Chapter summary:
Where Rey meets and names three new friends, Kylo takes a hot bath, and our duo face an abrupt change in fortune.
There were so few times in Rey's life that she could remember being this content.
She was so used to waking up fearing the day and how ironic is it that now when she truly has something to fear her soul is finally at rest and at peace?
Their Bond has to be having a part in how she's feeling. It's a warm and heavy thread wrapping close to her, lulling her to stay asleep for as long as she possibly can.
Rey knows what means. It means that Kylo broke his promise. She needs to wake up, peel him off her of, and discipline him.
Except, when she forces her eyes open with a reluctant jerk of her will, Kylo is not, in fact, cuddled up to her like he had the night before. Oh he's moved alright, laying down right next to her and not on his designated side of the fire pit. But he's not fused to her. Is barely touching her at all, actually.
No, now he's simply holding her hand. He's laying flat on his back and he's holding her hand gently but firmly, sleeping with it resting directly over his heart.
Rey swallows, an abrupt surge of emotion falling through her. This is ridiculous. He's Kylo Ren, for kriffsakes. Kylo Ren should never look so unguarded. So… so content and happy. Exactly like how she had been just moments before.
She pulls her hand away smoothly, careful to keep her movements even so as not to wake him. Then, when she's free, Rey props herself up on her elbow and regards him.
The sky is pink and delicate, glowing softly with the gentleness of early dawn. Kylo looks like someone else in this light. Someone she's sure she would have liked far better than the real him.
And there's something she wants to do. Something she's sorely wanted to do for so long. Carefully, Rey dips into his mind, making sure that he's still deeply asleep enough. Oh yes, he is. He's completely unaware of the thoughts going through her head.
To scan his subconscious like this when he's resting is a violation but… well, that just serves him right, doesn't it? If he can do it to her, if he can somehow sway her dreams or drift into her head whenever he pleases, then she damn well gets to do the same.
Still, her confidence wavers when she reaches out and touches his face. She listens through their Bond, wary of any hint that he's waking. He isn't. She's free to go ahead.
His scar is surprisingly smooth under her questioning fingertips. The seam of it lies flat and even.
"You don't own me."
She mutters the words under her breath, rising to her feet and shuffling unsteadily away from their campsite. A cup of caf would do wonders for her disposition right now. Help her rise and shine with renewed energy and the strength to keep going even in the face of such overwhelming odds.
Practicing morning forms will have to do instead. A chance to get her blood up and clear her head. Today… today they travel. They have to tolerate each other. She has to control her temper around him. And, if all of that goes off flawlessly, maybe they can find a way to send a signal.
This time tomorrow she might be back on base, freshly cleaned up and with a perfectly executed lie ready for explaining why the Millennium Falcon will need to be towed from the ass-end of the galaxy back home.
And what about Kylo? Where does he fit into that plan?
He doesn't. She'll have to get rid of him. Can't risk the Supreme Leader catching even a whiff of the remaining Resistance's whereabouts.
Irrationally, the thought of abandoning Kylo on some moon or neutral planet somewhere makes her feel very sad. He'll be devastated. He's already so worried, the thoughts of their impending breakup have been playing around in the dark recesses of his psyche and she's caught an echo from time to time.
She knows what he feels because of their… their unique connection. It's changed ever since they were intimate. Ever since they made love and that one flawed, natural act somehow made them far closer than it had any right to.
But sweet karking hell, don't tell her that it's always going to be like this? Not from now on? It's going to go back to normal, right?
It has to. It absolutely has to. This close of a proximity to her bondmate's deranged psyche will surely be unbearable. Lead her down the same path of madness that brought him to decision-making failures like believing plunging his saber into a drive core is an acceptable way to tell a girl he likes her.
Rey doesn't have an answer to that one. She only knows one thing for certain about what will happen when they send that signal: Kylo is going to be an epic, world-class, galaxy-renowned pain in the ass about letting her go.
The wind is stronger today, and the sky has a different quality to it.
Sometimes, as Rey ambles through the forest near their camp, she swears she can feel eyes on her, but not in the ominous hungry kitty sort of way. There are more signs of animals here out of the depths of the jungle. Occasional droppings on leaves or the odd paw or hoof shape in the patches of mud.
