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The bad news is that something about the electromagnetic field of this planet interferes with the function of almost all other forms of electricity. Circuits short. Droids shudder to cold, lifeless silence. Even lightsabers won't activate, denied the flow of power from the crystal to the blade. Rey can't figure it out, nor how life continues on here without trouble. All living beings are just sparks of energy from one neuron to the next, or so she's always believed. The Force is one means of connecting with that energy. She can connect with the Force, but she cannot use it to lift so much as a stick. She cannot contact home, or wake the astromech assigned to her fighter.
The good news is that the indigenous sentient life forms of this world mean her no harm. They find her a curiosity, and treat her like a child just learning their melodious language. She's been patted on the hand and even the head more times than she can count in the last two weeks. Gently. Encouragingly. Understanding that without a second tongue, she will never be able to pronounce their names. Despite the language barrier, they are sure Rey will grow accustomed to life here, and will flourish.
They are far less sure about their second visitor from the sky.
She's staring again. She drops her eyes, but he's already noticed. "What do you want?" Kylo Ren demands, glaring at her from where he sits. There's a metal collar around his neck, and a strong chain holding him to a thick-trunked tree. He has enough slack to stand and pace a few steps, a place to sleep, even a modest shelter where he can hide from the rainstorms which regularly thrash this part of the planet. Otherwise, he is tethered to one place. Their hosts do not trust him.
"Nothing," Rey says, after too long. She stands and walks away from him, enjoying the knowledge he cannot follow.
For the first day after their ships crashed, they fought each other using whatever tools they could find. Only the intervention of the purple, wood-like creatures who lived here prevented one from killing the other. As soon as Rey proved herself harmless to them, they freed her. Her adversary can't maintain a civilized conversation for more than a few minutes without flying into a rage. At first, she was terrified he would break free anyway, and would kill her as she dozed. Then she was angry with him, blaming him for the crash that marooned them. Now she's just tired, and Kylo Ren is the closest thing to another human she may ever see again. It is the only reason she can think of why she continues to linger here when she has this whole planet to explore.
They have been here a month. Rey isn't fluent in the local language, but she can carry on a conversation. She can help with the daily tasks to keep the village running, gathering fruit and the occasional egg from the tree tops, or joining a hunting party in the brush. She lets the chatter of the villagers wash past her, picking up words here and there like a stray leaf passing in a dust storm. Her eyes have grown used to the dim light here among the trees, bright sunlight only ever viewed when filtered through high leaves. This is nothing like her former life, and nothing like the life she was learning to build with the Resistance. She misses her friends there, but she only knew them a few months. They are fading into grayscale memory. She would believe her entire past is a dream, except for the one dark, brooding reminder chained to the tree. When she returns from a hunt, the dream shatters, and she remembers it was all real. Out there, beyond the electromagnetic field of this world, her friends will be searching for her if they have not yet given up.
She hates Kylo all the more for being the one to remind her not to lose hope of rescue.
She brings him his food tonight, refusing to let her own fears and sorrows stand in her way. "Here," she says in a short tone. "It's dinner."
Kylo doesn't thank her, and he doesn't eat immediately. He sets the bark plate aside. As he turns, she sees where the metal collar has worn the skin of his throat into angry red welts. Worse, now that she's looking, scarlet gnarls creep away from the wound, winding like worms underneath his skin. For one second, she forgets who he is and what he's done, feeling empathy for the pain he must be in.
Then she remembers.
He turns back to her, perhaps reading her thoughts on her face. "It's nothing."
"You're lying." She lets herself step closer, aware that he might seize his opportunity to attack, even attempt to strangle her with his chain. It isn't as though he doesn't have precedent, if the stories are true. Kylo takes a step back as she approaches, then allows her to place her hand against his skin. She can feel heat radiating off him. He's been sick for some time. "You need an antibiotic." There was a medikit in her ship, which was destroyed when she crashed. She doesn't know if his ship has one.
