Lacuna

(latin noun: A blank or unfilled space, a missing part)

Chapter One- Alone.

Bella had always had the inkling that everyone else was experiencing life drastically different than what she was. For reasons more than just the usual person who just wants to be different. Isabella had grown up in an orphanage, abandoned at a hospital at only a few days old with only a first name. She was never successfully adopted even though that was very rare for a newly born baby, and the times she'd been fostered she was placed back in the orphanage within weeks.

She believed that she was never adopted because strange things had always happened around her. She could move things without touching them, connect to life and death and everything in between on a level that she soon became aware that others couldn't as soon as she started to perceive the world around her. Sometimes, when she could fully connect to that part of herself it almost made the voices silent.

It wasn't so much a voice as much as a foreign opinion that she was acutely aware wasn't her own, a growing darkness within her. It encouraged hurt and selfishness and revenge. The more she fed it, the stronger it got, a fact which she didn't learn until late in life when she was seventeen. She had night terrors that robbed her of sleep (and therefore mental resistance), and her quick to anger personality was encouraged by this darkness.

On the flip side was a blinding light within her that had always fought against the darkness. That connection she had with the earth helping her get through her hardest moments and forgive herself when she would fail and indulge the darkness.

But the light never prevailed, and she wasn't confident that it ever would, she wouldn't hold her breath for the ability to lead a normal or even a minutely easier life. She constantly battled demons, staying away from other people because darkness seemed to surround her and it put innocent people at risk. She fought loneliness by training her abilities; the progress meant that she was less likely to lose control.

Her breath fogged in the New York air, the cold of it invading her lungs with a painful sharpness. All of the snow had long been turned to slush and then frozen over. She slipped on ice heading into the bar where she worked, her power bubbling up as an instinct to help her but it was an instinct now to suppress it. She caught on to a pipe, grimacing when her fingers brushed something damp and slimy. Working to keep her dirtied hand away from herself and surfaces she pushed her way into the busy downtown Manhattan bar, it was Friday night in the late November and it was ice hockey night.

"You're late." Ned commented dryly with disdain; he didn't like her unless she wore low-cut tops and refined her vocabulary to 'Yes sir!'. She wasn't late, in-fact she was five minutes early to her rota start time but Ned would always demand everyone turn up twenty minutes before their shift started, even though he never paid any of them for it and never turned up early himself. But she was only twenty-one, with no qualifications and she needed the job.

He huffed and the darkness whispered for her to demand respect from him. It was easy to ignore but she still shook her head to clear the voice and pushed through to the small staff room tucked into the broken freezer.

Once she'd washed her hands and removed her coat, she checked herself in the bathroom. Her pale skin was flush from the cold, her long and wavy blue hair falling around herself which she put back into a high pony-tail in case she was handling food later. She usually worked the bar, but Ned would usually take her off bar work unless he was desperate so he could justify taking more of the tips.

She wore a short-sleeved, V- neck black t-shirt that highlighted her assets so that she could make up for the loss of tips later when Ned had to cave and let her on the bar. On her bottom half she simply had on nice fitting black jeans, some weather-proof biker boots and an apron.

She stepped outside and started her shift, serving food and helping in the kitchen until more people would arrive to catch the end of the game. She quietly groaned when taking a customer's food out to them as a familiar feeling of light-headedness and slowness began to creep up on her. She'd been having these feelings the last few months but couldn't afford to go to the doctor. According to Google she was, on top of a long list of things, low on blood sugar or had a terminal brain illness among other urgent life-threatening conditions that Web MD loved. So, no worries there. The only benefit was that it would drown out the voices in her head at its peak.

Jesus, she was just a picture-poster candidate for mental and physical health.

She faded to and from tables, not actively functioning or remembering anything anyone said to her longer than it took to write it down (hopefully nobody asked for ranch because they wouldn't be getting it) when her co-worker Mia finally appeared.

"Bella, you look awful! Are you alright?" Mia was abysmal at putting things lightly but Bella couldn't focus enough to be offended. Mia was pretty and an actress who refused to do anything but theatre, she had golden toned blonde hair and deep brown eyes with sun-kissed skin that she'd acquired from growing up in Arizona. Mia preferred to work more so that she could save money up to visit her British boyfriend, Ben, who works with computers and helped Bella out by putting her in contact with her papers guy who forged her identification so she could get a bank account.

Bella let out a shaky breath, her vision swaying. "Are you having another one of your funny turns?" Mia panicked, always a caring person. She was so kind and had offered to let Bella use her insurance, which was illegal and something Bella couldn't hold on her conscience. But Mia had given Bella her old cell-phone so she could contact her or the hospital should things get more serious.

"Ned wanted you to do the dishes, but if you don't mind seeing to these guys I'd rather not be out front right now." Mia nodded and Bella handed Mia her notepad, stumbling through to the kitchen holding herself up on the counter.

