Work Text:
Ren wakes up early every morning to amble into the bathroom, where he sits and rubs moisturizing ointment into every inch of human skin left on his body. Sometimes, the dead skin peels off in flakes, and he carefully picks them off and flicks them away, and rubs medicine into the area a little harder. He pretends he doesn't smell the blood, or feel it under his feet.
His routine (face, neck, arm, what he can reach of his back, sides, leg, foot) is perfected, so that he never has to look in the mirror. (Sometimes he catches a glimpse anyway, and it jolts him each time: a face gray and drained of blood, eyes bloody red, hair left hanging loosely around his shoulders and beard unkempt. He doesn't look real.) Ren slings a towel over the mirror. It makes brushing his hair difficult, so he takes to braiding it to keep it out of the way. The towel remains.
Doc and Renbob know better than to interrupt his rituals. They let him take care of himself, because they've taken care of him for so long. It's his turn, he said. Doc doesn't comment on the blood and skin that ends up in the corners of the bathroom, or the too-many hairs that Ren pulls out of the gaps in his prosthetic. Doc understands needing some control, and allows Ren to have it.
After bad nights, Ren wakes up worse. He dreams of explosions and axes and executioners' hoods and a world drenched in blood, and so many arrows. In his dreams the arrows pierce his eyes, and blades cut his neck, and when he collapses to the ground all he feels under his hands is coarse sand, sticking to him and pushing into his wounds and into his veins and pain. After bad nights, Ren wakes up gasping for air, as if he can't breathe, and he all but falls into the bathroom. When he emerges hours later, his skin is peeled and rubbed raw, and he stinks of blood.
Ren's hands shake. He knows the names of too many stars, now; sometimes he tells their stories to Doc. Doc listens as he works. Ren babbles on about obsolete constellations and universes and tries to forget the man who told the tales to him and left him for dead. His hands still shake.
Ren is careful. He tells Doc that he doesn't feel well, but he never shares details if he doesn't have to. Doc will never know the contents of his unconscious mind, or exactly the way Sith spoke to him to get Ren to believe. But Ren finds he doesn't need to.
There are new constellations coming, and Ren doesn't know whether to be grateful or afraid.