Mother's Regret

This was made for the Star Wars Club Contest-    Contest 13- Childhood of Kylo Ren - WINNERS!
Sorry the juding took so long, guys! There were quite a few more fictions than usual, and the judges read them all.
AND THE WINNERS ARE...
In the judge's Section
First place
What the judges were saying:  We really enjoyed this quick simple fiction about
Ben's early years. Here Ben is experiencing nightmares that don't seem quite within the
realm of what a normal kid's nightmares should be...

Second place
What the judges were saying:  This delightful illustration pictures
a young hopeful Ben with a familiar creature from a recent TV show.
We loved the details on this one, and the caricature is spot-on with how a young Ben
might look.

Third place
What the judges were saying:  A very creative entry featuring
how the Force might feel to a child like young Ben


+++UPDATE: WOOHOO! I won second place by popular vote! Thanks!!

This was also based on a rather heartbreaking blurb about Leia that I read on tumblr awhile back: Just Visiting, notbecauseofvictories: notbecauseofvictories: ...

leia still has them stored somewhere on her personal holobank. All the transmissions ben sent from luke’s, sullen beneath the messy fringe of his hair, with ears like satellites (you’ll grow into them, han and leia must have promised a thousand times; she wonders if he did)

she likes watching them, those nights when their intelligence has dried up and the senate is stonewalling her again, or one of her pilots didn’t come back and she has to inform the family—when she’s already hit bottom and there’s nothing to do but crawl a little further down, where at least it’s warm, familiar. The particular pain she feels counting ben’s moles as he talks about lightsaber drills is second-nature now; there’s a part of heart that exists only to ache when he says, in a voice on the edge of cracking, mama, can I come home now?

(she has four years’ worth of transmissions saved on the holobank. he says it a hundred and seventy eight times. (she knows, she counted that night han left.) At first, it was the refrain of every message—mama, please, I don’t want to be here, I’ll be good, please, can I—but it had fallen off, gradually replaced by a distraction, a distance. 

at the time, she had taken it as a sign that he was adjusting, settling into life at the temple. it had been a good thing.)

yes, leia says, fifteen years too late into the empty dark of her quarters, those nights when there is no more down to go, just her and the ghosts who left her behind. come home.

the next time she sees ben, he is bleeding. (he is dying) and all she can think—dully, through the white-sharp shock of love and anger and panic—is, oh. he grew into the ears.

rey is saying something (she half-carried him from snoke’s crumbling fortress, the absurd height of him draped over her narrow shoulders and leia has never been so grateful for the strength of this girl, forged in heat) and rey is saying something but leia can’t hear it, she can’t hear anything, not even the war, the sound of cannons and blasters that was crowding her ears a moment ago. All of it is gone, and leia is counting the moles on ben’s face.

he looks tired.

mama, he says weakly, and rey startles into silence, looking at him with wide eyes. There is blood oozing from the corner of his mouth and the voice is all wrong, a man’s voice—but that same part of leia is aching, still. mama, he says. can I come home now.