The flash in his eyes may be from the fever, and it may be from whatever fever settled into his brain years ago. "Does it matter?"
There are people out there, people whom Rey cares about deeply. Two of them love this man, no matter his crimes. If he is here, then they are real, and Rey will not disappoint them. "It matters enough."
She doesn't know the words for what she needs. Her new friends gradually lead her to the word medicine. She has to return to the brush with a guide, collecting orange, feathery fungi from the base of particular trees deep in the darkness of the forest. She fills a basket within an hour, more than enough for her own needs, and enough to resupply the village. The healer, who is also the head cook, mashes everything in a nutty-scented paste.
"You can't keep him chained," she tells the chief. The words are difficult to understand and to make herself understood. Kylo Ren should be a prisoner. He cannot be trusted. But he also cannot heal if he keeps wearing the collar. She agrees with both sentiments, and the chief only agrees with the first.
"He is dangerous," says the chief, in the Basic he has learned from Rey. He's extremely intelligent, Rey has come to learn, taking his post not as an inheritance but as a chosen leader for his people. He will not be cowed with force, only persuaded with logic.
"I have to keep him alive. Bind his hands instead."
The chief makes a disturbingly clear gesture. A hand can be removed at extreme need. "If he is not bound to the tree, he must be bound by you."
"Yes," she says. She can fight him. She's proven that more than once. "He can be bound to me."
Kylo sits up from the thin pallet where he sleeps, watching the approaching guards with wary eyes. Rey says, "They're going to remove your collar. Don't do anything stupid. I realize that might be difficult for you."
His glare turns to her, but he doesn't struggle when the guards reach for his neck while the chief snaps another chain onto one wrist. He can't move. Rey approaches with the salve, and hopes this works as she applies the orange paste to his throat.
"It will be easier if you let me die, you know."
"I know." She completes the application, wiping her fingers against the side of his shirt. This is a bad idea. She should let them keep him chained this way. She nods to the guards. The chief affixes the other end of Kylo's chain to her left wrist.
Kylo lifts his arm with a gentle tug on hers. "Are you joking?"
"The agreement is that if you are no longer chained up, you have to be chained to me."
"You're my guard? You know I could snap your neck."
"I am your guard. You know I could gut you like a froggle."
Threats made, they both relax. The chain is long enough to allow him to walk a few paces away from her. She glances at his sleeping area. "I don't intend to spend the night here. Bring your bed and come on." The tug is unpleasant as he gathers his thin pallet, and the pieces of armor he's removed during his confinement. "Leave the helmet."
"No."
Arms full, he follows Rey to the small hut where she's slept for the last month. It's fully enclosed with a leather flap for a door. Her own bed isn't much thicker than his, and the entire room is only big enough for the two beds side by side. She hasn't even considered how she'll have room to stretch, or to meditate. Kylo will be next to her the entire time.
This is a bad plan.
She lets him settle his things. "There's a fire tonight. I'm going back out."
"What if I want to stay here?"
"Too bad." She goes to the door, tugging him behind her. Instead of the villagers spending their evening by the fire, many of them have gathered outside her door. "What's this?"
"You are bound," says a tall woman, whose name reminds Rey of a song she heard once back on Jakku, back when she had lessons in the outpost's school.
Rey lifts her wrist. "Yes. He's safe. He won't harm you." She goes to step outside, and is pushed back in by the mass of bodies.
"You are bound," another says, and the rest give that odd twitch of shoulder that Rey has learned means agreement. "You must spend tonight here."
Kylo joins her at the door. He says, in a bad attempt at their songlike language, "We are bound? To each other?"
Another shrug of agreement.
Kylo breaks into a grin. "Rey, do you know what the word 'bound' means?"
"You're chained to me."
The chief stands there, arms folded. Kylo asks him, "How long are we bound?"
"The tradition is one season. After the season, you may choose to be bound permanently."
