motherofresistance | A trip to the doctor's

Entry tags:

A trip to the doctor's

Who: Closed log for Leia, Gray!Ben, and NPC Doctor Harter Kalonia
What: Ben has some medical problems that need to be addressed. Fortunately, the doctor is in.
When: The day after this thread
Warnings: Discussion of mental illness, self harm, and eating disorders. Angst and feelings. Possible discussion of canon-typical violence.

The night had passed, as it inevitably did. And when the day had come, there had been plans to make. Once she and Ben had woken up properly, she'd contacted Doctor Kalonia. Normally, she would have just walked in, but this was a more... delicate matter than a typical illness or injury, and she needed to request a private consultation rather than just a standard visit to the medical bay. Fortunately, being the leader of the Resistance gave her significant pull, and the request was granted for later that afternoon. Short of an emergency, they'd have the bay all to themselves.

Now, here they were, about to step inside. Leia had come with Ben, partly for moral support and partly because she wasn't certain how the meeting would play out without her presence. It had been hard enough for Ben to tell her about his symptoms and what he'd been doing as a result; it would be that much harder to explain the situation to a professional and submit it and himself for scrutiny, even compassionate scrutiny. If necessary or desired, Leia could take some of the burden of explanation off of Ben's shoulders.

"Ready for this?" Leia asked Ben as they approached the medical bay doors. Beyond them was their best hope of a resolution to Ben's difficulties and the potential for real healing. But still, she knew that stepping through them probably wouldn't be easy for him.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

When and if Leia discovered this, it was likely that Rey would find herself being invited to dinner with them on a fairly regular basis. She'd actually been thinking about doing so regardless; she wanted to get to know Rey a little better before she got so deep into her training with Luke than any conversation was likely to be dominated by talking about said training.

Leia nodded, making a mental note of the name and description. "It might just," she said. "At any rate, it certainly can't hurt." The worst that could come of the tea search was nothing, after all.

That conversation was put on the back burner, though, as Doctor Kalonia swung a standard medical scanning array into place over the Ben where Ben lay. Many larger medical facilities had ones that hovered or even had exam beds that scanned whoever lay on them automatically, but the Resistance relied on an older style metal swing arm to support the medical scanner. the doctor adjusted its height and positioning until it was was approximately a foot and a half above Ben's waist, centered on the middle of his body.

Satisfied, she locked it into place for the moment, and turned back to the control station next to the bed. "Just lie still for the scan," Doctor Kalonia instructed Ben. "In your state I know it's likely a bit uncomfortable, but it'll only take a moment." She activated the array, and the broad, pale blue scanning field projected out, passing slowly down along Ben's body from head to toe, then repeating the process in reverse, scanning from foot to head before deactivating.

Doctor Kalonia touched a few buttons to finalize the scan, before unlocking the sensor arm and swinging it back out of the way. "There," she said. "You can sit up now, if you like. It'll take a few moments to go over all the scan data."

She turned back to the workstation, the monitor of which would be partially visible to Ben if he sat up. Though most of the readings wouldn't make much sense to anyone without a medical background, some things were clear enough. A catalog of previous, now healed injuries, most from combat and training, but a few older ones from childhood misadventures. Basic statistics like his body temperature, blood type, blood pressure, and age. A small , three dimensional hologram of his skeleton that with a few button presses by the doctor gained muscles, sinew, and organs. It's this image that she seemed to linger on, going over the attached data in detail and frowning thoughtfully.

Ben wouldn't really protest to being able to spend more time with Rey. She treated food in a way that made him too guilty to stuff it in a napkin or leave it untouched. Having spent so long without it, Rey was capable of adoring and enjoying even the most bland and normal things, staple foods of the rest of the galaxy that she had never known existed before. He would always remember the way her face lit up when he gave her candy stolen from Uncle Chewie's secret stash. She had never known there was that much sugar in the whole of the galaxy. Before he could even protest she'd pushed a small piece of it past his lips, too, and Force help him, he'd forgotten to feel guilty about liking the taste for a moment, watching her smile.

He grit his teeth. Laying on his back always hurt, could even result in bruises if he did for too long, hips, back and shoulder blades pressing too sharply against the surface. Ben had always gotten a litany of purple bruises from combat in those areas since he was introduced to the concept of fasting, but that was why avoiding physicals was his norm. The doctors at the First Order told him the same thing every time: eat. Sometimes he had tried, only to glance down at himself and think 'but there's fat there left to burn, I don't have to eat yet'. These days he was fairly sure it was actually muscle his body was starting to eat away at, but that was not the kind of thing he would even suggest with his mother present.

He hoped the time Snoke deliberately broke his bones to give him incentive to learn Force Healing looked like a normal injury to the doctor. Ben still had nightmares about that time, about being able to feel the breaks in his ribs, thinking he was about to die as he struggled not to black out from pain. It had been humbling and traumatic in equal doses.

Sitting up, he rubbed at the base of his spine with a wince, a dull ache informing him he'd be paying for this later. "If any readings show up involving snake poison, that's from Poe and I trying to use the Force to befriend a two headed snake as kids. Turns out the Force doesn't work that way." He swallowed, worried about the way she was frowning. It had, he knew, nothing to do with snake poison, and everything to do with his fear of food. The readings, however, might as well be written in ancient Wookie calligraphy for all the sense they made to him.

"...what's wrong?" he asked, after a prolonged silence.

Both Leia and Doctor Kalonia noticed that Ben was rather rigid as he lay on the bed being scanned. The doctor had expected it, but to Leia it was another reminder of how much her son had suffered; how much he was still suffering. Coming back from this would be difficult; they'd both have a lot of work to do. And she'd be lying if she said that seeing him like this didn't scare her. But she'd just gotten him back; she wasn't going to lose him now. Never again. Whatever it took to help him beat this, she'd do it. They all would; Han, Rey, Poe, Chewie, even Luke, once he and Ben were ready to face each other.

