Rey had done her best not to allow herself to dream.

There had been a frightful intimacy to her dreams as of late, reminiscent of the vague brush of a hand against hers. Her skin prickled, in what she initially thought was revulsion. It had come to comfort her like an old friend. She woke up in a sweat, her breath rapid and her skin almost painful against the scratchy rough spun of her blanket. It was frustrating, this lack of sleep, and a pair of dark bags had begun to present themselves on her otherwise youthful face.

No one had warned her that this would be more difficult than facing off against a room full of enemies.

A voice echoed painfully in her skull, and she squeezed her eyes against the onslaught, pinching them shut until he quieted down. Usually, he would - as these were only dreams. Snoke was gone, and their connection had been obliterated with him. Their connection had been obliterated. She sometimes had to repeat it like a mantra in her head. Obliterated. Like so many other things. Gone. Ghosts.

She sat up, rubbing her temples and glancing out at the starry expanse stretched out before her. She had taken to falling asleep in the cock pit of the Falcon, causing Chewie to inevitably toss a blanket over her before mournfully groaning and making his way to his own bed. That (early) morning, she found herself facing Poe, a headache already growing right behind her eyes. He handed her a cup of something strong, though she couldn't be sure if it was meant to help her sleep or wake up. She dropped her legs down, feet planting firmly on the floor as she wrapped her hands around the steaming mug. Poe looked sleepless himself, his dark hair curling into his eyes.

"You dream loudly," He said, a smirk stretching across his face.

"I'm sorry," She said, taking a sip of the liquid before coughing a bit. "What is this?" She nearly spat.

"Old family remedy," He whispered. "It will help you sleep,"

"Oh really?" She murmured playfully, though she knew when she was fitful that the others on the ship were usually awake.

Poe smiled his impressively charming smile and settled into the seat beside her. The falcon was cold, strangely devoid of any sort of movement other than a vague, creeping chill which seemed to be taking all of them over. Rey had been forced to pull on her thickest socks and pile herself high with as many blankets as any of them could find. They were in a drift, a strange sort of void that was full of frequent lightning storms and a thick blanket of clouds. It was dazzling, but the moment that they'd gotten swept up in it, the Falcon had stopped working - causing Chewie to spend a good deal of his time below in an attempt to figure out what the hell was going on.

Poe hadn't meant to be on the ship with them, but he'd caught a ride when they made the plan to head out to a system that housed an old Alliance base, with reports of allies springing up there. General Organa had sent them all across the systems looking to bolster these connections. Leia had noticed the general malaise of the crew, and Rey had suspected that she had wanted to give them an activity that would take their mind from the overwhelming amount of system changing events that had happened. He seemed frustrated by their lack of progress, but they were stuck - and all of them had eventually accepted the fact that they might have to try to wait the "storm" out.

Poe took a sip from his own drink, which seemed to go down easier than Rey's had - his eyes on the flashing lighting as the ship seemed rattled with another burst of thunder. Rey took another sip of the awful tasting concoction that Poe had given her. Rey examined his profile, finding that in the deep, low light, it was a face she enjoyed looking at. It was not, currently, the one that haunted her dreams; but he seemed to soothe her somehow.

When it seemed there was danger of hearing his eerie, dark tones echoing again in her thoughts, Poe realized he was being watched and looked at her. He always had the look of being vaguely amused, even in the worst situations. Rey barely knew him, though they seemed to share a companionship that went past needing to fill the silence.

"Finn worries about your nightmares," Poe finally said, taking another drink of the liquid. "I thought this might help,"

"It does, thank you," Rey nearly flinched at the use of the word 'nightmares'.

"I hate to sound like a mother hen," He finally murmured. "But maybe you should try catching a few hours in your bunk," He admitted, setting the drink aside. "I'll keep an eye on this while you do. Everyone else will be up in a few hours,"

She wanted to argue, but the soft turn of his brown eyes made her think twice. She nodded, swallowing the rest of the concoction with ferocity before she stood up, setting the cup aside.

