"Run- fast as you can.
No, no one has to understand.
Fly high across the sky, from here to kingdom come,
and fall back down to where you're from.

Don't you fret my dear…
Oh, it'll all be over soon.
I'll be waiting here
For you." — The Civil Wars 'Kingdom Come'

She didn't expect him to be so close behind when she came out of hyperspace. Maybe her call to him had been too good. Either way, she was now faced with what looked to be a very modded TIE fighter on the tail of her humble transport.

She whipped forward on the steering yoke to dive beneath him and her radio crackled to life.

"Rey?"

Her eyes widened as she grit her teeth, pushing the ship into maneuvers it wasn't designed for and felt it rattle under her touch.

"Finally caught up, have we?" she called back.

How did he even know her frequency? She flicked at the controls and nearly cried. He had jammed her communications. It was now impossible for her to make contact with the planet below and the Resistance base that hid on its desolate surface.

Rey felt her body tense and a thin sheen of sweat break out on her face. This was not how this was supposed to go.

As she zig-zagged across space in an effort to shake any of his attempts to get a lock, she heard his deep yet unnervingly boyish voice come over the radio again.

"I've been looking for you," he said, and she heard a falter in his tone that she wasn't sure was him or the signal.

Rey arched a brow as she tried to make a 90 degree break and skim the planet's atmosphere. If she tried to go into hyperspace now, he'd be able to follow exactly behind her. Although she could see his ship was a little worse for wear, there was no mistaking its superiority. Her transport wasn't built for combat, had no weapons systems. She had a shield at best and her own talent at the controls, but wasn't sure if that would be enough. If she could hit the planet's atmosphere at just the right angle, though….if he could leave her alone for just long enough, maybe she could use the planet's gravity to slingshot her away. He wouldn't be able to follow her so easily then.

As she prepped the ship as best she could for what could very well be a suicide maneuver, she angled the shields to the ship's belly and watched the hull burn red as it started to skim the atmosphere.

"I remember. You told me before, right? In the woods, on the false Starkiller Base."

The temperature in the ship was beginning to rise- if she wasn't careful it would break apart under the stress. She felt her tie to him hiss on top of it all, his absolute certainty now that the dream had been real, that they had somehow impeded upon each other's unconscious minds, followed by another different emotion that was gone before she could contemplate what exactly it was.

She saw his ship hovering above hers, just enough away from the atmospheric burn, and as she looked up through the glass of the cockpit she saw (she was sure she was imagining it- had to be imagining it as he was too far away) his penetrating gaze slicing straight to her.

Kylo seemed to keep his distance, as if he were contemplating what exactly she was planning on doing. The chase had been brief, obligatory, but this was something else altogether. Her ship looked like it was on fire as it streaked across the planet and for once, he wasn't sure what to do. He could feel, somehow, that she herself was growing increasingly warm. Perhaps dangerously so.

"Rey," he called to her again through the radio. He was the only one she could talk to, after all.

"Whatever you're planning on doing," he continued, "you're smart enough to know that simple transport isn't designed for it. Hull integrity is already failing. Stop this and land."

Rey scoffed, raising up a shaky hand to her face to try and wipe away the sweat now pouring down her entire body, but as it hit her eyes it burned and her heart lept into her throat as her hand faltered briefly on the controls in reflex to the pain before correcting her angle as she piloted her ship on. She was so close- if she could just push a little bit faster…

Kylo's grip was white-knuckled as he watched her ship dip, and when she quickly righted it, it finally occurred to him what she was intending to do. Pressing his lips together, he adjusted his targeting knobs and made no effort to hide it, his weapons primed on her exhaust.

"You know that ship won't survive a slingshot," he said hurriedly, his words staccato as he tried to quickly formulate a plan to diffuse hers.

A panel that had come loose from the heat melting its joints wretched away from Rey's vessel and flew off, nearly missing Kylo's ship. Both of them jumped and it jolted across their connection, making them unsure of who had felt what.

Rey's computer wouldn't stop beeping at the fact his ship was targeted onto hers and coupled with the heat, it was beginning to drive her mad. She couldn't give in to the pressure. She had no choice but to take advantage of the fact that he wanted her alive and wouldn't dare shoot her down. Rey's eyes burned again suddenly as tears mixed with her sweat and she cursed under her breath. Her mouth only partially held back a sob, trying desperately to clear her vision enough to at least see her read outs.

"I don't understand why you're doing this!" she cried out to him finally. "Unless you want me dead, burned up in the atmosphere, leave now, Kylo Ren!"