Doctor Kalonia had noticed the unusual pattern of broken and mended ribs, yes, but though she wondered about it, it didn't stand out as much as it might. She had little experience with Force-induced injury and broken ribs were a common enough injury for anyone who routinely participated in hand-to-hand combat. As it was, it was only worth a mental and medical footnote compared to the problems at hand.

The comment about snake venom earned only a slight nod to show he'd been heard as she examined the readings; as an attempt at humor, it fell somewhat flat, but she didn't want him to think she was ignoring him. He knew as well as she did that that wasn't the cause of her silence, though as his next and more serious question indicated.

Doctor Kalonia turned to face Ben more directly. Ben might be reluctant to venture the truth in front his mother, but the doctor intended to give them both accurate information, however hard it may be to hear. "You may have some idea what's wrong already," she said to Ben. "But I'll give you the details. For all practical purposes, there's no fat left on your body to burn, so your body's started burning muscle to sustain itself. You're also starting to lose bone density at an alarming rate and are nearing the point where you're risking permanent damage to multiple organs. And your immune system is seriously suppressed as well due to malnutrition, leaving you at risk for secondary infections; something that most people would be able to handle easily, your body might not be able to fight off."

"It's fortunate that you came in when you did," she said. "As it is, the damage can still be undone with time and proper care. If you'd waited even two more weeks, that might have been a different story; I might still have been able to save your life, but you'd have effectively crippled yourself. As it stands, I'm going to have to restrict you from any heavy physical training until further notice; your bones have deteriorated enough that if you try to keep up with anything like the sort of combat training I've seen Rey doing, you're liable to fracture something."

Leia, for her part, could only listen as the doctor read off her findings. If they'd been even a few weeks later... No. She banished that horrifying possibility from her mind. There was still time to fix this, thank the Force. They could still do something. Her earlier determination redoubled itself. They would do something. They would beat this. Because the alternative was unthinkable.

He had known he'd burned through some fat. But he'd always told himself when he was afraid he was getting too thin that there was still some fat left, he had pinched his skin and felt skin between his fingers and told himself there was some time still to keep at this, that he was safe, that he wouldn't have to risk another episode. There was always some kind of excess something his well-trained eyes could find to excuse one more missed meal, one more day, just one more time.

His first impulse was to tell the Doctor she was wrong. It was a foolish impulse, but it was his first thought. How could he be out of fat to burn when this wasn't the lowest he'd weighed? How could he be so close to the edge when he had gained weight since he'd come home? It didn't make sense. He had eaten several full meals, one with Rey, one with Poe and his gaggle of pilot friends, one, at a snail's pace, with Han, sitting around listening and discussing old stories of Han's glory days. He had forced himself not to run laps afterwards, made himself sleep, fought off the panic because if they saw him they would worry. All that effort not to push the food away and work himself to collapse when that was all he wanted to, and it wasn't enough? It was all for nothing?

He went pale and still. His mind raced. What would he have to do to try to save himself? Would he even be able to do it when his attempts at fixing the problem himself had been so hard and done so little? He looked over at his mother, whose face was unreadable to him. She was willful and hopeful, but all he could see was a mountain to climb that he wasn't sure he could scale.

Ben pulled his jacket on and wrapped his arms around his torso protectively. "I can't give up training with Rey. She needs to be able to fight the First Order. I know Force Healing, I can mend a fracture. I'll just - I'll just take vitamins, or something, so I can keep up with the work."

Denial settled over him. This was all wrong. He wasn't weak, he wasn't breakable. He didn't have the time to be. There's a war to win. Fractures are nothing he hadn't endured before.

Three meals in the weeks he'd been back might well seem like an accomplishment to Ben, and in a way it was, but it was nowhere near enough to mitigate any significant damage, as the doctor would have said, had she know. It had been just enough to keep going; to keep others from becoming too suspicious of him so he could keep on starving himself. Obviously that had gone out the airlock at this point, but it had obviously worked, right up until it didn't.

At the very least the doctor could tell that he was keeping himself well hydrated. Dehydration was often an unintended side effect of prolonged fasting, and she suspected that he was doing better on that front now than he had while with the First Order; she couldn't put his increase in weight down to anything else but water, as everything else was gradually wasting away.

Doctor Kalonia's gaze was compassionate, but her tone was firm. "I can help mend fractures to; that doesn't mean I encourage them," she said. "I'm sorry, Ben, but this isn't open for debate. Rey can practice with Finn, if she needs someone experienced in First Order tactics and fighting styles; since you yourself told us that you were the only trained Force user that the First Order had, she's far more likely to face stormtroopers than saber wielders anyway for at least a few years. I'll be informing Rey of your ban from training as well, just so there's no miscommunication." In other words, so he wouldn't be able to claim to Rey he wasn't banned from it in order to get around the doctor's orders.

Leia, meanwhile, had taken Ben's glance in her direction as a cue to come over. She could sense the way his mind was racing, though catching any of those thoughts to read it would require being more intrusive than she liked. It would no doubt be an uphill battle, but she didn't want him to despair of his chances before they'd even really begun. She rested a gentle hand on his shoulder, a solid reminder that he wasn't alone in this. He was no longer just he; he was part of they. And what he might not be able to accomplish alone, they could do together.

Doctor Kalonia didn't comment on the General's move to Ben's bedside, but it did hearten her a bit. With his formidable mother and likely soon to be his equally formidable father solidly on his side, she felt better about his chances. "I will be giving you some vitamin and mineral supplements," she continued to Ben, "but that's all they are; supplements. They're not meant as replacement for food, and they won't work as one. Your body still needs actual fuel to work, and if it's not provided in the form of food, it will just keep burning through muscle until there's not enough left to sustain you."

