He won't let her drive. He says she's had too much to drink, and he is probably right, but that means she has to sit on the back of the speeder while he goes through a number of tedious pre-flight checks, which she suspects have come straight from the manual. When he does eventually take off his hands move over the controls in a careful manner, all his actions are considered and therefore he flies exceedingly slowly, with the craft doing no more than the recommended speed, its altitude and turning circle calibrated to be within operational parameters.

It is only when they are around an hour from home that he puts his foot down, and the speeder comes alive in his hands. She wraps her arms around his waist, puts her cheek to his back, closes her eyes and just leans on him, trusting him to do whatever he needs to. She can feel from the tilt of the vessel and the ferocity of the wind whipping through her hair that he is practising, testing himself and his abilities as he makes use of the Force to guide the craft as fast and as low as possible, as if he is some tyrannical leader chasing a girl across a desert.

By the time they are back at the camp it is dark, and Rey's eyelids feel like someone has weighted them down as she all but falls off the speeder.

Ben squints at her in the gloom. 'Can you walk or shall I carry you?'

'I can walk.' She demonstrates that she can stagger at least, while he collects the bags from the speeder panniers and dumps them in a heap in the equipment store.

He hands her a bottle of water while she is struggling with her belt and watches out of the corner of his eye while she drinks it as he seals the tent for the night.

'We need to leave,' she says, trying for clarity, although she feels like something has hit her in the chest, and the catch of her belt still refuses to come undone.

'We can discuss what to do in the morning. You're exhausted and you need to sleep.' He is across the room in a few strides, releasing her belt in a single flick and then kneeling to remove her boots one by one. It is done with dispassionate efficiency, and even in her addled state she recognises that this is not a seduction. 'Take off your clothes and go to bed.'

It soundly curiously like an order but she is too tired to resist and she begins unwinding the cloth around her chest and yanking at her sleeves. He is discarding his clothes over the other side of the room but she keeps her head down, her eyes lowered as she strips and then searches for her pyjamas, assuming that he is doing the same. He makes it to the bedroom before she does, and this time he takes the side closest to the wall, but when she clambers in she notices that something is different.

He has spread the blankets across both sides of the bed, so that the sleeping arrangements have become a double, rather than the two single areas she had laid out the night before and he raises the covers for her so that she can crawl in next to him. His arm is beneath her head before she knows it, and she rolls against his side, her head on his chest, ending the day as she began it. The sound of his breathing lulls her to sleep in seconds.

Rey wakes up in Ben's arms, cosy and comfortable and as she blinks she decides that this is a habit she doesn't want to break. His eyes are already open but he doesn't shuffle away and instead, continues stroking her upper arm in the same lazy way he appears to have been doing for a while. There is nothing sexual about this experience, she doesn't feel the urge to start seducing him and under her fingers his chest just feels like a body rather than an object of rampant desire. Rather, she is content to lean on him and he seems content to hold her.

Outside, the birds are singing with the dawn and the top of the tent is burnished with the gold of sunrise.

'Tell me about your childhood,' he asks without preamble.

All things considered, she would rather not, but it occurs to her that this is a story she can write however she prefers, now that she has the leisure to look back. Maybe it doesn't need to be that bad.

'My parents loved me very much,' she begins, feeling the truth of that statement. She was always loved, even in the times she felt most alone. 'But they got mixed up with something they couldn't control and to protect me, they left me somewhere they thought I'd be safe. They intended to come back, but they were killed and they never did. I grew up waiting for them. It wasn't much of a life, but at least I grew up. I was safe, even if I wasn't very happy. I learned to survive. If they hadn't done what they did, and left me on Jakku, I'd have been killed, or something much worse would have happened to me long before now.'

He doesn't appear able to help himself. 'Jakku. Location – Inner Rim, Western Reaches. Atmosphere – breathable. Points of interest – '

'There aren't any, believe me,' she cuts in.

'But at least you know where you're from. You know your story, your history. I've lost all that. Rey,' he says, and he stops stroking her arm and grips it instead. 'I want to go back to Exegol.'

She is stone against his side. 'No. I never want to go back there. I can't. I won't.'

'I have to. That's where I was found and there has to be a reason why. There has to be a story and I want to know what it is.' His throat works as he swallows. 'I want to know why I look so much like him - Kylo Ren. That's why you really took me from the Resistance, isn't it? Not because you were rescuing me, but because you were trying to protect them. You think there's a good chance I'm him and I've just lost my memory. That's why we're hiding in the middle of nowhere – so you can kill me if I turn out to be Kylo Ren.'

Deliberately, she extends a finger and holds it high above his forehead where he can see it, and then she drops it down so that it lands just above his eye and runs a line over his face, across his neck and down his chest, the line of the scar that is no longer there. 'You're not him,' she says. 'He was a monster and he's dead.'

'Not according to the Resistance.' He extricates himself from her embrace, rolls on his side so that he can face her and the eyes that search hers are vulnerable, beseeching. 'I need to know, Rey. I need to know my story. I can't carry on not knowing who I am.'

