There's silence in the clearing. The birds do not sing, the beasts that live in the dense undergrowth do not move. Nothing approaches. For a moment, Rey simply stares down at Ben. He's curled onto his side, arms wound tight around his knees. Even unconscious, his face does not look relaxed, eyebrows drown low over eyes shut tight, full lips turned down at the corners. She wonders if he ever smiles, if he even knows what happiness is.

She watches him for another moment and finally kneels at his side, the wet of the dewy grass soaking into the thin material of her pants. "Ben?" she whispers, leaning down closer to him. He doesn't move and she touches his shoulder. Still nothing. "Ben, you have to wake up," she says louder. But still, no response.

She leans back and studies him. He's too heavy to try to transport back to her shuttle on her own. She can try with the Force, but she's not sure how long she can extend her use of it for. Lifting rocks, sure. Lifting an entire human being and transporting him through a dense forest? She's pretty sure that's out of the realm of her abilities. She's still not trained, not fully at least, and she frowns as she thinks of the few lessons Luke Skywalker had taught her before becoming one with the Force.

Ben curls further in on himself and says something. She can't make out the words. He repeats them. Over and over. She hears the name Masaka again and she has no idea what the connection is, what it means. She shivers in the cool morning air, worried that this Masaka may come looking for them.

She tries one more time to wake him, but his feverish mutterings become louder, more frantic, and she backs away. He's hot to the touch and she worries that he's taken ill with something she won't have any idea how to cure.

Water…

He needs water. Even now she can see that his lips are chapped and dry, his skin unnaturally pale.

Water…

She remembers a creek, not too far back. It wasn't much, but there may be enough of a flow to fill her canteen, enough water to make sure he doesn't expire from dehydration.

He won't die.

Not on her watch.

When she returns to him, not more than an hour later, he's not much different than when she left him. Still unconscious, lips forming words in a language she's never heard before. He's rolled onto his back, long arms and legs splayed out across the ground. His hair fans out about his face and she can see one of his ears. She realizes she's not seen them before and now she understands why the Supreme Leader of the First Order keeps his hair long and carefully combed over them. They're large, not really a surprise considering the sheer size of the rest of him, but they stick out at an odd angle.

Endearing, really.

They humanize him somehow.

She kneels next to him and dribbles just a little bit of water on his lips she waits to see if he'll drink on his own. It's not the first time she's had to force water down an unconscious person's throat. The amount of people who thought they could beat the Jakku desert with little experience always amazed her.

The water slips over his lips, down the side of his chin.

No good.

She reaches out and presses her finger to his lips and she's surprised at just how soft and plush they are. She tries not to think too hard about how good they feel beneath her finger or notice the way they part at her first hesitant touch. She's able to dribble a little more water into his mouth and is relieved to see that he at least swallows it.

He may be unconscious but he's there.

Sitting cross-legged on the ground, she pulls his head into her lap, lightly touching his forehead and pushing back sweat-slicked dark hair. He's been muttering nonsense words in his restless sleep for what seems like hours.

Maybe it's been minutes.

Maybe it's been days.

Or years.

Rey blinks her eyes and shakes her head. There's a black hole somewhere inside her head that keeps wanting to drag her in, its gravitational pull almost stronger than her own mind. She won't let it take her, not like she's sure it's taken him.

And so she presses her hand to his head as she presses into his mind. It comes easily these days, almost too easily. Their bond sings as she presses inside what is usually a warm, dark place. Welcoming, a space that she knows he relishes her occupying.

But not this time.

Something pushes back.

A creature dances by, fangs bared. It's humanoid, but like nothing she's ever seen. Purple skin mottled with blue, long canine teeth, almond-shaped eyes set deep in its head. Another dances by near it, similar but colored differently. And then she's awash in bodies as they press in and around her. She hears that word. Masaka. And other words, ones she understands even less.

Ben is there, standing in the middle of it all.

Masaka, he says and holds out a hand to her.

The scene shifts and they're standing in the ruins of a city, dark stone jutting into the sky, fragmented and burnt in places. There are bodies everywhere and she sees what's left of these people.

War.

Starvation.

The horrors of a people destroyed from the inside out.

Ben comes awake with a gasp and she's thrown out of his mind and back onto the ground. "What was that?" Her voice comes out on a gasp, as if she's been running hard instead of sitting on the wet ground with his head in her lap.

"Rey?" he asks as he rolls over onto his knees.

"Who else did you think would come to save you?" She tries for amused but there's a current of something darker running under the words.

He just stares at her, his eyes almost too big in the lengthening shadows. "I don't need saving," he mutters.

She ignores that. "Why are you here?"

He doesn't respond, not right away. Instead his eyes scan the clearing around them, the woods, the sky. The sun is slowly sinking behind the trees and she knows that soon they'll be trapped out here without any light other than their lightsabers.

"Ben?" she whispers.

He's on his feet in an instant and she watches as he reaches down to his belt and comes up empty-handed. Watching the play of emotions on his face is like watching a holodrama. Confusion, fear, anger. "We need to get out of here." And then he's turning to walk away. She's left staring after his rapidly retreating form.

