does not wait for an invitation before scooting onto his cot (which is barely big enough to fit his frame, even by himself), arranging her legs underneath of her. He eyes her warily - while they have spent many nights together riding out Ben’s nightmares, they have never before lain in bed with one another. In truth, they have never shared anything beyond a few awkward kisses. This is not at all how Ben imagined it would go. “Lay your head here,” she instructs, patting her thigh. When Ben hesitates a moment too long, she gives him a look. “Don’t be a baby,” she says. “This will feel good, I promise.”
Ben obeys, pillowing his cheek against her thigh and drawing his legs up to make room for the two of them. When he has arranged himself comfortably, the cloth comes to rest over his burning eyes, the slight pressure of Rey’s fingertips keeping it in place, and he cannot help the contented sigh that escapes his lips. It feels heavenly, and it even helps him to breathe a little, opening up his sinuses. “You’re a genius,” he mutters to Rey, as a small hand comes to card through his hair.
Laying here like this, he feels almost human again, even as another cough rumbles in his chest. He muffles it against her leg. “Yes, well, this genius says first thing in the morning is a trip to the medibay. Now hush,” Rey chuckles, and Ben knows better than to argue this time. He wouldn’t dare risk anything that would make her hand stop combing through his hair the way it is.
Long minutes pass, the kind that feel like hours through the haze of his fever, where they don’t say anything at all - until, just as he’s on the cusp of sleep, Ben recognizes the slide of Rey’s mental defenses drawing themselves up. The strain on his mind, so much a part of him now that he forgets it is there at all, is gone immediately, and he knows she is shielding him, doing her best to protect him from whatever further nightmares he would have tonight.
He knows the kind of strength that takes - knows she must have been working on it with his Uncle Luke for a while now - just as he knows he should tell her not to do it. This is not her battle and it is so much to ask… but Ben is so tired and her fingers are dancing across his forehead and the respite of letting go of his defenses, even for the night, is not something he can turn down.
I love you. The thought is sudden and fierce in its possessiveness, but it does not surprise him. He has known his feelings for months now - perhaps even longer than that - though he has not given voice to them out of fear. Now, however, Rey can have no doubt of how he feels, not with her inside his mind, shielding it from the inside out like she is. Her hand pulls away from his hair, and for a moment, Ben swears he is going to stop breathing. Perhaps if he had never known how this felt, he may have been able to live without it, may never have known what he was missing at all. But knowing Rey exists and not having her, that is -
The hand is gone only long enough to rearrange the cloth where it is slipping from one of his eyes, before it returns to cup the shell of his ear affectionately.
“I know.”
--
End.