"Permanently?" Rey says the word in Basic, and Kylo's grin turns into a bitter laugh.
In Basic, he replies, "The translation isn't 'chained.' The translation is 'married.'"
Part Two
Her friends don't understand the issue. The tradition is that the couple must spend the first night in their own space alone. Rey is not allowed outside, and Kylo can go nowhere without her with their arms bound this way.
Frustrated, she goes back to her own bed, glaring at his smirk. "You're happy about this!"
"Hardly. I've been married against my will without my say. This was all your idea. I'm just amused you didn't know. I thought you were the expert in their language."
"Clearly I missed a lesson." Another thought strikes. "How long is a season?"
"About fourteen years."
Horror sinks in, until she realizes he's kidding. Rey growls at him. "This isn't funny."
"It's a little funny. Admit it."
"No." She rests her head on the small blanket she uses as a pillow. With difficulty, she rolls away from him. "If you come near me while I'm sleeping, I'll kill you."
"Likewise." He flings himself down on his own bed close by. Her arm feels the pull of their chain as he settles. She can feel him next to her. She's volunteered to spend not only tonight but every night here with him, helpless if he chooses to attack her while she sleeps. She must remain vigilant, must stay awake until he sleeps, and wake before him every morning. Kylo Ren has been obsessed with her since their first meeting. She shudders to imagine what he will do to her if she ever lets her guard down.
She listens to his breathing slow and deepen into a quiet snore.
After a long time, she falls asleep.
In the morning, they are permitted back outside again, as though nothing has happened. She has only enough slack for very brief privacy as she uses the village's latrine, then waits for him to do the same. As they help themselves to breakfast, the early light shows the welts on his neck have already started to heal. She reapplies the antiseptic paste, and feels his body temperature is much closer to normal. Between the medicine and sleeping indoors, he'll recover. Rey considers asking for him to be tied up to the tree again, but no. She volunteered to be his keeper.
"We should join the hunting party," Kylo says over the last of yesterday's fruit. "We'd be more help there."
"No."
"Because you don't trust me with a weapon?"
She doesn't reply. They both know it's the truth. The chain shouldn't get in the way for stalking game. She dares not give him access to one of the sharp hunting blades the others use. A hand can be removed, the chief said, and she doesn't have to meditate to know hers would slice off as easily as Kylo's if he intends to escape.
"I can't take you hunting. We'll join the gathering party."
He takes the last bite of his food and swallows noisily. "We should practice climbing together."
The climb is far more difficult with him attached to her. Rey longs for her Jedi powers to serve as a lifeline. She has far more trust in the Force to catch her than she does in her bitter enemy. They stick to the lower branches, finding only a few fruits left by earlier foragers. Far above them, even small children climb easily from branch to branch.
"I could try to swing you up higher," Kylo suggests, casting an eye to their pitiful haul.
Rey gets a strong mental image of how that would go. He'd wind up breaking her arm, or worse. "No. This will have to do for today."
They head deeper into the forest, looking for better climbs with lower branches. Rey notices the sounds of the villagers falling away behind them. She stops. "This is far enough."
"If you intend to eat tonight, you need to help me find more food." He hurries ahead, pulling on the chain. Rey digs in her heels.
"I'm not going anywhere alone with you."
He turns and reads her expression. He steps closer, and already they are too far away from the rest. If he tries to harm her, she will fight him alone. She can. She has. She will not be afraid of him again.
"Let us get things out and clear between us. You know I find you," his gaze drops down her body and rises back to her face, "interesting."
She knows. "If you dare try anything...."
"You'll kill me. You've said. When we escape this world, I'm sure we'll try killing each other many times. One day, one of us will succeed." He steps a little closer, making her skin crawl. "I would like nothing more than for you to realize the Resistance is a doomed experiment, and for you to join me, but I only win if you come to my side willingly." He bends in and says against her ear, "Your virtue is safe."
