The trail back to the shelter is marked by leaves slotted into split twigs that they dismantle as they go. When the ground becomes boggy, they walk backwards; their boots sinking through the mud to leave a false trail for the Trandoshans, should they come across it. Between the sticky humidity of the forest and the growing discomfort of hunger and thirst, the return journey feels a hundred times more difficult. Their hair is wet with sweat, their clothing sticks in places it shouldn't. Soon all Rey can think about is how thick and dry her mouth feels. That, and whether momongs are edible.

On occasion, they support each other in their scramble through the pressing forest; a hand at an elbow where the ground is too slick with moss and algae, quick fingers to untangle plants that cling with tiny grasping spines and itch where they touch the skin… They do these things in silence. Their attention on the task at hand.

Not daring for a moment to consider that they might be grateful for each other.

Though several hours have passed since they first set off to try and trap the Trandoshans, the angle of sunlight spearing through the trees suggests the sun has barely tracked across the sky.

"The length of a day runs longer on this planet, I suppose." Kylo shrugs when Rey voices her observations aloud, though he slows his pace; his interest piqued by the topic. "A standard twenty-four-hour day is normal for most planets, but it can range from eighteen to thirty-" he stops, turning back to glance at her with a sheepish look, "you probably know all this."

"Actually I don't. Not entirely." Rey says quietly. "All that I know, I taught myself - from whatever information I managed to decrypt from the computer systems I salvaged. That's not to say I didn't learn about other planets," she says quickly, "but certainly… There are gaps."

"Huh." Kylo is quiet for a time. "Well, I wouldn't have guessed."

"Is that a compliment?"

"Don't be ridiculous," he snorts, "that was sarcasm."

But his tone is light, and Rey gives him a playful shove.

"That was a compliment." she grins.

Kylo doesn't protest.

A stream of brackish water quenches their thirst and helps to pick up their energy for a time, but it does nothing to dull the hunger pangs. When they stop to rest upon a fallen tree, Rey chuckles aloud to find herself daydreaming about the dense, tasteless sponge of polystarch bread.

"First Order fare isn't that much better," Kylo admits when she shares the source of her joke, "although the soup…. The soup isn't bad."

"Ohhh, bread and soup," Rey says with a soft moan, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. "I'd give anything for it."

Kylo says nothing. Though his gaze stays on her long past it should, until he catches himself staring and shakes out of his reverie with a flush of embarrassment.

"Colourful bugs should be avoided," he says suddenly, moving to inspect the fallen tree, "and anything with spines or stingers."

"Avoided for what, exactly?" Snapping a branch, Rey picks idly at the prone trunk; the layers of softened bark peeling back like shedding skin.

"For eating." Kylo looks to her with a raised brow, "are you squeamish about eating insects?"

"No, not at all." To prove her point, Rey teases out a fat grub from within the crumbling wood and holds up its undulating body between thumb and forefinger. "Would this be edible then?"

"Most likely." He watches, expression sceptical.

"Excellent." Slipping it into her mouth, Rey rolls it around her tongue before biting into its body with a pop. The creature's warm juices explode towards the back of her throat and she swallows it quickly before her mind can repel it. "Delicious."

"I'd like to see you say that about something with an exoskeleton," he quips, "and crunchy, grasping legs."

"Don't underestimate what a desert rat will eat," she smiles, fishing out another grub and holding it out to him on her palm, "your turn."

He draws his gaze from her hand to her face, "Oh no, you have it. Since you enjoyed the last one so much."

"Chivalrous of you." Rey says dryly, and swallows it whole this time.

As they move on, Kylo continues to share his knowledge of rainforest edibles. "Fruits, if you can find them. But avoid plants with white or yellow berries. Don't eat anything with milky sap, or shiny leaves. And most of all, don't go near mushrooms. Some are edible, but unless you know what you're looking for, there's very little difference between them and the ones that'll land you in a coma."

"How do you know this stuff?" Rey asks, chewing a young fern frond that seems on the safe list.

Kylo is silent for a time, until just as Rey thinks he's not going to answer, he mutters a quiet, "Luke."

The I don't want to talk about my past cue slides right past her. "Did Master Luke teach you these things when training you to become a Jedi?" She watches him work the reply with his jaw before opting to swallow it.

"Talking wastes energy."

Rey sighs at the sudden shift in his mood as he lengthens his strides and cleaves ahead. The gabber of momongs high in the canopy above them fill the silence left in his wake

It hasn't escaped Rey's attention that in the twenty-four or so hours that have passed since waking upon this planet, she's had rest and food - and Kylo is yet to have either. And she's willing to bet his determination to mask his injuries are taxing him far more than he cares to admit.

