Chapter summary:

Where Rey doesn't make a new friend, but she does get invited for dinner.

A profound and primal reaction would strike anyone who found themselves in Rey's current situation.

Here she was, alone on a strange and alien world, facing down a very large and very curious apex predator. She may have been a Jedi, at least by default, but she wasn't cocky enough to not be afraid of what might be about to happen.

The jungle cat was just so big. Even her great Master Luke would have been nervous upon confrontation with this massive beastie. Or he might have tried to milk it. That was also a possibility.

Regardless, when the alien feline leaped forward, careening through the air straight for her, Rey had to fight to silence her mind. Had to control her nerves and survival instincts that were telling her to stop, drop, and then run like hell.

No, instead she wills her psyche to go blank and allows the Force to guide her. The force will never fail her, not if she has faith in it. She could almost do this with her eyes closed. This was nothing at all.

And she barely misses the extended claws that would have torn open her neck and possibly beheaded her.

It had been so close. She'd barely dodged. Could feel the movement through the air so close to her skin.

Rey spins in a pirouette, swinging her saber and timing it for the perfect killing blow just as the beast lands on its feet in the spot she had been occupying only a heartbeat before.

Her blade ricochets. Bounces right off the creature's hide and nearly falls out of Rey's hand from the sharp reverberations of the hard impact.

And the beast isn't even really hurt. Rey stares at it dumbfounded. There is a cut on the cat's shoulder but it's a small one. Very small. Growing smaller and smaller until it's gone.

A bright green glow surrounds the spot of the wound and the skin and fur grows back in seconds. That… that had been the Force at work. Rey could feel it to be true. But it's nothing like any form of the Force that she's ever encountered. Neither light nor dark and healing is certainly a possibility, but not like this.

Beastie looks back it her. Its tail lashes quickly from side to side. Then it lunges again, swiping for her in a breakneck arch.

This time she has no room to dodge, but she can bring her saber up to block it. The power of the cat's movements nearly knocks her blade right out of her hand, but she holds on tight to the hilt and parries the creature's attack with a blazingly fast swipe of her own.

This time the beast gives a great howl and leaps back.

She had hurt it. Hurt it badly. Two of its toes are laying severed on the ground.

The cat recoils its wounded paw, holding it tightly again its own chest as that green light surrounds it. Rey's can't stop her gasp of shock as the creature regenerates itself right before her eyes. The toes grow back, deadly and sharp clawed as ever.

Rey steps back, never taking her eyes off the unreal sight.

The cat growls, flattening tis ears and hissing low.

"Stay back," she warns, holding her lightsaber across her body in a position that's as equal parts defensive as it is assertive.

The growls turns into a roar. Slitted eyes track each movement of her feet as she rounds her enemy in a circle.

She needs to get out of here. Fighting in the close of quarters with something this huge is all but impossible.

Rey throws a shockwave of the Force against the animal, willing it to give up and retreat back to whatever jungle wallow it crawled out of. The beast stumbles and glares at her, the fur on its massive back rising and making it look even bigger than it already is. It shakes its head, clearing away the fog of her mental blow, and blinks twice.

Then it licks its lips and Rey turns on her heels and runs.

Branches snap and scratch against her face and arms as Rey bolts through the jungle. She doesn't look back to know that it's still there and still chasing her. The tremors in the ground behind her tell her all she needs to know.

Twice the beast lunges at her, closing the distance with its much longer strides. Twice the Force saves Rey, guiding her to exactly which way to dodge and roll to avoid an otherwise fatal blow.

She keeps her lightsaber activated even though its almost as much of a liability as an asset when she's running and tumbling through rough terrain like this. The familiar weight of it in her hand provides a false sense of security and helps with evading the worst of the underbrush, but the creature truly seems to hate it. It almost feels like the animal is targeting the blade more than it is her, but she's absolutely not about to discard it now.

Another twist in the gravelly ravine she'd been fleeing down, choosing the path of least resistance, and she suddenly comes face to face with her nemesis again.