Rey stops by a narrow trickle of a creek and sits on a rock, resting for a few minutes to calm her mind. Kylo is still asleep, but he'll inevitably rise soon and they'll need to be on their way. Yesterday they had found a plant reminiscent of bamboo. Not quite bamboo as she's ever seen it, but, with a little improving and adaption, she'd managed to turn a length of it into a watertight vessel.
When she bends down to fill it up from the creek, a creature well-hidden in the foliage chirps and moves sightly.
She leaps to her feet in an instant and the animal recoils in turn. It's a… thing. A large… caterpillar like thing. Blue-green and almost shaped like a question mark but with antennae on its head and countless short little legs on the bottom. Like if a millipede and the letter 'S' had a baby together.
On the other side of her mind Kylo stirs, rising from the sudden burst of her adrenaline at being startled.
Rey hesitantly reaches out, offering the Question Thingy her hand. Her off hand, just in case it happens to be of the bitey Question Thingy variety.
The antennae wiggle. It scuttles backwards, it's tiny legs gliding it smoothly across the forest floor.
It's alarmed. She can feel that through the force. This creature was a young Thingy and had been curious about her, the newcomer, and now she's scared it.
"I'm not going to eat you," she whispers softly. The antennae stop. Then wriggle with renewed energy.
Rey? Where are- what in the hells is that thing?
She rolls her eyes, pushing Kylo out of her head but the damage has already been done. The creature must have sensed something was happening to her because it takes off, scuttling quickly away until it disappears into the underbrush.
'Morning Kylo.
She pushes the words deadpan. This is why she's not allowed to have nice things. Because, inevitably, her bondmate would show up in one form or another like a bogeyman and scare every curious Thingy away with his dark gloom.
Where are you? Why did you leave?
His voice has a touch of anxiety to it, but the meaning behind his concern is obvious.
I didn't run away, you nerf-herder. If I had, I would have taken all our stuff, wouldn't I?
A pause. The image of their camp swirls through her mind and Rey pushes back harder, finding looking through his eyes highly disorientating.
And she takes the scenic way back, ambling along the sides of the stream or occasionally dipping out into the wide open space at the top of the hill to watch the sky. A flock of brilliant white birds watch her from the trees, cocking their heads and bending their long necks in ways that should have been physically impossible. She'll name them… Twisters. Yes. A flock of Twisters are watching her, and ripples of alarm are emanating from them. Guess they don't like her nearly as much as she likes them.
There's something slightly odd going on. Usually, at least over the few days that she's known it, the sky is a scattered kaleidescope of clouds and bright colors. Today it's cloudless but hazy, an odd sort of energy signature is gathering along its edges.
It makes her think of the jungle cats. The same nameless sensation of something building. It almost feels… it almost feels like the planet is starting to take notice of her.
In the distance behind her she can hear the Twisters chirping. Rey decides to pretend they're wishing her a happy goodbye instead of good riddance.
"What in all kriffing sweet hells is that thing?"
"It looks like a pineapple. A bouncing pink pineapple."
"This planet is the strangest."
Rey nods, watching as the electric fuchsia beastie bounces by them, hopping without a care in the world. And it does look like a pineapple. Or a pincushion. It's top area where he assumes the head is located is elongated and spikey while it's round lower body appears to be covered in hundreds of tiny quills, each one with a yellow bulb at the end. If it wasn't moving and clearly sentient Rey would almost think it was some sort of exotic hybrid plant bred by a rich collector for its exceptionally whimsical beauty.
"It's not afraid of us."
Unlike her, Kylo appears to have minimal interest in the newcomer. He barely gives the- oh, what should she call it- the Pink Pincushion a second glance as they come to a stop in the shade. It's afternoon now and they'd been discussing the possibility of shared meditation. Combining their efforts, so to speak, to see if they could sense together an easier course of direction.
"Well, I suppose this is as good a spot as any."
Kylo sets their bundle down on the rock and starts heading toward the flat grassy spot a few hundred feet down the wash. They had spent the earlier part of the day climbing and descending, slowly gaining elevation but there was no easy linear path. Now they're in a sort of rocky slot canyon edge along the side of one of the low foothills. The canyon itself was relatively shady, offering a welcome reprieve from the odd winds and intense bursts of heat that they'd been challenged with, but the location made her nervous. The ground of it was unstable and full of deep holes and crevasses. They'd had to be exceptionally careful with how they stepped or they might literally fall into a pit in the earth
"The sky is so odd today," she says as she joins him.
Kylo nods, already having adopted the meditation stance She sits down across from him.