Neither can quite hide their relief when they finally push their way through the dense tangle of forest and reach the shelter.

"We won't stop here for long," Kylo says, dropping his cloak to the floor and falling upon it like a lead weight.

"Uh-huh. Of course not. I wouldn't want you getting too comfortable." Rey raises a brow as he splays out on his stomach, head resting upon his arms, without so much as bothering to take off his mucky boots.

"You'll get sores on your feet if you're not careful," she chastises.

"Don't care," comes the mumbled response.

"I'll wind up having to carry you."

A muffled grunt serves as his reply.

"Which I won't do, of course," she continues, "I'll just leave you for the Trandoshans. Then when they come to retrieve you, I'll take their speeder. How's that for a convenient way of killing two birds with one stone?"

Silence.

A tiny, opportunistic voice pushed to the front of her mind, urging her that now would be the time to do exactly that. Leave him here, and beat a trail back through the forest that the Trandoshans can't miss. It's no less than what he deserves for all that he's done.

Except, she doesn't really believe that. And she's not that kind of person, even if she did. Sighing, she kneels beside him and begins unbuckling his boots. It seems a strange, intimate task, and not one she's in the least bit comfortable with. But the Supreme Leader is out cold and oblivious. Not stirring even when she hauls off the mud-encrusted boots, peels off his damp socks and hiffs the footwear through the shelter doorway.

"You'll thank me later," she murmurs, pulling an edge of the cloak around him. "Actually, you probably won't."

She casts a look over Kylo's sleeping form. Even in the dim filtered light of the shelter, the purple bruises on his face stand out hard against his pale skin. She wonders again if they were inflicted before or after he was tranquilised. Afterwards, she suspects grimly, unable to imagine anyone capable of giving him such a beating if he were conscious.

"You should have joined me, Ben," she whispers, laying a hesitant hand upon the bruise at his cheek before tucking a wayward lock of hair behind his ears, "when you had the chance."

Feeling suddenly self-conscious, Rey pushes herself back to her feet and leaves the shelter. She needs to find them food. And if all else fails, at least she knows where to find grubs.

By the time Rey has fashioned a spear from a felled branch, the sun has finally passed its highest point in the sky. Her efforts to catch momongs, frogs or anything other than mosquitos proves to be futile and, stomach rumbling furiously now, she follows the pond as it narrows into a creek before converging into a river.

The fast flowing water fills her with trepidation as she watches it from the silty loam of the bank, but Luke Skywalker is on her mind as she picks her way across the rocks until she stands in the middle with feet placed wide upon two rocks and her spear poised above the fast-flowing water between them. If the old Jedi learned to hunt channel fish on the near-barren Ahch-To, so could she.

"It would be nice to have a little guidance right now, Luke," she mutters, "perhaps a pointer or two on how to do this!"

A silvery flash of movement below catches her eye and she thrusts the spear into the water, pulling it out in triumph to discover she had caught -

Absolutely nothing.

"If it's Luke's guidance you're seeking to catch fish, perhaps you should try using the Force to lift them out of the water."

Rey wobbles on her rocky perch before catching her footing and turning to face Kylo; barefoot at the river's edge with boots in hand. His hair is sleep-tousled and he looks no more well-rested than he had a few hours earlier. She resists the urge to tell him as much. "How did you sneak up on me?"

"You were busy trying to commune with a ghost," placing his boots on the ground, Kylo unbuckles his wide belt, peels off his tunic and lays them on a rock before tugging up the hem of his undershirt.

"What are you doing?" Spinning away, Rey returns her attention to the river surface, her gaze fixed on the water swirling about the rocks as she tries to ignore the sound of more items dropping to the pile. "You should be resting!"

"I'm making use of this planet's primitive bathing faculties. And I don't rest well." His voice grows closer as he wades into the current. "It's safe to look. I'm not naked."

"I don't need to look at you," Rey says sharply, ignoring the heat that flushes her cheeks, "I'm looking for fish."

But her eyes dart to him despite herself, and she holds her gaze steady on his face as she offers a tight smile, "you might want to be careful of leeches."

He grins then, before submerging himself fully and swimming deeper into the river, allowing the current to carry him downstream.

"Idiot," she mutters, resuming her search for fish. But there's a stupid tightness in her chest that stays lodged in place until she catches sight of him in her peripheral, his strokes broad and strong as he swims back towards her.