"She needs to know how to incorporate the Force into her movements. That sort of thing cannot be learned from Finn, because he doesn't know it. I have to teach her how to fight, I can't lose her to my own weaknesses. I l- I care, about her. You don't understand," he snapped, irritation flashing through him. Not just irritation, but fear, too, fear that he would slip into an episode and Rey would die and none of it would mean a thing until it was too late to help. "And I don't see how these supplements will keep me from slipping out of myself, which is the bigger problem given it's what led to me not eating. I've tried vitamins. Vitamins, herbs, supplements, anything that I came across during my entire life that held promise at least got a trial run, and none of it ever worked. All this will do is condemn me to another episode."

The panic was overwhelming. He wanted to take it back, go back in time and never admit to anything, never admit he had a problem. This wasn't just going to cost them the war, this would cost them everything. Rey, Finn, himself, no one was going to be alright unless they worked together and he could do nothing sitting in some room all day popping vitamins and forcing down meals instead of aiding in their battle.

He hated himself, suddenly. He was so useless. Ben had always been an instrument of the Force, even when it felt like he was just that and not a person. Why had he fought tooth and nail to get his Force powers back if he couldn't use them? What was the point of even being here - more than that, why was he even alive? His thoughts rammed together, overlapping, a blur of waste-of-resources-holding-everyone-back-going-to-lose-everything.

And the worst part was knowing that he would fade away again and not be able to care about it, that he'd watch it all unfold without being able to even verbalize a protest. Ben deflated, anger giving way to a sense of complete defeat. So this was it. Surviving the Dark Side, changing himself, turning to the Light, trying to do the right thing, and his reward was to be damned to total depersonalization.

He barely even noticed his mother's presence. She might be beside him, but just like when he was a child, he was alone in all the ways that counted.

Doctor Kalonia endured Ben's outburst without flinching. She'd expected the anger, fear, and denial. As a doctor, she'd dealt with those from her patients before. But the despair, the way he just deflated in complete defeat? That was the worst. She'd seen similar expressions on the faces of some of the Hosnian survivors she'd treated; utterly lost and desolate.

"Ben," she said gently but with conviction, "it's alright to be afraid. I won't tell you not to be because this is a frightening situation. And I understand the fear of losing people you care for to this war; I feel it every time someone is brought into my med bay. I fear that one day I won't be fast enough, skilled enough, knowledgeable enough to save them. Your mother may be in command but everyone on this base is under my care, and that includes you. And speaking both as a doctor and as a friend of your mother, I can tell you one thing; I want you and everyone else here to be as healthy as possible, in body and mind."

"In your situation, I have to think about the body first," she explained. "Because the state of your body affects so much of what I can do, and if your body falls apart, then nothing I do to help your mind will ultimately matter. But while things like food and supplements will be a necessary part of your treatment, they won't be all of it. I want all of you to be healthy. Just like your mother does."

"Which is why it's time to get to dealing with the root of the problem," she said, moving to a nearby cabinet and retrieving a device that looked like some sort of strange headband made of flexible metal with several bits of delicate instrumentation attached from a protective case within. "This is a specialized scanner that measures brain activity and neurotransmitter levels in great detail. With this, I'll be able to see exactly what's going on in your head, and using that, will be able to come up with a complete treatment plan for you that includes you body and mind. And find a way to prevent your episodes of depersonalization that doesn't involve harming yourself or risking your life."

Leia didn't move from Ben's side during the doctor's entire explanation, torn between worry and fear at the deep self-loathing and despair that dominated Ben's mind and trying to pay attention to what the doctor was saying, lest she miss some important detail. -Always love you. Always. I'm here for you, Ben. My Ben. My boy. Don't give up.- The thoughts and feelings were offered gently to Ben through the Force, but their strength was undeniable. -Not alone, Ben. Never again. Love you so much.- She wasn't about to let him give up, not now, when they were so close to a solution. Not if there was anything at all she could do to help.

He had come so close to losing everyone he loved. To be taken out of the fight left him adrift; First Order or Resistance, he was a fighter, a protector, someone who could grit his teeth and follow orders if it meant they'd all make it out alive. All his life he had been desperate for friends and now he had them, only to have to leave them to their own devices. It didn't make sense. He would have hurt less if he had never had them at all. He wished he hadn't given his father his lightsaber. He used to turn it over in his hands as a reminder he wasn't all destruction, he could create, too, he could make things, he was multi-faceted and real like any person was. Now he wasn't so sure about that last part.

"Jedi aren't supposed to be afraid," he deadpanned, a note of genuine self-loathing in his voice. "Clearly, you've never met my uncle." Jedi and Sith alike were supposed to push that emotion down, work past it, be better than their base instincts. Just one more way he was failing at all this, it seemed. Force help him, he was so tired, so weary of the past and wary of the future. He didn't want to kill himself, but he wouldn't mind if his heart gave out on the spot, either. Mostly he wanted to cry and sleep and not wake up.

How was he supposed to resist the temptation to give up when he wasn't sure there were any other options? He looked at the scanner with tired eyes. He was trying so hard to keep something in him from giving out, but the future seemed so large, an ocean in which Ben was just a speck. He looked at his mother, exhausted. How could she love him when there wasn't anything there to love? She'd see that soon enough, see him fade out as if being swallowed by static, and then what? What would she do, now that she knew what was going on in his head and had to deal with seeing it in person? That was so much to ask her to deal with. Sorry. Sorry for everything, sorry for being broken, sorry I can't fix myself. Useless. If life was an ocean, Ben was leaden weight wrapped around Leia's neck as she tried to keep her head above water.

"How do I put the scanner on?" he asked, his voice giving away he already thought it was a fruitless endeavor. "I've had some strange devices implemented in medical treatments over the years, but I've never had a brain scan or anything."

That was likely how the First Order doctors had missed it. Too busy tending to strained muscles or blaster burns, they'd never paused to think about other things.