"Thank you, Poe,"

He nodded in return, kicking his feet up onto the dash and wrapping his blanket more securely around him.

It was snow and darkness. Rey thought she could spy the vague glow of red, and instead of retreating from it, she began stalking towards it. The snow soaked through her boots, and her feet felt frigid cold. She wore her simple robes that she'd carted with her from Jakku, and they weren't meant for snow. In her hand was a lightsaber, glowing blue with purpose. It felt like a beacon, drawing a dark intention in her direction. Even though she was cold, she felt sweaty and strangely warm, tasting the salt on her lips. It was adrenaline that drove her towards the red light glowing hazily in the snow fall.

The trees kept twisting up like a labyrinth, but eventually she came to a clearing, sterile white and surrounded by a crop of dark trees. There were footprints, a large foot print, and her eyes lifted to take in the surroundings before they landed on him. He was tall, standing there in his stooped fashion with his strange, kinetic lightsaber flickering red at his side. It fell away with that strange disengaging sound once he saw her, and her own was suddenly dissipating at her side.

Ben.

Or was it Kylo Ren?

He was stark against the snow, standing nearly as tall as a tree. He was uninjured, so memory didn't serve. She saw the white of the scar she had given him twisting like a path on his freckled features. He had never been beautiful to her, but she found herself wondering what it might feel like to trace the ridges of the scar with her fingertips. He dropped the lightsaber, and she heard the weight of it crunch in the snow. She was unsure, but eventually her own fell from her fingertips as she drew forward, almost tripping in the thick layers of snowfall. It was his overlarge frame that fell first, onto his knees - as she came to stand before him.

He reached out, pulling the dark gloves from his long, broad fingers. Her own were bare, and so cold she could no longer feel them. He took her hands in his own, and she felt the callouses of training as his warmed skin brushed hers. They were large enough for him to wrap both of his hands around hers. She looked down, finding it so odd that his hands should be wrapped around her own.

"Rey,"

Her voice caught in her throat, and she found she was unable to formulate a reply immediately, other than: "Ben,"

"You're cold," He murmured, in his matter-of-fact way.

His hands slid against hers, and she grasped his, almost unaware that she was capable of such a response. She hadn't yet looked up to him, but now that they were connected, her eyes lifted up to his. They were brown, a fleck of red in them, and he used his weight and height to pull her into the snow with him. She toppled to her knees, though she felt the width and breadth of his arms swooping around her to pull her against his chest. The hug felt crushing at first, but then he loosened his grip and allowed her a moment to pull back. She took the opportunity, pressing her hands against the wall of his chest and using it to push away from his suffocating hug.

He kept his arms wrapped around her, even as she pushed him away.

"Is this real?"

"I don't know,"

He felt real enough. She could feel the fabric of his clothing beneath her fingertips, the warmth of his body radiating against her. She let her hands drift, using the excuse that she was trying to discern that he was real, indeed. It was more shocking when his hands drifted in return - and she had to feel the brunt of them against her bare skin. It felt almost as if he would devour her whole. He then grasped each of her biceps in his hands and began shaking her, his deep velvet tones begging her to wake up.

Wake up.

Rey. Wake up.

WAKE UP!

She shot up, feeling the rough shaking of the Falcon. It felt like the ship might rattle apart entirely, and she opened her eyes just in time to blearily hear Finn and Poe shouting at one another with Chewie howling mournfully as a backdrop. She wrapped the blanket tightly around her shoulders before she opened her eyes, and she realized that this shaking was unlike the rattlings of before. They were falling, and it felt as if the storm was pulling them inward. She scrambled out of the bunk, slipping and sliding in the direction of the cock-pit, though the ships lights flickered on and off, indicating that it still wasn't working. She heard Rose below, banging and adjusting, but the Falcon gave no real response.

Chewie yelled down at her, and she responded with a quick, "I'm working on it!" Irritation evident in her tone.

Rey scrambled into the cockpit, doing her best not to get knocked against the walls of the corridors before she grasped onto the chair Finn was currently sitting in.

"What's going on?" She shouted over the din of the free fall.

