Forever Alone ~ Kylo Ren x Reader

21 - Strange

~time skip because i'm tired of making filler chapters~

It's been five years since that meeting with Luke and you found yourself unable to account for the time lost. After that meeting and your private lessons started, you lost track of the days which turned into weeks and so on. You and Ben dove into your training, both in and out of class. Whenever you weren't training, you were either eating or sleeping, which wasn't very often. You and Ben were still the top of your class, still showing up Irsha every chance you got. This lead to very high tensions between the two of you, but you were glad to have a challenge. The competitions between you and Irsha became somewhat of a spectacle where most of the class would come to watch. Of course you would always win, whether it was just an argument of an actual duel but there have been a few times where Irsha came close to beating you. These fights only made you and Irsha want to train harder, you to ensure that she wouldn't come close to beating you again and Irsha so that one day she might beat you.

Master Luke picked up on your little rivalry and often delighted in pairing you two together for training duels, much to your enjoyment. You had to hand it to her though, she was just as stubborn and relentless as you, if not more. The only issue with this relationship is that she would continue to spread rumors around the Academy about you and she would try to get between you and Ben.

Though your opinion of Irsha may have changed over these years, Ben's had not. He still was uninterested and more annoyed at her than anything else, thankfully. There were a handful of things that had changed between you two in the five years that past and this was not one of them. You were still as close as ever, if not even more in synch with each other than you were.

On the days that you and Ben were exhausted from training, you would experiment with the Force. Normally these afternoons would end in destruction one way or another, but every now and then you were able to make progress, aside from what Master Luke taught you in class. In addition to summoning your saber from across the room and lifting rocks, you were able to connect with Ben using the Force.

You had come up with the idea on one particularly nasty day when it was storming outside and classes were cancelled. You were both able to sense each other through the force, sense strong emotions and sense each other's physical presence, but you wanted to go deeper. To see how deep this connection between the two of you could go. So you proposed that there would be a way to make this connection physical, like a thread, instead of the brief glances you would get into each other's heads. Ben had 'apparently' already thought of the idea and hadn't said anything to you, so he takes credit for the end result, when really it was you who created it.

It started with the two of you continually trying to shape the connection into something. Ben had argued that it should be a stream, so that there would always be something flowing between you, but after plenty of arguing, you decided that it should be a thread. A string built of the Force and your relationship, connecting your minds.

The creation of the bond was more work than anything else. You and Ben would often go to sleep with raging headaches and sore minds from your sessions, but eventually, you were able to materialize the bond.

The moment the connection was complete, you felt a click in your mind and your eyes were opened. Suddenly, you were able to feel everything Ben was feeling, see into some of his most cherished memories and see through his eyes. The most shocking outcome of the bond was that you were able to hear each others thoughts. At first it was interesting but then it got annoying as you could hear each other from anywhere in the Academy.

Then you and Ben were forced to find some way of dimming the connection, not severing it, but to quiet it, so that you weren't constantly in each other's heads. There were then several more weeks spent together in Ben's hut, practising blocking yourselves from each other's minds. This also ended in a lot of headaches but you were able to mold the thread into exactly what you wanted. Ben could force you out of his head but also open his mind so that you were him, in a sense and he you.

You were 17 and Ben was just 18 when you were able to get a general understanding of the bond. There were still aspects of the connections that you hadn't yet figured out and they proceeded to reveal themselves throughout the next two years.

Even when you were 19 and 20, you and Ben were still learning things about this bond that you created. You'd thought about telling Luke what you'd done but Ben shot you down every time you brought the subject up. You both decided that the risks of telling him, mainly expulsion from the Academy, were too great to chance.

So you and Ben kept your little secret hidden from the rest of the Academy and continued with your studies. The bond came in especially handy during examinations where you were able to tell each other answers and ask questions that you wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. It was also very useful on those mornings when Ben decided to pull another stunt and leave you hanging before class or meals.

With this bond between you two, you were sure you and Ben couldn't get any closer until your 19th birthday. Until then, you had been best friends with nothing that could come between you, not even Irsha Dal. Then you turned 19 and everything sort of changed after that. Nothing actually changed, you just didn't start noticing these things until you turned 19.

You started picking up on little changes in Ben's behavior around you. How you would often catch him glancing at you out of the corner of his eye. Or how he had started finding any excuse to touch you or be next you. Normally you would just dismiss these things as Ben being Ben but on your birthday, after he gave you his gift, it was just different.

He pulled you into one of those hugs that you couldn't ever forget and held you for a long minute. So caught up in the moment, you didn't pick up on the oddity of the situation until later that night. Ben had always been a hugger, but he would never hold on for very long, he was always the one to break apart first. This time, he didn't pull away. He held on to you tightly and pressed your body into his chest, breathing deeply.

You dismissed the hug as him just being sentimental as you two had been friends for 8 years. It wasn't until you felt something in the bond, a feeling run down the thread from his mind to yours, that you realized it wasn't just sentiment. When you felt that emotion, you pulled away from the hug in shock. It was warm and fuzzy, but it made your stomach tingle and your heart skip a beat. It felt like happiness, but in a way you had never felt it before. It felt like home. Up until then you had thought that the Academy was your home, but this, the feeling, this was your home.

As quickly as the feeling came, seconds later it was gone, leaving you utterly speechless. Unsure of whether Ben felt it too, or if he intentionally sent that feeling to you, you decide not to bring it up. Instead you just grinned up at him, the smile reaching your eyes, ignoring the hollowness you felt in your chest left behind by whatever that feeling was. He too, was smiling up at you in a way that made your heart flutter a little.

Whatever happened with the bond during that hug either didn't have the same affect on Ben or nothing happened at all for him. Still smiling, you linked arms and walked to your favourite spot by the lake.

You spent the rest of your birthday with Ben, leaning up against a tree with one of his arms around your shoulders, watching the moons and the stars.

Ever since that day you have been unable to forget that feeling, the sense of warmth and comfort you felt. The feeling was unfamiliar to you, you'd never felt anything like it in your life before, and it scared you a bit. Not the feeling itself, but not knowing what that feeling was and what it meant.

The strangest part was that you kept experiencing glimpses of that feelings, completely at random throughout the day. Sometimes you would feel that flicker of warmth when Ben would touch your hair or one time when you caught Ben staring at you from across the class.

It was so strange to you. So, so strange.