Back on Jakku this was what would happen before a sandstorm. Here gods only know what might be about to happen. The humidity has risen precipitously as well, making their clothes cling to their skin and both of them be a little more irritable than usual.
Case in point, he doesn't wait for her to offer her hands. Instead, he simply reaches out and yanks her forward, gripping her wrists firmly.
The air around them is suddenly stifling hot, but somehow his touch still sends a shiver down her spine. Rey can't stop herself, really can't, and a memory of their intimate time together flashes through her mind before she can catch and bury it.
He'd held her then, too. Pinning her down but then it was softer and more romantic. His lips against her skin, his voice in her ear.
"Rey."
She swallows, opening her eyes and feeling her pulse spike at the potent look he's giving her.
Sorry.
He clears his throat, his palms sweaty against her skin but that's unavoidable, they're both sweaty as hell right now.
"Rey... concentrate, please. Let's meditate."
"Right."
She waits until he closes his eyes first.
That was all you, by the way. I had no part in that line of thought, I want you to be clear on that.
Rey squirms, cheeks burning as she tries to bury her embarrassment. As soon as she's ready, she feels his mental presence slip against their Bond before he darts into her mind.
For a split second she can see them, both of them. It's a bird's eye view from above, she and Kylo sitting there surrounded by an ocean of glowing blue grass. He's leaning towards her, both of their eyes are closed but even from this new vantage she can see-
"Holy shit are we sunburnt and filthy."
They are. Kylo more burnt than she is but Rey hadn't realized how encrusted with dirt her clothes and skin were getting.
"I told you to take a bath earlier, back there by that creek."
"Kriff off, I wanted to cover some ground while it was cool. And you stink just as badly as I do."
Rey squirms, feeling a bead of sweat form on her brow and trickle down her neck to join the existing dampness around the ring of her collar.
"It's so kriffing hot today, Kylo. Shouldn't it be getting cooler the higher up we get?"
His visage shrugs in her mind.
Reach deeper, Rey. Let's see how far we can look.
Their minds merge closer, both of them drawing the Force inside of themselves. The different threads show up clearer and clearer the more she reaches. Her light. Kylo's dark. Both blending together in a field of green.
Yes. The green energy. This planet is coated with it.
It really is. She can almost make out the shape of the plants just by how the energy drapes over them. Oh, and she can see living things, too. They glow within the Force. Little birdlike bat things flying through the air, landing on a nearby tree to watch them.
Further. Let's keep going. Beyond this canyon.
Their view pans higher. The green fades and something pulls at her, drawing her attention to distant movement. Something very large and powerful. It's them. The jungle cats. It has to be. They're close but must not be aware of the two of them.
"So we're still in their territory, huh?"
Kylo's hands on her tighten but he doesn't answer. He's looking at something else from his side of their connection. The image in her mind starts to become muddled. As hot as it's getting, it's hard for her to concentrate.
"Kylo?" she asks, a strange feeling of dread starting to fill her senses.
Her skin begins to crawl, a feeling of ants crawling across it. Maybe they've been doing this for too long, fighting against this energy that keeps trying to dampen down their abilities.
"Kylo," she repeats, squirming against the shifting grass.
"Do you see it?" he asks, voice sounding parched and strained.
"What?"
"The mountains, look at them," he pulls her mind in deeper, bringing their powers together more fully. She follows, letting him drag her awareness up and further away.
"What are those things?" she asks, feeling her pulse spike at the inky dark paths leading through her vision. They run along the ground, carrying her far across the hills and the canyons, up higher and higher. They run like veins, pulsing their way up towards the mountains.
"Caves, I think."
Oh? Oh. That's right. When the piss cat had cornered her and earned it's namesakes, she'd hidden in a cave. Where do they lead? Why can she see them at all?
"Focus Rey, we're losing it."
They are. A haze starts to ring around the edges of their vision, Kylo's hands slipping against her sweat-covered forearms. He squeezes her tighter pulling her and pulling her until-
The mountains. She can see them for just a second. A single moment. The peaks of them are barren. Just rock and open spaces.
No life. No living things either flora or fauna. Which means no green energy. And no interference to get in the way of their transmitter.
Then the vision, mountains and veins and green glow and all, comes to an abrupt and absolute stop.
She opens her eyes and Kylo is staring up, a look of great concern etched onto his face.