"I have, actually," Doctor Kalonia said with regards to having met Ben's uncle Luke. "A good man, but he and I disagree on a number of points, that being one of them." She wasn't Force-Sensitive herself, but having dealt with Leia, Luke, Rey, and now Ben, she was firmly convinced that while the Force itself might be all powerful and all knowing, the people whom it touched were just as flawed as any other individual in the galaxy. To try to pretend otherwise, she felt, only led to fooling oneself.

Leia loved Ben because the possibility of not loving him never entered her mind. It felt like an essential, almost physical property of him, like mass or height or his presence in the Force. She loved him because she knew his first smile, his first tears, his first breath. Sensed him and knew him before anyone else in the galaxy, even Luke. She was his mother. He never had to ask. -Never useless. I'm here. I love you. I'll catch you if you fall.- An old promise, not uttered since he was a child, but always true, even if she'd failed spectacularly at it before. Never again, though. She'd always be there if Ben needed a safe place to land.

"I'll put it on you," Doctor Kalonia said. She was sure there was some sort of silent conversation going on between mother and son, but she wasn't privy to it, and thus focused on her task. "I need to make sure the sensors are properly aligned. Look at me for a moment, please." Once Ben did, she slipped the sensor array over his head, adjusting it so it fit snugly without being too tight. The bits of sensory instrumentation were positioned on his temples and forehead with another being tucked carefully under his hair to contact the back of his head.

Checking the positioning one final time, she turned back to the console workstation next to the bed, entering a new sequence to activate the brain scanner. The scanner gave a faint, almost inaudible hum as it was activated, but then did its work silently, gathering data that fed back into the workstation, putting together two different holograms that projected out of it and displayed next to each other. One was a 3-dimensional representation of Ben's brain, picked out in shifting colors. The other was two dimensional, a simple bar graph with the names of various chemicals and neurotransmitters listed on the X-axis and amounts on the Y-axis.

Doctor Kalonia studied the two images as the colors shifted and the graph gradually filled up. By the time the scanner had finished its cycle and shut down, several of the amounts on the graph had been indicated in red, the numbers blinking to draw her attention. A few of the warning signs she could see she knew were the result of his starvation, but the others... Yes, that would do it alright. She compared it to the 3-D scan for a moment before turning back to Ben.

"I think I've found the root of your problem, Ben," she said as she came over to gently remove the scanner from him. "And better yet, I know how to fix it."

Ben blinked. The Jedi Code had been shoved down his throat as sacrosanct for as long as he'd been at Luke's. To have people know it and just flat out disagree with it was always shocking to him, and confusing. If his mother and most of her friends here, it seemed, disagreed with the dogma, then why had he been sent to go learn it? It seemed counterintuitive at best, given that straining to follow the rules about fear had made him reluctant to ever reach out for help when his episodes of derealization were getting worse or when the Dark Side got a stronger hold on him. If he hadn't been told he wasn't allowed to feel fear, if he'd been able to say something, they wouldn't be here now in a medbay looking at scans of Ben's malnourished and dying body.

He wondered if there would be enough of him left mentally for her to catch, but directed his attention to the Doctor, looking ahead as she requested, then watching her every moment with mounting anxiety. He wanted to be hopeful, wanted to believe she would hand him a way to never slip out of his own mind and watch the world from afar again. Ben also knew that there were limits to what medicine could do even under ideal circumstances. As one First Order doctor had told Ben once, medicine was not magic. Now he was torn between his inner optimist and years of bitter experiences with false hope, although back then, he hadn't known there was a word for what was going on with him.

"You did? And you do?" Wait, what? Years of doing everything short of dying in order to stay sane, and this could have been fixed with a brain scan and a competent doctor? For a moment a pang went through him. What would it have been like had this appointment happened when he was a child - no, focus. The present was a mess, but apparently there was a solution. "What's wrong with me? Are you sure it can be mended? I'm not doubting your skill, it's just... I've been like this since I was four, maybe even before that."

What was life like, fully in control of one's self and feeling the world to be real constantly? He had a glimpse of that when he was working himself hard and hungry, but then his mind was always clouded over with the disorientation of needing food and wrestling with himself over it.

There were many reasons Leia could have offered in answer to Ben's unspoken question. Most of them centered around her own key mistake. Like many terrible ideas, sending Ben to Luke had made perfect sense to her at the time. But hindsight, as always, made things much clearer, and she now cursed her younger self.

She'd been so afraid and so hopeful at the same time. She'd wanted to protect Ben from the dark part of their family legacy at all costs. Surely, she'd thought, Luke would be able to do that better than she ever could. She knew she'd inherited their father's temper, and she feared that she'd inherited his potential for Darkness; the specter of Vader had haunted both her nightmares and her waking life. Leia knew the power that hate and anger could bring; it had sustained her after Alderaan's destruction, given her the strength to strangle the life out of Jabba the Hutt, and served her in lesser capacities on numerous other occasions.

And when the first stirrings of what must have been Snoke's power had made themselves known, she'd seen only Vader's black gloved hand reaching out of her past and making a grab for her son. And fear had become anger. Those hands that had tortured her to within a hairsbreadth of breaking, that had forced her to watch as everything she'd ever loved up to that point was destroyed, that were guilty of other crimes too numerous to mention would never touch her son. The Dark would never have him; not her little boy.

She'd used the reasoning of Ben needing to learn to control his burgeoning Force abilities as an excuse, but Han had seen right through it, right to the fear and anger at the heart of her decision. And they'd fought over it in a way that wasn't a playful verbal fencing match that both not so secretly enjoyed, but barbs hurled with the intent to strike home and hurt. She should have listened to him then.

But she hadn't, and Ben had paid the price. Instead of protecting him she'd only made things worse. Carrying on another family tradition, as she'd found out much later; acting rashly out of fear for a loved one's safety, and in the process helping to cause the very thing they sought to prevent.