"There's no leeches, the current is too fast." He pulls himself up onto her rock and she shuffles further towards the edge to allow him space; aware suddenly of how huge his frame is when he's looming wet and near-naked beside her.

"Well good," she glances to the contoured muscles of his back before quickly blinking away, "because I wouldn't help prise them off."

"Had you been giving that some thought?" There's a lightness to his voice that surprises her - the short rest must have done him some good after all.

"Don't be ridiculous," the response is a tad too quick, even to her own ears, and she quickly scrubs a hand across her cheek as if it might wipe away the blush she can feel searing her skin.

"May I?" turning towards her, Kylo wraps a hand around the spear, just atop of her own tightly clenched hold. Water from his hair runs in rivulets down his face, forcing him to blink hard as it catches in his lashes. He gives his head a shake to flick the sodden hair from his eyes - the action so at ease that for a moment Rey can only stare, wordless; unsure how the man standing beside her now can be the same one she left sleeping in the shelter.

"Do you think you know what you're doing?" she challenges, sucking in a breath as he returns his doe-eyed attention to her. Eyes on face. Eyes on face.

"No," he shrugs, and her traitorous peripheral is aware of how his broad chest expands as he sucks in a deep breath, releasing it slowly in a draft of warm air that ruffles the loose hairs of her crown. "But I'll figure it out."

It surprises her that his voice can be so casual. As if there's nothing at all strange about him standing a foot away wearing little more than -

She drops her gaze then. Just for a moment. Simultaneously relieved to see he's kept at least some of his underclothes on and horrified at the way her line of vision insists on dipping back to the lightly-muscled planes of his stomach.

"It's all yours," she manages in a rush of escaping air, eyes suddenly searching for anything to look at except him. "The spear. Go for it."

"Thanks," he tugs the sharpened stick from her still-fastened grasp before turning away, seemingly oblivious to her awkwardness.

Annoyed suddenly, Rey jumps down from the rock with a splash. "Well, I'll leave it to you then."

She can feel Kylo's gaze on her back as she wades to the bank, and forces herself to slow. To sit upon the soft groundcover with legs outstretched before her as if she hasn't just lost her cool for no good reason.

From the corner of her eye, she watches him move to an area of the river where the current runs slower, and she kicks herself for not thinking of that first. She digs her fingers into the soft damp groundcover, pulling up tiny leaves and absent-mindedly tearing them to tinier shreds as he plunges the spear into the water, pulling it clear to find that, like her previously, he has caught nothing.

Rey huffs in relief, amused by the surge of competitiveness that almost sends her reaching for the staff-length piece of driftwood that she spies, sun-bleached like bone, bobbing at the river's edge. Instead, she lies back against the soft loamy soil of the bank and rests her hands behind her head. The river is wide enough to press back the trees and cleave a view to the muted blue sky and she stares up at slow-moving clouds, allowing herself to be lulled by birdsong and the occasional splashes as Kylo continues his quest to catch fish.

Closing her eyes, Rey reaches out with her mind and envisions the Force surrounding her, funneling into all living things. The spores within soil. The cells within trees… She envisions it, just as Luke taught her on Ahch-To. But she can't feel it.

The light thrum of the Force pulsing beneath her skin is as still and silent as it's been since she woke on this planet.

Perplexed, she tries again, brows furrowing in concentration as she clenches her fingers into balls at her side. Trying now to tap into the Dark. The rage of the river as it barrels over rocks downstream. The decomposition of creatures that once lived, buried under layers of leaf mould in the forest. The necessity of death that calls darkness to balance the light.

The response is nothing. She feels nothing.

A low growl of frustration builds within her as she tries to awaken that familiar thrum of the Force but…

"Are you okay?"

A shadow is thrown upon her as Kylo looms above her, blocking the sun. Rey flinches from the water that drips from him and rolls to push herself to her feet. "Oi! What's that about?"

"You looked… in pain," he shrugs, turning towards his clothing, warming on their rock. "Not that I care, of course."

"I'm fine. I was just concentrating on…" Rey stops herself short of admitting her concerns, "stuff."

"Right. Stuff." Kylo tilts his head at her, his lips poised on forming a question that doesn't make it past his throat. "Well, we're too exposed here. Let's keep moving."

Rey snorts as he begins to tug his pants over still-damp skin. "You're the one who's too exposed."

He turns, "huh?"

"Nothing." Rey casts a glance to the sky. The sun has begun its slow slide towards the horizon at last. "So how many fish did you catch?"

