chapter summary:

Where a desert girl has to learn the ways of the jungle and her nerf-herder, laser brained bondmate waits patiently and peacefully for his beloved to forgive him for stealing her V-card and come back.

Kylo drifts in and out of consciousness.

Rey can feel him constantly even as she's running away and the physical distance between the two of them grows. Sometimes he pulls at their bond in a fever, making her stumble and long to turn back and go to him. Sometimes he's more lucid and watches her placidly, seeking out the comfort of her mind but never saying a word.

Whatever "healing" she did to him has taken its toll on both of them. While her bondmate remains slumped on the ground, hurt and confused, Rey has a hard time staying on her feet. She stumbles and wavers and has to stop and rest far more than a young Jedi in the peak of her physical fitness should have to.

And she has absolutely no idea where she's going. No sort of guidance at all other than for a general notion to get as far away from him as fast as she can. Which turns out to be hardly fast at all since it's so dark now that she can barely see except for what the short glow of her saber can show to her.

A few more steps, just a few, and the ground seems to sway and roll beneath her feet, sickness rolling off of her in waves. Kylo is struggling to sit up. Progress for him is weakness for her and that's never been more true than it is now.

It had taken a lot to save that laser-brained fool's life. Rey has no doubt that she'll come to regret that decision very soon.

Letting him live was the wrong choice. She may be bonded to him, but she has something far greater that now defines her life: a duty to the Resistance. To her friends and new family who have given up so much and who in the hell was she to betray them like that and save her other half? She should have killed him. Should have let him die even if that meant her own death because the galaxy is about so much more than only the desires of one single person.

Killing him would have been the right thing to do. And she didn't do it. Someday very soon, she'll have to come to terms with that.

Until then, it's just one foot in front of the other. A slow, meandering lurch as she strives to get away from the root of all her evils while she still can.

Further complicating things is that there's also something very off about this planet that they're now on. Everything seems to react to her. Plants recoil as she moves past them, grass blades shrink and quiver when her lightsaber lantern draws too near. Even the inanimate things like the rocky bed of gravel and boulders she finally comes to rest upon when two of the moons are high in the sky seem to radiate an opposing force in effort to repel her.

So you can feel it too?

Kylo has tried to talk to her off and on as she trudged away from him. He had been surprisingly calm about their shared change in fortune. It made her highly suspicious.

But Rey is so tired. Her head is so heavy on her knees when she slumps down and rests it against them. She just can't with him right now.

"We're not on speaking terms, Kylo. Go away."

A spike of concern ripples over to her and she has to squeeze her eyes shut to fight back the surge of nausea it creates. He must be able to sense that she's not well.

Where do you think you're running to, little scavenger? Do you know some secret to this planet that you're not sharing?

Rey scoffs and shakes her head. Maybe he can feel that as her answer and maybe he can't. Either way she meant it when she said she wasn't going to talk to him.

Sluggishness finds her next. Dull or aching pains that prick at her nerves.

The lughead is trying to stand up, she realizes dimly. He's trying but is still far too weak and failing every time until he eventually gives up. She can see him there clearly in her mind. Sitting right where she left him, staring up at the endless sea of unknown stars in the sky.

The stars look exactly the same when she forces her own head up. She hadn't gotten very far away.

Rey pulls her wrappings tighter around herself, shivering from the dampness in the air and strangeness of her fortunes rather than from any real sort of chill. Since she has nothing else, she uses the computer panel – the one she cleaved from their escape pod before it sank into the mire – as a pillow. It's no more comfortable than the rock she'd been using before.

Somewhere in the far and near distance, her bondmate rubs the side of his head with a frown.

Neither of them get even a moment of sleep that night.

Before Kylo Ren had crashed into her ship and destroyed the engine and took her virginity and ruined her life, Rey had been flying near to this planet for a reason. It wasn't purely sheer luck that they'd crashed here.

Okay, it had been sheer luck that they'd made it to the surface. That part shouldn't have happened. But the Resistance had been investigating this planet as a possible site for a base. Rey isn't sure how they first zeroed in on it, but now that she's just discovered a long, long dead body in Rebellion gear it makes sense.

The corpse is mostly a skeleton by now, and an incomplete one at that. Its decomposition has no doubt been aided rapidly by the humid and hot environment and the spongy wet ground that had come to be… to be his final resting place.

