Chapter Text
Rey can remember the days when their bond was something she feared and loathed - a pervasive cloud in the back of her mind that would never truly leave, even if she curtained it off from the rest of her thoughts.
The prospect of being able to hear, speak to, or even see him when he was so very far away from her had made her sick. Angry. Disgusted. That he could just jump into her consciousness and project his fiery psyche into her head - him, Kylo Ren, this practiced murderer, this war criminal - back then, nothing in the world had upset her more. She’d run away from him, all the way to the other side of the galaxy, for a reason, but the threat of his poisonous presence would always prickle at her chest. Even actively shutting him out - having to interact with him at all - had felt like some sort of sin.
It’s different now that the war is over, though.
Rey no longer feels pins and needles when they’re separated. It’s more of a taut elasticity.. Like there’s a string woven around her midsection, and the further Ben travels from her, the tighter it grows around her. Sometimes, it’s a little bit uncomfortable - makes her shift in her seat, as if to loosen a twist in her shirt - but it’s never painful. Just a distant tug, gently reminding her that they’re connected wherever they go.
What had once felt like an invasion of her subconscious had just become a part of her. Ben’s presence had filled an empty recess of her mind that she hadn’t even known she’d possessed, and now, she can scarcely remember what it’d felt like not to have him there all the time. Rey reaches out to that part of her mind instinctively, to the little piece of her that’s him , as passively as breathing. Sometimes she brushes up against nothing more than a stubborn wall as he keeps his feelings from bleeding out into her own, but even then, she finds solace in knowing his damned stubborn presence is there.
Sometimes, that same damned stubborn presence becomes overbearing and breaks her concentration, and then Ben is the one who’s treated to a brick wall of irritation. Skywalkers aren't very adept at keeping their emotions at bay, Rey's learned.
Today, Ben tells her that his diplomatic trip to Coruscant has come to an end, and he's eager to escape the droning voices of political figures he's been begrudgingly working with for the past fortnight. She can feel his weariness leaking into her, like she'd been enduring it there with him, and their shared relief that he's coming home is palatable.
As he departs the planet and begins his journey back to her, Rey can feel the tight band around her chest gradually loosening as the distance between them shrinks. When she watches his ship touch down on the landing pad before her, the rigid draw of being apart melts away into a pleasant warmth in her belly.