Disclaimer: This fanfiction is not intended, in any way, for profit or any other sort of remuneration. All creative rights of the characters and the world of Star Wars belong to Lucasfilm Ltd. and/or The Walt Disney Company.

A STEP AWAY FROM DEATH

"C'mon, Kylo Ren, let go of me! Let me go!" Rey yelled at the top of her lungs, her voice echoing in the vastness beyond. She was hanging at the edge of a precipice like a pendulum, the man dressed in dark clothes her only link to solid ground. Their hands were holding at each other's arms strongly, exerting painful pressure on their skins. The cold wind howled, making her swing, pushing the hood of her white jacket backwards and messing with the stranded flocks of her hair.

"Shut the fuck up!" Kylo Ren mumbled with effort between his teeth, his knees buried in the stirred snow. Rey wasn't exactly a heavy person, but the angle at which he was holding her was killing his already damaged shoulder.

"That's all you've wanted to do ever since we met! Kill me now that you have the chance!" Rey roared with ire looking him in the eye. He had taken off his mask just minutes earlier, as they argued, when she had accused him of hiding behind it. It now lay lost somewhere in the snow behind them. "Do it!"

Ren returned her obfuscated and incensed stare and did the one thing she wasn't expecting from him: release the hold on her by opening his hand a little.

A look of alarm bathed her features as she slid further down towards the opaque bottom that neither of them could discern. A batch of snow fell like tree leaves to the abyss. She grabbed his arm stronger, her breathing coming out fast in white clouds in the freezing sunset.

That just proved to him what he suspected all along despite her bravado. "You don't want to die!" he mocked her with a sneer.

Bothered to not end after days of putting up with his erratic behavior, Rey decided to put everything on the line. Just like she did when they fought with their lightsabers on Starkiller Base, when sparkly red and blue crisscrossed inches away from their faces, she absorbed his energy to refocus her own, closing her eyes to concentrate on her inner momentum. When she opened them again a ray of determination and calmness filled her acute gaze.

"I'm ready to die, Kylo" she said loud enough for him to hear her through the cutting wind, looking at his intense dark eyes. He was starting to hate her calling him by that name over and over again, which made him realize how much she had affected him in the time they had been stranded together. "I have no fear, you hear me, I have no fear!" and to show him she opened her hand completely to drop with her back to the emptiness. She felt weightless for an instant, as if she had won the battle against gravity.

Ren growled like a furious animal and caught her small wrist in time, angered to a point deep down he thought he couldn't reach. "Stop this nonsense, Rey! It would be a pointless death!"

"Not to you, Dark Lord, not to you!" She looked down, seeing the infinite blackness that awaited her.

"Don't push me!" he threatened, tightening his grip on her.

"Good bye, Ben," she said in a more meaningful tone of voice before giving a hard shake to be free.

Neither of them would later know who really let go of who, if Kylo had released her for a second too long to scare her again and follow on his threat or if Rey had been the one to break the contact with her brusque move. For several excruciating seconds, Rey was already dead in a pool of blood and Kylo Ren alone at the top of a mountain. Their eyes glued to each other as time and space separated them as she fell. But then something happened, stopping everything else around them: Kylo Ren wielded the Force to sustain Rey in midair.

His draped arm and gloved hand trembled as he tried to keep her alive. The effort it took him to do so contorted his face in tense lines, sweat beads falling down his temples. It was one thing to levitate objects and persons when in control of the situation. Another totally different when tired, cold, injured and with a force-sensitive individual rejecting you back.

It all happened very fast, in just a few seconds. Rey exerted all the power she had to fight him off and make him release her, the Force pulsing strongly in waves to avoid him. The fact that Death's fingertips were already tickling her on the back was beyond her. That confrontation, that battle of wills had been boiling up for days. It had turned into a personal matter with him and she was willing to give her life for it, if only to prove him wrong. It didn't matter that she was relaying on a hunch, on pure instinct. There was too much at stake. She smiled evilly when she felt herself falling, getting free of his force-grasp.

"You damn scavenger!" he spitted and then he yelled, much like his victims did when he used the dark side Force with them. A flash of the Resistance's best pilot agonizing face came his to mind, of when he searched his head to find the BB droid that held the map to Luke Skywalker's location.

Against her will, Rey felt the weightlessness overcome her as her body was sucked upwards towards the grey cloudy sky. Resisting was fruitless. Before she had time to register it, she was at Kylo Ren's level above ground. He pulled roughly with his hand, maneuvering the Force at his will, his struggled cry dying in his throat. Rey hit his crouched body like a cement bag, throwing him down on the snow.

They both breathed exhausted, unable to move, she on top of him, the wind still whipping their hair to their faces. Kylo Ren felt a mixture of pain, irritation and relief. The thought of losing her had carved an empty and distressing hole inside his chest and at the same time he just wanted to push her off the precipice to end the things she was making him feel.

After a minute, Rey stood up with difficulty, her body hurting due to the extreme exertion. She barely could put one foot in front of the other, but obliged herself to get away from him. She missed how Kylo Ren slowly stretched his arm to hold her against him, failing miserably. Rey was still extremely mad with him, with what had happened, which didn't make any sense, for she had won. At the end of the day he didn't want to kill her, couldn't do it, and that must have consoled her. She raised her head to face the looming mountain above them and saw the wall of snow they both had blocked with the Force before it ate them alive as they run away from it. The two of them could have died that day, but destiny hadn't seemed prepared to claim their lives just yet.

She caught a slight movement out of the corner of her eye, Kylo Ren trying to sit up. They gazes met and held each other's for a moment. The scar on his face, the one she gave him, shimmered in an intense purple color due to the cold.

"You're weak," she told him, meaning how he hadn't been able to let her die. But nothing farthest from the truth. Inside, she was in awe of what he had done, amazed of all his power. As she walked to look for a way out of there before night set, she thought about how she wouldn't have been able to save him had their roles been reversed, not with him opposing her with all his might the way she had done. The easy thing would have been to let go of her hand, as she had asked him —ordered him—, to get rid of her for once and for all. Instead he had fought against gravity, nature and her own Force to bring her back to his side. She looked over her shoulder at him, seeing how he had gotten on his feet. The tug she felt in her chest, despite the angriness corroding her veins, made her feel the weakest of the two. She wondered if their dynamic would change from now on, and above all, if they would make it alive out of that damn planet.