He steps away and heads deeper into the forest, waiting for her to follow. Her heart is racing. The fears she hasn't voiced rise to the forefront of her mind, unsure if she dares trust his word.
The basket is light. They need more food. She really will kill him if he's lying.
Rey follows him deeper into the woods.
The feast tonight is glorious. The hunters caught a giant arthropod, one of the towering beasts that graze on the treetops. It roasts inside the shell with a mouthwatering aroma. Everyone goes back for extra helpings, and Rey doesn't feel bad doing the same. She's lived from mouthful to mouthful long enough to rejoice in plenty.
After dinner, and the general merriment around the fire, Rey and Kylo retire to her small hut. She finds a comfortable position and works her way through the beginning meditation Luke taught her.
"What are you doing?"
She opens one eye. "Communing with the Force." She closes the eye, focusing on her breathing.
"The Force doesn't come here."
"It does. I can feel it around us, can't you?"
"No." He's lying.
"If I can connect with it, maybe I can reach out my thoughts to Luke, and he can find us. Now let me focus."
"It's not going to work," he says with an open-mouthed yawn. "I've tried. And even if we could use the Force, as soon as any ship tried to land to rescue us, it would be as stranded as we are."
She hates admitting he's right. "Leave me alone. You don't have to help, but stop bothering me."
She reaches out with what remains of her powers. There is the effervescent sparkle she associates with the Force, weaker here than anywhere else she's ever been. Instead of tapping into a mighty current of power, Rey follows silvery tendrils, almost out of reach. Patiently, she gathers them together, weaving a thin cord of power, and reaching for more.
She becomes aware of a second narrow cord wrapping next to hers. Without opening her eyes, or using any of her mundane senses, she knows Kylo sits opposite her, his own eyes closed, mimicking her attempt.
Rey touches his thoughts. A thick wall of anger pushes her back. She's aware of how fractured his mind is. She has known the tormented shape of his thoughts since he first invaded her mind and she invaded his in turn so many months ago. He's unstable, but without his weapons or powers, the only one he's dangerous to is himself. He wants to return to the First Order to give himself the rigid structure he can't find inside his own brain.
"I thought you said this wouldn't work," she thinks at him.
"I'm hoping to be wrong."
Together, they braid the power they've found into a thick chain, wrapping themselves inside and reaching out past the canopy of the trees, out into the stars.
"Hear me. Please. Come soon."
When Rey opens her eyes, hours have passed. It's almost morning. Kylo flops down to rest in his bed. She crawls into her own, too tired to stay awake to watch him.
Their climbing skills improve as they grow accustomed to the chain between them. Every day, they reach a higher branch, and the day they bring back an entire nest of freshly-laid eggs, Rey delights in the beaming pride her purple friends take in them both. Despite the chain, Kylo has otherwise been accepted among the rest. They trust Rey to guard him, and he has done nothing to betray her trust, not yet.
They spend their evenings in meditation, painstakingly combining the little power each can scrape together. The daylight they don't spend in helping to find food, they spend in sparring practice. Their lightsabers may not work, but there are thin branches that do, and the chain is only an added challenge as he runs her though the same exercises Luke taught him as a boy. It builds form for both. Rey doesn't like to consider he's merely attempting to learn her moves as a means of defeating her later. She needs the practice if she's ever to defeat him.
At night, Rey listens to Kylo sleep, and she wonders how her friends in the Resistance are doing, if they miss her. It's been over three months. If her calls to Luke aren't getting through, her friends may believe she's dead. She might never see them again.
Rey is on the highest branch of the tree when she feels the wood under her feet give way. She doesn't have time to shout before the branch cracks beneath her. She flings her arms out, landing on the next one down with a rib-bruising thump. The chain is taut for a second, then falls slack as Kylo falls from his own branch nearby. She can't hold on as he drags her down five meters, both of them crashing through smaller limbs to land hard on a more stout branch.
