The library was cold, and I was beginning to regret not having grabbed a coat or something on my way over here. I was dressed in the same clothes that I had slept in, a black pair of running leggings and a grey tank top, my regulation exercise shoes now back on my feet. I sat down at our usual table and reached over the desk to grab the book we had been studying last, an encyclopaedia of the Jedi and Force-Training.

Ren wasn't here yet. He had told me to make my way to the library, and that he would follow me presently. It had almost seemed that he was slightly embarrassed this morning, made lightly uncomfortable by the fact that I had seen him so vulnerable. His eyes had been tired, and the shadow of a night's stubble had covered his strong jaw. I didn't suppose many people had seen him like that before.

I grabbed the hair-tie from my wrist and tied my medium length black locks in a low ponytail behind my head, getting them out of the way, and opened the book. I scanned the pages with my eyes, but the words swam around the parchment like fish, I couldn't concentrate. My head was still aching from last night, and if I moved my eyes too quickly, my brain took a while to catch up. I felt terrible. It wasn't only the after-effects of the mind-meld that were causing my discomfort, however.

I couldn't concentrate because I couldn't stop thinking about him. When I had first met Ren he had embodies everything that I hated. He was arrogant, rude, impolite, and he never thanked a single person for all the work that they had done for him. I had been terrified when I had found out that I had to work with him, but something seemed to have changed between us. I couldn't shake the sound of abject panic in his voice when he had spoken to me before my audience with Snoke, telling me to be careful, to not ager him. He had seemed truly concerned for my wellbeing. And then during the meeting his mind had always been on the periphery of mine, whispering words of encouragement when I thought that I couldn't do it.

There was a very blurry memory of strong warm hands catching my limp body when I fainted, the pain in my head and the tightness in my chest too much to handle. And then for him to tell me this morning that he had single-handedly carried me the entire way back?

I was confused to no end. Half of the time the guy acted like I was a piece of shit that had got stuck to the bottom of his expertly-buffed shoes, and the other half of the time he seemed to genuinely care about me. I wished he would make his bloody mind up.

"Stop daydreaming and start reading, Robin. This isn't a day off." The baritone voice came from only a few metres behind me, and I jumped in surprise. Maybe today would be one of the shit-shoe days. I turned around in my chair, and my eyebrows raised when I saw that he was much closer than I had expected, only a few feet behind me. His face was clean-shaven, and his hair was still slightly wet from his shower.

He raised an eyebrow at me.

"Robin, if you're ever going to be proficient in the Force, you need to make sure you're always in tune to it. You should have known that I was behind you."

He came and sat beside me, and put his arms on the table, folding his hands in front of him. No gloves today.

"How do I do that?" I asked him, honestly curious. If I had the ability to sense the people around me that would certainly make my life a lot easier. It would also mean that he wouldn't get the satisfaction of making me jump.

He pursed his lips together, as if in thought, and turned to look at me. Even sat down, he towered over me.

"Can you feel the Force right now?" He asked. I wrinkled an eyebrow, and thought about it. I could feel the slight chill of the room, I could feel the radiation of warmth from Ren's body. I could hear the steady drip drip dripping of a leaky pipe somewhere in the room, and smell the heady scent of leather bound books. But the Force? No.

"I can't." I admitted. He nodded, and took the book from my hands, placing it far away from the both of us. He took a small leather band from his wrist and placed it on the table in front of us. It was simple, brown and woven into a braid, fraying slightly at the ends. It looked old.

"Lift it." He said. I raised an annoyed eyebrow.

"I thought that we weren't doing force-training today?" I queried. My voice came out slightly snappier than I had intended it to. I was exhausted, mentally and physically, and I didn't think that I could handle another force-session.

"This isn't a democracy, Robin." There was an icy quality to his voice that told me to shut up and do what he said. I reached my hand out to the small leather band and reached inside myself, feeling the small spark of warmth that I had come to recognise as my Force. Breathing out through my nostrils, I lifted the band a few inches off the table and let it float there, unsupported.

"Good. Don't let go." He instructed, his voice stern. I listened, keeping the band floating in the air. It wasn't as heavy as the mask, and lifting it wasn't exactly easy, but was certainly a lot less work than lifting the helmet. Because of this, my mind wasn't entirely concentrated on keeping the band in the air, I had the ability to think.

"Alright," He instructed, "Look around you."

I moved my head to the side, and felt his hand come to rest on my shoulder, preventing me from turning my body.

"Look with your mind, Robin. Not your eyes."

Well I had absolutely no idea how to do that, but I tried anyway. I pushed the small glow of warmth in my chest from the Force away from me slightly, searching blind, looking for something, anything. My eyes were still fixed firmly on the band, which was still steady, but my mind was elsewhere. I could feel the heavy wooden table, sense its composition and history, and beside it the thick red armchairs. And then next to me, I could sense the warm large body of Ren.

It was different to looking at him. More intimate, somehow. My gaze was still planted firmly on the band, but I felt as if I was looking not only into his eyes, but right into his soul. I could sense his heart, the steady lub dub of the ventricles pumping thick red blood throughout his body. I could feel his lungs expanding and contracting with every breath, rushing oxygen through his bronchioles. The rhythmic warmth of his being seemed to almost encompass me. I let out a small gasp of surprise, and his voice entered my head, calm and reassuring.

"You alright, little bird?"

I nodded, probing deeper, feeling the crevices of his torso, the elegant lines of his hands. I hadn't moved from my seat, but my mind was all over him, drinking in this new sensation.

"Do you see everyone like this?" I asked him. My mouth hadn't moved. I had spoken directly into his head.

Cool. I didn't know I could do that.

I heard a low chuckle.

"Yes. I do."

A part of me felt slightly too exposed with that knowledge. He saw me the way that I saw him now, primal and animalistic, a body in perfect harmony, a well-oiled machine. I could feel his Force, much larger than mine and much more powerful. Where mine was a small spark, his was a burning flame, running through his veins like fire, setting him ablaze from the inside. He reminded me of a panther, a coiled spring with unwritten potential. I won't deny that it scared me a little bit.

I delved deeper, this time into his mind, the shadows and dark places in his innermost thoughts. Unsurprisingly, he blocked me before I could get further than his current thoughts. He felt a little cold, he was tired, and more surprisingly, he thought that my hair looked nice today.

"You don't want to look in there, Robin." His voice was joking, but there was a sense that the sentence was a warning of some sort, "My mind isn't a welcoming place."

The band in front of me dropped back to the table, and I took a shuddering breath inwards as the Force retreated back inside me, lighting my gut from the inside. It was gone, but I could still feel it.

"Alright, give it another go, but leave the band where it is." Said Ren. I obeyed him, and was surprised to feel that I could easily do the same thing again, sensing his being rather than just knowing he was there.

He smiled, but there was tightness behind his eyes that seemed almost nervous. I'd got closer to his mind than he'd let anyone get in a while.

"Good job, little bird. I'll make a Force-wielder out of you yet."