The creature must have somehow gotten ahead of her, and it hunkers low to the ground, tail lashing wildly to each side. Rey holds the blade out in front of, ready to defend herself as she slowly and carefully backs away.

"I'm not about to become your next meal, furball. Get that idea out of your head and go find someone else."

Its ears twitch to the sound of her voice. As predatory as its acting, it also seems very curious. Clearly it has never seen a human or anything close to one before, or is it the Force within her that it can feel like she can within it?

"Stay back."

Rey raises her free arm out, palm flat and pushing some intention of the Force into her words.

That was a mistake. As soon as she taps into her powers, muted though they are by the strange green energy that seems to radiate off of the beast, the animal transforms from curious to enraged. It bares its teeth and pounces, front paws extended as it leaps through the air.

Rey waits. Times her move to the very last millisecond. Then she brings the point of her lightsaber up, aiming it straight for the center of the beasts chest where its heart must be. Paranormal healing ability or not, this would surely be a fatal wound that would end their fight.

Until something massive collides with her from behind. The impact hits her flat in her back, shooting bolts of pain along her spine and slamming into her with enough force that she's knocked off her feet. It sends her skidding face-first across the gravel and her lightsaber flies out of her hand before she can stop it.

The Force doesn't give her a second to recover. It screams at her to roll and she does, hurling herself over to the side as the beast lands where she was a second before.

When she looks up, there are two of them. Two. The curious one was new and slightly smaller than the first.

The first which growls, the noise echoing through the trees and rocks surrounding them. Rey scrambles up to her feet, ignoring the searing pain of her aching back from where she had apparently been head-butted.

A whine echoes. The second beast flattens its ears, hunkering low in a posture that's both aggressive and defensive. The first cat puffs up, circling around the periphery but ignoring her for now.

They're about to fight over which one of them gets to eat her.

Right. Time to go.

Rey raises her hands up, pulling the Force into her to push them both away if necessary. Both cats turn to her, glaring at her and growling. The bigger takes a step forward and the smaller hisses and darts in front of it, blocking the path to its intended meal.

A standoff faces between them. Tails lash and eyes flicker between each other and her.

Rey strides backwards, never taking her eyes off them and relying on her muted connection to the Force to keep her from tripping over anything that she can't see. Whatever thing- whatever dampening effect she's feeling when she's around theses monsters- is setting her nerves on edge even more than they would normally be. It's like she's missing one of her senses and, if it comes down to it, she might not be able to hold them both back with either her abilities or her blade.

Her boot snaps against a twig, the sound of it barely audible over the constant growls and whines and warning of the two beasts to each other. Still, the smaller one looks over at her, and the larger immediately pounces. It swipes forward, claws catching on the others hind leg and making it erupt into a litany of howls.

So they can hurt each other, then. That means that fighting back is possible, she just doesn't know how.

But they are distracted, and this is as good an opportunity as Rey is likely to have.

Rey pulls all of the Force into that she can then throws it at them, crying out loud from the effort. Both cats reel back, stunned for a second.

A second is all that she needs. Rey summons her lightsaber back into her hand from where it had been flung. And then she runs as fast as she possibly can, dimly noting that the direction she picked will eventually lead her back to Kylo.

Rey ran with a purpose.

She was covering old terrain now, backtracking on the steps that she'd taken to get here in the first place. The cats had chased her for a long while, but they had spent as much time tussling with each other as they had trying to close off Rey's head start.

The unpleasant appearance of the second beast onto the scene had brought up a very concerning litany of questions: how many of them are there here on this planet? Has Kylo encountered them as well? What in the hells are they eating?

Rey hasn't seen any other big game. Granted it's only her second day, but other than the odd little flying or crawling jungle critters, the largest thing she'd seen had been a long, long dead human.

It was an unsettling thought. Hopefully these were the last of their kind and there wasn't something far worse still waiting to be discovered.

