Author's Note: I'm having some fun writing the practical side of Rey. She may be a dreamy idealist with a sense of childlike wonder, but she also knows how to handle herself, and I finally get to make good use of that. :D

Chapter 1

She was floating.

Floating through darkness, floating through nothingness. And yet, somehow, she was falling, stars and galaxies and years flying past her like swirling snowflakes. She fell, and tumbled, and fell, and then—

Nothing.

She opened her eyes and sat up with a gasp. Fog hung about her in wisps and trails. She realized after a moment that she was sitting on some kind of grass, her hands planted firmly in the dirt. Her staff lay beside her as if it had been dropped, clattering from some height.

She stood, slowly, testing her balance before putting her weight on her feet. Where was the Doctor? The TARDIS? The last thing she remembered—

What—what was the last thing she remembered? She had been talking about timelines or something like that, and then—the doors had flown open? She couldn't have been pulled out into the vacuum of space. She would be dead if she had.

She picked up her staff and slipped it into its holster at her back, taking a tentative step forward and looking around. Fog and mist surrounded her like a heavy blanket, and in the distance she thought she could see the grey outlines of what appeared to be buildings of some kind.

"Doctor?"

Her voice echoed a bit before fading away, swallowed in the fog.

Well—the ground beneath her was solid enough, and she wasn't having trouble breathing the air, so evidently she had landed on some kind of habitable planet.

Alright—so it was habitable. Was it actually inhabited? Judging by the dim outlines of the buildings in the distance, she guessed it was. Or had been, at one time.

"Hello? Anyone here?" Her hand went to her staff, ready to draw in an instant. This fog was a perfect place for any number of dangerous creatures to hide.

The only reply was the echo of her own voice.

Alright. So she was going with once inhabited but currently abandoned, then. If she could just find some sort of ship, maybe she could get off—and find the Doctor.

The Doctor….

She tightened her fingers around the cool metal of her staff and swallowed back a sudden wave of—something. Not fear. Definitely not fear. She knew how to handle ruins and strange planets. Well—not strange planets—not from experience. But theoretically, she knew what to do.

Definitely not fear.

She was fine.

Was the Doctor fine?

If he had been sucked into the vacuum of space—

She pushed back her worry. He was the Doctor. He was always fine.

And he would find her. Somehow. Because she trusted him.

Trusted that he would come back for her.

She sighed and started forward, her feet crunching lightly in the dead grass. No one had set foot here for years—she could tell that much. She had grown up among ruins. She knew a ruin when she saw one. Well—at last she wouldn't have to deal with unfriendly natives.

Hopefully.

The shadowy buildings loomed closer, and she slowed her steps as she approached, giving the area a quick scan. The mist settled about her in swirling clouds, and she shivered.

Wonderful. She had landed on a cold planet.

Her footsteps seemed loud in the fog, the only noise for miles but for the gentle murmuring of a breeze somewhere far-off. She looked down to see that she was walking on a pathway made of some kind of stone, cracked and blackened with age, or—something else. She dropped to her knees. Burns? Or—there seemed to be something odd about those cracks—

A wave of dizziness swept over her, and the world seemed to spin around her like a galaxy in fast motion. She stumbled to her feet and took a few staggering steps backward and then found herself sitting on the grass again, her breath coming in short gasps. For a moment it seemed as if the world had shifted, and the daylight that managed to make its way through the fog had blinked on and off several times.

Almost as if—

Almost—

She shook her head, pressing her fingers to her temples. She had been going somewhere with that thought. For a moment there had been something very specific she had been thinking. What—

Well, never mind now. She stood, stepping carefully around the strange cracks. Just looking at them made her dizzy—as if something swirled in their depths. So she stared at the building ahead of her instead. The fog parted for a moment, and she saw a doorframe—cracked, half-collapsed, the ghost of a once-loved home.

The silhouettes of other buildings surrounded her like specters. She couldn't go searching every one of them for traces of the Doctor. She needed to find some way she could communicate with—well, anyone. Surely whatever this planet was, it had some people on it somewhere….

She looked around. Well, the only thing she could do is head in a direction and hope she met someone.

Or better yet, see if she could find some kind of map.

She started towards the cracked porch of the house.

Something skittered behind her.

She froze.

It sounded like some kind of creature running over dry grass.