The air hummed as Kylo hacked the vines and undergrowth from the landing gear of his small, unmarked shuttle with his lightsaber. The craft had a light coating of moss beginning to grow in the crevices between panels on the ailerons, a few spots of which had begun their inevitable creep towards the ground. General dinginess of the hull aside, it was no worse for having spent the last several months buried in the jungle. He had struck out at dawn, as soon as the first light had begun to creep through the window and the rain had let up enough that he would not be soaked.

The temptation to remain there with the girl had been strong, but his sense of self-preservation was stronger. He had allowed himself a last, long look at her sleeping form to memorize it before silently gathering his minimal belongings and striking out into the wilderness to find his transport.

He had no destination in mind, and powered down the engines to maintenance levels to preserve their capacity. Thyferra was already a distant green blob receding behind him.

So the Resistance thought he was still worth spying on. This development had all the hallmarks of one of his mother's operations, but Kylo had been surprised to see it was Rey they had sent after him. He had suspected by her still-clumsy practice with the Force that she had not been training with his uncle, and the confirmation of this hunch caught him off-guard too. As had her eagerness to climb into his bed.

Kylo flipped on the autopilot, and moved to the rear of the shuttle to inspect the supply rations in the kitchenette. It was uncomfortably warm in the shuttle and he stripped down a few layers, his bare arms sweating slightly as the climate system set about cooling and dehumidifying the air. He settled into the table with a cup of caf and leaned his head back against the wall, eyes closed.

It had been months already since he had been exiled from the Knights, and when Kylo stopped moving long enough to tally the days, a creeping dread began to take hold of him. The Supreme Leader was wise, but Kylo felt Snoke had been too hasty to dole out this particular punishment on him without even hearing out Kylo's thoughts on how they could make an ally of Rey. Snoke would have had only to look into Kylo's mind, something he'd never shied from in the past, to see her nascent potential.

More than anything, he hated the stasis and uncertainty of his situation. It stirred unhappy memories he'd spend too long suppressing. His father had seemed to revel in chaos, in the free-wheeling, barnstorming, unstructured life of a smuggler scoundrel. They were not alike in this way, just as they were not alike in almost any way that Kylo had ever been able to discern. Neither had his mother been like his father, and it left him wondering what she had ever seen in him. But he could never shake the feeling that when either of them looked at him, all they saw was the sum of the qualities they despised in the other.

Being sent away to train with his uncle had been a temporary relief. The monotonous structure of the days on the wind-whipped plain had soothed him at first, but Kylo had quickly grown impatient with his cohort and even with Luke as it became apparent how intuitively he could manipulate the Force, and how they struggled to master tasks he had taught himself long ago. Needling them about their deficiencies became his favorite pastime, so when Master Snoke had visited them to observe the progress of the new Jedi academy, Kylo had barely disguised how he relished being praised above them.

In hindsight, he was forced to admit his actions then were not unlike that of his father's, and he hated Han even more now than when he'd lived for it.

He was sitting in the cockpit the next day, one foot braced against the instrument panel and his arm slung over his head, when he felt her too strongly to ignore. He had schooled himself to ignore temporary spikes in the bond, but this was…. different, somehow. Kylo stared out at the stars without seeing, waiting for the feeling to subside.

When it instead grew stronger, he ran his hand through his hair and slouched lower into the seat, bracing himself against it physically. He noticed the strange sensation in the pit of his stomach, as though the craft were moving but his body was stationary. He glanced at the nav equipment to be sure - they were holding steady.

It was her, then. Was she…?

Kylo, he heard her say as distinctly as if she were there with him.

"Yes…?" he said aloud. He was startled to hear her speaking through the Force.

I think you'll like this, she slurred her words slightly.

"Rey?" he said, but he knew she would not heed him if she could even hear him.

She was with someone, that much was evident, and they were both drunk. Kylo closed his eyes and laced his fingers over his head, stretched his neck against the weight of his arms. He had nothing better to do than watch her, he supposed.

Whether it was her near-inebriation or the distance between them, the images came to him piecemeal: her hand tracing under someone's shirt, fingers hooking into her waistband, her squirming against him and grinding her hips against this other man's thigh, giggling as this stranger's tongue swept against hers.

Kylo propped his other foot up against the console and chuffed. Did she mean to show him this, or had alcohol simply impaired her judgement to the point where she couldn't keep from doing so? Not that he objected, but… the reality of her being with another so soon after him was intruding on the hazy afterglow of their recent encounter. He had never been able to decide if his inclination to watch was merely a biological function, a sort of deviancy, or a hybrid product of unslaked desire and practicality. In truth, regardless of whether it simply allowed or not, the complications of sustained relations with another person were a burden he was uninterested in harboring.

He raised one eyebrow as this stranger grabbed her ass a bit too eagerly and she started at the contact with her bruises. She moaned into his mouth and twined her calf around his leg. Kylo bit his lower lip as he began to feel a throbbing ache in his own groin that mirrored hers. He lazily undid his trousers to give his swelling manhood more room as he watched her passively.

They were doing a strange dance of sorts, one where Rey repeatedly tried to get this partner to hold her wrists somehow, but he kept dropping their arms back to their sides. She finally gave up trying and dropped to her knees, fumbling with the closure on his trousers with numb fingers. Kylo felt the twinge in his own jaw as she worked her mouth furiously on the man's half-hard dick, kept trying to get him to hold her head to him, but he leaned stupidly against the tree they had been pressed against in response.

He was hard now, and Kylo languidly stroked himself wishing it were his cock in her sweet mouth instead.

"What are you going to do, Rey," he wondered out loud.

There was no answer from her end, and he teased himself with his thumb on his head, swirling the pad of his digit over the sensitive, swollen flesh. His jaw and tongue felt limp with her exertion, but he smiled slightly at the realization that their bond was this much stronger already.

A moment later, he felt a bone-deep ache like he had not known in some time spread through his lower torso, one that hitched his breath and stilled his hand. It was her unsatisfied need, and it was so strong, so consuming that he groaned aloud realizing what had happened. He felt as though someone had kneed him in the groin.

"Fuck," he muttered viciously, catching a snippet of the man's unconscious face as Rey sat on the ground beside him, delicately arranging his clothes as best she could over his softening, fading erection.

Kylo stood abruptly, grimacing as he tucked himself back into his pants and moving to the rear of the shuttle to pace in the small hold. The lingering sensation of their thwarted desire prickled his loins, but he refused to give in to the temptation of returning to her memories as he had before to satisfy himself. No, this moment was instructive, albeit annoying. He had taken a calculated risk that their union would strengthen the bond, had let her push him well past his intended limits, had in turn pushed her beyond ones she didn't even know she had, and now the proverbial matches were doing their work.

There was no way out. They would be forced to forge a path together somehow, to meet in the middle.

The voice woke him from a sound sleep, as it had so many times before.

Come to me, Kylo Ren. It is time to complete your training.