Her skin is raw from her sudden descent, with splinters down her arms. Drawing breath hurts. Beside her, Kylo's face is a mess from where he struck the thick truck of the tree as he fell.
There is no question of, "Are you all right?" There is only the question of, "Are you too injured to climb down?"
"I need a minute," she says, when she can talk. Kylo nods, edging as close as he can to the tree trunk, where the branch is widest. He helps Rey move closer. Every movement hurts.
"How bad?" he asks, and without waiting for an answer, he moves her arms and legs looking for breaks. She bites back a scream as he prods her ribcage. He frowns. "I know this hurts. I have to see if it's broken."
She nods, letting his hands move across her torso, pressing in painfully. She swallows another scream when he presses in on the same spot as before. The pain recedes when he moves away.
"I think it's just a bruise," he says, trying to sound sure and failing.
She catches her breath. Trembling, she places her hand against his face, checking for injury. Abrasions, she thinks. If they had a medical suite, she'd want to check his skull, but they don't have a medical suite. Kylo moves his arms and legs with no difficulty.
She glances over the edge. It's a long way down. He follows her gaze. "We can stay here for a while as you rest, but we have to climb down before it gets dark. If we fall again, we'll both be killed."
Rey doesn't know if her arms will hold her, but she knows she doesn't intend to die in a tree. "We'll go slowly."
Kylo wraps a length of their chain around her, holding them closer together. It means they don't have as much freedom of movement. It also means he can carry more of her weight as they make their way down one handhold at a time. They stop for a rest at each large branch. It's more than an hour until they reach the bottom. Rey crumples into a tired ball as soon as they hit the forest floor.
"You saved my life," she says, when she no longer thinks she will pass out from pain. "I couldn't have climbed down alone."
"We're even. You saved mine."
"When?"
He points to his throat. The welts have healed, leaving a few dark scars in their place. "If you hadn't insisted on treating me, I'd have been dead within a few days."
It doesn't feel the same. She'll accept his word if she doesn't owe him a debt she can't repay.
They make their way together back to the village.
Part Three
Rey is too sore to sleep. No position is comfortable. Her chest aches. She nearly broke her wrist when her fall yanked Kylo down with her, and now it throbs. She would pay a lot tonight for a painkiller spray, but that was destroyed with the rest of the medikit.
She sits up, resting her arms on her knees, and her chin on her arms. That removes some of the pressure from her ribs, although it's too uncomfortable to fall asleep this way.
In the darkness, Kylo sighs with a grumpy annoyance. "Come here."
"Why?"
"Because you're keeping me awake with all the moving around." He pats the place beside him. "Lie down."
"It hurts."
"I know." He gives her arm a tug. Rey lets herself be coaxed next to him. He's warm as he wraps his arms around her. She feels a different warmth blooming inside her chest. The pain lessens.
"What's that?"
"It's a healing spell. With our powers this weak, it's only going to work when I'm touching you."
She ought to argue with him, but instead the warmth and the easing of her pain make her too sleepy to object. Rey sets her head next to his. "Can you teach me?"
"In the morning."
She wakes with a gasp. She's being held, and she's warm, and her body hurts. The events of the previous day come back to her. The sleep has helped. She doesn't want to move from here, and there's an odd situation. Under any other circumstance, she'd be happy to be as far from Kylo as their chain will allow. Instead, she turns slightly, mindful of the soreness this causes, and watches him sleep.
His face has been cleaned of his own injury, and treated with the antiseptic salve. He'll have more scars to match the one she left across his face the day they met. Asleep, free of the demons that live inside his head, he looks younger. She can see the traces of his family stamped on his features. He was a child, and he was loved, and he became something horrible. But last night, he held her while she slept and he passed healing along to her injuries, and he didn't claim she owed him her life. She doesn't dare risk thinking that he's changed. At best, he's willing to work with her to get out of here alive.