'Let the past die,' she quotes. 'Kill it, if you have to.'

He sighs. 'I can't.'

Maybe it is better that he doesn't find out, she thinks. The revelation is going to hurt him more than he can possibly imagine. That this bright, compassionate man, who enjoys books and reading instructions could have murdered his father, overseen an empire which stole children from their parents for a life of forced servitude, stood by while countless millions were slaughtered indiscriminately with the planet killing weapon his side had made – this knowledge will crush him. He isn't her Ben, and perhaps she is cruel to expect him to be. Perhaps she should rejoice in the fact that he has lost his memories, because this allows him to be better than he was. He can start again.

She rolls onto her back, considers the curved vault of the roof. 'I suggest we escape from Ajan Kloss first, and then decide where we're going. How about that?'

He takes a breath and at first she thinks he is going to argue, but he pushes it back. 'One step at a time then. How do you suggest we escape?'

'Ajan Kloss is a moon, with two moons of its own, but there's little in the way of habitation this far out, that's why the Resistance chose it. Ajara is a gas giant and completely uninhabited. We need somewhere big enough that we can disappear but it'll have to have decent hyperspace links so we can escape in a hurry if we need to. You're the walking encyclopaedia, what planets are near here like that – and skip the points of interest, I'm not going sightseeing.'

She turns onto her side to face him, and rolls her eyes at his wounded look. 'Cademimu V is in this sector,' he answers after some thought. 'It has a population of ten billion or so, it's an ecumenopolis, heavily industrialised so it'll be easier to hide there, and it's on the Celanon Spur, which means there'll be a lot of traffic. The Republic used to use it as a munitions depot but more recently it's become a shadowport so we're more likely to find people there who are no longer so sympathetic to the Resistance. It has an interesting history actually, its most notable ruler was…'

She holds up a hand. 'I don't need a history lesson either. It sounds perfect, we'll go there. But we need a ship.'

'Steal one from the Resistance,' he says snippily. 'You're happy to steal everything else.'

'I stole clothes for you, but you can take them back if you want. Wander around naked for all I care, it wouldn't be the first time.'

He clears his throat. 'How do we get to Cademimu then, if we don't have a ship?'

'This moon survives on logging. It's slowly being deforested, which means that there must be a spaceport somewhere big enough to accommodate cargo ships, which will arrive on a regular basis. We can pick up a ship there, just something small with a hyperdrive and we can take that to Cademimu and change it for something else. But we are going to need a long term plan – where will we live? What will we do for credits? Someone needs to keep you in the style to which you've become accustomed.'

He flips onto his back and stares at the ceiling for a while, but she isn't sure what she's done to upset him. 'I'll just…go and have a look at the navcomp on the speeder then,' she offers eventually, sitting up and unfastening the tent.

He waits until she has opened the main door and has a foot outside onto the damp forest floor before he moves. 'I like waking up with you,' he says.

She feels a blush rise to her cheeks and she opens her mouth but nothing comes out. Perhaps now is not a good time for words. Instead, she fiddles with the speeder for a bit and when she comes back to the tent he has gone to the cenote and she doesn't follow.

Ajan Kloss's spaceport is a whole day's ride away on the speeder and Rey is keen to get started. It can only be luck that the Resistance have missed them so far – they were not expecting her to hide in the middle of the forest or they would have been out with sensor equipment before now, but it can be only a matter of time before they decide to search the rest of the moon. It is likely that their efforts have been centred on the port for the last couple of days, and her hope is that they will be getting careless. She may be able to slip through their surveillance if she hides well enough.

Ben returns to camp wearing his new clothes, which appear to be almost the same as his old clothes in fit and style, except that the trousers and tunic are dark grey and his shirt is a deep red. He has picked a floor length grey cloak which swishes pleasingly from his shoulders and these colours suit him so much better than the beige combination he had on before that, although she tries to disguise it, she can't help staring at him. There is no way that they are going to be able to hide with him walking around looking like that, all cloak and hair and brooding intensity. Something stirs low down in her belly and she feels her cheeks warm for the second time this morning.

He smooths the front of his tunic self consciously while she affects not to notice and busies herself with striking camp. The speeder's panniers are quickly full and the tent, sleeping equipment and other bags are slung over the back; Rey knows they will not be needed again but she is also aware that everything has a price, and she is currently short of funds. She has just packed the food they bought yesterday and filled drinking bottles with the last of the cenote water when she notices he has beaten her to the pilot's chair.

'It's alright,' he says. 'You relax, I'll drive.'

'Relax? You fly so slowly I'll fall asleep.'

He is halfway through his pointless checks again but he flings her a quick smile that is so roguish for a second that it reminds her of his father. 'Challenge accepted. If you fall asleep, I'll buy you dinner.'