"Corporal Delckis."

Rey flips the remains of Corporal Delckis over with the Force since she doesn't want to touch him. She'd said he was mostly a skeleton, but there's still… stuff on his bones. To give no mention to the smell. It's pretty hard to take.

She has no idea how long he's been out here. Decades at least, given her best guesstimation of the timeline.

Far more disturbing then some random corpse being out here is that he's incomplete. There's only his torso and head here, leading her to wonder if her concerns of big jungle beasts was actually well founded. Or perhaps all that remains are simply what was left after an unsuccessful parachuting or escape pod debacle? Not everyone could be as lucky as she and Kylo were to survive an emergency crash landing through the atmosphere.

Either way, she doesn't want to linger. See if poor Mr. Delckis has anything she needs and then skedaddle the hell out of here.

Attached to the rotten fabric of his belt is a little leather pouch. Probably a small pocketknife or something of about that size. She summons that over to her with a frown and a mouthed 'sorry'.

The scavenger in her is also telling her that… that his helmet might be useful. She has no way of collecting water should she find any and…

Brain juices. Oh gods no. He's been dead a long time, but not that long and-

What's wrong? What's happening to you?

Oh kriff, trust her kriffing bondmate to butt in as she was struggling with a tough decision.

It's dawn now and, when she closes her eyes, he's still where she left him on the edge of the mire. Except now he's sitting crossed legged and in the meditation stance. That must have been why he could connect with her so easily.

To be spiteful, Rey shoves at him the visuals of what she's seeing. He recoils immediately, flinching into the periphery of her mind. Then he gags, twisting over onto his hands and knees, as she throws the smell at him too just for extra pettiness.

What in all the hells?

Rey shrugs, keeping her sensory assault up for a few moments longer before taking it away.

"Apparently I'm not the first freedom fighter to make my way here. This planet had showed up in our records and… and here we are."

A pause as Kylo recovers his composure. He pulls her closer to him through their bond, and now Rey can see the deep-set frown etched onto his features.

Is there a base here, then? Yet another old, abandoned relic we can take cover in?

Not that she's aware of, and Rey has no idea where this 'we' business is coming from.

"I was thinking about using his helmet as a cooking pot."

She hadn't been thinking about it with any sincerity, but the comical waves of sheer horror and aghast-ment that the spoiled prick she's bonded to make the notion almost worth it.

Or not really, but it was still fun to rile him up.

Rey stands up, still wavering slightly in the aftereffects of giving away so much of herself to save Kylo last night.

The sky is brighter now. Before it was hazy and foggy and dim, but now the low-lying clouds have begun to dissipate as dawn progresses into the dazzling vibrancy of early morning.

It feels like it's going to be a very hot day. Heat she can handle. Heat and humidity and rotting corpse stench? Oh no thank you, definitely time to go now.

Some sort of symbolic gesture seems appropriate. Religious beliefs run thin in the Resistance and she assumes it did in the original Rebellion as well, so Rey settles on clasping her hands together in front of herself and dipping her head respectfully.

"May the Force be with you."

Her other half frowns, irritated by her choice of words and drawing her own face into a scowl as well. She promptly shoves him out of her head before he can catch any of the tangle of feelings the memory wells up inside her.

"Spoiled prick," she mutters.

Then she picks her head up, rolls her shoulders, and leaves the dismal gravesite as quick as she can.

Do you really think you can ignore me? After what we shared?

Her bondma- Kylo Ren's- persistent interruptions were seriously getting on her nerves. It's mid-morning now and she had been attempting to somehow jerry-rig a usable something out of the pile of nothing that was the severed computer terminal. Kylo's constant need for attention was making this a most tedious task.

Still, he doesn't like being ignored, so that's exactly what she going to try to do. Even though she has a sinking feeling her quest is in vain since she can't think of any sort of power source for her impromptu device. If it had a power source, maybe it would work. It looks like something that should work. But as it is now, she can't even test it properly. So that sucks.

Rey… you know that I'll find you. I always do.

Her hackles rise and her fingers tremble, drawing out a muttered curse from under her breath. It's true. That's the part that stings the most. No matter where they are or on whose side they are on, she and Kylo always seem to find their way back to each other.