She knew she wasn't wholly at fault; the whole thing could be called a comedy of errors, if it wasn't so tragic. So many mistakes and misinterpretations on all sides had led them to this point. Luke believed in the Jedi way with the same deep, earnest sincerity that he did most everything else. That sincerity was one of the few aspects of the Tatooine farm boy that had survived to the present day; when Luke told you something you believed it, because he believed it and you didn't need the Force to know he did. Luke would have never thought for a moment that his lessons about Jedi emotional control would prevent someone from reaching out if they genuinely needed help.

Leia certainly hadn't. They'd both been concerned about the nebulous something that was wrong with Ben, but had totally misinterpreted the cause. Leia had seen a troubled son, Luke a struggling student and a nephew wrestling with his own Dark side. 'We just need to be patient,' Luke had told her in one of his last communications to her before Ben's fall. 'He'll get there. He's stronger than even he knows, and as stubborn as you are. He just needs time to figure out his own path.'

And then Snoke had come into the picture in earnest and warped Luke's lessons about control that- however ineffective- had been meant to help into something dark and twisted meant to dominate and destroy. And for the second time in her life, Leia'd lost everything she loved in one day.

There was learning in that loss though. Some new lessons, and some she'd relearned, but as she began to put her family back together again, she took them all to heart. People really could change for the better. Light could overcome darkness, despite all odds. And there was always hope, if one knew where to look for it.

Changing the past was beyond any of them. But they could learn from it and make the future better.

And Doctor Kalonia was providing just the ray of hope Ben had needed it seemed. She nodded at his question. "Yes," she said. "And I'm beginning to have a very low opinion of First Order medical personnel given that none of them thought to do this sooner if there was no obvious physical cause preventing you from eating." Then again, who was to say they would have shared the results with Ben even if they had. The doctor wouldn't have put it past Snoke to want Ben as vulnerable as possible to his manipulations, even if they were more competent than she was giving them credit for.

"And what's wrong is an imbalance of several neurotransmitters that affect areas of the brain related to personal identity, your kinesthetic sense- that is, your sense of body awareness-, and the centers for voluntary muscle control. In a neurotypical person's brain, these neurotransmitters are produced at a steady rate that generally only some sort of severe trauma can unbalance. But in yours, they're typically produced at a much lower level than normal. When your brain detects that levels are too low, it vastly overproduces them to try to compensate, which triggers an episode; the greater the overproduction, the longer the episode. Adrenaline slows down the rate at which the levels drop; that's why extreme activities tend to increase the time between episodes. And starvation affects the brain in ways that- aside from causing various other issues- have a similar suppressing effect."

"To curb it on a permanent basis, though, we need to even out the levels of those neurotransmitters so that your brain doesn't panic and over-produce them," she said. "Which we can do with medication. It won't be as simple as flipping a switch; as you said, medicine isn't magic. There'll be a lot of fine tuning dosages and potentially trying several different medications to get the best effect possible, if need be. Under optimal circumstances, I'd also refer you to a psychotherapist, but that's not possible currently; I will be giving both you and your mother some information on basic techniques that can be used to help things along, though. It will take some time and effort, but yes, it can be mended, and then maintained."

"I broke enough medical droids most of my doctors hated me," he admitted, though he had the decency to look and feel sheepish about it in retrospect. "Eventually people learned to get me in and out as quickly as possible so they didn't have to deal with me. I was - I was afraid they were going to try to stop me and take away the only thing that was working, so I made myself too much of a nuisance for them to look closely at me." He had no idea what they would have done with fuller medical scans. He never gave them a chance. Ben had grown wary of them, of the critical gazes medical staff gave his body, the obvious disapproval. The way they murmured to each other had felt like vultures circling. He had been afraid of so many things, of them locking him up, turning to Snoke and informing him how bad it was getting, giving him some new false hope treatment that didn't work and never did. It had been easier to shun all the medical staff entirely than deal with the things that went off in his head when he tried to talk to them.

He thought about life on Tsussain, those months where the episodes had vanished entirely. He'd been in the freezing cold, working day in and day out, always active. Ben slept better after exhausting himself and woke up still himself, every time. For a few months he'd felt like a real person. And he'd been able to eat full meals at the time, for a while. There was so much hope back then, but maybe it wasn't all gone. If there was actual science behind it, then maybe he didn't have to stay out in the cold until his whole body shook or avoid food until his stomach was concave. All the neuroscience is beyond him aside from the basics, yet the very fact that there's some science at all that explains what's wrong is a miracle. A long time ago, Ben had given up hope for even that much. When that happened, it was like pouring water on an ember, the last bit of resistance he had to his growing addiction to starvation being stomped out.

The idea of living with food again is strange. He was unsure how he would get through all the anxiety it caused him these days; Ben handled food the way other people handle live ammunition. As impossible as it sounded, though, when he looked at his mother, he thought he could do it. She wasn't going to be planets away anymore. If he needed to talk to her, that was actually possible for once. He wasn't really looking forward to telling Han, but once he did, then he had two people, at least, to turn to when he wanted to do something stupid out of sheer avoidance of the next episode.

"Why would I need to see a psychotherapist? Didn't we just establish this is about brain chemistry and not... depression or the usual things I presume people go to people like that for?" His experiences with therapy were basically knowing that such professionals existed and, on occasion, having to tell officers under him to go see someone for their PTSD or depression or whatever other mental catastrophe was making them a nuisance while they themselves were still too valuable to be reassigned. As far as he was aware, someone had to be actively suicidal or publicly breaking down to merit that kind of thing. He wasn't really at that point, was he? He made it through the day alright, other than when mealtimes were concerned.