"We need to focus on edible plants," comes his muffled reply as he pulls his undershirt over his head, "not animals that require a fire to cook."

"You couldn't catch anything, could you?" Rey grins as he reaches for his tunic. "The mighty Kylo Ren could not catch a fish."

"My skill set lies in catching renegade Jedi," the quirk of a smile touches his lips as he shoves his feet into his boots and moves to sling his tunic and belt over one arm.

"And you're not very good at that, either." Rey returns, stepping out of his range in case he should try to prove otherwise.

"Are you sure about that?" In a flash, Kylo dips to pick up the discarded spear, twirling it in one hand as if it's a staff.

"Oh, you're so out of your league," the competitiveness suppressed earlier rises again as Rey sweeps up the sun-bleached length of driftwood and spins into an offensive stance as she turns back to face him.

Grinning, Kylo moves in a half-circle, forcing Rey closer to the water's edge as he gives himself better footing. Seeing his tactic, Rey steps forward with a downward strike and pushes him back, smiling as he parries with a certain kind of awkwardness that reassures her he's used to fighting with a saber, not a staff.

"You need a teacher," she quips, remembering the time he said the same thing to her.

Kylo snorts, and strikes hard, coming at her with a series of lunges and swings that push her closer to the river with astonishing ferocity; as if driven to prove that what he lacks in skill, he makes up for with power.

Ducking beneath a savage swing, Rey brings her staff around and slams him across the shoulder before jabbing it towards his face; missing his chin by a finger's breadth as he jerks back out of reach.

"I'm not sure if killing each other now is an effective way of getting off this planet," Kylo blocks another blow and inhales sharply as Rey's stick catches him hard across the fingers.

"Are you afraid?" she laughs, flicking her weapon around and forcing him to block again.

"Of my mother's wrath were I to kill her young prodigy?" Kylo flicks back his hair with a jerk of his head before locking his eyes with her own, "terrified."

Rey stops then, lowering her guard and leaving herself open to his attack. "Really?"

"No." He lunges, thrusting the spear towards her. She smacks his weapon away in the nick of time and for a full minute they're both fighting in earnest; thrusting and parrying and spinning until finally, Rey takes Kylo's legs out from under him with a low sweep that lands him flat on his back. Wincing and winded.

"Well you're lucky I do fear for your mother," Rey stops the downward thrust of her staff - just inches from his throat, "were I to kill her prodigal son."

"Ha!" Kylo shoves the weapon out of his face, although he makes no effort to rise, "you assume two things quite wrongly. One, that she'd ever harm you for killing me, and two, that I'd ever return." At her blank look, he clarifies. "The prodigal son is supposed to return."

"I don't fear that she'd harm me," Rey says, throwing her makeshift staff to the ground, "I fear what it would do to her - to truly lose you."

"She has truly lost me."

"No. I don't believe that."

Kylo rolls to his feet and stalks forward, expression dark as his knuckles whiten on the spear he still holds. "What do I need to do, to get this through to you? I am not the person you want me to be."

Rey steps back, buffeted by the sudden brunt of his anger. "I don't want you to be anyone -"

"No. You do." He bites, eyes ablaze as he stops inches short of her. "You romanticize the idea of Ben Solo - yet you don't even know who Ben Solo was! Well, let me tell you. He was angry. No less angry than Kylo Ren. The only difference between them? Ben Solo was weak, naive and pathetic. I. Am. Not."

For a moment he lingers, face close enough for them to share the same breath.

"You're wrong," she says quietly. Fiercely. Enraged by his sudden turn in mood as much as the nature of its cause. Enraged even more so by the truth of his words. "You're nothing but pathetic."

And then she's wheeling away, snatching up her makeshift staff as she leaves him on the river bank.

Chapter note: I questioned long and hard the river scene playing out the way it did (and I've still been changing things right up to posting). Kylo and Rey are, imo, a couple of total space virgins, but when I wrote of Kylo peeling off his clothes in front of her I kind of thought of it as an extension to the shirtless Force bond scene from TLJ where Kylo is completely nonplussed at turning to Rey half-naked, while she meanwhile is having a hard time looking/not looking at him.

Oooh, and I'm sorry about that ending. See, I wanted to bring a bit of UST into the story, but at the same time… They're still enemies on two sides of a war. And as much as they keep dropping their guard and having moments of at least behaving amicably towards each other, I still have to keep them at each other's throats a little bit by having them remember that fact. But I guess you probably know to expect that, given the title and premise of this story...

Please let me know your thought on this fic so far! The next instalment will be out on Sunday-ish. :)