Of course. We are bonded, after all.

"Kriff off."

Rey picks at the circuit in her hands, carefully unscrewing the connector to one of the severed lines and rerouting the wire next to it. There had been one single, solitary piece of luck on her side these last twenty-four hours and that had been that the leather pouch on the corpse's belt had actually been a multi-tool. Not an omni-tool, that would have been far too useful to be allowed by the cruel whims of Mistress Fate, but rather its old fashioned DIY cousin. It provided most of the small screwdrivers and other pieces that she would need to complete her task if it wasn't for that glaring omission of the lack of power.

Tell me where you are, Rey. You're close. I can feel you.

Her hand slips in annoyance, causing the tool to slip and severe the delicate connection she had been trying to attach.

"Godsdamnit Kylo! Would you just go away and leave me in peace?!"

It's a rhetorical question and they both know it. Kylo wouldn't be Kylo if he wasn't annoying the living crap out of her 24/7.

And he doesn't immediately answer back this time. Instead, he simply lurks. Hovers like a gloating demon or a specter of high hopes and deep promise. This is much worse. Now he's simply observing her and she can hardly stand it.

"Say something, you kriffing lughead..."

Rey mutters the words under her breath, going back to tinkering with her doomed signal transmitter.

I thought you wanted me to shut up?

"Do both."

The only power source they had was currently gods-know how many meters under muck. It was unlikely to have kept any charge overnight, and even lower odds for it not shortcircuiting when Rey cut out the panel with her saber. If she had been thinking clearly at that moment…

Well, she hadn't been thinking clearly. Kylo had been dying and taking his sweet time about it. She'd just taken what she thought shed needed and then hurried back to him. Yet another thing he's ruined by existing.

Ouch.

"No no no Kylo, you don't get to do that. You don't get to pretend that you have feelings."

Their bond has become so much stronger over this last day since they had… gotten closer. Enough so that she can clearly feel the hurt emanating off of his side of her mind. The reasons behind this new level of connection are excruciatingly obvious but Rey will be damned if she acknowledges them now. Or ever.

It's only a matter of a few more seconds before Kylo speaks again.

If I were there, I could help you.

She scoffs. Doesn't even bother trying to hide her scorn for his suggestion from him.

"Oh yeah? Like you helped on the Falcon? Tell you what, Kylo. You come and find me. If not when you do, we're going to have another go of it. We're going to fight properly, and this time I promise that I'm going to break you down so fast the fall through the atmosphere will seem like nothing."

With that threat, Rey's concentration is officially shot. She tosses down the multitool aside with a muttered curse, but catches her temper and carefully wraps it up with the computer terminal in what had been her outer tunic. With her arms exposed like this, she's doubtlessly going to burn up in this sun but whatever, that's just something else she can blame on him too.

Kylo doesn't answer, but even across this growing distance she can feel him shake his head.

Rey spends the rest of the morning hacking her way through this strange jungle with a very half baked notion of somehow turning the Kyber crystal in her blade into a power source. The computer-turned-nav device needed energy. Her blade was made of energy. It could… work? All further details pending.

Kylo had pulled back out of their connection after her rejection of him. There was a part of him, not a small part either, that was so desperate for love. For her love. And she'd given it to him or nearly, back up there miles above her head when their bodies had expressed things she couldn't even begin to wrap her mind around.

The way he wants her now has very little to do with sexuality. Or maybe not very little, but they still went well and deep beyond that. His feelings were hurt, obviously. And yes, she will reluctantly admit that he has feelings. Far too many of them, in fact. He may have called her a bad Jedi but he's an even worse darksider, truly.

In times like this she actually feels sorry for him. She does. But that doesn't mean that she can give into him.

It doesn't matter how much she wants to. It doesn't matter how much it's simply the only sensible thing to do. Yes, they are bonded, after all. And they're also stuck on this planet together. It would only make strategic survival sense for them to team up and put their heads together.

Except Rey had the sinking feeling it wouldn't only be their heads they'd end up interlocking. Hence her need to cover as much ground away from him as she possibly can.

Rescue will happen. It has to. Self-rescue or somehow otherwise. Her other half simply can't be around when it does.