Dr. Kalonia quirked an eyebrow at his explanation. "Well, I would appreciate it if you avoided breaking any of my medical droids, if possible," she said. "They're more difficult to replace than most droids, and we don't have quite the reserves that the First Order does." She wasn't sure how much his explanation revised her opinion of the First Order's medical staff, though; difficult patient or not, they should never have allowed him to reach this point.

"The primary problem is a chemical imbalance, yes," she explained. "We can take care of that with medication, and balance out some of the related depression and anxiety. But addictions of all sorts are as much psychological as they are chemical; more so when no actual chemical substances are involved. The addictive behavior patterns become ingrained until it's difficult to function without them, even if what originally triggered them is no longer a factor. There's always some new stressor that an addicted brain will use as an excuse as to why the behavior must continue. Having a non-judgmental professional to talk to and get advice from can be helpful in a lot of cases; having someone who can check your logic and recognize warning signs can help prevent backsliding."

"And also, while we can take care of the current problem, the mental and emotional toll it's taken on you over the years won't just go away. Nor will the new mental and emotional stresses and challenges that will come with recovery. You will need to work those out somehow, as they only exacerbate the other issues, and a professional pyschotherapist would be best equipped to do that."

"Without the option of professional psychological consultation, though, we're going to have to rely on a strong support system to help you through this," she said, turning her gaze to Leia, who nodded. She would do whatever was necessary to support her son through this, and was already mentally making plans for things she thought might be potentially helpful.

The doctor gave Leia a nod in return before turning her gaze back to Ben. "You're already off to an excellent start with your mother," she said. "But honestly, the broader a safety net you have, the better. I don't doubt that your mother will be telling your father and getting him involved, but I really recommend involving your friends or friends of your family who you feel you can trust. The more people involved in keeping you on track, the better your chances."

Edited 2017-03-07 07:34 (UTC)

"So long as none of them attempt to give me a shot while I'm not looking." Oh, the howl Ben had let out that time - and the ensuing slaughter of droids, mostly unintentional. Needles were barely doable when he saw it coming, they were an unacceptable surprise. He liked Dr. Kalonia, but he had instincts about perceived attacks.

His first instinct was to argue he wasn't stupid and he would be fine once he was on medication. He didn't enjoy starving. Except he did enjoy, in a way, the flood of the Force through him, the power he could wield. If things went bad in this war, he might be tempted to skip a meal or two, whatever it took to get the edge on their enemies. Was that foolish? He couldn't tell. Would it work? Possibly, but the very fact he was having this debate in his head meant that her point was proven. "I don't really have many people who would even want to be part of my safety net," he admitted, the weight of all his errors as Kylo Ren gathering over him like leaden clouds. "I spent a lot of time and energy isolating myself. My father, my uncle Chewie, Rey, Poe and my mother are all I can hope for."

Not Luke - he wasn't going to inflict himself upon the man whose life he'd ruined so thoroughly. Luke had suffered more than enough. He didn't need to try to deal with Ben again.

The corners of Dr. Kalonia's lips quirked upward in amusement. Yes, she could easily picture such a scenario, though it was likely more comical in her mind than it would be in reality. "I'll be sure to make a note of it in their programming," she said. They were generally pretty good about that sort of thing, but if it kept them intact, she'd make it a standing order.

Leia gave Ben's shoulder a gentle squeeze and sent a gentle pulse of affection and support through the Force as she felt that weight settle on him. That would be one of the many things they'd have to work through together. But both Leia and Doctor Kalonia noted that there was someone conspicuously absent from Ben's list.

"Given that you just named several of the most stubborn and persistently caring people in the galaxy, that sounds like a good list," Dr. Kalonia said. "But there's one more person I think you should add to it. You might not like the idea, but I recommend involving your uncle and former Jedi Master as well."

"The impact of the Force as it relates to medicine is unfortunately an under-studied subject," she said. "But given that your mother has been my patient for some time now, I made it a point to read up on what I could. According to surviving records, the Jedi order banned fasting meditation a century or so before their fall, after one too many cases similar to yours happened. But in those cases, the involvement of their current or former Jedi Master was listed as a turning point in the recovery of those who survived."

"Even though you have more of a support system here than just your former Master, I still think it's important that he be involved," she said. "I understand medicine, but the Force is outside my reach; he would need to be on the same page as the rest of us if I ever needed to consult him on matters relating to it. Though he'll be answerable to me if he does or tries to get you to do anything I feel is against your best interests." Jedi Master or not, she outranked everyone on base when it came to medical matters, and wasn't afraid to use that authority.

"And he'll be answerable to me too," Leia said. "Which will probably be more convincing in the long run." Leia could be incredibly intimidating when she wanted to be, and not even her brother was immune. Especially not her brother.

Ben tensed up at the mention of his uncle. Instantly, old defenses honed in the First Order acted for him, throwing mental walls up between him and the world, pushing his mother's connection and presence away - she was too pitying, she did not understand the magnitude of the wrong Ben had done, what he'd wrought upon Luke's already weary heart - and before he knew it he was standing, buttoning his jacket up as if the layer of clothing could keep out the concern.

He wasn't an expert on the Force or medicine and certainly not the intersectionality thereof, but he would be damned if he was going to let that be an excuse to haul his tired and dead-eyed uncle into this mess. "I am the last person in the galaxy that Master Luke wants to see," Ben said in well-practiced, cold, I-am-of-the-Force-I-need-nothing-else tones (though his mother might be able to sense the actual underlying sentiment was regret and fear of rejection mixed together). "The sentiment is more or less returned. I would much rather go the scientific route than that of the Force. I doubt he would have much information for you in any case; the number of Jedi and Sith alike who fell prey to this is small and very poorly recorded, he can't tell you anything you don't already know."

The familiar sensation of having the walls close in was almost unbearable. He looked at his mother flatly. "Don't bring him into this, Mother. You know it's never resolved anything before." The number of fights Luke and Ben had managed to have over the years was breathtaking given Luke's calm nature. Ben brought out the worst in him and that was putting it kindly.