She climbs on behind him and there is a shiver of something in her stomach as she loops her arms about his waist. He smells faintly of freshly sawn wood. She isn't a dinner sort of girl but she is quite tempted by the thought of eating with him somewhere special, while he wears this outfit and she is dressed to match. That thought sustains her while he takes off, but shortly afterwards she forgets about anything but the wind in her hair and the exhilaration of flight. Now that he has mastered his craft he is a good pilot, almost as good as she is herself and she enjoys the journey immensely, whipping through the forest with her knees gripping his thighs, her fingers laced around his stomach or tucked into his belt, mirroring his movements as they bank and turn.

The outskirts of Kloss Outpost flash past her in a blur of metal, long, low buildings much like the homely wooden versions found in the jungle, except that these are dirty and rusting and several are open to the skies. There is an acrid smell of burning in the air and the few other speeders on the main route into the trading post look like they have seen hard use. This is not a town which has money. Both moons are up before Rey taps Ben on the shoulder and indicates a salvage yard on the right hand side of the road, one of the only ones which still has its signs lit at this time of night and he turns into it and hits the landing sequence.

'Let me handle this.'

He nods, but his face ripples and she wonders what kind of disguise he has prepared this time. Rey stretches her legs, knowing from long experience that the price she achieves will be partly driven by the value of the items she is selling, and partly by the way she sells them. At some length, a bored looking Toydarian flutters from the shack in the centre of the yard and Ben has the sense to put his hood up and disappear behind her. The negotiations begin well, as the speeder goes for as much as two thirds its trade value, but Rey has to stop extolling the virtues of the camping gear she is also trying to shift when she notices the amount of time the junk dealer is spending trying to peer under Ben's cloak. She decides to cut her losses and gives away the rest of her equipment for a song, and she is about to request payment in untraceable credit chips before Ben steps in.

'One moment,' he says, in his distinctive voice and the Toydarian flinches in a way she finds disturbing. Ben holds out his hand for the dealer's transaction pad and enters a few commands on it, leaving his - also distinctive – fingerprints before he hands it back and Rey is passed the remainder of her payment to put in her bag.

She exits the scrapyard at a brisk walk, leaving the flying blue trader gawking in her direction. 'Mind tricks don't work on them,' she hisses, breaking into a trot. 'And he recognised your voice, and has your biometrics. He's probably calling the Resistance right now to claim the reward for finding Kylo Ren. Why couldn't you just stand there and keep quiet, for once?'

'I transferred the credits I owed for these clothes to the merchant in the forest. I'm not a thief.' He sounds unrepentant.

Rey threads through back streets, following the increasing press of people to the landing pads and the recreation area which will have sprung up around them. Emerging from a gap between two taverns she stops to assess the situation. The streets are crowded, and there is a strong smell of burning spice in the air, accompanied by the sound of several voices raised in a slurred song. It is not yet late, but already a fight has broken out at one of the entertainment venues further along the strip, two large, stocky bodies of indeterminate species brawling to the cheers of a watching crowd. This is not a safe place, and the ramshackle nature of the buildings, the general state of disrepair into which most appear to have fallen suggests that she will need to have her wits about her if her bagful of credits is going to make it out in one piece. If she shows weakness, she will become a target. Ben has felt the danger in the air, because his hand has disappeared inside his cloak and she suspects it is now holding his lightsaber.

She pulls up her own hood and points in the direction of the brightly lit docks on the far side of the strip, stepping out into the crowd and trying to draw as little attention as possible. There are a large number of fighters, transports and small cargo vessels standing on the various landing pads, but all are too visible to the patrons of the entertainment establishments to be easily stolen – she will need to move towards the outskirts of the docking area to find what she seeks. Abruptly, a hand lands on her shoulder and she spins, ready to attack whoever it is but Ben simply shakes his head and gestures backwards into the shadows.

She follows him to the back of a tumbledown building which reeks of sewage, on which an aged sign is flickering as its power cell disintegrates. Ben takes a few steps backwards and then launches himself towards the skies, executing a perfect somersault as he clears the roofline and lands on top of the hotel. She shakes her head, trying not to be impressed at the speed with which he is picking this up, and follows him.

'This isn't going to work. Did you see the guards?' He points out toward the landing area. 'Every ship has a member of the Resistance patrolling nearby, I saw the badges on their clothes. I think they're supposed to be hiding but if you look carefully enough you can see them.'

She peers out of the shadows, expanding her awareness through the Force at the same time, quietly, subtly, making sure that anyone who might be similarly gifted won't sense her search. 'You're right. Finn is here, I can feel him. He's a stormtrooper who defected,' she explains quickly. 'How are we going to get out? If that junk dealer mistook you for Ren it won't take long before every one of those guards is alerted and starts searching for us.'

'We could fight our way out.' He looks at her to gauge her reaction. 'They have blasters but they're no match for us. We could steal a ship easily if we wanted to.'

'And then we'd be chased by all the others. They'd catch us. We'd never make it to Cademimu.' She stares out at the vessels on the landing pads. 'We're trapped,' she says.