Chapter Text
He had not been courageous.
He should have been, but he wasn’t. He’d messed up, and Ben Skywalker didn’t know what to do about it.
A soft, rhythmic crunching sound drew close, and with it the familiar Force-sense of his father. He considered scrambling to his feet and dashing inside before he was seen, but just then Dad rounded the corner of the house. He caught sight of Ben sitting on the stairs of the back porch and stopped in his tracks, his cape lifting just slightly with the breeze. “Ben? What are you doing out here alone?”
Ben looked down, nudging a bit of snow off the bottom step with the toe of his boot. Too late now. “Thinking.”
Dad tilted his head to the side, then came over and brushed the light coating of snow off the other side of the step that Ben was sitting on, and sat down beside him. “Pretty cold for thinking. You want to go inside and tell me about it?”
Ben squirmed a little and glanced over his shoulder at the lighted window, then back at his boots.
“Ah,” Dad said. “Do you want to tell me about it out here, then? Or is it something you need to keep private for a while?”
A sigh escaped him before Ben could hold it back. “I—I wasn’t brave today. I meant to be! But—I wasn’t.”
Dad put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward to meet Ben’s eyes. “And what happened today that you needed to be brave? I thought your cousins were coming over.”
“They did,” Ben said, gulping a little at the memory. He loved his cousins, and the days when they were all together were always the best, and when he woke up this morning and saw that it had snowed a lot overnight, it had been so exciting to think of the fun they could have. But then…
“So?” Dad prompted gently.
Ben hunched his shoulders. “We made snow forts.”
“That sounds like fun.”
“And had a snowball fight.”
“Also fun.”
“But—” Ben looked up. “We made teams. Me and Nakari and Valeria on one team, and Rylan and Kaela and Alaine on the other.”
“Okay,” Dad said, a crease starting between his eyebrows the way it did when he was thinking hard about something.
“And we were throwing snowballs from the forts, but then—then Alaine made a sneak attack.”
Dad leaned his chin in his hand, his elbow still on his knee. “Well, she is your Aunt Corissa’s daughter. Just because Alaine is quiet like Uncle Julian doesn’t mean she’s not just as determined as Aunt Corissa.”
“But she was really sneaky. She snuck up on us and came around the wall of our fort and tackled me.”
The corners of Dad’s mouth twitched. “Definitely Aunt Corissa’s daughter.”
“But Dad,” Ben said, not at all sure he wanted to admit the next part and somehow really wanting to do so at the same time. “She scared me. And I used the Force on her.”
Dad’s eyebrows lifted. “Oh? How?”
“Well,” Ben muttered, looking down at his boots again as he kicked another bit of snow off the step. “I was surprised and she’s as big as me and I couldn’t really catch her with the Force, so I kinda just—pushed her. So she landed in the snow instead of on me.”
“Hmm.” Dad was quiet for a minute, thinking, and Ben waited miserably. “Alaine’s not hurt, is she?”
“No.”
“And you’re not hurt?”
“No.”
“You know what Mom would say about this?”
Ben hunched his shoulders a little higher. “No.”
“She’d say, ‘good instincts.’”
“But Dad,” Ben protested, sitting up straight before he realized it. “Jedi can’t be scared! They have to be in control! You say that all the time, that we have to be careful not to use the Force for wrong things!”
“Look at you, paying attention to what your father says,” Dad said lightly, then put his arm around Ben’s shoulders and pulled him close. The wind was still cold, but Dad was warm and his cape draped around Ben now too was warm and his Force sense was warm, not disappointed like Ben had feared. “But you got one thing mixed up, son. Jedi can be scared. Everyone’s scared sometimes. The important thing is to not be controlled by your fear.”
Ben looked up. Dad was smiling now, and he didn’t look disappointed at all. “But wasn’t I? I pushed Alaine because I was scared.”
“You didn’t lash out, did you?” Dad asked. “You didn’t hurt her, or try to throw her away, or scare her in return. You just—avoided a tackle.”
Ben considered this. “I guess. But you and Mom always say no using the Force against people who don’t have it unless we absolutely have to.”
“That’s true,” Dad agreed. “We’ll work on that together, okay? So that next time you’re startled you can make a better choice. But you know what you did right today, Ben?”
“No,” Ben said, leaning a little against him.
“A whole bunch of things,” Dad said. “You had good combat reflexes—your mom will be proud of that. You had enough control of the Force to push Alaine away without hurting her. Most important of all, Ben, you listened to your conscience and want to do better next time. And you told me about all of this even though it was hard for you. That’s all pretty good, don’t you think?”
To his surprise, Ben found himself smiling. “Maybe.”
“Definitely,” Dad told him, squeezing his shoulders. “Facing up to your fears and learning from your mistakes is about the bravest thing anyone can do, and you did that. Now how about we go inside and get warm?”
Ben perked up. “Hot chocolate?”
“Best idea I’ve heard today,” Dad agreed. “Let’s go see if your mom and sisters want some.”
“Okay,” Ben said, feeling warm inside already.
Maybe it wasn’t such a bad day after all.