A/N: Sorry this chapter took a little longer than normal, but there's some pretty substantial stuff in this chapter so I wanted to make sure to get everything right. Thank you for your patience! I hope you all enjoy!

"Why didn't you wake me up?"

Her complaint was expected but unwelcome.

"Are you dead?" Kylo asked. "Am I?"

"What?"

"Are you dead?" he said again, turning from the bag he'd been rifling through. "Did I let anyone onto the ship? Call someone from the Order to come and take you in your sleep? Did I kill you? Or are we still as safe as we can be, given the circumstances?"

Her bottom lip bobbed for a moment, attempting to form an answer that wouldn't support him.

"Try looking at what I might be doing right instead of always assuming I'm doing it wrong," he muttered as he stood up and walked away.

Much to his annoyance, Rey followed. "It doesn't matter how good of a job you did or didn't do; I told you last night that I would be the one keeping watch, and you went out of your way to disobey that rule! It didn't even take a day for you to go against something I said!"

He knew he shouldn't open his mouth. Knew he shouldn't poke the proverbial beast. But he did anyway. Because he'd stopped caring long ago.

"You know, you still haven't answered my question."

She met his taunts without missing a beat. "And you still haven't answered mine."

Kylo stopped, spinning to face her. "Honestly? I figured you need all the sleep you can get. So I didn't wake you up."

Her frown deepened.

"Oh, was that not malicious enough for you?" he crooned. "What would you rather I say? 'I've been in contact with Snoke himself the whole eight hours you were sleeping,' or, 'I've been plotting all this time to kill you in the cruelest way,' maybe? Sorry, it's just not in my cards. I risked my life to save yours; I'm not going to do anything to endanger you now. That would be stupid."

He turned away before he could even read her expression. She said something else as he approached the ration shelves, but he chose not to hear her. He pulled one down and slid onto the bench nearest to him, tearing it open and preparing for the harsh rebuke he was sure to get.

"...I already don't trust you," she was saying as she walked in, "and then you go and do something like this to make it worse! I can't-"

"Rey!"

She stopped short as Kylo stood. "It's happened! It's over! There's nothing you can do about it; there's nothing I can do about it. I stayed by that hatch all night, and I made sure no one blew us up. That's it. It would be best for both of us if we could just forget all of this and move on."

He grew aware of how threatening his posture had become and he backed down, seating himself again on the bench. His eyes he trained downward, staring at his food as if it was the only thing he could see. Any moment now, Rey's shouts would echo through the metallic interior of the ship. Kylo had unleashed a force of nature over something as petty as who kept night watch, but he wasn't sure he'd made a mistake in doing so. He wished she would see how ridiculous she was being. Wished she would realize that he had nothing to gain from going back.

After several seconds of silence, he checked to see that she wasn't standing over him, lightsaber in hand, ready to strike him down. She wasn't. She'd moved across the room and pulled a ration pack from the pile, herself. It was like she'd decided he didn't exist. They met glances over their food every once in a while, but she'd look away, still silent.

He so wanted to say something about knowing where she'd hidden the weapons, to say that even though he knew exactly where they were, he hadn't taken them. However, though that could potentially promote trust, it would probably only destroy what little of it they shared, so he kept that information to himself. Besides, if he told her, she'd move them so if, Maker forbid, the need arose, he wouldn't be able to find them.

When Rey finished, she cleaned up after herself and left without another word. Kylo watched her, simultaneously astonished and baffled by her sudden silence. Was she not going to put up a fight? Was she going to lay down and let it go for once? Surely not. That was far too much to hope for. Something worse had to be brewing.

He'd tread lightly.

She was still silent when he met her in the main cabin. When he walked past, she didn't even look up. He plopped himself down across the room from her, noticing for the first time what it was she was doing - tearing her old, tattered clothes into strips. Several times, he opened his mouth to ask her why, but he wasn't going to start something else if she wasn't going to, either.

Eventually, she looked up and eyed him as he'd been eyeing her. "What?"

He shook his head. "Nothing."

She wasn't buying that. She held up the cloth in her hands. "I suppose you want to know what I'm doing."

Now was a good time to weigh his options before proceeding. Was this a trap? Did she want him to ask what she was doing? Was it really that important at all? After deciding he had nothing to lose, he nodded.

"Of course, you do," she snorted. "You can't keep your nose in your own business."