In the time that they were meditating, the sky has gone dark. Very dark, actually. A deep purple and grey miasma is swirling through the sky, advancing towards them rapidly and casting deep shadows across the heavens from horizon to horizon.
Then the smell hits her. Pungent and acrid and unmistakably caustic.
It's a chemical storm. That's what she had been feeling. That ominous dark dissonance on the horizon of their vision.
Kylo realizes the danger moments before she does and he leaps to his feet, grabbing her hand and yanking her up so hard she's actually airborne for a second. They take off running, leaping over cracky fissures and boulders alike as they race back to where they'd dropped their belongings.
The trees above them are empty.
"The birds are gone!"
She doesn't know why that's important, but it is. They knew this was coming before she did.
The winds hit them just as they reach their bundle. These were no dry desert winds, not at all. These were scalding gusts of steam, so thick and heavy that it her lungs started to choke and she bent over, coughing furiously.
Kylo grabs her again, yanking her by her shoulder as he half-carried half-dragged her towards a rocky outcropping that would offer them at least a little reprieve. He pins her against the wall of the rock, shielding her as the burningly hot winds lash at them from the sides.
"Kylo?"
She can barely say his name, the air is so heavy and starting to stink of sulfur. This is toxic. They need to get out of here or they're going to literally be cooked to death.
"Where?!" she shouts, looking around in a panic.
They were effectively trapped here. The high walls of this canyon would be all but impossible to scale under these conditions.
Above her Kylo cries out, a sharp and cut-off howl of pain. She looks up at him, his whole face distorted in agony, and then it hits her too. Literally hits her. The storm is intensifying, and with it comes scalding, foul-smelling waves of torrential rain. No, worse than scalding, each drop literally sizzling as it hits their skin.
"Fuck! Just- RUN!" she shouts, snatching the bundle up as panic takes over.
They both scramble away from the boulder, Kylo wrapping his arms around her as they lunge forward, tripping and tumbling on the rocks for how little they can see through the blistering onslaught.
Dear gods this hurts so bad! Her skin starts to welt immediately, the stinging rain hotter than anything she ever experienced on Jakku. She falls and Kylo picks her up, slinging her into his arms as he stumbles.
They're not- they're not going to make it, are they?
Is this it? Is this how they're going to die?
KYLO! She tries to shout his name, but the winds drown out her words and fill her lungs with fire. She screams, burying her face into the cloth of his shoulder.
Then he drops her, hurling her onto the ground and she's already in so much pain that she doesn't even feel the sharpness of the rocks cut into her red and raw skin. She cracks open her eyelids enough to see the glow of his saber swinging toward her.
It would have been a mercy killing. It really would have been.
Except what Kylo was doing was cutting into the earth next to her. Rocks and debris fly, the irregular blade spitting dangerously close to her skin but Rey understands immediately. He's opening up an entrance into one of those pits. A hole in the ground into the unknown but the plummet into black uncertainty is infinitesimally better than certain death up here.
Rey activates her own saber, hacking and slashing almost blindly alongside him. She can't breathe. Can hardly see. She boiling.
GO!
He shouts it at her as soon as the opening is big enough. Rey doesn't have to be told twice. She shoves their bundle through and plunges in after it, leaping headfirst into the darkness below.
Rey falls to a hard stop and sudden splash.
There's water at the bottom of the pit. It's not deep, maybe waist height, but it's enough to cushion the impact from the good five or six meters drop that she fell.
And the water at the bottom of the pit is cool. Gloriously cold. Rey flops face-first into the shallow lagoon, trying to soothe every overheated, welted part of herself.
Her eyes are fused shut from the the dirt an chemicals that had coated her during the storm, but seconds after her descent she hears a much bigger splash next to her. She scrubs at her face, dousing herself and furiously washing away all the layers until she can see again.
"Kylo."
Her voice is cracked and her lips taste like blood, and when she looks around she finds them to be in a small cavern. Or maybe it's a large cavern, but the tiny hole high above them that they fell through only lets in a little of the dim, muddy light. There the storm rages on with a fury, but it seems like they are safe enough down here for right now.
"We're alive," Kylo hisses, sounding every bit as destroyed as she is.
Everything hurts. Everything. But they're living somehow, and it's blessedly cooler in here. Much cooler, actually. The air smells thick and loamy with earth, but nothing like the toxic clouds of hell they had endured.