"It started awhile go, all the lights blinked out and we went into free fall. Sometimes the power kicks back on but it's scarily infrequent," Finn said, his clipped tones distracted as he continued mashing things on the console. As if on cue, the lights flickered on and halted the process of the fall, but it wasn't to last. The lights flickered off again, causing Rose to give an audible exclamation from down below.

Rey reached out, grasping Finn's shoulder suddenly.

"Hold on," She murmured, her eyes closing slowly.

Rey reached out, as she had done before, feeling the strange in-between of the spaces around them. There was something out there, something beyond what she could touch that was causing the ship to fail. Every time she got close to it, it slipped from her. She didn't chase it, instead choosing to focus on the falling of the ship. Her strength didn't waiver, and even though there was a faint headache beginning at the back of her eyes, she managed to steady and slow the plunge of the ship. They broke through the atmosphere of the planet that was pulling them downward, moving at a speed that caused the outer hull to catch fire. They were either going to die aboard the Falcon, or Rey would have to settle them to ground without killing them all.

It seemed an eternity, but when the Falcon met water with a loud rumble and a large shake, they all became dislodged from their places, including Rey. She fell backwards, away from Finn, and landed on her butt with her head banging against something as the console caught her. Everything went black.

It was a dreamless sleep, which she might have been thankful for, if she had known. However, Rey woke with a throbbing in her head, and sweat on her brow. It was hotter than she ever remembered it being in Jakku, though she could hear a familiar voice in her head saying that 'it was a dry heat'. This was different though, the air pregnant with water, pressing upon one with an urgent need to find a cold body of water immediately. Her face indicated her displeasure, though all she could do was lift her hand to try and rub the pain from her temples. When her eyes opened she found that it was dark, and she heard the echoing drips of water reverberate through the place. It was a cave. She thought she might have still been dreaming, but the pain in her head and hands made it clear she was not.

"Finn?" She tried, though was met with no response other than the reverberating echo.

She moved towards the light of the entrance, squinting against the low light of the day. She glanced down at her hands, finding that they were swollen with scratches and puncture wounds. What had she done? She lifted her hand against the light, attempting to shield her eyes as she looked out over the horizon. She could smell meaty-leafed plants and a variety of strange animal life, but there was nothing there of her companions. She couldn't see the Falcon anywhere - couldn't even see the damage of the foliage where it might have landed. How could she have gotten so far away from it?

There was an emptiness that made her uneasy - a sort of silence that she hadn't experienced since her force sense had been "turned on", so to speak. She wanted to yell their names, but she realized it might have not been a good idea to draw too much attention to herself as it was. She reached out with the tendrils of her mind, though the path of her companions was frustratingly muddled. They were here, but not there, there and then gone. Alive, but out of reach. They must have survived the submersion, but how had she ended up here? If her hands were any indication, she had found her way here - though when she searched her thoughts she found she could claim no memory of it.

She struck out into the jungle, grabbing a few rocks and placing them into her pockets before finding a long, somewhat heavy stick that would have to do as a weapon should she need it. Her lightsaber had been with the Falcon, and she had no idea if it had even survived. There were trails here and there - suggesting that some sort of life form had walked the paths, though some of them wound around in odd fashions, and some of them were completely overgrown, causing her to have to hack down a particularly stinky vine that released a putrid smell every time it was broken. Eventually the smell became so overwhelming that she discontinued hacking at the vines, and tried to find her way around or underneath them.

The rain came in fits; first a sprinkle and then a heavy, sideways torrent that forced Rey to stall her progress and find shelter under one of the large, fetid trees that graced the Island. The large, tear drop shaped leaves kept her out of the way of the cold pelt of water, but it had gotten to a point where she was so soaked that she could not tell the difference. The water was strong, though, and the wind even more so, and she found herself tired - the lack of sleep over the past few days dragging her down. Normally, she was energetic, but she found herself just wanting to sleep.