By the time she reaches the crest of the grassy hill she'd been jogging up, Rey's skin is burning from intensity of the sun beating down upon her. She squints, pressing a flattened palm above her eyes to shield them as she looks around. This is the first spot of higher ground she's come across, but it still doesn't let her see much.

The landscape is a brilliant kaleidescope of colors. Mostly deep greens and purples like the leaves of the higher trees. In contrast, the lower levels of the jungle were filled with bright pops of python yellow or electric blue. Orange flowers. Red rocks. A gluttonous overindulgence of colors. Rey had never seen anything like this place. Never even imagined it.

It was beautiful. In a psychotropic, otherworldly sort of way. Everything was alive and moving and vibrant. Even the sky would shift in color, varying between blue and pink and orange like it was always the very beginning of sunset even if the sun was at its apex above her head right now.

Alright, so it was pretty. Rey was enjoying this brief moment of reprieve. The first real chance to catch her breath. But where to go now?

Absolutely impossible to say. Behind her was Kylo, so obviously she couldn't go back that way. Ahead, following the direction of the sun across the sky, was the notion of a hill or mountain. She couldn't quite see it through the heavy canopy, but the landscape was definitely rising in that direction.

Just as she's about to push on, fighting her own weariness and mixed feeling, power suddenly rolls through her. It's echoing loudly off Kylo's side of the bond and that can only mean that he's doing something. Using the Force and using it strongly.

Rey sighs. Kylo Ren doing something is the worst. Nothing ever good comes from that.

She sinks down, kneeling on her heels and resting her legs. Again the grass shrinks from her, shying away from her fingertips and palms and anywhere that her bare skin touches it. This world may be beautiful, but it's also very strange and somewhat unsettling.

The feeling of power inside her grows. Focuses and intensifies.

"Kylo?" she asks to no one. "What in all the hells are you doing?"

The mental image of him that she gets when she closes her eyes is muddled. It was much clearer earlier and she frowns before lifting her fingers off the grass and it immediately sharpens. Interesting...

When she sees him, Kylo still looks pale and weak, but he's standing up and reaching out. He's still by the edge of the swamp where she'd left him, and he's reaching and frowning. He must have been waiting there, regaining his strength from his brush with death to do… whatever it is he's trying to do now.

"Kylo?"

His eyes narrow. A snarl starts to slowly form on his upper lip.

"What are you-"

Be quiet.

Rey sucks a sharp breath in through her nose. Oh, so that's how it's going to be, is it? Well, in that case, he can just-

Help me lift it.

His mental voice is tight with inner tension. He's really putting the effort of the Force into whatever it is that he's doing. It's a struggle for him. Much more than he thinks it should be. Either he's still weak or it's that thing going on with this whole planet. The sheer exertion of his will reminds her of when she was running away from him on Crait.

It feels exactly like that, actually. And that's when she realizes what's he's trying to do. The same thing, more or less, that she had done to save her friends back on the brutal planet of salt and death.

"You want to lift the pod out of the bog? Why? It's useless to us now."

Her voice breaks his focus and the Force snaps, making them both physically recoil. Rey opens and closes her palm several times to take the sting out of it.

Then Kylo rolls his shoulders and her own moves in synchronization until she catches herself.

Because, my darling last Jedi, the pod has a power cell on it. You said that you needed one. I'm trying to be helpful.

He reaches out again and Rey closes her eyes, taking a slightly wider stance for stability as she mirrors his movement with her own arm.

"I never told you that."

You thought it. You'd also thought about using your own lightsaber to power your crude attempt at a signal. Rey… that was a very stupid idea.

Her nose scrunches up in her displeasure and Rey's pretty sure she's actually bearing her teeth.

"Kriff off. I don't see you doing any better. Actually, I don't see you doing any-"

I was recovering. And waiting for you to come to your senses and come back to me.

Rey shakes her head. The man is an idiot, if she hasn't already established that aspect of her opinion about him.

"Then you're going to be waiting a while."

It was mid afternoon by the time Rey came to a clearing filled with animal bones.

Big animal bones, actually. Some nearly as long as she is tall. Most were bleached clean by the sun, but there were a few that were more recent.

Rey had heard about some large animals, usually mammals, all going to the same place when it came their time to die. In principle it made sense, but this place was downright eerie. The energy resonating inside this glade was off. Off as in negative. Off as in dark.

