Work Text:
“Just relax, it’s easy”
He couldn’t help the bite in his voice, but Ben was starting to annoy him. His student most attuned to the Force, struggling with this, something all his other students that if he was going to be completely honest, some shouldn’t have even been there in the first place as their power in the Force was as weak as a loth kitten.
Ben’s head was pointing down, the mess of dark hair so unlike both his mother and father falling around his shoulders. He convinced him to cut it, once, Ben was more eager to please him back then and would do anything to get his approval. He hadn’t done it since, Ben without his hair being one who constantly tried to hide behind something else - be it his uncle, or even the week long fashion statement of popped collared on new clothes he got from who knows where. Always hiding, like he was worried about being found.
Though there was one thing his nephew could never do, and that was hide. He shone brighter in the Force than anything Luke had ever seen. He had only read about it in old Jedi texts, of individuals so attuned to the Force that it seemed to glow from them, outward like a sun. He thinks briefly of Leia’s worry of dark forces taking over, attracted to him like a moth to a flame, but other than what he would call Force-based teenage discontent, he can safely say that his sisters worries were unfounded.
Ben was a brilliant student.
In everything but this.
“Ben, you’re not going to clear your mind if you can’t even relax. You know what to do, just do it”
Perhaps the wrong thing to say, he could see Ben’s already tense shoulders tense even more, and he feels a spike of resentment broadcast out so clearly. He learned long ago to not take these things personally, for every way his nephew was quiet, he more than made up for it with how loud he was in the Force. To not comment on it was a way he could give Ben some privacy in his feelings.
Though this was exactly what he was trying to help Ben with. Letting go. Clearing his mind.
That Ben found such ease and fluidity in the Force whilst always wound up with things on his mind was just another way that his nephew astounded him. That Ben managed to do it with such ease, without letting it overwhelm him or letting himself go into the dark was another feat, that his nephew somehow also managed to not go into the light was however a bit concerning.
For himself, he could use the Force with ease, but not without mentally clearing himself first lest he give way to the dark.
It’s just them there. Sometimes the other students get jealous of the extra time he spends with Ben, he’s not surprised, they all know he’s Ben’s uncle even when he tries to eschew any familial type relationship, keeping it purely as master and student.
What he tries to make clear though is that he spends extra time with any student who truly needs it. Most of his other students either aren’t powerful enough to require it, or the one to one tutorship they require can be given by another more advanced student. Ben himself often helps, usually Tai, the two of them linked together in the Force in a way that he much prefers to ignore.
He sighs. The headache threatening to bloom along his brow is getting harsher. He’s been out here under the trees with Ben for about three hours now, long after meditation class ended, and Ben was no closer to letting his mind go than he was during the class, where he was faking it enough to fool the other students but not enough to get by him. A front of nothingness, casually floating and rotating the rocks Luke had placed as a focus for the students control in the Force.
He could see beneath the surface though, the ripples of turmoil, the constant uncertainty and worry of not being enough, the odd burst of anger - not unexpected, given his age, but something Luke needs to help him get under control lest it make way for unwanted paths.
He wanted nothing more than to help, but he had no idea how when the methods he uses for himself and every other student seem too difficult for his otherwise most gifted student to attain. Scouring the old texts he had collected didn’t offer anything much, either, as though the Jedi of old just assumed everyone already knew how to do this. Instructions on how to complete other Force feats often started with ‘Begin with clearing your mind’ with no notes on just how someone could do such a thing. He felt useless, telling someone to do something without being able to coach them on how to do it.
“Look, Ben, you just need to let go. You can do this, I know you’re capable” He rubs his brow, trying to abate the headache a little longer, the setting sun beckoning him indoors where he can achieve his own mediation. Maybe then it would come to him, how best to help.
He lowers his hand to Ben’s shoulder, and can see Ben’s whole back stiffen at the unwanted contact. Touch was something he gave so freely, a way to ground himself and others. Ben used to lean into him, appreciating the contact, but the past few months that had changed.
He put it down to Ben just changing with age, being a teenager was never a simple thing, he remembers being one himself.
“Come on, just imagine yourself empty, empty of everything, nothing to think about, nothing to dwell on, just you and the Force”
He means it to come out softly, but his own emotions are starting to get the better of him at this late hour, as his headache starts to bloom outwards. He has other things he needs to be getting on with, his own meditation notwithstanding, but the amount of paperwork involved in keeping the school going was mounting up higher and higher.
Perhaps the wrong thing to think right now, as Ben, astute as ever in the Force, seems to connect with him just as he thinks it. Ben knows it’s rude, and that he shouldn’t do it, but Luke knows or at least trusts that he tries his best not to. It’s something that Luke himself only began to achieve through great thought and meditation, a skill he actively trained, though Ben had been doing it since childhood almost like second nature. Much like Ben’s meditation, how was he supposed to teach him not to do something when Luke himself had to actively learn how to do it, not how to not do it?
“You just don’t get it, do you?”
It’s the first words Ben has said nearly all day, other than the odd grunt or dutiful ‘Yes master’. It was at a level just above a whisper, like he had been thinking about it for a long time and had to expel it out of himself. Luke wants to joke, saying he’d almost forgotten what Ben’s voice sounds like, but the harshness of the others' tone stops him.
“You just don’t fucking get it!”
And just like that, Ben was storming away from him, before he could even begin to query what the younger meant. Luke’s hand shrugged off, Ben's clothes in disarray as he quickly stomped away.
Burned on Luke’s mind is the glimpse he got of Ben’s face as he yelled his words, eyes big and on the brink of tears, an expression of pain and confusion, lost and unable to find. Plus everything that came out of him in the Force in one quick burst like a gust of wind through an open door before being forced shut, forgetting the lingering breeze coming through the window. Resentment, at Luke, at the Force, at all the other students able to master this one thing so simply when Ben himself struggled. A feeling of entitlement, like this shouldn’t be so tough, when everything else came to him like second nature.
Part of him wonders if he should follow Ben down, go talk it out now in his hut, help him through this.
Another part of him feels relief that finally his day is over and he can go be by himself for a bit.
He knows what the better option would be, he knows what he should be doing, but he can’t help but think about himself.
Anyway, if Ben still feels bad in the morning, they can talk about it then.