Alright, Chapter 4 in record time (for me), and I'm working on 5 right now so that'll probably be up in the next couple days. I am really into this story, so expect frequent updates lol. Quick thanks to those that followed/faved/reviewed

Lena Elise, XvampiresXwolverineXOmG, Ree923, you guys are awesome and I'm really happy you're enjoying it so far. This is a bit of a new style for me so it's good to know that I'm doing it well. Now on with the show!

.

.

Fresh Start

.

.

That night was the first time Oria had been able to sleep without the intense memories assaulting her, her mind was simply too exhausted to conjure them. Dinner had been a simple affair, more of the same kind of instant mystery food that she was beginning to understand sustained all space travelers. Han had attempted to be a little nicer to her, though he hadn't quite managed it, and Chewie even went so far as to pat her on the head, it made her far happier than it had any right to.

After dinner had come the nightmare that was getting out of the suit she'd spent the last three days in. She was loathe to part with it, not knowing if it was still working, still relaying data, telling the home team that she was still alive, but it hadn't been meant to be worn for this long, and it was beginning to chafe.

Leia had spent a good five minutes struggling with it, not believing her when she said it could only be removed with a specific pulse, before calling R2 into the room to try and help. It took another half hour to find the specific frequency needed to make the magnetic fabric separate, but eventually the little astromech was able to get her free, and then had come the adventure of the sonic shower.

Leia had laughed at her for a solid ten minutes after she got out, the squeak of sheer panic and surprise she'd emitted when the sonic activated imprinted forever in her mind. Ori had tried to be angry with her, making some half assed excuse about having never used one before, but she couldn't keep it up in the face of Leia's honest amusement and collapsed into a fit of giggles herself. It had been the first time she really saw the princess as a person, instead of a character.

They'd spent the rest of the short night trying to find her something to wear, resorting to having to borrow one of Luke's old shirts as it was the only thing that would fit her curvy frame. She had to fight down a blush at the thought of it having once touched his skin the way it was now touching hers, reminding herself that this was no time to be reliving old crushes, but parts of her body that seemed unconnected to the rest of her still set about tingling in an uncomfortable way until she fell asleep.

In place of the nightmares and memories that she'd grown used to, there were only fuzzy half dreams, glimpses of deep blue eyes, soft lips at her throat, combat roughed hands grazing down her body, sending shivers over her skin, and a strange sense of connection that had her waking in the night, body drenched in sweat and breath coming in quick gasps. Leia roused just long enough to ask if she was alright before falling back asleep, leaving Ori alone and confused in the darkness. Why the hell had she been dreaming about that?

Elsewhere in the ship, Luke was awake and panting, his eyes searching his darkened bunk for any sign of the woman that had invaded his dreams. He'd never felt such intense emotion before, the images that accompanied it serving to light a fire under his skin that he knew would keep him awake for the rest of the night if it wasn't dealt with. He collapsed back against his pillow with a groan, this was going to complicate things.

"Ori wake up!" Leia's voice pulled her from the dark swirling mass that had held her trapped. Her eyes flew open, her hands wheeling wildly through the air as she fought to free herself from the terror that gripped her. "Hey hey, it's okay, you're okay." Soft hands closed over her wrists, pulling them down to the tangled blankets as warm brown eyes came into focus in her field of vision. The light in the bunk was still dim, casting shadows into the corners and keeping Leia's face in half darkness, but just seeing that she wasn't alone went a long way to helping her calm down.

"Sorry." She felt herself sag back against the padded bunk mattress, Leia's hand leaving her wrists to rest on the blanket by her hip. She could feel her concern, knew she wanted to know what she'd been dreaming about, but she wasn't up to talking about it just yet.

"You were screaming." Leia said, her hand moving to trace a soothing line down Ori's arm. "Was it a memory?" She asked, hoping to help give her new friend some peace of mind.

"I'm not sure. It was just darkness and so much noise and fear." She felt it bloom in her chest as she spoke, the same gripping terror that had pulled scream after scream from her in her sleep. Tears welled up as she shut her eyes against them. She was so tired of crying, of feeling helpless and lost. She wanted to be the confident and strong person she'd been in her world, not this weak imitation that couldn't go a single night without reassurance.

Leia looked like she was about to respond, only to be interrupted by a knock at the door. She sighed, giving Ori a soft smile before standing and moving to the door, wincing as the light from the corridor streamed into the room. Luke stood on the other side, looking equal parts concerned and confused. Ori felt her heart sink as he stepped into the room, so she'd woken them both up then, way to go.