Next to her the water churns as Kylo drops to his knees. He rips off his shirt, tossing it on top of one of the many stalagmites that are scattered along the bottom of the small chamber, and splashes at himself frantically.
"Oh, Kylo..."
His back is covered in welts, far far worse than the fiery stinging spots that she's suffered. He really did take the worst of the brunt for her, didn't he?
"Martyr," she murmurs, frowning and wishing they had the foresight to find some sort of soothing plant earlier when they still could.
He laughs, a short bitter choke as she helps him, scoops up the soothing cool water and splashes it against his broken skin. Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe the water is actually filthy and she's only going to make his wounds septic, but right now Rey would do anything to help ease the burning pain radiating off of him in waves and through their Bond.
"Can you-" his voice breaks before he can say it but she knows what he wants. He wants her to... to ease his burden.
"Alright" she tells him softly, shifting in the waters to kneel behind his crouched over form.
He looks at her through slitted eyes, his lips a grim line of pain. Yeah Kylo, she feels it to. But her wounds were far less serious than his. She'd said they were being cooked alive up there, but she had no idea exactly how close to the truth that was until she rests her palms against the flat of his shoulder blades and feels the heat radiating off of his skin. Kylo hisses, even her soft touch proving to be nearly unbearable, but he lets her try.
"I don't... I don't know if I can do this again. I don't know how I did it the first time."
He nods stiffly, and it's a true testament of how much pain he's in that he doesn't try to boss her around or 'teach' her.
Rey closes her eyes. Summons the light side of the Force. It's hard for her to touch it right now, after everything they have just gone through her mind is fractured and scattered. Not at all in the right headspace to perform something as focused as a Force healing.
She breathes deep, trying to will herself into a more meditative and productive state.
It doesn't come easily. Kylo fidgets under her touch, her frustration echoing back into him.
What did you think about? Last time?
Last time when he was dying she'd thought about... she'd thought about how she doesn't hate him. She could never hate him because he's a part of her now
Rey feels her heart flutter, emotions surging up within her at he memory. The memory of feeling so helpless then. At feeling so utterly powerless and useless and wanting to do something, anything to make him better.
Kylo gasps under her touch, and Rey's eyes fly open. She stares bug-eyed, eyes scanning his back. His skin looks better. Marginally. A little less furious. Less red and weeping.
He's still plenty hurt though, just now he looks like someone who spent an hour out under the Jakku noontime sun and not a post-mortem crime scene victim.
"More?" she whispers, hoping that he'll say-
"It's enough. Now it only feels like Hux put out ten-thousand of those damn cancer sticks of his against my back."
She doesn't know what that means, but there's a definable trace of gratitude to his voice.
Next he repeats the same move she did herself when she's first plummeted down here. He flops facefirst into the water, submersing himself completely.
Rey looks at her palms. Opens and closes them. Oh what she would give to have her Master here with her now. To tell her what she did so that she can repeat and refine it. Odds are high that this won't be the last or final time that one of them faces a severe injury.
Kylo surges abruptly up out of the water, splashing and tossing his head back, sending an arch of water flying through the air.
Despite the ridiculous intensity of these last moments, Rey can't help but crack a small, lopsided smile.
"Feel better, Darksider?"
She's glad that the cave is so dim. Glad that the storm still rages, angry and dark and purple, high above them. Because if she could see him now she's pretty sure that he would be delightfully wet and half dressed.
"Rey."
Her eyes flick up to his face when he says it. That's not the tone of a happy man. No, indeed not. His expression is wide-eyed, almost stricken.
"Oh gods… Kylo, what-"
She gasps, literally gasps, when he holds up the power cell. It had been in the bundle which she'd blindly thrown when she'd jumped down into this cave, and it must have struck one of rocks jutting out from the water.
Half of it is held in his hand. Only half. It's shattered, broken irreparably in two, and taken with it their one and only hope of getting off this planet.
These last two chapter titles? Anyone? No? Oh, okay…
No Man's Sky! Incredible game! I totally have been basing this planet off their Viridescent planets.
"Weather Warning: Incoming Storm"
Oh man they aint kidding about that in that game. I've landed on a number of cold viridescent planets but my home base is built on a temperate jungle one with these occasional sweltering storms that send my Traveler running for cover in the nearest cave so you know I just had to have some of that going on in this story too!
next chapter:
To mark almost reaching the halfway point of my outline it's time for Kylo and Rey to celebrate by doing what they do best… and by that I mean spelunking of course.