Sorry for the long-ish break between updates!

She awoke to fingers running through her hair.

"Are you still braiding?" She asked, her voice groggy and eyelids heavy.

"Mhm."

She fidgeted and sank deeper into her bed.

"You're taking a long time…"

"I'm trying something new, it takes time," he answered.

Her eyes fell shut for a moment, but she forced them back open, determined to not fall back asleep, not yet. "You still haven't showed me how…I'll figure it out on my own if you don't…" she yawned.

"I will…one day," his voice was soft and his tone almost sad (why sad, had she said something? She only wished to learn how…) His hands left her hair and came to rest gingerly in his lap. "Can you turn over? I need the other side now."

She had felt him appear in the bond earlier, the sky still dark and the base peacefully quiet. He had been standing on the other side of the room, his back towards her. She had asked him what he was doing. He had told her he had just come in to retire for the evening, she had told him it wasn't quite time to wake up where she was. He had told her to go back to sleep, that he'd do her hair when she woke back up.

She told him that he should go to sleep and not worry about her hair.

He told her that he had all the time in the galaxy, especially for her.

(He of course meant for her hair. They were enemies on either side of a war, there was no time for the individual person. Her hair though, that was all he meant…all he meant.)

She told him he might as well do it now in that case.

So he did.

She hummed and rolled over to her other side, now facing him. He was knelt on the floor (her bed wasn't very high off the floor to begin with, she had slept on the ground for so long it felt strange to be very far away from it while she slept) with his torso leaned over the frame towards her. She stole a glance up at him, his features serious as he worked.

"Where am I?" She whispered.

His hands stopped, eyes trailing down to meet hers before a rare, curt laugh escaped his lips. "Is that a trick question?"

She paused, confused, but then cracked a smile as she realized. "No, no not that…where am I where you are?"

His eyebrows were still scrunched together.

She sighed, turning her head to look at him easier. "In my world, you're knelt on the floor next to my bed…where am I?"

She felt him stiffen through the force before she felt her hair fall from his fingers and watched him look away from her.

"A bed…"

It was her turn to look confused. "A bed? As in mine…can you see my bed?"

He shook his head. "It isn't important."

Why wouldn't he tell her? Was he somewhere secret or—

Oh…

Images of a metal framed bed and pristine white walls flooded her mind, but the bed wasn't empty. She was on it (in it, would be a more accurate description, really), hair half braided and legs curled around grey blankets.

Her eyes flew open and she was back in her own room and her own bed with her own blanket.

"I shouldn't have showed you, I…" his voice was quiet, almost embarrassed as he ran a hand through his hair, gaze still on the ground.

"Am I…in your bed…often?" She doesn't know what made her ask it. Did she really want to know? She could already feel the heat creeping up beneath her cheeks. What if she was and he'd never told her or did the Force connect them while they were asleep and neither of them aware?

"I…" Don't know, his mind finished for him.

The silence grew tense around them, each passing moment passing by slower and slower.

His hands once again began combing through her hair, shaking out what little he had done on her next braid and starting over.

"So you can't go to bed until I get up?" She asked, questions swarming in her mind of this new realization. The Force had never projected him on any of her bedroom furniture, or maybe she had just never caught him laying down…

He shrugged.

"The Force eventually solves that…"

She was quiet at that and settled on instead watching the way the muscles in his arms moved under his shirt as he bent over hair, gentle and fluid.

It was easy to pretend in these moments. Easy to pretend that there was no war going on outside the walls of her room, that there were no battles to be fought, no oppressive leaders to overthrow…easy to pretend that the man beside of her wasn't who knew how many star systems away…easy to pretend that he was on her side, the light side…

She rather liked pretending.

Why did the force connect them? What reason did it serve, what purpose was there really? Could it sense the loneliness that she pushed down and tried to cover up or was it merely by chance? Had the Force just chosen them at random? Why her— why him?

"I wonder the same things," Ben whispered, taking another lock of her hair from behind her ear.

She pursed her lips, frustrated that she had forgotten to shield her thoughts from him. Again.

"You do?"

A pause.

"I do."

And in that moment, for just the briefest of flashes, her walls pulsed deep red and there were tears clouding her vision and Ben didn't stand before her but in his place was Kylo Ren with Ben's eyes, hand outstretched to her across the distance between.

Please.

And then she was back where she had always been, in her bed, beneath her thin blankets with tender hands weaving her hair, connecting them, weaving them together.

Please, the voice echoed in the back of her mind. She wasn't sure whether it was a memory or his thoughts through the bond, she didn't know how to distinguish between the two sometimes—

"I could teach you the difference," he spoke up. "I could, I will, if only you'd…" but he trailed off with nothing but a shaky breath, his voice quieting as he tied off the second braid with something from his world, wherever he was.

"If I'd…?" She asked, propping herself up on her elbows.

"Join me and let me teach you. I'll find you, trace your coordinates and I'll show you—"

"The dark side of the Force? The immeasurable power of it?" I don't want it, her mind added after, her tone sharp.

His eyes narrowed. What do you want?

What did she want? Wasn't that the question of her whole entire life. She wanted her parents to have come back, wanted them to have never left, she wanted answers and peace and someone who…someone who…

She had never blocked out her thoughts from him harder.

She closed her eyes tight, shaking her head, ignoring the hand that was fading away from her shoulder, ignoring the whispered apology that slipped out from his lips…it was something too personal to face. Something she didn't want to face.

When she opened her eyes he was gone, and she was alone again with the light of the morning pouring in through her small window. She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. He'd only braided the top half, leaving the bottom half to rest just below her shoulders.

She hadn't worn her hair down since…that day.

Maybe he knew that too.

Was he the one who had filled her thoughts with memories of that place? Or had it been her own thoughts, tempted by the only person who offered any connection…what would it take for him to turn? The light was there, bursting through the cracks of the wall that was his clinging to the dark side he felt he needed to shield himself with. She could feel it in his mind, in his thoughts, in his touch…why couldn't he see that for himself?

She wanted someone who wasn't going to leave her, needed someone who actually cared about her and not just about her powers through the force.

Kylo Ren would never understand that.

But Ben could.

To be continued...