"Are you okay?" He asked, looking toward his sister. "I could sense your fear from my room." He stepped slowly past the door, his eyes taking in Leia's relatively made bed and then Ori's mass of sheets and blanket.

"Sorry, Ori was having a nightmare and her screaming woke me." Leia said, trying to make it sound conversational. They'd all had nights like hers, where the memories they fought to push down rose up to attack them in their sleep. "We're okay though." She said, smiling and turning back to her own bunk.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you guys." Ori said, sitting up in the bunk and pulling the blanket around her to form a kind of nest, giving Luke space to sit down if he chose. She was secretly hoping he wouldn't, but should've known better as he immediately filled the empty space.

"It's okay, I'm sure Leia agrees when I say we'd much rather you wake us so we can wake you than have you suffer by yourself." He said, placing a hand comfortingly on her knee. The motion woke the memory of the other dreams she'd had the night before and she had to fight to push them down before he could see them, that would be the last thing she needed.

"We may not know each other well yet Oria, but that doesn't mean we don't care." Leia said, giving yet more weight to her brother's words. "Now, why don't you tell us what you were dreaming about, maybe we can help." She said, Luke's nodding registering in her peripheral.

"I appreciate the concern, really I do, but I don't really know what was happening in the dream, just that it was dark, and I was terrified and in pain. I used to get night terrors as a kid, a kind of waking nightmare that you can't get out of, but it's been years since I had one. I guess all of this," she gestured around her, "is just catching up with me. Sorry, I know it isn't much to go on." She shrugged, looking from one face to the other, waiting to see the frustration and irritation that had been near constant on her mother's face when she was younger, but all she saw was sympathy and understanding.

"That sounds awful, is that a common occurrence in your universe?" Leia asked, sitting slowly up and mimicking her posture. "For children to suffer like that?" Her face was a mask of sympathy and horror.

"Fairly, it usually stems for a deeper mental disorder, mine was from my anxiety, the night terrors were the only way my young mind could articulate what it was feeling. It got a lot better once I got on my meds." She wanted to ask if mental illness existed in this universe, but she was afraid of the answer. What if it didn't? What if she was some kind of freak here? She'd spent the better part of her young life feeling like the odd one out, she didn't want to have to go through that again.

"You must be very strong to be able to speak of it as you do." Luke said, seeming to sense her discomfort. It made her feel a little better, just as it always did, to have someone realize how hard it is to live with the hell her mind put her through, but she couldn't shake the idea that she was the only one around that had to deal with it.

"I honestly never thought of it in terms of strength. I didn't really have any other option, it was either learn to live with it and keep it in check, or go crazy." She shrugged, wanting desperately to move on from this particular subject. She'd never liked talking about her mental illness, or her childhood for that matter, and this dealt with both. The twins remianed silent as she got herself under control, banishing the remnants of the nightmare to the recesses of her mind.

"Well, since we're up, we might as well start breakfast." Leia said, standing slowly from her bunk and ushering her brother out into the hall, turning to a small case that held her clothes and personal items. She began pulling out several pairs of what looked like leggings, holding each pair up to eye them over before tossing them away until she seemed to find what she was looking for. "These should fit you." She said, turning and holding a pair of brown leggings out to her.

She stood and accepted the clothing, surprised at the supple softness of the material. It reminded her of soft tooled leather and she felt a small smile grace her face as she slid into them, memories of nights in the bar with Suzie and the gang flashing through her mind. It had been years since she got to simply go out and have fun, perhaps now she would have the chance.

The girls made their way slowly to the common area, Leia asking all manner of questions about her world and the people she'd known, being careful to avoid any subject that might cause her pain. She still managed to bring up a few bad memories, but for the most part it was just anecdotes about her time in college and questions about politics and how they functioned where she was from.

"Morning princess" Han said, grinning cheekily at her as she rolled her eyes, aiming a smack at his arm as she walked by. Luke laughed as he rubbed at the now stinging spot and handed his sister a tray. It was much the same as the night before, but the pasta like side dish had been replaced with some questionable looking bread and the dark drink was replaced with something off white and opaque. Another tray was handed to her and they all sat down to eat.

"We'll be arriving on Yavin 4 sometime tonight, I need to go over security with you before we land, I don't want anything going wrong." Han said, his posture looking almost ready for a fight.

"I don't need security Han, these are our own people." Leia said, refusing to look up from the data pad she was reading. Ori could tell this was a conversation that had happened many times before, and would probably end much the same as it had in the past. It reminded her of Gavin and his fiance Trisha. She felt her heart lurch as she remembered they would be getting married soon. She was supposed to be in the wedding.