Rey looks at their wrists. They are bound. She lives in certainty that destiny brings them together, and one or both must die. That's a far greater chain than the slim metal one holding them now.
She doesn't want to kill him. She doesn't want to die. She wonders how she can possibly break that chain.
They keep to the lower branches these days, sometimes wandering deep into the forest together to find a good tree. Rey has stopped worrying about their time alone. She's with him constantly day and night. If Kylo intended to kill her, she would be long dead. Instead, he's freer with his smiles as time passes, telling terrible jokes. Away from the First Order, away from his Master, away even from the powers that marked him as special and separated him from the rest of the galaxy, he's becoming less of a monster.
From the next branch over, he pelts a ripe fruit at her head. Rey ducks, peeved as he laughs. In place of the monster, Kylo is becoming an annoying twerp. Maybe he always was, and has been too busy up until now to really shine at being goofy.
Finn would love Kylo's bad jokes.
Sorrow hits her like a hammer. She hasn't seen Finn in months. He's her best friend, her first real friend, and there's a good chance she'll never see him again. The thought clenches her chest as badly as her bruised ribs did. Finn tells bad jokes, and he gives great hugs, and she misses him so much she suddenly can't breathe.
"What's wrong?" Kylo has lost the smile.
"Nothing. I want to go home."
"We can. We've collected enough for today."
"No, I mean home. I want to see my friends again. I miss them. Don't you miss anyone?"
He goes still. "No. The First Order doesn't encourage that kind of closeness." His voice is clipped, colder. For a while, he forgot about who he is, who she is, and what their lives will be when they get back. Perhaps she shouldn't have reminded him. "We can return to the village." He starts to climb down, which forces her to follow or risk falling again.
They don't talk as they walk back. This close, she can sense the old angers glowing inside him again, old wrongs he's nurtured his whole life. They bring their haul to the gathering space for the cooks to serve later. It isn't until they are alone in their hut that Rey breaks the silence.
"We should try contacting Luke again." It has been several days since either had the energy. Now she's sure she needs to reach out, find the right means of sending her mind to touch her would-be Master's.
"Skywalker has failed us." The clipped tone is worse. "We should attempt to reach Lord Snoke instead. His powers may be strong enough to find us."
Rey shakes her head. "If Snoke reaches us first, I'll be held prisoner."
"And if the Resistance finds us, I'll spend the rest of my life with one of these," he says, waving the chain. "Not interested."
"You don't have to be their prisoner. Luke and your mother would welcome you back. You could come home with us."
"Unlikely."
They emerge for dinner, their argument banked in front of the others. Kylo is distant to her now, despite his constant presence. She ought to be grateful. He's been far too close since they started this mess. Any space can only do her good.
Instead, the loneliness eats at her. Her best friend is far away, and the only other human on this planet is angry with her.
The thought forms inside her head without her realization, until the truth is perched there in her mind. Has she plucked the thought from his head, or does she just know him well enough by now? Kylo has fallen into this world, and wrapped it around himself like healing arms. Now he is aware that morning is coming, and he will have to rise and walk away. He's bitter because they will have to leave.
It's the middle of the night. Rey is wide awake. She can tell from the lack of snoring that Kylo hasn't managed to fall asleep yet, either.
She says, "You could stay here. No one can sense us here. There are no sensors. Our powers don't touch the Force. You could stay, and live here, and be safe."
"But you would go."
"I have to. I need to be home again. I can't explain why." It isn't just her training, barely begun. It isn't just her friends. It's who she is. The day she left Jakku, she knew she never intended to be trapped on one world ever again
"Then I have to follow." He moves his wrist, moves the chain between them. They are bound.
Later, she won't be sure who moved first. Later, she'll revolve the chances in her head, that it was her, that it was him, that some understanding between them clicked together simultaneously.