Eventually, the rain would stop, and her clothing would dry with such a startling veracity that it was as if she had never been wet at all. Of course, the humidity felt as if it was even more sapping than the rain, and by the time she came upon what looked to be a small village, she was thankful that she might find some shelter. The sun was setting, and it had gotten to be cold. It reminded her of Jakku, and she found she was enjoying her time here just about as much.

When she finally came upon what looked to be a small outpost, it was carved into the heavy vines and trees that were almost strangling the island. She felt relief at first, but when she took her first few strides into the area she found that the place was a ghost town. Doors stood open, there were stalls full of rotting food and the dust that coated the items left standing alone in homes made Rey realize that the place had been devoid of life for a long time. She paused briefly, examining a small doll that had been overturned and abandoned in the middle of the lane that connected all of the living spaces. It was as much a town as Jakku had been, though there was no bustle of activity, and no one was scavenging for parts to pay for food.

Rey closed her eyes after a thorough examination of the area, her brows dropping into a furrow as she reached out with tentative tendrils, trying to seek out some sort of life force. There was nothing. So much nothing that she wondered if it was something. She heard something shift behind her, a sort of rustle in the foliage which caused her eyes to shoot open. She spun around, hoping to catch sight of a friendly face. Where had the rest of her friends gone?

It wasn't Finn. Or Poe. It was a young girl, who looked to be no older than fifteen. Her hair was a wild, dark rats nest on her head, and Rey found herself gripping the stick she had been using to walk in a fashion that meant she might suddenly swing it like a weapon. The girl didn't shamble, but her walk was a slow sort of concurrence, and it was often jerky, as if she was in some sort of pain - or as if something was holding her back (or pushing her forward).

Rey steadied her feet, though the girl was not yet moving as such a speed to cause her alarm - her overall appearance was sinister. The closer she got, the more Rey found to be wrong with her. Her eyes were a glowing sort of purple putrescence. Rey did not think she had ever seen such a color occur naturally, but her small universe had been widened of late. The girl had a swipe of oily black substance across her mouth, and Rey instantly recognized it as the putrid oil that had been spilling from the vines as she'd been hacking them away. Rey lifted her hand, drawing the energy around her to try to stall the girl in her tracks. Something about the jerky way that she moved told Rey that there would be no use in trying to talk sense to her.

Rey couldn't have expected the girl to push back, with such a force that it threw her back off of her feet, air knocked from her lungs as her back connected with the dirt. She coughed, rolling to the side to try and regain her breath before she scrambled backwards, standing and finding her feet again. She was prepared to face off against the girl, retrieving her makeshift weapon and facing her once again, now covered in the muddy dirt she'd slid into. She spit some of the grainy material from her mouth, finding it just as distasteful as the smell of the vines.

As she stood, Rey's gaze was drawn from the girl, out into the ever darkening horizon. She realized with some discomfort, that there was more than just the one pair of glowing eyes. A whole bevy of them blinked out in the darkness, and she realized that there would be no fight here that she might win - not against the sheer numbers. They were like wolves on the hunt. She had only ever faced off against one other force user, and though she had won the fight, she found that the thought of fifty force users was almost as unsettling as he was. She turned, and ran.

By the time she was out of breath, she felt she had been running for hours. There was no real shelter from the rain, but somehow the intense unpleasantness of the "town" seemed to dissipate the more distance she put between herself and it. She still had no indication of her friends, or where they were, and she began to dread the thought that they had come up against those things before she had. She didn't like running from a fight, but even Rey recognized the insanity of trying to fight a huge number of people in the state she was in.

In fact, the situation was looking more dire the longer it went on. Each time she reached out with the force, she was met with nothing but dead air. No remnants or whispers of her friends. Rey couldn't imagine that she had lost the ability just as quickly as she had gained it. No, there was something other going on, and she wagered the events were connected. As night had fallen, the planet had gotten even more muddled and less friendly. There were bugs aplenty, and each time Rey swatted one away they left behind a small spot of her blood and a small itchy bump that became more maddening each time another bite was left behind. She began to regret any bits of exposed skin.