She resumed her task without answering his question. Kylo rolled his eyes.

They sat like that for almost an hour, neither one of them talking, neither one of them acknowledging the other's presence. They might as well have been in two different galaxies.

Kylo took to fiddling with the edges of his sleeves. It was strange how loose these new clothes felt. He almost felt...naked, half the time. More vulnerability. Exactly what he needed.

Rey wasn't paying attention to his squirming. Kylo almost found it amusing just how focused she was on such a menial task. The strips were uneven at best and in tatters at worst, but it was as if the entirety of the galaxy was woven in the threads of the old material. Fascinating as she found the cloth, Kylo was unamused.

"I'm going to…" he mumbled, not bothering to finish his sentence with actual words.

He shifted to stand, his joints popping as he moved.

"You said something last night that I'm not sure I understand."

Of course she'd waited until the last moment possible to broach the topic. Whatever was most inconvenient for him.

He sat back on the floor, sighing. "I'm going to need you to be more specific."

"I'll get there."

She tore the last of her strips, folding them and setting them aside. Her pace was painstaking, but not because she cared about making sure the tear was neat. The flick of her gaze in his direction every few seconds was enough to tell.

"We'll need to find a way to sanitize those," she said when she'd finished. "They could be patches. Bandages, if we need them."

Leaving would start another fight. Kylo knew that. It took everything he possessed not to walk out, anyway. He cleared his throat. "You were saying?"

She stared at him. It felt as if she was scanning him, trying to find her answer without asking a question. Kylo met her glare evenly.

"You said something about us being...what was it you said? 'Tied together,' I think it was." She folded her arms over her chest. "Would you care to explain that?"

"Not really."

Her suspicion morphed into anger, and she opened her mouth, likely for another tirade. Kylo held up a hand.

"Please...don't."

Her mouth closed, but her frown remained. They were caught in a staring match for several seconds, but Kylo backed down first, closing his eyes and tilting his head back against the wall.

"I'm not sure I could give you as much information as you'd like."

"Given the circumstances, I'll take what I can get. Anything is better than nothing."

Kylo sighed, licked his lips. He opened his eyes, but he didn't move his head from its place on the wall. "Snoke seems to think we're connected. In a way that most people are not. He wasn't sure how - he never said so, but I knew. Then, he had me bring you to him just to make sure and...well, then I don't think he had to wonder. I guess when we brought you onto Starkiller and-"

"When you brought me onto Starkiller. Those weren't the orders you were given; you were supposed to get the map from BB-8. You said you didn't need BB-8 because you had me. You brought me onto Starkiller, not the Order."

He gaped at her for a moment before regaining his senses, shaking his head, and waving her off. "When we," he gave her a pointed glare,"brought you onto Starkiller, you and I managed to tie ourselves together when I tried to pull that map from your head and you fought back. And that's it, I guess. That one moment stuck us together. At least, that's what Snoke believes. I thought he was crazy until recently. Seeing you, hearing you, meeting you in my dreams. Starts to happen enough and you think that maybe your master's crazy delusions aren't so crazy after all."

He swallowed, prepared to continue, but Rey spoke before he could.

"How do we get rid of it?"

Her voice was small, frail. Kylo looked up at her, startled to see that she looked pale, almost green. She seemed terrified.

"I'm...not sure we can."

If her face could've fallen any farther, it did.

"So this is forever, then? This...whatever it is? It's always going to be there, that's what you're saying."

Kylo scrambled to recover. To fix whatever it was he'd said that had upset her so much.

"Rey, I told you I didn't know very much about this. We could try and find more about it, maybe ask...ask Luke if he knows-"

"No."

She stumbled to her feet and left. Kylo knew better than to follow.

When Rey finally wandered back into the same vicinity, hours had passed. The sun was setting, and Kylo was watching from the copilot's seat through the cockpit viewport. He sensed her before he saw her; she hovered in the doorway before walking inside and plopping herself in the seat next to him.

She was silent for a long time and Kylo was prepared to receive a long lecture. Technically, he'd been banned from the cockpit - an addendum already given to the rules Rey'd set only the night before - but he didn't figure there was any way she could punish him. Not out here. Still, he wasn't looking forward to the fight that was sure to come of it.

But she didn't say anything. Not about that, anyway.