"Hey, you okay?" Luke asked, his voice quiet as the couple continued to argue. Ori looked up from her spot on the floor and shrugged, trying to push a smile to her lips but failing.

"Just a lot of things I'm remembering I won't be doing anymore. Those two reminded me of a couple friends I have back home, they're getting married soon and I was supposed to be there." She drew a breath, feeling tears prick at her eyes and blinked them rapidly away. "Just adjusting I guess." She turned back to her meal, suddenly without appetite.

"Come on." Luke said, grabbing both their trays and standing up. "They're gonna be at it a while." He smiled as the argument started ramping up, Leia's voice slowly rising to match Han's. Ori could almost feel the tension between the two and stood, following Luke down the corridor to his room, the door closing just as the shouting started.

"Whoa." She said, her voice quiet as she faced the door. She'd grown up with parents that fought, always trying to get the last word in and shouting when they couldn't understand the other person's point of view. It had seemed normal at the time, but now, seeing it from the outside, she could understand why they'd decided to split. "That is not healthy." She said, turning back around to face her would be teacher.

"They're just working out how to talk to each other. It's hard when their whole relationship up to this point has consisted of flirting and running for their lives." Luke said, shrugging and dropping onto his bunk, gesturing for her to join him while handing her one of the trays. She smiled, crossing her legs and balancing the tray on her knees as they both resumed eating.

A moment of silence stretched between them as each fell into their own thoughts. Luke began to plan how he would go about teaching Oria what she needed to know in order to control her powers and Ori busied herself with trying to to realize how much cuter Luke was up close. She could feel the tingle beginning again, distracting her from the world around her and making each tiny movement a practice in self control. She only hoped he hadn't noticed.

"Are you finished?" Luke asked, looking over at her nearly empty tray and still hands. He couldn't stifle his small chuckle as she jumped, pulled from whatever thought had been sending those small jolts of sensation across the link he still hadn't managed to break. She nodded, passing her tray into his waiting hand and turned to face him, her cheeks still red. "Before we begin, what do you already know of The Force?" He asked, watching the excitement bloom in her eyes.

"Well, only what was explained in the movies. A few of my friends were really deep into the mythos at one point, but I never really understood what they were saying. So, The Force, is like a web of energy, it passes through everything in the universe and binds it all together. If you have the ability, you can learn how to manipulate the energy to do things like lift objects, influence people, heal, that kind of thing." She noticed that as she spoke, she slipped into her "academic" voice, something she'd developed over the years to sound more confident and be taken more seriously. She hadn't meant to do it, but it had become habit for her anytime she explained something.

"Very good, I thought it was just a myth when Ben first told me about it, so you're ahead of the race already. Now tell me how you use Magic, in your universe. What exactly do you think or do when you tap into that power. I think it might help you learn a little better if we work from a base you already know." He smiled as he sensed her beginning to relax. It was nice that she was excited to learn, but it also made her tense, and tension was about as far from where he wanted her to be as was physically possible.

"Well with Magic, it's all about opening yourself up to the world around you, feeling the push and pull of the energy in the air. Like if I wanted to do a spell to help you be a little more lucky, I would open my mind to your specific wavelength and manipulate it to always land on the favorable side of any outcome." She said, her hands moving as she spoke. Her colleagues used to joke that if they taped her hands down she wouldn't be able to string two words together.

"That's how Ben explained The Force to me, looks like we were right about them being the same thing." Luke said, feeling himself relax as well. He'd been so worried about adapting what he knew to fit how she would need to learn that he hadn't stopped to think about how close the two energy sources already were. If she was already this far along then training her should be a snap.

"Well then, I guess all I really need are the particulars then huh?" She asked, the excited smile returning to her face. He could tell what she was thinking without even having to access the link between them, and while he thought it was cute to see her like this, he had to squash her hopes.

"Not so fast. I won't be teaching how to lift or move a single speck of dust until we get your emotions under control. With as erratic as you are right now you could easily upset the whole ship. Meditation first, levitation later." He said, extending a finger in a mock impression of Han. Ori laughed and nodded, covering her disappointment in an effort to spare his feelings. It was something he'd noticed about her when they first met. She was perfectly fine with emoting to a ridiculous degree when she was alone, but the moment someone else was around her, she would stuff all her feelings so far down in her mind that not even she could reach them again.

"Just bear in mind, ADHD kid here, meditation has never been possible for me in the past." She pointed to her head and mimed a spreading web with her fingers, reminding him of the ever present swirl of thoughts she had to deal with on a daily basis. He nodded and his face became almost completely passive for a moment before he seemed to shake himself out of it.