When the skyward spires of a tall building began to appear on the horizon, Rey began to find relief. Of course, the twitchy thought at the back of her mind warned her that it might just be another ambush. However, she was exhausted, and she just wanted a place to rest her head for the night (and maybe avoid the onslaught of blood sucking bugs that had accosted her). She began to bargain with herself. Just make it another mile. And another. And another.

Eventually, after so much bargaining, Rey found herself standing in front of a huge temple. It was old, with the ceiling having fallen in, but she thought there might be enough of a cover left to spend the night there. Something in her recognized the markings carved into the sandstone that curved around the old electronically locked door. Her hands brushed the markings, and though she put no effort to it, the door responded to her - opening with ease.

Rey stepped inside of the temple, and she was expecting a sort of draftiness that never came. The temple was just as humid, especially now that the rain had stopped (again). Rey drifted through the empty corridors, and realized that this place had also been empty for a very long time. She followed the hallways, finding a sort of atrium that would do well as a cover, considering it had most of it's roof left - and the bugs seemed uninterested in this place.

Rey drifted, her mind on things that she could not speak of - until she came upon an area that looked as though it had recently had life in it. There was evidence that a fire had been lit within a circle of stones, and recently doused. The coals were still smoldering. She wondered at it, before she came across a pack which had been left, but wasn't totally empty. There was food, and water, and she was so hungry that her stomach garbled angrily at the thought of it. When she turned her mind from her stomach, she realized this might have been one of her companions, until she spotted the first order insignia on the hefty black pack.

Suddenly, she was on alert again. She couldn't imagine how the first order had found this place, though they were experts at following the whole lot of the alliance around the galaxy these days. Angrily, she kicked the thing over. She leaned down after arguing silently with herself for a few moments, pulling the thing open and yanking out it's contents with some childish ferocity. It was a disappointing measure, as it was just a few personal items and a change of clothing. The only thing of interest glinted silver in the low light, but her attention was pulled from further examining it when she heard another shuffle. Her senses were awry in this place, and she was frustrated with herself for being caught off guard again.

She turned in the direction of the noise, her hand reaching into her pocket and picking one of the heftier stones she'd chosen earlier. If she was going to be forced to fight a horde full of poisoned townies, at least she would try to get the jump on them. She threw the stone with force and precision, feeling the rough grain of it slide from her fingertips as it left her hand. It was something she was already good at, but she couldn't help but feel the tingle of the force as it flew towards it's target.

It landed it's mark, though she was stopped from going for a second stone when she heard the thing 'knock' forcefully against skull and fall with a 'thud' to the ground beneath. The man reached for his head, drawing it away with finger pads stained red. It was hard to mistake him; even without his traditional garb he had a sort of presence that made itself immediately obvious. A moment of childish rage crossed his features, and Rey thought he might pick the stone up and lob it back at her. The boyish expression smoothed away, his features placid. She was shocked, so much so that she stood there staring at him for what seemed like a very long time.

His military clothing had been shed, likely due to the heat. He remained in a black, standard undershirt. His general look was one of disarray, though from the waist down his uniform appeared mostly unchanged. He was smudged with mud, and his lengthy dark hair had been pulled back into a low hanging ponytail. His features betrayed none of the shock that she was sure hers did, though looking at him now she wondered if he always looked so conflicted. The gash on his forehead leaked, but he seemed unaware of it. Rey questioned if he was real each time she saw him, but when she dreamed of him it was as she had first met him, his face lit up with the red glow of his lightsaber, his form lumbering through the snow as if he was a creature run on adrenaline alone. Somehow she knew she wasn't dreaming.

There had been a time when everything in her had wanted to kill him. She found herself conflicted now, forced into something uncomfortable with him. She felt as if she knew him better than she knew anyone, and she wondered if he felt the same. They both seemed to have the same moment of recognition. If they killed each other, their likelihood of getting off of this forsaken rock got smaller. Even she could recognize the benefit of having him here, and she attempted to assuage her stormy thoughts by pointing out that despite him being what he was that he was useful in some capacity.

"You have good aim," He reached up to wipe the blood from his face, wiping it on his pant leg.

"Ben," She muttered.