Dark, but also light. Somehow it's both. The powerful, vibrant energy of both life and death swirling together.

What the hell is this place? Master Luke had told her that some planets had species that were highly force-receptive. His own master Yoda had lived on such a place. A place where your own powers could be used against you if you weren't careful.

Rey frowns and presses her palm against one of the bones, listening if it has anything it wants to tell her. It's icy to her tough, stinging her skin with its cold despite it having baked all day under the sun. She yanks it away and her palm had started to crack, skin tinged with a faint green hue that only slowly returns back to its normal shade.

"Kylo?"

She whispers his name. He's the darksider. He should be able to tell her why these bones are radiating lifeforce even though they're long, long dead.

Kylo doesn't answer. He's still having his little tantrum and giving her exactly what she wanted. Gone away and left her alone.

How ironic that now that she could actually have a use for the unbearable wreck that was her bondmate's poor company, he's the one giving her the silent treatment for a change.

And that's when Rey realizes it. There's no Kylo. No angry hiss from his side of the bond, only silence. Nothing but silence. From him and now from anywhere around her. The jungle is quiet and completely still. It should be full of movement and strange sounds and the constant thrum of the Force as it reflects back at her.

Rey reaches out. Tries to push and scan the area immediately around her. Her powers immediately get shoved back at her like they were on an elastic band.

She's being dampened. Something is restricting her access to the Force completely.

She… needs to get out of here. Whatever this place is, it doesn't want her here.

Rey turns and hurries backwards, working her way to the edge of the bizarre graveyard as quickly and silently as she can.

Well, there was good news and bad news.

The good news is that, once Rey had gotten a good rushed distance away from whatever the hell that monolithic place was back there, she had started to feel normal again. That strange feeling of rippling energy had subsided, and along with it much of her anxiety.

What does she really have to be afraid of, anyhow? She's a Jedi, at least for all extents and purposes. The last one of her kind. Something too rare to die and too powerful to be afraid of a little bad juujuu.

The other good news was that she had found a few pieces of debris. Not debris that her, from their, escape pod may have lost during it's terminal landing, but things that are much older. Scraps of metal and various bits and bobs. If she were to guess, most likely they came from the ship of poor Corporal Delckis. He really must have crash landed here after all, and that would explain the lack of completion to his corpse.

The bad news? Oh yes, of course there was bad news.

Kylo was back. Back in her head at least.

He'd been giving her the cold shoulder until that whole business with the bone pile. Then he must have felt the disturbance in her because he reluctantly, emphasis on reluctantly, had asked if she was okay once she'd gotten a safe distance out of there.

"You're a miserable pest, you know that right?"

Rey kicks at a small piece of rusted metal that might have once been some sort of coupler. That one does her no good, but she did find a small flat sheet of outer housing that she can bend with the Force into some form of bowl or container. While not ideal, it was infinitely than the earlier choice of 'rusted helmet with a touch of rotten brain soup' canteen.

You want this power cell Rey? Come and get it.

Rey rolls her eyes, annoyed as much at herself as she is of him. After all this time, he really shouldn't be able to get under her skin anymore.

So you're planning on stealing it from me? Or did you think I wouldn't notice that errant thought when we were linked together?

Linked together huh? That was the other bad thing. Try as hard as she might, Rey couldn't quite seem to get her mind out of the gutter. It was as if at long last doing the do had awoken her inner giggly adolescent girl as supposed to whatever "woman" she was finally supposed to be.

You know that you're never going to get this away from me. You might have to pry it from my cold, dead hands but then, of course, your sweet little heart couldn't bear to be without me and you'd have to resurrect me all over again, wouldn't you?

"Kriff you're an asshole."

Rey means it so much. Maybe she didn't mean all that heartfelt sentiment about killing him and sending him to an eternity of suffering while she lounges around eating the grapes of wrath and spite or whatnot. She'd told him something like that as they were leaving the Falcon in the escape pod. Maybe she'd meant that, maybe not. But this she really means.

She tries her best to ignore him, though. His kind feeds off negativity. Starve him of her attention and maybe he'll wither up and become an easier target.

And then the Force swells in her again. Fills her senses like it had before when Kylo was trying to lift up the pod.

"Oh gods Kylo, what are you..."

