open post.

[imahologram]

for whatever miscellaneous bullshit your little heart can come up with.

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[solochild]

Ben feels the shards of glass pierce his mother's feet maybe even before she registers the raw sensation of broken glass ripping apart skin; digging through callouses into sensitive nerves. The sudden awareness is sharp and startling as if someone flicked their middle finger over the thumb like a shot against the raised hairs on the back of his neck. Ben jolts upright and hurriedly scrambles over his bed until he's in full view of it the scene. His mother's forced, brave face; her awkward smiling curling around half-formed curses. The droplets of blood staining the off-white carpet.

"I'm sor- I didn't mean-" She's gone - a mom-shaped blur drifting away from the unlit corners of his room into the brightly lit yellowish glow of the hallway. All before his panicked apologizes could come to fruition.

The Force is strong in Ben. With barely a through he already every bit of glass willed to move with the claw-liked tension in his hands to a tightly compact formation hovering above the carpet. Trickling like hail into the awaiting dustbin.

"I didn't mean to," Ben said. It was his answer for everything. I didn't mean to lash out and I didn't mean to make the walls shake or the windows shatter. It always followed the tune of: I'm sorry, mom. I love you.

Most times he meant it. At least, right now he did.

[imahologram]

Leia watches, quiet, as the glass ends up in with the rest of his trash. Ben's skills are sometimes bemusing, sometimes just this side of unsettling--this, it seems, is what comes of being raised in a family where the Force is an inescapable fact of reality, not a bedtime story of times past.

Right now, it's convenient, if nothing else; it means she can take light, uneven steps over to her son and sit down next to him, wrapping an arm around him. If he wants a hug, she doesn't doubt he'll creep closer; if he doesn't, she doesn't want to overwhelm him. Sometimes he's so sensitive to these things.

"I know you didn't," she tells him, her voice a warm murmur. She might have snapped at him earlier, and there's no doubt that she's annoyed at his father right now, but she wants to believe she always has it within her to find some comfort for Ben when he really needs it. "It was an accident."

Well, the part where she's got three or four new cuts in her foot was, anyway. She's not sure how much he meant to throw the glass in the first place, for that matter. His temper gets away from him.

Maybe we should start buying plastic cups, she thinks, but Ben would be insulted by that.

First things first. She ducks her head a little to glance under the bed. "How's AT-AT feeling?"