"Okay, well meditation isn't the only way you can center yourself. Visualization can work too, it just takes a little longer. Think you can handle that?" He asked, feeling apprehension beginning to creep into his mind. He really wanted to be able to teach her what she needed to know, but what if he couldn't? He hadn't exactly been doing this whole Jedi thing for very long himself, what if he wasn't ready to teach another?

"Visualization is a common technique in therapy, I think I should be able to do that one. What am I visualizing?" She asked, relaxing her shoulders, placing her hands on her knees, and closing her eyes. He watched as her face fell into absolute stillness, though her mind was still buzzing with activity, and was struck by how different she seemed to be in that moment. He'd never met anyone with a mind like hers. It was a paradox, chaotic yet structured, always alive with activity yet completely still, it was like her mind and her brain were two different things occupying the same space and she could subconsciously choose which one she would be using. It was fascinating to watch from the outside.

"Picture a line, any color, any size, doesn't matter. That line is The Force. Now see the line as it touches you." He watched as her expression began to dance all over the spectrum. At first there was simply peace, then it began to shift to confusion, frustration, then finally satisfaction as she brought her focus to where it was needed. He felt it when she made contact with The Force, like a ripple in an otherwise still pond, and he felt his own heart jump as the emotions he was getting from her became sharper and far more varied.

"When it hits me it just fades away." She said, turning her closed eyes down to her own chest. This confused him as he could see the web of her own Force print quite easily, but perhaps she wasn't thinking properly.

"Don't try to structure what you're seeing, just follow the energy." He said, giving their tenuous connection a tiny nudge in the hopes that she would be able to follow it. A gasp brought a smile to his face as he felt her switch from her brain to her mind.

"Whoa, that's me? What do the colors mean?" She asked, her inner eye flying over all the different lines and colors she could see floating around her face. It was strange, seeing herself from the outside, like she was a ghost or something, but she wasn't about to let this opportunity go to waste. Her brain began cataloging every detail, every color, every line and smudge she could see.

"They mean whatever you want them to mean. The way I was taught was that each color corresponds to a specific emotion, but I've found that to be only about half true. Emotion does play a part in it, but it's not a direct connection like it was explained to me, more a loose correlation. Red is almost always something to do with passion, or intense emotion, where as blue if serenity or calm emotion. Beyond that it's your Force Print, you tell me." He felt his cheeks begin to hurt as his smile widened at the look of concentration on her face. He could feel when she began to experiment, drawing up memories that would evoke different emotions so she could identify what each color correlated to.

Ori didn't know how much time was passing as she tested each of the colors. Luke had been right about red and blue, each color would take on a warm or cool tone depending on how strongly she felt the emotion attached to it, and she found that while some of her emotions blended well with the red, others began to look down right disgusting, the same holding true for the blue.

When she finally pulled herself back down to her body, she had to steady herself against the wave of dizziness and exhaustion that swept over her. Luke's hand flew out to support her shoulder as she began to tip sideways, pushing her softly back onto the bunk instead as her world set to spinning.

"Whoa, that's unpleasant." She said, cradling her head in one hand while the other rested against the cool metal of the bunk wall. She needed something to remind her that she wasn't moving, that it was just her brain reacting to what she'd just done. "Is it always like this?" She asked, barely cracking a single eyelid to look up at him.

"Only at first. I got over it in a few days, and that was with Yoda literally riding my back about it." He said, smiling as she laughed softly, though it quickly devolved into a groan. He thought he heard her mutter something along the lines of "crazy old frog" but decided not to press it. Instead he simply scooped her from the bed and carried her to her bunk, which was only down the hall from his own, and let her rest up there until lunch time. If she was anything like him, she should be mostly over the cognitive back lash by then and they could move on to the next step.

"Thanks." She said, her body already starting to drift off. "Don't think I coulda made that walk on my own." She laughed softly, cocooning herself in the blankets the moment his arms were out of the way.

"You earned it, that was really impressive. We'll try something a little harder after lunch so rest up okay?" He said, brushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear as she rolled to face the wall of the bunk room. He heard a mumbled reply but seeing as it was followed immediately by a quiet snore he decided to ignore it. She would be ready, he had faith.

Alright, so there's 4 done, the beginnings of attraction are blooming and things seem calm, it would be a shame if something came along and messed that up, like say, the author *evil cackles* okay, I"m done now. As always, thanks in advance for any follows/faves/reviews, I really do appreciate them and I will see you in the next chapter!