Her voice fades out on itself. Wait. This… this is different. It's not the same sort of energy she'd felt from him before. She knows her bondmate's Force signature better than anyone else's. Better than her Master's, even. But she's never felt him like this.

Rey freezes mid-step, all the tiny hairs on her skin standing straight up. This is raw power that she's feeling, but it's very strange. She doesn't like it. Something is inherently wrong about it.

...Rey?

The sensation continues to buffet her, slamming against her like raging water. She can barely hear Kylo's voice in her head over the roar of it.

This is the same feeling that she'd had before, when she'd touched that bone. Her hand throbs, The hand that she'd touched it with.

She looks down at her palm. It's cold to her touch. Ice cold and faintly glowing green.

Rey? What's going on? What's happening?

Her heart is racing, that's what's happening. And her connection to Kylo is fading, cracking in and out like static.

"Kylo?" she whispers back.

He's there but he's blocked. This really isn't him. Something else is-

A loud snap comes from behind her. Far louder than anything the birds or lizards could make.

Her lightsaber is in her hand and activated in less than a breath, but she doesn't turn around. She's being watched. She can feel it. Kylo can feel it. His panic spikes, taking her pulse along with it.

The energy moves closer, stalking her. Now it, whatever this thing is, is aware that she's aware. It knows that she's ready and willing to cut it down if it has to.

The knowledge that a powerful force user is ready to stand and fight is more than enough to scare away most any sentient creature.

Not this one. It moves closer, nearly silently. If it weren't for the occasional snap of a twig, Rey wouldn't know that it was there at all.

Slowly, carefully, and deliberately, she turns around. Makes the movement slow and graceful. She needs to show that she's not afraid. That she's powerful and capable and this thing needs to rethink what it's doing and leave. Save its own skin before she cleaves it off of it.

And then she sees it. It's a creature. A big, big creature.

Some sort of feline, most likely, and absolutely huge. Bones nearly as big as she is high. All teeth and claws and not even a trace of fear as it regards her with slitted eyes.

And it has some sort of Force ability or at least an inherence. The fur or hide of it may be black, but it almost glows, shimmering with a radiant green power.

Rey's palm throbs but she doesn't take her eyes off the beast. This was the hand that she'd touched onto the bone in the field. Somehow this thing must have been tracking her through that.

"Kylo?" she whispers.

Beastie twitches its nose to the sound of her voice, smelling her and then its ears raise up in interest. Guess she smells good. Fucking hell…

"Kylo, I think I'm in trouble," she takes a slow step back. Don't show fear. She's afraid, but she can't show it. "I think this… thing has been following me. Kylo? Are you there?"

His side of their bond is pure noise. That same dissonant disturbance that she'd felt from the grass or the trees or the other living things on this world, but now amplified exponentially.

So this whole planet really is out to get her.

"Stop," she tells the… the big fucking monstrous jungle cat when its limbs tighten and it cocks its head, tail beginning to twitch from side to side. "Stop. You will turn around and not come back here again."

Mind tricks often work well on animals. Not on this one.

Jungle Kitty growls, the fur on its arching back rising as she tries to probe its consciousness. It's not afraid of her. Not even a little.

"Kylo?"

He's hours away. Would be hours away if he knew where to find her. That leaves her with only one option. She squares her stance, holding up her lightsaber in readiness.

Jungle Kitty doesn't like that. Not at all.

The second her saber is drawn up, her hand throbs with a new level of pain. Rey gasps, taking her eyes off Kitty for a fraction of a second to see what's happening to her palm.

It's a second too late. Jungle Kitty howls, the sheer noise of it deafening as it reverberates across every tree and rock around them. And then it pounces, moving far faster than its massive bulk should allow, and Rey hardly has time to leap back and block its attack.

author's note:

What? We can't have an alien jungle fic without big jungle critters and psychedelic colors and force power hijinks can we? You want some action and drama in a fic, send in the man with a gun bursting onto the scene. Or a Jungle Kitty with a Force hate on, in this case.

But damnit, now this means I have to write a fight scene next chapter. FML.

Next chapter: Rey and Fluffytoes go at it, Kylo hauls ass to rescue his girl, and I your humble author begin to have grave doubts about my 'absolutely not gonna be over 50k words for the whole story' promise to myself.