By the time she reaches the debris swath she'd found before, her mind is beginning to clear of the fog that it had fallen under. Whatever strange dimming effect the creatures had on her abilities is fading, albeit very slowly. It seems like they may have stopped following her, or at least momentarily. Perhaps she's reached the end of their territory, or maybe they've simply gone after someone who would put up less of a fight back.

Her palm also no longer burns with that cold, ice-like sensation of numbness that it had when the cats were close. With any luck, whatever negative energy she'd absorbed from casually and foolishly touching that sacred bone was also beginning to fade.

Now that the coast seems temporarily clear, Rey allows herself a pause to collect her breath and regain her bearings. Logic… logic would believe, that since there was a dead human body in a flight suit and pieces of fuselage from a crashed ship, therefore there should be the remains of said ship somewhere nearby. Perhaps it would have a piece or part that she could use, and perhaps not, but it was worth investigating just in case.

Rey?

Kylo's voice scratches into her mind like static and her shoulders slump. Of course. They had become separated by the beast's interference and he sounds upset, his voice tight with tension just from saying the simplicity of her name.

Kylo, I-

What the hell happened to you?! I thought you'd died!

He screams the voice into her mind and she flinches as the echoes of it ring painfully inside her head. His tone is genuinely panicked and it makes her hesitate to shut him out of her mind completely. She's not used to hearing him sound like that.

Still, she chooses her words carefully. Not wanting to give anything away that might compromise her location to the person least deserving of knowing it.

Kylo, I was attacked. There are these… giant creature things. I don't know what they are, but they ambushed me. You need to watch out for them. And don't touch anything.

Silence falls between them. Rey suddenly realizes that she's fallen to her knees, clutching the ground underneath her and panting open-mouthed. But this isn't her, all of it is projected through from him.

Kylo had actually collapsed with relief at feeling her again. Rey blinks and looks up at the sky. It's still the bright of afternoon. How much time had gone by since they'd last connected? She couldn't have been chased for more than an hour.

Kylo? What's wrong?

She can see him when she closes her eyes. He's red faced and looks furious. And very sweaty. He'd been running blindly, trying to catch up to her. Shouldn't it have been obvious that she was still alive? She can feel him always. That constant drag on her soul that's both a maddening outcast and an unwelcome reassuring weight.

Except she couldn't feel him before, when the creatures were around. Their energy had blocked her from all but the most primitive layers of the Force. Most likely all he could feel was how afraid she'd been, and then she'd disappeared from him completely.

Kylo… I'm fine. I don't know what happened but-

I hate you, you filthy little Scavenger. You have no idea what…

He doesn't finish the sentence, but she can feel how empty his words are. He's not even trying to convince himself of them.

A beat passes. Rey listens to the sounds of the jungle around her. Everything is quiet and calm and still, exactly the opposite of the restrained chaos going on in the other side of her head.

Where are you?

Kylo's voice is tight. Does he really think that she'll answer him?

Rey presses her lips together and shakes her head. She can't tell him. She just can't.

In the back of her mind Kylo begins to pick himself up off the ground. She does the same, noting from the slightly different angle how a dull piece of metal in the distance catches her eye.

The tug on her soul increases. Kylo yanks on their bond, causing her first step away from him to falter. He knows that she's not going to tell him what he wants. Knows that she's still running from him. So now he's going to be the spiteful little shit that she's so familiar with and make it as hard as possible on her.

And this time it takes so much more effort for him to shut him out of her head and go about her way.

Despite everything, or more likely because of everything, Rey can feel their connection all the time now.

She's shut him out as best as she can, but it's not nearly enough. Kylo is always there, dragging her down with him. She knows exactly where he is right now. Up there on that grassy slope where she'd first stopped to catch her breath and reassess the situation.

Beyond that lies the bone yard, but she's not going to warn him about that. Okay, maybe she will, but first things first. If she can feel him despite shutting him out, that means that he can feel her too. They are always balanced in everything they do, and Rey hasn't even the ghost of a doubt that he's tracking her as fast as she can flee from him.

