Some deep instinct flared up in her brother's defense at the venom directed towards Luke, but it vanish as quickly as it had come. Another part of Leia was perversely glad to see that Ben still had enough fight in him to get angry; he'd need all that fight to get through this. She somewhat wished the anger was a bit more evenly distributed- they'd all failed Ben by degrees-, but she didn't doubt that Luke's had stung the most. And understanding somewhat why that was gave her an idea of how to handle it.
"You know," Leia said after a moment, "it occurs to me that on some level we all expected Luke to be able to fix everything, just because he was Luke Skywalker. You, me, Han, Chewie, people in general, even Luke himself, I think. I of all people ought to have known better than to buy into the legend; my baby brother who first grew that silly beard early on because he looked so young that a visitor mistook him for one of his own padawans, trying to resurrect the Jedi order after a few years of sporadic training." She shook her head and sighed though the corners of her lips quirked upward slightly for a moment, recalling that memory fondly despite the situation; things had seemed so much simpler then.
"I won't deny that Luke failed you," Leia said. "He did. We all did, and you have every right to be angry about that. But Luke never knew what the problem was before. None of us did. Not even a Jedi can help with a problem if they don't know what that problem is. He hated that he wasn't able help you, and that the only solutions he had to offer were ineffective. After all, how much of a Jedi could he be if he couldn't even help his own nephew find some peace? None of us realized how bad things really were until it was too late."
"I won't tell you not to be angry, because I know you both are," she said. "Angry at yourselves and angry at each other. And I'm under no illusions that any meeting between the two of you will be easy or smooth; I'm expecting a shouting match at the very least, if not a few things being thrown with the Force. All that anger and hurt is bound to blow up at some point, but it'll be that much worse the longer it's allowed to fester."
"Maybe the two of you will find a way to work things out, or maybe in the end you'll both decide that things really are too broken to fix between you or even that you just can't stand each other. But at least things will be out in the open and you'll both know for certain, rather than sitting at opposite ends of the base, quietly assuming that each of you hates the other and terrified of what that might mean for your futures."
"Naturally I'm hoping the two of you can find a way to make things work, but this is real life, not a holovid," she said. "If you can't then you can't; you're both still family and that won't change, even if you can't be in the picture with each other. I'm only asking you to give your uncle the same chance you're giving me and your father; the chance to make up for some of our mistakes, make up for lost time, and maybe do something right by you for once."
Meanwhile, Dr. Kalonia politely pretended she couldn't hear the conversation between mother and son, turning to her workstation to enter the data she gathered so it could be formalized and entered into Ben's medical records. Hopefully by the time their discussion was done, she would have something more to tell them.
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Date: 2017-03-08 11:10 pm (UTC)"You know," Leia said after a moment, "it occurs to me that on some level we all expected Luke to be able to fix everything, just because he was Luke Skywalker. You, me, Han, Chewie, people in general, even Luke himself, I think. I of all people ought to have known better than to buy into the legend; my baby brother who first grew that silly beard early on because he looked so young that a visitor mistook him for one of his own padawans, trying to resurrect the Jedi order after a few years of sporadic training." She shook her head and sighed though the corners of her lips quirked upward slightly for a moment, recalling that memory fondly despite the situation; things had seemed so much simpler then.
"I won't deny that Luke failed you," Leia said. "He did. We all did, and you have every right to be angry about that. But Luke never knew what the problem was before. None of us did. Not even a Jedi can help with a problem if they don't know what that problem is. He hated that he wasn't able help you, and that the only solutions he had to offer were ineffective. After all, how much of a Jedi could he be if he couldn't even help his own nephew find some peace? None of us realized how bad things really were until it was too late."
"I won't tell you not to be angry, because I know you both are," she said. "Angry at yourselves and angry at each other. And I'm under no illusions that any meeting between the two of you will be easy or smooth; I'm expecting a shouting match at the very least, if not a few things being thrown with the Force. All that anger and hurt is bound to blow up at some point, but it'll be that much worse the longer it's allowed to fester."
"Maybe the two of you will find a way to work things out, or maybe in the end you'll both decide that things really are too broken to fix between you or even that you just can't stand each other. But at least things will be out in the open and you'll both know for certain, rather than sitting at opposite ends of the base, quietly assuming that each of you hates the other and terrified of what that might mean for your futures."
"Naturally I'm hoping the two of you can find a way to make things work, but this is real life, not a holovid," she said. "If you can't then you can't; you're both still family and that won't change, even if you can't be in the picture with each other. I'm only asking you to give your uncle the same chance you're giving me and your father; the chance to make up for some of our mistakes, make up for lost time, and maybe do something right by you for once."
Meanwhile, Dr. Kalonia politely pretended she couldn't hear the conversation between mother and son, turning to her workstation to enter the data she gathered so it could be formalized and entered into Ben's medical records. Hopefully by the time their discussion was done, she would have something more to tell them.