"Ben, wait," she calls and races after him, reaching out a hand to grasp him on his upper arm.

He swings around faster than she expects and she collides with his chest, bumping her nose on the muscles there. His arms come around her and hold her steady for just a moment. "Rey," he starts to say.

She looks up at him. Too close. There's an intimacy to their Force bond; she can't deny that. But being pressed up against him, this close…She can't quite figure out if she wants to step back or lose herself within him. "Ben," she mutters. "What is…"

He's the one who puts distance between them then, gently grasping her upper arms and pushing back a step or two from her. She feels like she can breathe again. "I don't know," he admits and she can see how hard it was to allow that admission. "I just don't know. We just…We need to get out of here."

"Your shuttle is destroyed," Rey murmurs.

"We'll take yours."

He says nothing else, instead reaching out and offering one of his hands to her. She hesitates and can see the way the pain works its way from his expressive eyes down to his generous mouth. And then finally she takes his hand. He wraps it around hers and she's struck by just how massive those hands are. Everything about him is big, larger than life: tall and broad with massive hands and a personality to match.

He tugs her into the woods. It's a race then as they trip over roots and, once or twice, almost each other. She'd laugh, but there's nothing funny here. He's desperately serious about getting out of the woods and off the planet. And she has no choice but to follow him. And soon, he'll have no choice but to follow her. She'll take him with her; she has to. But she has no idea what she'll do with him once they're off the planet.

He can't go to the Resistance.

She can't go to the First Order.

She's not even sure she can go back to the Resistance at this point. Racing off in the middle of the night, stealing a shuttle, and meeting up with Kylo Ren on a planet in the middle of nowhere does not speak well to her trustworthiness.

When they finally run out of the woods, she breathes a huge sigh of relief. "My lightsaber," he mutters, staring at the shuttle that he had arrived in. It's slipped a few more feet down the side of the hill and she's afraid that any wrong move will knock it completely off.

"You left it there?" She can't believe he would do such a thing.

"I wasn't exactly myself," he shoots back. There's a petulant bent to the words.

There's a story there; she knows it. "Just…be careful." She squeezes his hand tight for a moment before releasing it.

"I'm always careful."

She does actually laugh at that, a small snorting huff that comes out as she watches him rush off. He is careful this time at least, climbing almost gracefully into the shuttle. He forgoes his normal heavy footsteps, testing each bit of the ramp before he continues. It feels like he disappears inside for far too long, but then he returns, safe and sound, with the lightsaber and a few other supplies in hand.

And then she finds herself on her shuttle with Kylo Ren. With Ben. She's still not sure what to call him, images of his pursuing her on Starkiller Base mixed up with quiet Force connections across the galaxy. He lets her call him Ben. He responds to it. And yet she's not sure if that's who he is. She's not sure he knows who he is anymore.

They settle in, with her in the pilot's chair, him in the copilot's. He lets her take the lead. "Where are we going?" she asks as she inputs some commands.

"Anywhere." There's a dark edge to the words.

She keys in a few coordinates that will take them some distance from this unknown planet, but not too far. They need time to talk.

She presses the button.

And waits.

Ben watches her.

She hits the button again.

There's a furrow between his brows.

"Rey." His voice sounds tight.

"I don't know what's wrong."

"It worked fine when you landed?" He's on his feet now, bending over the controls. She bats his hand away.

"I know what I'm doing…"

"You're not doing something right."

"Stop touching things!"

"Well, fix it!" He throws himself back into his seat and she turns to watch him for a moment. His jaw is clenched, his lips pressed together. One hand is curled into a fist on the armrest and the other hovers dangerously over his lightsaber.

She presses a few more buttons and finally sighs. "I can't." She hates how small her voice sounds. She's Rey. Rey the scavenger who made her own speeder. Rey with the Force. Rey the one who can do anything.

"You…can't. Or won't?" Brittle. That's the word she'd use to describe the sound of those words.

"What is going on, Ben?" she finally says as she turns to study him.

He looks away from her and the lines of his body draw taut, like a bowstring just on the edge of being released. "I don't want to…" She gives him a pointed look. She knows where this is going. He's going to shut down and refuse to give even an inch.

"Ben, please?" He says nothing. "I followed you all the way here."

"I didn't ask you to."

She scoffed at that. "Are you sure about that? Because –"

"Fine!" He cuts her off with one swipe of his hand and she jumps back a little. It's not that she's scared of him. It's just that he's large, and he seems even bigger stuck in the tiny cockpit of her shuttle. "I might have…wanted to see you." The words come out as if they pain him to say.

"Might have."

He rubs his temples with one hand and closes his eyes. "Please, Rey, can we stop this?"

"You're terrified," she says and there's no malice behind the words. For a moment she feels a little curious, but then a shiver slides its way up her spine. "What happened?" He still looks hesitant to tell her and she finally reaches out a hand and tentatively touches his. Sometimes she's still hesitant to touch him, afraid she'll see that future that she saw laid out for him, for her, the future that didn't seem to want to come true. "Please tell me."

He takes a deep breath. "There was a coup."

"A…"

"Yes. Hux."