Now, her mouth finds his in the darkness. The kiss is rough, unpracticed, and full of things they want and can't have. She can't trust him, not here and now, and not in whatever future unrolls before them. Without letting herself consider why, she pulls his end of the chain taut, looping the length around his other hand, constricting his wrists together. Rey takes control of the kiss, and feels Kylo's shudder under her, tastes the soft moan on his lips.
Their powers, weak as they are here, have learned to touch when they are this close. His body bows his neck to her. His mind echoes with the word, "Anything."
"This is only tonight," she says, with a firm belief she wants to feel. She kisses his bare throat, kisses the dark scars from his collar, like love bites etched over his skin. When he returns to his life, he'll wear high-necked shirts, and he will have no friends to ask him how he was injured.
She's caught glimpses of his body as he's undressed here, and she's sure he hasn't granted her as much privacy as she would like. There are no surprises as she opens his shirt. Her own unwraps without needing to slide over her hand. She presents him a breast to touch with his lips and teeth. His groans deepen as he licks his way across what flesh he's permitted to touch, seeking a nipple Rey keeps just out of his reach. She likes the feel of his mouth on her, but she enjoys his frustrated growl even more. He wants her, has wanted her since they met in the forest on Takodana. Kylo wants to possess her soul, and lay claim to her body, and he wants her to say she is his alone.
Rey wants many things. Tonight, she wants to feel. She sits up and places the heel of her hand against his mouth, shoving wetly inside. He moans again, the sound vibrating her skin. His arms test the strength of his chain, the same one binding him to her. He could struggle free if he chose. She watches the fight go out of his shoulders as his eyes meet hers.
This isn't the first time she's done this, though it's the first she's tried with the other person completely in her power. Rey's hands must do all the work, unfastening his trousers and her own. Rey must move their bodies into a more comfortable position. Rey must carefully straddle his hips, and guide him into her, and watch the broken look cross his face at the first deep thrust as she takes him deep.
Listening at night, she's heard other couples at their unions. She's sure someone must be listening now. She keeps her own gasps to herself.
It has been a long time since she last had a lover. She's forgotten the good, solid stretch as her own muscles rise and fall, and the shuddery sweetness of that place inside her she's never able to reach with her own hand. Her hand is busy now, coaxing her own pleasure from her aching, sensitive skin as they move together faster. She can feel his mind flowing against hers, surging through sensations as his knees try to find leverage and thrust deeper. His hands wriggle in their bonds. She is his captor, and she is his freedom, all bound up in the jumbled landscape of his mind. Sheltered inside of his thoughts, she spies the one he doesn't intend for her to see, the one where he's convinced himself he's in love with her. It's a horrible delusion, pieced together from the broken, twisted ideas of love he's been fed by his Master, and turned outward onto the one person he believes can understand him.
"I know you don't," he thinks, as much as he is capable of thought while his attention is focused on wet and hot and tight and incoherent in his need for more. She shuts down her own thoughts, immerses herself in her own needs as she rides him harder, nearly cresting, nearly there. His mind blazes with animal want, unable now to find the finesse of sliding back into her brain.
She wants him inside her body, not inside her soul, not now. If he could hear her, she could not hide away her own emotions, not from him or from herself. She doesn't want to know if she's in love with him, too.
It's morning, and they're sticky and sore. She's had her inoculations, the same as the rest of the Resistance. She won't get pregnant, or catch one of the common diseases associated with sex. It's as safe as anything can be, she tells herself, and there's no reason not to kiss Kylo awake, push his arms over his head, and greet the morning properly as he writhes in delight beneath her.
At breakfast, the chief approaches them. "The season is over." He nods to Rey. "Is he safe?"
She shrugs. "He won't harm you." She considers, as he unbinds first her wrist, and then Kylo's. "How long is the season?"
"As long as it must be. You took a long time."
Kylo rubs his wrist and asks, "It's a mating season?"
"Of course," says the chief. "Now you may choose to be permanently...."
