let me know if you need anything
“Hey, Solo!”
Ben looked up. The sudden motion triggered a dull ache in his right eye—he winced.
“Uh—sorry.” Amalia came to a halt in front of him in the grass. The tall, bulky Togruta girl always looked like she was going to barrel right into you, but always managed to stop a few inches short. Back when they’d hated each other, Ben had thought this was some kind of intimidation tactic. But now that they were something like friends, he realized that she was just…well…awkward as heck.
Amalia peered at him and at his covered eye, then tapped her own cheek. “You look like one of the deep space pirates.”
“Wow,” said Ben, deadpan. “I’ve only heard that about five hundred times since I came back to Jedi school.”
“What’d they do to you, huh?”
Ben juggled the air with his hands, trying to figure out how much detail to go into. “Uh…they cut my eyeball open, and sewed a synthetic band into it to hold it together and make it stop falling apart. Basically.”
“Whoa. Sounds gnarly, dude.” Amalia paused. “…Can I see?”
Ben laughed. “Bro. Do you want to see?”
“I mean? Kinda? Will you like, die if it’s exposed to air?”
“Listen, I’ll show you, if you want to freaking see so bad.” He lifted the patch. He had to manually pry his eyelids apart—they were still swollen. He closed his left eye, just to see how well he could see her—everything was sort of a bright, slanted blur.
Amalia made a face. “Ew. It’s all red. Is that blood? Nasty. I see a coagulated mass of—something. There is straight-up slime in your eye, dude.”
Ben put the patch back on. “Yeah—I’ve been trying to, like—cry it out, but I can’t think of anything sad enough to make me cry. I dunno. I’ve had a hard time feeling emotion lately, in general.”
He said it, and then realized he hadn’t wanted to say it. He backtracked as quickly as he could.
“But now that you’re here, Mal, all I gotta do is look at your ugly mug,” he quipped.
Amalia rolled her eyes so hard she pretty much just rolled her whole head. “Hardee har har. Have you looked in a mirror? Geez, Solo, you can’t say shit like that to girls.”
“Oh—you’re a girl? Oh my Force, I didn’t realize. Sorry, miss.”
She wound up and punched him in the arm. Hard.
“Ow! Bruh. I’m already injured.”
“Well, you weren’t injured enough,” Amalia huffed. “Fixed it for you.”
“I’m telling Uncle Luke.”
“Yeah, go run and tell your Uncle Luke. Pissbaby.”
Ben tried to think of something clever to retort, but then his eye started hurting again, and he felt kind of sick. He hissed and lowered himself down into the grass, which seemed to initiate a truce.
Amalia leaned down. “You okay, bro?”
“Yeah—fine.”
“Are you still allowed to train and stuff?”
“I’m not supposed to do any ‘strenuous activity’ for four weeks.”
“Well, you were never getting any, anyway,” Amalia snickered. “Now you just have an excuse.”
Ben wrinkled his nose. “Ew. No, I mean…”
“Does lifting rocks with the Force count as strenuous activity? You’re not technically lifting them physically.”
“Eh. I always give myself headaches when I do that normally, anyway, so…maybe just littler rocks.”
“When are you gonna be able to see again?”
“Out of this eye?”
“Yeah, well, which eye do you think I’m kriffin’ talking about, dumbass—“
“I don’t know.”
“…Damn.” Amalia sat down next to him. “Sucks.”
“Yeah, I mean…I know it’s gonna be months. Maybe a year. And I don’t even know if it’ll ever be the same. Probably not.”
Amalia twitched her lips to one side. “Does it bother you?”
“Like, what, the pain? Or…”
“No, like…losing your vision. Like, coping with the loss.”
Ben shrugged. “…I dunno. Sure ain’t the biggest thing I’ve lost. It’s hard, I guess, knowing you’ll never be the same, but…I was already never gonna be the same, so…” He trailed off.
Amalia nodded at the horizon, picking a blade of grass apart with her fingers. “Yeah…I get how that is.”
They sat there in silence for a few moments. A low breeze came and rustled the grass.
“…Maybe I’ll gain some kind of extra Force sensitivity,” Ben said hopefully. “To compensate. Or something.”
“Yeah,” said Amalia. “Or…maybe you won’t, and you’ll just be half-blind.”
Ben threw her a tired glance. “Thanks, Mal. You’re a real pal.”
“What can I say? I try to offer a realistic outlook on life.”
“Hm.”
“But, for real though…let me know if you need anything. Okay, Solo?”
Ben raised an eyebrow. “Like what? Another punch in the arm?”
“Well, yeah, if you need that, I’m your girl. But, uh, seriously. Like if you need to talk, or…” She gestured vaguely at nothing.
“No offense, Mal? But you are not great at talking.”
“Hey. Never said I was. Just said that I would. Or if you wanna, like, just go throw rocks in the pond together, or something. Go look for weird bugs. Climb that cliffside Luke said not to climb. You know?”
Ben smirked. “Ha. Okay. Yeah. Gotcha. And then I’ll bang my head real hard, and knock out my other eye.”
“Exactly. You get me.” Amalia stood up and dusted the grass off her tunic. “Well…I’m on kitchen prep with Fannie and Meliko tonight, so…guess I gotta go. Do an extra meditation for me, will ya? Fannie drives me nuts.”
“Really? She’s so nice.”
“Yeah,” Amalia scoffed. “That’s what drives me nuts.”
Ben snorted. “Well, okay, Mal. See ya at dinner, then, I guess.”
“Will you see me though?”
“Dude, shut up!”
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Do antis just forget this is a story about a ghost falling in love?
Betelguese is ghosting between the living world and the afterlife; he's implied to be omnipresent and probably feels soul connections. It's not comparable to real life crimes at all.
"The only one I think I can deal with is Edgar Allan Poe's daughter. I think she understands me."
Who's to say he wasn't immediately aware he and Lydia were something akin to soulmates? The funny thing is, he goes about it like a hopeless romantic and it does get toxic. That's literally what makes it funny and shippable.
"Holy shit, this goth girl is the one. I feel it and I get her, she'd definitely get me too even though I never spoke to her and am assuming how she feels is the same as me" ...This opens so many opportunities for Lydia to set her boundaries and have Betelgeuse continuously pine for her, getting rejected until there's some development. You can explore the co-dependent route where they rely on each other too much (hot AF and my personal favourite). Or you can take the second movie literally and have him finally get the girl after 30 years of self reflection. It's just such a good ship.
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