She stared out the viewport, same as him. Neither one of them looked at the other.

"Can you…?" She shifted, clearing her throat. "Can you always see what's in my head?"

"No."

It was clear she didn't believe that.

"I suppose I could if I tried, yes," he amended. "Even though we're bonded - if we are - I'd have to make a conscious attempt most of the time. And even then, it probably wouldn't work the way I wanted it to. Sometimes, it just happens, as we know from the few encounters we've had already. But with the connection being so undeveloped, so young, to do it at will would take effort. Practice. Time and care."

That neither of us is willing to give, he added silently.

"Is there anything to do for us to fix it? Would it fade away if we ignored it?"

He shot her a sidelong glance. "I don't know what you think we were trying to do before all this."

"Maybe we were subconsciously exploring the connection because we weren't entirely aware of it, but now that we are-"

"Rey, this isn't just going to go away. From what little I've been able to find on the subject, these things aren't easily forged, which almost certainly means they aren't easily broken. And after what we've been through and given the situation we find ourselves in, I don't know how you think we'll be able to just forget all about each other."

"The only other option is keeping it, Kylo, and I'm not doing that! Not with you!"

Something in Kylo snapped. "Can we stop that? Can we just accept the fact that, for the time being, we are in the exact same boat? You get caught, I get caught, Rey! So let's stop doing... whatever this is and start thinking like we're on the same team! Or at least the same planet!"

Finally, he'd turned to look at her. Her mouth was agape, her brow twisted in a scowl. He heard the stirrings of a protest in the back of her throat, but he plowed on before she could continue. It was his turn to talk. His. She'd gotten her turn.

"Why don't you realize that if you die, I die? I'm on your side! I have to be, right now! I get that! Do you? Do you realize that it's cooperate or die? This isn't just about you anymore, Rey, this about the Resistance! Everyone you care about! Are you willing to let them die because of me?"

She swallowed hard, and Kylo swore he could see tears glistening in her eyes. "No."

"Okay! Then can we please get it together for two seconds! Let's...act like adults and not children!"

He slumped back in his seat, running a hand through his hair as he caught his breath. Rey snorted next to him. "A little ironic, coming from you."

Kylo brought his hand down on the console. "That's exactly what I'm talking about, Rey! These jabs at each other are getting us nowhere!Can we stop this arguing and talk, please? I understand our situation is far from ideal, but this? This fixes nothing! I get it! You hate me, and you want me dead, and the thought of being connected to me makes you ill! Fine! But let's discuss it when we aren't running for our lives from people that want us both dead! Both of us, Rey!"

He panted, staring her down. She stared defiantly back. After a beat, she turned to look out the viewport again, mumbling something Kylo couldn't make out. Still, he was sure he could guess the general message.

This time, he was the one to walk out. Rey was smart enough not to follow.

"Of course."

Of course now would be the time this would happen. Of course he'd be here. Of course. Of course.

So much for sleep being her escape.

"Why are you here right now?" his voice echoed. "Shouldn't one of us be awake?"

"And that person has to be me?"

"According to you, yes."

She could hear the smug smile on his face, and oh, what she'd give to slap it off. "Why are you here?"

"Sleeping keeps me out of your way. At least, I thought it did. I thought maybe I'd finally found a way to avoid fighting with you. Apparently not."

Rey groaned and flopped onto her back. A soft thud met her ears moments later, leading her to believe that Kylo had done the same. She put her hands over her face, taking a deep breath and mulling over her options.

She had so much she wanted to say. So much she wanted to scream in his face. She wanted to make him feel small for every atrocity he'd ever committed, wanted him to hurt like she hurt.

But he was right. They were working together now to stay alive, whether she liked it or not. They would both be on the run for a while if Rey was to believe him and the motives he gave. And if she wanted it to be bearable, she was going to have to swallow her pride for now and try to come to some sort of temporary truce.

She took a deep breath through her nose. "Kylo-"

"I really don't want to do this right now, Rey. Please. We don't have to talk to each other. You don't even have to acknowledge the fact that I'm here. Silence is fine."

"Will you let me speak?"

She heard him huff. After a moment, "If you must."

His attitude was not making her next statement come any easier. But if she wanted to make peace, she had to be the one to extend her hand. After a long pause, she forced out the hardest sentence she'd ever had to form in regards to this man.

"I just wanted to say that you were right."

