How Do You Romance (Closed to Momma Leia)

[greyorder]

Ben's life since he got back has been confusing. There are a lot of issues to work through, most of them fairly serious, and he's been working hard at his self-mandated task of redeeming himself fully. He and Uncle Luke can be in a room together briefly, which is a plus, he and Finn have graduated to something approaching awkward friendship, and Han has fallen back into snarking with his son as they work on the Falcon's latest breakdown. The Force is returning to Ben, albeit not at the pace he'd prefer, and his new lightsaber has given him chances to work with Rey on her skills there - she's extremely talented, simply used to using a staff instead, so the techniques are different. He goes to military briefings with his mother and pours out all the First Order's dirty little secrets in extreme detail regularly.

Nobody told him about the unexpected difficulty of being human again, not being Kylo Ren, full time monster. Ben Organa-Solo (he loves his mother enough to take a dual surname), non-monster, guy-with-Force-powers? That's a role he's never been less certain how to fill. So he gravitated towards Poe, who knew him before and whose forgiveness has been critical in restoring Ben's ability to believe in himself, and Rey, who will simply call Ben out when he's being too hard on himself because she does not believe in mincing words. They're good friends.

Friends who he's slept curled up against. Friends who he's held onto tightly and wanted to kiss. Friends who he's had dreams about he tried to ignore because Jedi are supposed to be celibate. The entire galaxy would have been better off if Anakin Skywalker never got involved with anyone. Ben has been viewed as Vader's second coming enough to be hesitant about the mere idea of this. But it's not going away, so he had to call upon the only impartial judge he knew who had some Force knowledge and some idea about romance: his mother.

He found her in the common room again, fiddling with a datapad, Poe's nightmare caf in a mug by her side. "Are, uh. Are you busy?" This can wait. Ben both needs and does not want this conversation in equal measure.

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[motherofresistance]

As it so happened, what Leia had been fiddling with on the datapad was her schedule. While Han, Luke, and Ben had been... gone, Leia had taken on a number of tasks that didn't strictly need to be taken care of by her for the sake of constantly having something to do. She hadn't pushed herself beyond what she could safely handle, but constantly having something to distract her had helped.

Now that her family was back together, though, she was faced with the task of having to shift certain things around or reassign them in order to have dedicated time with them while also being sure not to overburden anyone else. Which, as it turned out, was easier said than done. Ben's arrival proved to be a timely distraction from an increasingly frustrating task.

She looked up at Ben and smiled. "Actually I was just about ready to take a break," she said. There was one particular task that stubbornly refused to be relocated, so maybe a brief break would help her refocus on it properly later. She saved what she was doing and closed the file. "What did you need?"