Brilliant, on a curve of Skywalker

Ben was back at the window, staring out at the ocean and trying to find some calm. He and Ender had called Karla over, and while Ben trusted her absolutely when it came to healing (he wouldn't have had her help with Ender otherwise) and he wasn't afraid of pain, he kind of...worried about her reaction when she saw exactly what the Sith Lord had inflicted on him.

Thus the truncated meditation exercise. Not because he was nervous. At all. Really.

Ben was an expert liar, after all, and had been an expert at lying to himself for years.

[OOC: For the boy and the girl! Warnings for talk of being tortured Troy Denning-ed.]

Ben finally got his hand extracted from Ender's (he hadn't really been trying that hard while Alai had been visiting), and left the room to give Val (and Alai, sigh, grumble, whatever) some time to spend with Ender as well.

Ben went for a walk, got lost four times, found some food and a shower and finally made his way back to his room.

He sat down in an uncomfortable chair on the theory that if he sat on the bed he'd fall asleep for a week, and began making some long-delayed calls back to Fandom.

With his luck, time had sped up there, he'd been gone for a month, and Karla was after his head...

[OOC: If you think he called you, he did!]

The quarters were a little more cramped on the Falcon than they were on the Shadow, and the addition of two more people and a nexu cub was helping Ben feel a little caged in.

It wasn't helping that Luke hadn't called yet to let him know where to rendezvous to continue on with their mission. His father wasn't dead--Ben would have felt that--so Ben was trying to wait patiently for his comlink to go off, rather than calling and demanding to know what was going on.

After a few hours of staring at the comm and mentally demanding it to ring, Luke finally called in. The Sith had left the planet having captured most of the Nightsisters of Dathomir, but Luke had Vestara as his prisoner aboard the Shadow and was using her as collateral in his new pact with the Sith.

Ben's yelped "WHAT?!" at that news had echoed through the ship.

Luke's second bit of news--that the Sith claimed their young people were going through the same Force psychosis that had plagued the Jedi--was harder for Ben to believe, and the final piece--that Luke would prefer Ben head to Coruscant to warn the Council personally about the Sith rather than meet up with his father to head back into the Maw--was greeted with absolute silence, then a nod of acquiescence.

Ben was being left behind again. He was fine with that. Really. He curled up on his bunk after he wished Luke luck on his mission and stared at the wall.

See? Totally fine.

[OOC: For the guy with him, phone calls or emails!]

Ben was grabbing a quick snack as he waited in the galley for his father to finish docking the ship on the first human-majority planet they'd seen in months and taking the chance to catch up on more reading about the Aing-Tii Monks. As soon as they restocked their supplies and checked for physical mail (Ben hoped that Tony's package would catch up with them here), they'd be heading into Aing-Tii space, which was a challenging enough flight that Luke Kriffing Skywalker looked slightly apprehensive about it.

Ben stopped being nervous by remembering that if Jacen had been able to do it, Luke would be able to do it better.

...it had never been said that Ben could not be very petty if the occasion called for it.

[OOC: Open for calls, texts, visits from the boy who's in space with him, care packages from home full of YA gay literature...]

Ben hadn't exactly slept in a week, and adding that stress to a healthy dose of getting his ass kicked by a minotaur and a few uncomfortable reminders that gravity worked, he'd passed out on his bed and slept for a solid 16 hours.

For Ben, that was an insane amount of rest.

And now he was up, drinking the largest cup of coffee the Perk produced, and poking around at bits of his astromech droid. Just a normal Sunday, really, if you ignored some of the bruises on his face.

[OOC: Door and post open!]

Ben didn't exactly advertise it, but he kept pretty obsessive decent mental tabs on some of his friends--especially the ones with a history of taking off on him with short to no notice.

So when he'd felt Ender's emotions shift toward--well, he wouldn't call it panic, because Ender never panicked--but concern, he'd been glancing at the door roughly every three minutes since and taking a mental head count of Tahiri, Jaina---

--and then Karla went off the grid, despite her lecture to him on Friday about not providing notice to her about doing the same thing. He took less than a second to wonder if it was a test to annoy him before dismissing the idea.

Ten minutes of unanswered and increasingly frustrated phone messages later and Ben was scrawling a hurried note, dropping it on Ender's bed and heading out into the night to figure out what the kriff was going on.

[OOC: Establishy and NFI.]

Another day in Colorado, and another awkward morning in his and Tahiri's room together.

At least there was hot chocolate? Ben had a mug of it in his hands, partially because hot chocolate was astral and partially because it gave him something to do.

Maybe they was something good on television?

If he was supposed to be using this trip as a romantic week, Ben had failed rather spectacularly so far.

[OOC: For two!]

Ben had spent the last few days doing a lot of research into the specific type of animal Ender had become--a komodo dragon--and learning important things like how it couldn't live on ice cream and stale birthday cake alone.

Thus, the trip into the preserve, where hopefully Ender would retain the animal instincts necessary to catch his own lunch.

Ben smiled over at his companion as he walked almost silently through the undergrowth. This was going to be so gross educational!

[OOC: For Karla and great SP justice!]

Reno's lecture in Rookiehood had brought up memories of decisions Ben had made that led to most of his sleepless nights, but he'd been able to push them to the back of his head.

They'd stayed there until he'd heard the instructions at the reserves that involved snipers. And on an intellectual level he knew that water pistols weren't nearly the same as the collapsable rifle he'd use to take Gejjen out, but logic wasn't really working on convincing his stomach to stopping flipping over right now.

So he sat on the beach with his eyes closed, concentrating on the sound of the waves and trying to find his inner balance again.

It could take a while.

[OOC: Sure, open. Beware the emo.]

Ben, mindful that the last time he'd been in the Corellian Sector he'd been a member of GAG and kicking down doors looking for terrorists, put a bright smile on his face, prayed no one recognized him, and led Karla and Ender around.

"This is where you can find really astral food," he said enthusiastically, because this was Ben and food was pretty much top on his list of judging how good a place was, just below "are they shooting at me?" "There's also neat stuff to look at and almost everyone here speaks Basic. You might run into some Selonians or Drall, but Corellia itself is mostly human."

[OOC: For the two with him!]