"No," Rey says. "That's fine. No permanence needed, thank you." She ignores the expression on Kylo's face. She doesn't want to know if he's relieved or disappointed.
"It is of course your choice."
She wonders at that, too. How long would they have been chained together if last night hadn't happened? Would she still be bound to him twenty years from now, resentful and sad? She has her freedom. That's all that matters.
"I'm going with the hunting party today," Kylo says. She can't stop him. She can only keep guard.
"So am I."
Night brings new questions. He is no longer required to remain at her side. He doesn't have to sleep in her hut. He has nowhere else to go. "You can stay," she says, and watches him control his face.
"Good."
They rest side by side in their own pallets, not sleeping, and not talking about last night. It was just once, she decides. She needed comfort, and now they are free. Any lingering emotional attachment is best forgotten. Jedi don't do that sort of thing. Luke has told her this many times, both as instruction and warning. She has seen too many yesterdays in his sad smiles. He has been in love, perhaps more than once, and doesn't want Rey to experience that same agony.
"Was Luke ever married?" she asks in the thin night air.
It's a long time before Kylo responds. "No."
"I'd like to try to reach him again. We've got to be close."
Another long pause lingers. Then Kylo sits up, and he stretches his hands to her. Rey shifts, letting herself touch him, sweeping together the few tendrils each can find of the Force surrounding them. They build upon each other, focusing the power as they've been learning to do. Time is meaningless within the sway of their work. Bodies might be resting, but minds subsume each other, creating a deep intimacy.
Rey reaches out.
Luke Skywalker reaches back. "There you are."
They don't speak after. Instead, Rey finds his lips while Kylo whispers into her mouth. She's more sure this time, and holds his arms above his head with her own as she takes him into her, knowing him now as well as she knows herself. He needs to be held down by her, needs to be urged by her, needs her.
Morning is coming. Their rescuers know where they are now. This can only last one more night.
Rey cries into the kiss when she comes, and bites promises they both know she can't keep into his tongue.
The Resistance has been funded by the last of the coffers of a long-dead planet. Many of its ships are old, and a few have no electronics at all. When Commander Dameron manages to bring one in on an easy glide into an open meadow, Rey jumps into his arms with relief.
"We've been worried about you, kid," Poe says, rubbing her head affectionately. "Finn's been out of his head. He told us you had to be alive, we just needed to keep looking."
Rey smiles, her heart warm to know someone at least has never given up on her. "I'm glad I got through."
"I'm guessing your ship isn't salvageable."
She shakes her head. "We'd never get it running. The EMR fields here are vicious." Poe nods in agreement. Together, they head back to the village for him to say hello to her kind hosts, and to retrieve poor AY-06, who has been lifeless since her landing.
As they load the droid onto his ship, he says casually, "Luke said you might have been stranded with someone else?"
Her face is still. Rey has practiced this flat look for years, never letting Unkar Plutt see her anger, never letting the other residents of Niima Outpost see her fear. Poe Dameron has no chance. "Just my droid." She gives his arm a squeeze. "I should say good-bye to the people here. I'll never see them again."
"Okay." And maybe he believes her, and maybe he doesn't, but he gives her time alone to walk back to the place that's been her home for these last several months.
She makes a proper obeisance to the chief, and tries the same with the healer before she's swept into a friendly hug. "I'll miss you," she says, and she will. No signal will reach them. No ships can land except the one ancient vessel Poe may be able to take off from here. Rey can only remember them, and wish them well.
Then she steps inside her hut.
"You could come with us."
He doesn't reply. Instead, he plays with the skin at his wrist, the place where they were bound for so long, and Rey can almost feel his hand against her own pulse point. He cannot go with her, and it doesn't matter. He cannot help but follow where she goes, whether it takes months or years to escape the atmosphere of this planet. She can keep his secret until he does.
"I'll be with you," he says, and strokes her face.
A kiss is as good as a good-bye.