Leia felt Ben's walls go up, muffling their connection, though they couldn't truly cut it off. As a result, she could indeed sense the emotions that lay under his refusal. Dr. Kalonia might guess, but Leia knew.

She returned Ben's flat gaze steadily, and though her tone was compassionate when she spoke, it now also carried maternal authority. "Ben, I don't have to 'bring' him anywhere," she said. "You said yourself last night; Rey's probably told him what she knows by now. And once he hears about it, he'll want to help, both because you're his nephew and just because he's Luke; stubborn, compassionate, sincere, guilt-ridden, and chronically heroic as he is. He'll be in this sooner or later regardless of what I or Dr. Kalonia say or do."

"The difference is in how it happens," she said. "Whether he feels like a part of our family who we involved by choice because we care about him, or whether he feels like just a consultant who was only brought in for his Jedi knowledge. And I think you know how both of those things feel, and which is preferable."

"I know you're afraid," she said. "And I know you regret what happened. But so is he and so does he. Trust me; he's tried to shield it from me, but we're twins. We've been connected since before we were born and not even a Jedi Master can block that out completely; I've known somewhat how he felt ever since he got back, no matter where he is on base, and the reverse is true too." Which was another reason she knew he'd be involved one way or another; even if Rey's word wasn't enough to convince him, Leia's worry would alert him to the fact that something was badly wrong, and he was smart enough to put it together from there.

"It's just not possible to avoid him forever, no matter how reluctant you both are to take the first step. Especially since you're friends with Rey." Friends was perhaps too mild a term, but neither one of them was in any state to consider that at present. "And having healing be the reason for coming together might just help you both heal."

Edited 2017-03-08 08:24 (UTC)

"Luke never came to my aid before, I doubt he'll break that tradition now," Ben quips, but the humor is laced with venom, with hurt borne of never being good enough for his uncle to care for, things never being bad enough for Luke to say anything but 'try to meditate again', never a nephew but a Jedi-in-training, not family but a living weapon. A part of Ben wanted to hit Luke. Another part of him knew he already had, more effectively than anyone else ever could, by killing the other padawans. And he didn't even have the decency to kill me in return, some sick part of Ben's childish subconscious whispered, pained and forsaken in equal measures.

The only way to move forward with life was to make a new one, a new persona, a new path. That meant not leaning on Luke again. Luke's only fear seemed to be Ben entering his life again and even if Ben couldn't fix everything that had happened, he could stay out of his way, at the very least. Ben had set ablaze everything and everyone Luke had cared about and worked so hard for and then he'd tried to goad him into killing his only nephew. Leia wasn't there that night, hadn't seen everything hit peak levels of desperation and hurt. It was going to haunt Ben and Luke until they died. There was a grief too profound to put into words lingering in every glance shared between them. Ben hated himself, mildly despised Luke, but above all he hated that so long as he was alive, he could still do more damage. How much further could he push Luke before the poor man snapped? How much could one person be asked to bear? Eventually, someone was going to realize having Ben around wasn't worth inflicting this on Luke.

If people had to choose between the Jedi Master and Jedi slayer, Ben was under no delusions that he'd win. The longer he went without coming into contact with Luke, the longer he would be able to stay here.

"There are some things people don't heal from," he said quietly, pinching the bridge of his nose. He wanted to break everything in the room just to see something shatter, to feel something give out underneath him. "I can't stop you from involving him, but let's not pretend things are going to be fine if we just try hard enough. That's not how this family works."

If trying hard was all it took, he wouldn't have ended up in Snoke's clutches to begin with. He wondered if the creator of fasting meditation ever had to deal with this, if people had ever turned to her and expected her to sit down and talk it out. If so, suddenly her inability to stop and eventual death made a lot more sense. This wasn't going to help. The thought of Luke made him regret sharing any of this at all and want to double down until he was so strong in the Light that his uncle would believe him when he spoke for once. This was the opposite of a reason to stop. 'Why are you doing this', Rey had asked. And then, as now, Ben's only reply is simple: why not?

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.

Leia hadn’t been there the way Luke had, seeing Ben slip out of himself again and again, endlessly, desperate when he was there to try to grasp at whatever sanity and stability he could. He had been so scared, so small in a vast, sprawling galaxy that would do as it pleased with him. All he wanted, all he had needed, was family. Family was not the Jedi way. Or maybe Ben just wasn’t worth the effort. No one would ever truly know.

When Ben had turned on Luke, he had thought he would be struck down for it. He taunted Luke, then begged him, deliberately letting his defenses down. All those years of pain and suffering could have finally been over. All those nights of being afraid to fall asleep and lose control could have been over. He had been so tired, so worn down, that he had resorted to pleading with his uncle. One quick motion with the lightsaber and it was all over. Unavoidable self defense, Ben had told Luke softly. Nobody will blame you. For a moment, Luke had looked at him with deep enough pity Ben’s heart had soared, thinking it was about to happen-

But no. Of course not. That was never how Ben’s story went. Belatedly, he realized that in his anger he’d been broadcasting the entire memory to his mother. Wincing, he drew away to try to regroup and put up the old, disused walls he’d grown so comfortable with as Kylo Ren. The effort was exhausting. Most things were, these days.

“I expected him to fix me, too. Just not in the way the rest of you were thinking.” One slip during Jedi training and he would never have to deal with this ever again. One accident well placed and timed, that was all he had needed. Groaning, he scrubbed his tired eyes. “Everyone assumes I wanted to make it out of the fire...” Like he’d set the Jedi Temple ablaze with himself inside out of some tactical error? He was much smarter than that. There wasn’t supposed to be an exit strategy beyond that. If Ben hadn’t gotten afraid at the last second of what burning alive would feel like, this would all have been over years ago. Too weak to die, too weak to live, he thought bitterly, loudly enough for his mother to hear.