Her voice choked as the tears streaked down her face and the controls under her hands began to shake. More alerts sounded and she knew she may never make it to the right speed to slingshot, and at this stage, even if she could, would her ship survive it? She screamed sharply in frustration and bit hard into her cheek.

Kylo growled, his lip twitching as he weighed his options, watching her ship burn up in front of him. It didn't take a sim to see that her chances of pulling off her bluff were slim, and shooting her down yielded only slightly better odds for her survival. Either way, giving up and letting her go, letting her get farther away again when he was right on top of her, was not an option. He grimaced as his grip tightened on the controls and he moved in closer.

"You know I can't do that…" he said quietly.

Rey looked up and saw the shadow of his ship looming above hers. Unable to go any faster, and unwilling to give up all of her progress, she glared angrily as the speed reading hovered relatively unchanged before staring up at the Admiral TIE now directly above her cockpit.

"What are you doing?" she shouted at him.

Kylo gave a small, empty smile.

"Saving you," he replied. "I think."

And with that, Rey watched in horror as the TIE aligned itself just off-center and crashed down onto the back end of her ship, pushing it down through the atmosphere of the planet and out of slingshot trajectory.

Kylo heard her scream over the radio but his expression remained unchanged. He glanced out of the glass and saw as the wings of her transport and the wings of his Admiral tangled inextricably together, the metal of her ship malleable from prolonged exposure to such high heat, and felt as they spun, plummeting together towards the planet's surface and an inevitable crash trajectory.

He took his hands away from the controls as casually as if he were planning to disembark, ignoring pointedly the chorus of alarms ringing from every one of his ship's consoles. He tightened his pilot's harness and reached back for his helmet before lazily pulling it over his head.

"I recommend," he called again, his voice pitched impossibly low through the helmet's modulator, "That you tighten your restraints and prepare for ejection."

He could feel her terror and annoyance bleeding through to him, and as much as a part of him was amused, he couldn't shake some sense of terror himself.

If we're going to die, we're going to die together.

Their ships were tumbling rapidly through the sky of the wasteland with nothing but hard, parched earth waiting to greet them. He had no idea what would happen if they survived this, but he'd deal with it if they survived.

As they came close to ejection altitude, "I hate you," he heard Rey's voice say over the din, and he couldn't help but smile.

"Pretty last words, for a Jedi," he quipped back, but there was no force behind it, and Rey clung tightly to her harness as the universe spun around her. She'd already stopped trying to keep up with what direction they were going in, all of her senses focused on anticipating the one alert that would tell her it's safe to eject. Somehow she started to feel a sense of calm come over her as she stared up at his ship lodged against hers. If she's going to die, she'll at least take him with her. Hopefully.

"Tell me!" she half sobbed. "Please tell me why we're probably going to die right now? Why all of this had to happen? At least before I die for it?"

Kylo's aloofness faltered and he frowned. Absently he tugged on the straps of his harness although they could go no tighter and he paused. "You should never have gotten involved with the Resistance. You should have stayed on Jakku. Stayed a scavenger."

"I tried!" she screamed back at him. "But every single person I met told me to leave."

He scoffed. "You were foolish to listen to them."

"No I wasn't!" she shouted defensively, almost on reflex. She frowned, not exactly sure how she could justify how she hadn't been wrong, but she could make out details on the surface now and knew they were getting close. She heard him sigh.

"You ruined me," came his clipped voice. He spoke slowly. "This is all your fault." and as her brows shot up in incredulous shock at such a suggestion, she heard a loud bang as the canopy of his ship flew open and his pilot's seat shot into the air. She felt it- the ejection was premature.

"No!" she screamed, and as his form disappeared into the deep azure sky of the planet, her console finally rang with ejection warnings. She stared at the flashing symbols [EJECT] [EJECT] [EJECT] blaring across every screen and, breathing heavily, she gripped one hand into her harness and slammed her hand on the eject button. She felt herself sucked out of the top of the transport and the freezing air sliced through her overheated skin. She couldn't breathe as she soared higher and higher, trying desperately to keep her head pressed back against the headrest, and as stars flickered across her vision, she saw the silver billow of a parachute before she blacked out completely.


A/N: Thanks for your patience, guys. I'm actually in Japan right now- things have been crazy. Hopefully more regular updates will resume soon, but know that I have two other chapters already done!

So they finally meet! Aaaand I kinda ripped off 'Farscape' a bit but the idea was *so good* I had to use it. This chapter is a lot shorter than I thought it was? I'm really sorry. But like I said, I already have two more chapters in the wings. Angsty times are ahead of us, my dears. I hope you're prepared. And thanks SO MUCH as always to all of you who have left reviews and followed and all that good stuff- I love, no, LIVE to read what you guys have to say, so thank you so much. :)