The words were fast, jumbled together so they were hard to understand. But they were out there. She'd said them.

Unfortunately.

"What?"

Rey rolled her eyes. "Oh, you heard what I said."

"No, actually, I'm not sure I did."

Though it irritated her, it's not like she could blame him. She couldn't quite believe it, either.

"I said, you were right," she huffed as she sat up. "Fighting won't keep us alive. Cooperating will. So, as much as I'd love to give you a piece of my mind, there's a time and a place, and it's not now or here."

"You're actually agreeing with me?"

"Not entirely. But it would be arrogant of me to think that you don't have a point."

She felt...relief? Contentment, maybe? A similar sentiment to those flowered in the Force around her, light and overpowering.

"I'd like to revisit our connection."

The calm feeling vanished as if it had never existed. "I already told you all I know."

"You told me how you found out about it. Not what 'it' is."

He shifted but offered no answer. Rey frowned. "Can you come to me? I'd be more comfortable if I could see you."

The shifting sounds stopped. "I've told you I can't do that. And I've told you why."

A vague conversation from what seemed like years ago came to mind. A then-stranger had rambled something about not wanting to endanger her or place her in the way of their nightmares. Once she'd found out that her strange companion was none other than Kylo, she'd entirely disregarded every conversation they'd had, finding it easier to forget them than it was to remember how vulnerable she'd been in front of him. Up to this point, though she hadn't given it much thought in that amount of time, she'd assumed he was lying, she supposed. But now…

"You weren't making that up?"

"There were few things in those conversations that I made up."

Who you were being one of them, she wanted to say. But she kept her mouth shut.

She pushed herself to her feet. "I guess that means I'm coming out to you."

"Are you really going to risk doing that again?"

Rey shot a glare in what she assumed was his direction. "I've done it twice and survived just fine. I just have to remind myself not to let it swallow me. It isn't dragging me in, I'm choosing to enter. I have the power. It does not."

It was silent as she dusted herself off.

"Fine," he finally said.

The inflection of his voice projected that if she died, he'd be standing over her grave shouting 'I told you so.' She ignored him; she knew what she was doing.

After taking a deep breath, she walked out in the direction of his voice, her steps slow and cautious despite her confident words. Faint light followed her, as it always did, from her little patch, lighting the way, but only a few feet in front of her. She'd never gone out very far, definitely not as far as she was traveling now. The anxiety twisting her stomach into knots got worse the farther she went, and she began to understand Kylo's warning.

Eventually, it grew to be too much, and, afraid to go any farther, she stopped.

"Kylo?" she called, her cheeks flushing. "Kylo, can...can you meet me here? I don't want to go any farther than this."

She expected jeers. Taunts. Mocking laughter or words. But he did none of that. Instead, he met her request with slow, even steps, measured so as not to alarm her. When she could make out his silhouette in her light, she closed the gap, trying to ignore the sigh of relief that escaped her without her consent.

They stood, avoiding each other's gazes for a minute or more before Rey took charge of the situation and sat down, crossing her legs. Kylo followed suit, relieved at being given something to do.

"So..."

"So."

"We can share dreams. Clearly. What else can we do?"

She tried hard not to stare - she knew it would make them both uncomfortable - but she was curious. And desperate.

"Well," he started, pulling his lower lip between his teeth for a moment. "We've managed to project ourselves in some way across the galaxy so we can both see and hear each other over great distances. I'm sure that could be done by normal means, but to use those means would require practice and purpose and a will that we don't have."

"I wouldn't try that hard just to see you." After she realized what she'd said, she added, "No offense."

"I'll live." He cleared his throat and started his speech once again. "There's also the possibility of us being emotionally linked. I have less evidence of this, but I've had my suspicions for a while. Unexplainable mood swings, random bursts of nervous or excited energy, things of that nature. I've felt your peace, I'm almost certain. Maybe you were meditating or-"

"I've felt your anger." Rey's voice was quieter than she'd expected it to be. "Your…"

She wasn't sure how to describe the rush of things she'd felt from him on occasion. The only word she could manage to scrape up was 'mess.' It was a twisted storm of so many different things that Rey wasn't sure that it wasn't just all the emotions on the spectrum rolled into a ball and flung at her.

Kylo realized that she wasn't going to finish her sentence and he continued. "And that leaves us being linked in some cruel manner where we can experience the other's pain."