At least she'd found what she was looking for. The trail of fuselage she been following had been badly overgrown and she knew that any components that she found would have long since stopped being functional. Nevertheless, when she blazes her way over to the ruins of what had once been the cockpit, there still might be a few useful components that she could add to her transmission array. Anything to boost its signal would help. Strips of metal. Long pieces of wiring she could make into an antenna. A power source.

The doors to the cockpit have been torn open in wide, jagged, and well rusted slashes that leave her with no doubt of exactly how the body of the pilot she'd found had come to be so incomplete. At least it saves her having another gristly confrontation with a corpse.

Rey clicks at the buttons of the terminal out of blind optimism. No power. Of course not.

There isn't much here, either. Too many decades have gone by and the weathering of the jungle has left most of the ship as little more than a rusted hulk of decaying metal. The frame itself even cracks and crumbles against her hands as she tries to shift the remains of the pilot's chair out of her way.

Rey swipes at her forehead, wiping away the persistent beads of sweat that seem to cling to her in this jungle. In its own way this is much worse than the desert. Jakku was infinitely hotter, but at least your sweat would dry off you. Here everything would cling, leaving her body threatening to overheat and reminding her that she hasn't drank a single drop of water since she was still on the Falcon.

Maybe that's why Kylo is in such a terrible mood. He's ranting and raging on his side of their bond. Each step for him is becoming harder and harder and the kriffing idiot is simply going to make his dehydration that much worse unless he starts taking it easier on himself.

And he really is pushing himself too far. Part of her wants to snap at him to give up chasing her and look after himself for a few minutes. He's already starting to fade. His presence lessening in her mind with each passing second.

Rey ignores him. He's nothing more than an unwelcome distraction. She needs to find what she needs and hurry on.

What's next? Well, the inside of the cabin is a total bust. There's still the engine compartment which, in a short-range shuttle vessel like this, is located in the nose of the ship. The nose of the ship which has been smashed shut and half buried under years of overgrowth.

Godsdamnit. Nothing can ever be easy here on this forsaken planet, can it? At least it's not as buried as their escape pod. She won't need Kylo for this, not that she needs him for anything.

Rey steps out and rests her palm flat on the web of vines and foliage growing over the hull. She visualizes them parting. Imagines them slithering aside peacefully so she won't have to hack her way through and possibly damage something that she needs.

Nothing. That strange energy of this planet resists her.

Rey digs deeper, pulling more of the Light into herself. It's not an easy feat to open up to the Force while simultaneously keeping her ink-dark other half firmly out of her head.

She almost has it, she can feel it. But it's so much more of a struggle than it needs to be. This should be easy. Move the grass, look in the compartment. Nothing to it.

Nothing to it and nothing happening.

Maybe… maybe she should ask Kylo for help? Not that she needs him, but to settle his debt to her. She'd helped him lift their crashed pod, and now he owes her for the favor.

Kylo.

She says his name flatly.

Nothing. Silence.

Total silence, in fact. The only time he's this quiet is when he's unconscious.

Rey snorts. She'd thought about warning him not to get heat exhaustion, but he's a big boy. He should have been able to figure that out for himself. And if not…

Well then, if Kylo's collapsed, it's all his fault. Like everything else. She's not going to go back for him. If he was too much of a fool to pace himself correctly then-

Then she can't feel him at all. It's like his side of the bond has completely disappeared. Exactly like it had done before.

Rey knows what this means. They're coming for her. The beasties haven't given up after all. Her palm begins to itch, that familiar sting of mixed energy pushing down at her connection to the Force.

This time Rey doesn't hesitate. She bolts into a sprint, running through the jungle blindly, suddenly as worried about her other half as she is for her own skin.

Author's Note:

Trying to teach myself to write shorter chapters. It feels strange an unnatural. I don't know if I like this, but hopefully it'll help me keep a more regular update schedule.

Next chapter:

Kylo pines for Rey, Rey pines for Kylo but doesn't admit it to herself, and Jungle Kitty opens its mouth and optimistically waits for one of them to just stumble inside.