“I don’t want to shout with him, or throw things with the Force, or anything of that ilk. Contrary to what the world thinks, I don’t relish theatrics and arguments that can be heard two systems away. But everyone’s so used to their version of me they’ll expect it. Luke will expect it. And I can’t do it anymore – I can’t pretend to be that person because I don’t even know if I am a person at all. I cannot continue on these two-men Jedi-Sith drama plays that are so traditional. I don’t have the energy in me to fight him and he doesn’t have it in him to see me as anything but Vader reincarnated. So he’ll be addressing a person that never existed and I’ll be falling away and what, exactly, will we have accomplished? I can tell you right now I’ll be too anxious to eat before I meet him, and after, and during every visit with him. The thought makes me want to vomit now and I don’t even have anything to do so with!”

The old fear is back, the oh-Force-no feeling of standing on a cliff’s edge, of tumbling over, of having taken an irreversible plunge with his mother. Now she knows he actively wanted to die. Did Luke ever tell her? Does she think he’s weak? She wouldn’t be wrong, but the thought hurt anyway. He bit his lip to shut himself up, hard enough to hard blood. Pain. Hunger. The only non-judgmental, steady things to turn to in a galaxy constantly thrown into turbulence. He wrapped his arms around his torso, counting the rib ridges. Starvation - the only guaranteed loyalty left in his life.

Leia didn't respond until it seemed Ben was finished speaking. She would have been lying if she said that at least part of it wasn't because she needed to come to grips with the memory Ben had unintentionally sent her and the knowledge that he'd actively wanted to die. Begged Luke to kill him, even. So that was what Luke had meant...

But the idea that she could think him weak? That was what ultimately made her move. She stepped forward, closing the distance between them and wrapping her arms around her son. "Oh, Ben...", she aid. "None of us ever thought you were weak. None of us think so now. It took more strength than most people would have had to hand your lightsaber over to your father. To come out from behind the mask that Kylo Ren was and come back to us. You're a very strong person, and I'm so glad you are because it gave is all a second chance."

She was quiet for a brief moment after that before speaking again, though she didn't let go of him. "None of us knew you were in the temple when it burned," she said quietly. "The heat damaged the security recordings, and by the time we got there... by the time we got there, it was all over."

Nothing but charred rubble and bodies. Ben had been gone. Luke had been gone. They'd found R2, inactive, next to a small holorecorder containing a cryptic message from Luke, but beyond that... there was nothing. She'd lost everything. Her world reduced to ashes. Again.

But she remembered that night too, even if she hadn't been there. The events had jolted her out of a dead sleep, what Luke probably would have called a 'disturbance in the Force'. Given that Luke had once mentioned to her that Obi-Wan had described sensing the death of Alderaan the same way, she was tempted to believe that the greatest gift of the Jedi wasn't the Force, but understatement; 'disturbance' did not in any way cover anything she had felt that he might have called that.

But Ben didn't need her own memory of that dark night. Not right now. But perhaps another memory would help. "I never thought you enjoyed those kinds of confrontations," she said gently. "Just that that's the kind of thing that usually happens when two people who care about each other at the same time they're carrying a lot of anger and hurt for one another meet."

"But I don't think you know what's in Luke quite as well as you think you do," she said. "I'd like to show you something, if you'll let me." She nudged gently against his mental walls, a knock at the door. Accompanying it was an equally gentle wash of warmth and love. You don't need those. Not with me, Ben.

Ben had been more than ready to die even when he was with Snoke. Hope was always in limited supply. He was so good at his training under Snoke because he didn’t shy away or retreat from daunting tasks. Though he didn’t actively seek death out, he did not avoid it, either, letting the chips fall where they may. He might succeed, or fail, but when the worst that could happen was just a long, permanent sleep, then there was little to fear in the galaxy. There was nothing that could truly scare him in those days.

Having people to live for was much harder. He didn’t know how to be the son Leia wanted. He didn’t know how to be the friend-maybe-more Rey was seeking. She would do better to look to Poe or Finn. His mother would be better off if he kept a distance so he couldn’t disappoint her, but oh, how much he had missed her. He wanted nothing more than to be held by her like he used to be, back when he was a child and didn’t understand that people saw Anakin when they looked at him. His arms wrapped around her in return when she embraced him on instinct. She was small in the sense of being short. He was small in all the wrong ways, the wrong ways that felt empowering, like armor. People could leave, but he could drive the Force into him, into his body and mind, no matter who walked away or who stayed. He could be a person. For a long time, that was all he’d had.

He’d had to live for himself without ever truly believing there was a self to live for. Now that he didn’t have to, he wasn’t sure what other options there were. Luke was not an option the way that happy endings were not an option; Ben fully expected his life to end in some overwrought tragedy that was typical of the Skywalker family, to either die on the battlefield in glory or be struck down and succeeded by Rey.

“Uncle Luke knew,” he muttered softly, closing his eyes. He was there, couldn’t he have sensed it in the Force, Ben’s struggle to stay in the heat while fearing the burning heat? Ben had screamed when part of the ceiling came down, terrified of what he had wrought, fighting with Snoke in his head as the man told him to save himself and Ben’s Uncle was silent in the Force, unreachable, leaving him alone... “Or I thought he did. If he ever actually told me what was going on with him, that might have helped salvage things. But he didn’t. He still doesn’t. He never will. That much, I know.”

He wanted to argue about Luke ‘caring’ about him, but his curiosity at what memory she might think could salvage the incredible mess he’d made of their lives was overpowering. Begrudgingly, he let down his mental shields, enough to let her in, not so much he couldn’t throw her out if more of his unpleasant memories popped up and he needed to keep her from being traumatized.

“Alright. Show me.”

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A trip to the doctor's

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