That would explain the pain flashes. But what had he felt from her? She'd play dumb and maybe he'd tell her. "How do you figure that?"

He seemed surprised by her question. "Well, I...I just assumed...when Snoke-"

He stopped without any indication that he'd continue. Rey found herself leaning forward. "What?"

When he looked at her, his face displayed guilt the likes of which she'd never expected to see on his features. "I could feel what he did to you. I tried to deny it at first, but it's harder to do when you can feel the ghosts of what you're denying. I know what he did because I could feel what he did. I'm just sorry I didn't stop it sooner. I was a coward, and instead of stopping it, I left you alone. It seemed easier to feel a familiar pain than deal with a new one."

"New one?"

His eyes bore holes into hers, pleading with her not to make him voice the answer aloud. That alone caused the answer to hit her like a punch, knocking the air from her lungs. She averted her gaze to let him know he no longer needed to explain.

She was his new pain. The fact that he'd had to watch her suffer when he knew she'd done nothing wrong. He'd sat by and let it happen. But was it because of something else?

No. This was just another lie. It had to be.

'Cooperate,' she reminded herself. 'Allow yourself to trust, just a little.'

She turned to his eyes, the one thing about him she knew she could trust. They never lied. It seemed to Rey that they couldn't. What she found in them was something that, deep down, she already knew: he was telling the truth.

Overwhelmed by this development, she looked away.

"So, if we ignore this...connection," a small part of her wanted to call it a 'bond', but that word seemed too soft, too...intimate, "it stays unpredictable. We have to live with the fact that sometimes we'll randomly connect to each other until one of us dies."

"To put it bluntly."

"But," she sighed, pulling her knees to her chest, "if we learn more about it, open up to it, explore it, we could potentially learn to control it."

Kylo was slow to respond. "I'd say that's a safe assumption, yes."

"Then I guess we don't really have a choice."

"I guess you're right."

They fell into silence.

Rey tried to ignore the insistent gnawing in her stomach. Something about being connected to him in such a close way felt...wrong. He was a horrible person. What kind of things did he think about? What atrocities did he relive every day in his memories? How many of them would Rey be privy to?

The weight of what she'd just agreed to settled squarely on her shoulders, and she found herself panicking. She couldn't do this. Couldn't open herself up to be completely vulnerable to this man, this monster. Despite the logical decision they'd come to, and the semi-agreement they'd managed to make, Rey was terrified.

If there was a time to run, it was now.

"I'm...I'm going to go keep watch," she whispered. "Someone needs to."

Kylo tried to stop her, he protested even as she stood, but he was too late. She'd already begun to wake herself.

She shot out of bed as fast as her tired limbs would allow, forcing them to propel her across the ship to her belongings. She didn't have much, but what she had was shoved into a small pack. Slinging it over her shoulder, she slipped back towards the ration shelves, taking a stack and shoving it into her pack with the rest of her things. Checking to make sure she had all she needed, she made for the hatch.

"Rey?"

His voice was sleepy and uncertain. She stopped in the middle of unlocking and lowering the ramp, straightening up and turning towards him at the slowest pace she could manage.

"What's in the bag? Where are you even-"

The sleepiness left his eyes and something else replaced it. Something much darker. Rey could no longer meet his gaze.

"I'm...going for a walk."

Even to her own ears, it sounded like a poorly cobbled excuse, which it was. Sort of. But now that she was awake and far away from the swampy darkness, she saw that running wasn't the sole course of action she could take. A viable one, for sure, but not her only option. So maybe a walk to clear her head was in good taste.

Kylo stared at her with what Rey determined to be a mixture of disbelief and disappointment before turning to walk away without a word.

When he was gone, Rey turned and threw open the hatch, forgetting about the ramp. She hopped down into the sand and straightened the strap on her shoulder, breathing deeply. Maybe she'd come back. Maybe she wouldn't.

But right now, she'd walk.

A/N: The dreams are back! It's a little difficult to get them asleep at the same time, but I did it, lol.

I'm really trying to speed things up just a little bit. I feel like things are moving too slowly sometimes and the last thing I want is for you guys to get bored. Maybe you're not bored, though and I'm just paranoid. Who knows?

Hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! Thank you so much for reading! Your feedback is always so loved and appreciated! Until next time!