She got herself a glass of water which helped a tiny amount, but her head continued to throb. It had never been this bad before, and she wondered if she was possibly having a brain aneurysm. She shook her head, emptying out her glass of water and controlling her breathing for a few seconds to somehow force it to pass. It seemed to work and her head suddenly became mysteriously lighter, although the world around her still seemed a little disjointed it was enough for her to get back to work. She lifted herself up on the counter, kneeling so that she could get the clean plates from the top shelf, god forbid Ned provided a ladder apart from on health and safety inspections. She needed two stacks to fill up the dispatch station and she didn't want to risk climbing back up when she was feeling unwell. Bella glanced around, a partial and unfamiliar black shape catching the edge of her vision but the turns she was experiencing often made her vision spotty and she thought nothing of it. Assured that nobody was around, she lifted the first stack with her arms and the second with her power.

"I suspected you were sensitive with the force." A deep male voice stated behind with a slightly curious tone and she screamed, dropping the plates and cringing as they crashed to the floor. Whirling around to see the owner of the voice but forgetting she was on the counter, she fell off the counter and onto the ceramic plates and she groaned in pain.

She felt blood trickle down her face from when she had practically head-butted a broken shard of the plates. She struggled to form a coherent thought before remembering the reason for her fall, looking up her eyes connected with those of a man. He was tall and pale, with black chin-length hair and chiselled features. He regarded her with slight surprise but as if he knew her. She knew positively that she didn't know him because he wore such strange clothes, all black and very structured and a heavy black cape. Across his left eyebrow and down his cheek was a thin pink scar, as if he had been slashed in the face.

As soon as she started to form words, Ned stormed in with a look of rage, Mia rushing in behind him but careful to not get in his way. "What the fuck have you done? Are you some sort of idiot?" He yelled in anger. Bella's eyes widened when he passed right through the mysterious man.

Fuck, she'd gone crazy.

"You're not crazy, at least not in the context of this incident." The figure stated, arching a brow as if in humour. She was speechless, could it read her mind?

Well, duh, Bella! If he's in your mind then surely he'd know what was going on in there. She chastised herself as Ned yelled at her more.

"You're fired!" Ned finished off his yelling.

She panicked because she couldn't lose this job. She would struggle to get another one that had a boss as oblivious as Ned and didn't do any sort of identity or background checks. She dramatically collapsed and her head, dripping with blood from surface cuts, gushed heavier with the movement.

"Oh," She groaned in over-emphasised pain, long and dramatic. "If only the proper health and safety procedures were followed but we don't even have a ladder… with no job…" She groaned again in overly exaggerated pain. "With no job, I might have to go on disability because of this workplace accident that…" She paused, trying to think of what the TV adverts said "Wasn't my fault. I might be entitled to compensation."

Ned visibly paled as her imaginary friend visibly laughed, looking confused by all of this. Or maybe just pained to be living in her head. "If you don't breathe a word of this, you can keep your job and I'll pay you double time for the rest of the night while you go home and recover from this light-headedness you're suffering from."

She considered for a second before groaning a little more. "But Ned…what if my face scars, I'll be permanently disfigured and it might affect my future income. I might have to sue for my trouble" She knew full well her face would heal well but she was seeing people who weren't there and she needed time to stop this episode.

"Fuck, Bella. You can work the bar all night next week too." Ned flustered and Bella sprung up a little too enthusiastically with how she was feeling and grabbed a towel which she used to clean her forehead cut.

"You should also clean this up and ask Mia to tend the bar for a bit, or else I might end up with a slipped disc as a result of this." She stated and Ned nodded, huffing. She grinned at him and the other staff members as well and turned to leave out the back, her imaginary friend following her with heavy and real sounding footsteps. She had left her jacket but she would get it tomorrow, she only lived a few blocks away and the cold didn't bother you much.

"Stop!" She heard from the man and felt a hand gripping her arm and spinning her around clear as day. "What planet is this? Who are you?"

"It's not real. It's not real. It's not real." Bella chanted to herself.

She gave him a strange look, her eyes lingering on his hand on her arm which she could feel as vividly as her own feet touching the floor. "I am Kylo Ren of the First Order, and you will tell me who you are. You are not the only one sensitive to the force!" His voice was rough and demanding and she yanked out of his grip, walking out of the alleyway and jaywalking onto the street in an attempt to get away from this man/thing.

His yelling continued behind her as she sprinted onto the pavement again.

"It's not real. It's not real. It's not real." She chanted to herself, walking quickly and staring at the pavement until a few cautious peaks before she reached her apartment told her she was alone. She glanced around the street, seeing nobody familiar before stepping into her building.

She would just take it easy for a few days, de-stress, and she would be fine. People had weird mental episodes all the time, and it didn't mean there was anything wrong. It was just another thing that she might have to keep under control.

She would be fine.