"But you're Kylo Ren," she says, as if that weren't obvious.

He snorts. "I'm just one man, Rey. One man against Hux and his hundreds of Stormtroopers. Even with the Force, the odds were against me."

"Was no one on your side?" The words slip out before she can help them.

His eyes close briefly and then slit open, watching her through heavy lids. He looks drained, dark circles beneath his eyes. They stand out in stark relief to the paleness of his face. "No one has ever been on my side."

She thinks of his parents and remembers the fate of his father. She thinks of Snoke and what sort of toll his being on Ben's side had taken. She thinks of Hux and realizes there is far more to the pasty little ginger than she might have otherwise thought. "I'm on your side," she finally says. And she means it too.

"I can't go back," Ben says and the words are tinged with a bone-deep weariness. "I can't go to the Resistance either." One side of his mouth quirks up. "I know that's what you were thinking. But you know the truth of it. The Resistance would make an example of me. The First Order wouldn't even try that much. I'm a dead man no matter where I go."

He stands then and leaves the cockpit.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know," he admits, his lips pressed together. "I need to get off this piece of junk. I...just need to move."

"We could spar," she offers.

"Maybe you should spend some time trying to fix this thing so we can get off this Force forsaken planet?"

"There's nothing wrong with it," she starts to say.

His whole body seems to tense and then he turns and punches the durasteel wall. She winces at the sound of his hand colliding with it, the crunch of bones. She winces, but lets him go when he walks away this time. "There's a small medical room," she shouts and hears him grunt as he moves away.

She'll let him take care of himself. Something tells her he's used to it.

They do spar, eventually, setting up in the clearing near her grounded shuttle. They haven't fought against each other since Starkiller Base and it feels a little odd to come up against him now. Maybe the strangest thing is that she realizes he wasn't trying to kill her back then, just as he isn't now. He's flashy and strong, and he definitely comes at her full force, but he always holds back just a little.

As does she.

It's not until she actually scores a hit on him, slashing across his bicep accidentally, that she realizes he's exhausted. The sun is high in the sky and the rays beating down on them seem to have knocked the wind out of him.

"We should quit."

"No." Stubborn to a fault.

"Ben." The word comes out like a warning. "You're exhausted."

"I'm not." His lightsaber drops heavily to his side, belying those words.

She sighs as he turns away from her. There's a certain set to his lips, almost a pout. He's been through hell. She knows that, can sense it flowing across the bond. But still he wants to carry on as if nothing has changed.

When everything has changed.

"I'm going to get more water," she announces and shuts her own lightsaber off.

His turns his own off a moment later and she tries not to notice the almost inaudible sigh of relief that comes from him. "Fine. I'll just…sit in the damned shuttle or something."

She shakes her head. Nothing will ever be easy with him.

The water is easy to find this time. She knows where the creek is and when she opens up her mind to the Force, it's easy to follow the patterns of life around her.

She returns with both of their canteens filled to the brim. It will help get the rations down when they try to eat them later. It's not that she's used to anything different, really, but even after all these years of eating reconstituted portions, she still hates them.

She finds him in the shuttle collapsed onto the one hard pallets in the living quarters. He's too big for it. Of course he is. His legs hang off the edge and one hand is thrown out awkwardly. She can't help the soft smile that crosses her face. The Supreme Leader of the First Order. Former, her mind supplies. He sleeps like a clumsy child, all long legs and awkward angles, and is that a bit of drool coming out of the side of his mouth?

"Ben?" she says softly. He'll need water after their sparring. She knows how dangerous dehydration can be, has seen what it did to those who didn't fare well scavenging on Jakku. Hallucinations, desperation, killing for even the smallest drink of too-warm water.

And finally death.

She won't let that happen here. The planet is lush and dehydration is the last thing they should have to worry about.

He doesn't wake to his name, so she steps closer, speaks louder.

Nothing.

Not so much as a twitch of an eyebrow or a movement from him.

She leans down and pushes at his shoulder.

Nothing.

He's not asleep.

He's unconscious.

She feels that familiar shiver work its way up her spine. This isn't the way it's supposed to go. It's not the way anything should go. She strokes the hair back from his face, lightly touches the bridge of his nose. It's almost too big for his face, like his ears. And yet somehow all those strange, overly large features come together to make one perfectly imperfect whole that she somehow finds not only endearing, but attractive.

He mutters something in his sleep and she recognizes this time that they're words in a language she doesn't know. She's not sure he knows it either and that thought freezes the hand that's still in his hair. He mutters something else, reaching out and gripping her hand, pulling it tight to his chest. She goes with him easily. Perhaps too easily, really. She wants this, wants the press of his body close to hers. It should scare her, and she cannot fathom why it doesn't.

The pallet is small and he takes up most of it, but she manages to maneuver herself so she's curled up at his side, one arm wrapped around his waist, the other awkwardly trapped against his back.

She contemplates working her way back into his mind, but she knows there are things there she doesn't want to see, doesn't want to know. And so she simply closes her eyes and drifts next to him.

They don't have much right now, trapped on this strange planet. But they have each other. She supposes that has to be enough for the moment.