Room 424 [afternoon]

[momslilassassin]

Ben wasn't hiding.

...much. It was his days without workshops, so after a run around the island, a stop in the salle, and time spent writing a letter to Aravis to catch her up on Fandom happenings (or at least a general sort of catch-up. He wasn't mentioning his fight with Ender, the extreme awkwardness that was his relationship with Tahiri right now, his conversation with John, or the impending arrival of his baby...aunt. It wasn't a tremendously helpful letter).

Now he was sitting in the middle of his floor, barefoot, with his hands resting easily on his knees and his eyes closed as he tried to regain equilibrium through meditation.

His father was so much better at this.

The door was cracked open.

Comments

[guardianborn.livejournal.com]

The whole 'wait and maybe you'll reach her again' plan totally hadn't worked. And it was pretty much a sucky plan to begin with, Rose went with the plan she didn't like just a little bit less - ask for help.

She was just deciding on this as she headed down to her room and noticed Ben's door partially open and without much more thought, stopped short and tapped on his doorframe. And then she realised he was doing something already and maybe she should leave it for another time.

[momslilassassin]

Ben's eyes popped open. "Come in, Rose," he said, smiling.

[guardianborn.livejournal.com]

"Sure you're not busy and stuff?" she asked, smiling back.

[momslilassassin]

"The nice thing about meditation is that I can come back to it any time," he said.

[guardianborn.livejournal.com]

"You sound like a brochure," Rose teased, slipping inside to sit down on the floor across from him. "How're you?"

Yes, small talk. Made it much easier not to worry about actually asking something important.

[momslilassassin]

Having a week.

"Fine," he said, smiling. "Your interrogation yesterday was fascinating to watch."

[guardianborn.livejournal.com]

Rose shook her head, making a face. "Thought I was going to get detention."

[momslilassassin]

"I've never gotten detention," Ben offered. "I got in trouble at home lots of times, but here they think I'm a good kid."

[guardianborn.livejournal.com]

She laughed. "Have them all fooled, huh? I probably shouldn't have punched Worf, but oh well."

[glacial_queen]

Karla hesitated in front of Ben's door. For several minutes, actually. It was...very odd, going into a male's room, at least when she was thinking properly. She'd rarely even been to her father's chambers; he'd almost always shared her mother's. His her his opwn private sanctum that no one trespassed. Most males in Kaeleer were like that.

She tried knocking very, very quietly. But the door was cracked--way to not notice the obvious, Karla--and opened wider at her touch.

"Err...kiss kiss?" she said awkwardly from the doorway.

[momslilassassin]

Ben's eyes popped open. "You finally decided to come in," he said, smiling. "I was wondering how long you were going to stand out there."

[glacial_queen]

Karla made a face. "I was practicing being a statue. For my statue-acting class. So there." She stepped inside the door. There, that technically counted as in, right? "And how did you know I was there, anyway?" She'd been quiet. Deliberately so. So if she decided to run away, he'd never know she'd been there.

[momslilassassin]

"I felt you in the Force," he said. "It's almost impossible to sneak up on a Jedi. It makes planning surprise parties difficult, too."

[glacial_queen]

"I wish I had a power like that," Karla said, enviously. "I might not have needed to go..." She coughed uncomfortably. "Never mind," she said, brushing her hair back behind her ears. "I just wanted to apologize. For last Thursday. Not for all of it--I mean, I'm not happy that you understand some of what we talked about, but it is nice knowing I'm not all alone here. But the rest of it, the stuff that might make you uncomfortable, or cause trouble with your Con--girlfriend, for that I apologize."

[momslilassassin]

Ben waved a hand. "It's fine," he said. What was broken between him and Tahiri was more complicated than just hormones gone awry. "Truly. Compared to what other people were up to, we were positively restrained."

[glacial_queen]

"Well, I'm glad of that," she started, awkwardly, then paused. "Though you don't seem fine." His psychic scent was a roil of emotions. She couldn't really tell what they were, not without getting inside his inner barriers, but they didn't seem pleasant. "I'll be glad if it isn't the roof that's got you tied up in knots, and I'll understand if there are other people you'd prefer to talk to over me, but...I can listen sometimes. And I doubt I have a stake in anything. And..."

She wasn't sure if she should add the part about being a Black-Widow. Sure, they were trained in the arts of mind-healing, but that didn't stop people from being scared of them. Ben probably wouldn't be scared, though he might shy at the word 'trained.'

[momslilassassin]

Ben's internal barriers got even higher. "You know how memories are," he said with a little shrug. "I've just been reminded about things I thought I was over. Not a big deal."

Huge, huge deal, Captain Repression.

[weetuskenraider]

Tahiri still had Ben's shirt, which was . . . yeah. Awkward. And with a little time to kill before she was supposed to meet Dinah for the promised spar, she thought maybe she should give it back to him. (Because that wasn't going to be awkward either.)

She could just sneak down the hallway and leave it in front of his room, right?

If, when she headed down to do just that, her Force presence was less defined than it usually was, her head hadn't been a fun place the last few days.

She left the shirt just outside the door and turned to sneak away again.

[momslilassassin]

"You're just leaving?" Ben asked through the door.

[weetuskenraider]

"I wasn't sure if now was a good time," Tahiri admitted. Someday she'd figure out she wasn't very sneaky.

[momslilassassin]

He reached into the Force and opened the door wider. "Come in," he said softly.

[weetuskenraider]

Tahiri stopped to pick up the shirt and edged into the room.

"Hey, I thought that was my thing," she said somewhat nonsensically when she noticed his feet.

[momslilassassin]

Ben wriggled his toes on the carpet. "It's hard to get into the correct frame of mind to meditate when my feet are stuck in giant boots."

[weetuskenraider]

"It's impossible to concentrate on anything that way," Tahiri maintained. "Any luck with it?"

[momslilassassin]

"Some," he said. "I've been trying for a while. There's a lot going on."