Freya couldn’t remember the last time she had this much trouble sleeping.
No, that wasn’t true. She hardly slept those first few years between losing her family and finding Jo, but that was different. She was alone then, afraid of everything. Afraid to stop moving, to remember. Afraid of what it meant to be not just Freya, but Rey.
But those days were long gone. Meeting Jo had been a blessing in disguise; attempting to jack the spy's car led to Freya finding a purpose outside mere survival, and with it a semblance of peace. The ghosts of the past still lingered, but at least it was easier to accept the way things were. She built a life for herself. A good life, despite its solitude. For a long time, that was enough.
Until, one day, it wasn’t.
Nothing had been the same since that day six month ago. She gained so much – a concrete cause through Camelot and Jo, a reconnection with her surviving family, and the open arms of Rey’s family, too. So many things she’d wished for during her years alone were real now, and by rights she should’ve been sleeping better than ever. But something else she gained overshadowed all of it. Someone else.
There was no use denying it. When the day was done and she was alone again, her thoughts always turned to Kyle.
It hadn’t started that way. At the beginning, she tried to think about Kyle as little as possible outside of their training sessions. It wasn’t worth the frustration. He wasn’t the Ben Solo she and Rey wanted but the Kylo Ren they had, which was far from ideal and spectacularly dangerous, but going their separate ways was not an option. Not for him, and – as much as she hated to admit it – not for her, either. Not after all they’d achieved together.
But it wasn’t just the discoveries about their connection that weighed on her mind. It was him. Or, more worryingly, her changing feelings about him. Something would set her off, something as simple as a breeze through her window that felt almost like an echo of his lightsaber sweeping past her, and she’d spend the rest of the night trying to find the words for what he was becoming to her now. Every night she decided the words didn’t exist, but the desire to find them, to know, kept her awake all the same.
Rather than wallowing, tonight Freya attempted to distract herself with a broken blender from the ‘70s. As long as she’d lived in London, projects like this were a refuge for Freya; she found almost every appliance she owned in a thrift shop, using the time it took to refurbish so-called junk to decompress when the loneliness got to be too much for her. It usually worked, so she went back to the old habit tonight in hopes that maybe it would work for this new problem, too.
It did, for a while. The repairs occupied her late into the night, but then the blender was fixed, and then she was in bed listening to music on her headphones, thinking about Kyle again.
So much for that. Freya heaved a sigh, then sat up to cross her legs and hunch over her phone hopelessly, her loosely braided hair falling over her shoulder. Her flat was too hot tonight to sleep in anything but a sports bra and shorts, even with the bedroom window open for her cat to come and go as he pleased. Summer weather never bothered her, but she found herself wishing it did. Would’ve so much easier to blame her insomnia on the lack of AC than to face what was actually keeping her awake.
Distantly, she wondered if he thought about her at all. Like this, or any other way. She wondered.
And then, suddenly, she felt him.
Her spine straightening as if electrified, Freya inhaled sharply and yanked the headphones from her ears. Her wide eyes found him immediately, but for a moment refused to register what they saw. He was facing away from her, sitting on the edge of her bed. Her bed. How was that…?
“Um.” Freya found her voice quickly, despite the racing of her heart. “It’s three in the morning, Kyle.” She had no idea what time it was wherever he lived, but it felt important to point that out. What reason could he possibly have for contacting her through their bond so late at night?
Abruptly, she went from confused to concerned, her brow furrowing as she tried to peer around his shoulders to see his face. “... Is something wrong?”