A/N: Thanks again for the response. Please let me know what you think of the new developments in the story.

Day 9.

She figured she had one day of water left. She'd been walking for four days. She could probably walk one day without water before she finally gave into dehydration and exhaustion.

After that she didn't know what she would do.

Die, she supposed. The wind would bury her quickly. No one would ever find her. She tried not to think about that too much. The idea of not seeing Finn or Leia or really any of the people she was just starting to make a sort of family with, made her want to lie down in the sand and cry. She knew if she stopped for longer than a few minutes she wouldn't get back up again.

So she kept walking.

She felt it before she saw it.

The wind shifted and a startled feeling washed over her, the first thing she'd felt besides fear and hopelessness in days. The pain that had been hovering behind her ribs, which she had mistaken for some kind of internal injury, squirmed and, for the first time since she landed on this planet, she wished she had realized what she had been feeling.

Darkness. She could feel it more prominently now; the raw sickly feeling crept over her skin.

People were scared and dying. She could sense them; barely make them out, like a shadow in her peripheral vision. She spun in a circle, searching.

The thunder from above caught her attention and she watched in shock as a ship, five times as big as her own, broke atmosphere.

The entire earth beneath her shook.

The ship was not attempting to land. It hurtled through the sky like a falling star, ablaze, huge pieces of it coming off on entry. It was massive; billows of smoke poured out of it and, as it fell to the ground, time seemed to slow down. Its roar was deafening as the machine plummeted towards the planet and she covered her ears in an attempt to block out the sound. Wounded, it blinked out of sight behind a dune.

The impact shook the ground, sand billowing up and knocking her off her feet. It took her a moment to realize what was happening, that the crash had caused a shock wave. Her Jedi friend, who she'd forgotten about in the moment, suddenly bolted. She blinked, trying to process what was happening. A shock wave was billowing out from the crashed ship, hurtling across the dunes, picking up sand and making a dark line that was raging its way down towards her. She followed her mirage with her eyes down the dune. And then she started to run as fast as she could, her brain finally catching up and realizing that if she got caught in the darkness, she would die.

The Jedi figure paused at the bottom of the dune as if waiting for her, priceless seconds passing by. She gained ground on the figure for the first time in days. He was waiting for her, arm held out. She didn't hesitate, grasping him the moment she hit the bottom. He shoved her into the ground, with a force no mirage could ever manage and before she could contemplate how that was even possible the shock wave hit. His firm figure protected her from the brunt of the shock. She was buried in an avalanche of sand as it cascaded over her. She choked, flailing in the sand to cover her mouth and eyes with her shirt. The sand piled in around her, weighing down on her, making it impossible breathe.

She must have blacked out, because she woke with a jerk and immediately began to gasp for air, only getting a mouthful of sand in the process. She dug frantically and finally broke through, coughing up sand and gasping for air at the same time. It took her a moment to realize that the figure, her mirage, was gone.

She felt around but the Jedi was nowhere to be seen. She waited for him to uncover himself from the sand, gasping for air much like she had. But nothing happened. No figure. No mirage.

So many things ran through her mind. Questions about who the figure was and how he'd saved her and if he'd ever been there in there first place, raced through her mind. She wondered how far gone she had to be for her hallucination to feel physically real.

The plume of smoke that rose over the top of the sand dune caught her attention, pulling her thoughts away.

She glanced around one more time for her mysterious figure before deciding the ship was a more pressing concern. She dredged back up the sand dune towards the fallen ship, a new assortment of bruises making themselves known on the way up.

It took her close to an hour to trudge through the sand and climb the sand dunes between her and the ship. If there had been no sand in her way it wouldn't have taken more than five minutes to get there, but she was exhausted, and it was well past the point when she would normally stop and rest for the 'night.'

The ship was a wreck.

Burnt ash, debris, and charred metal were scattered and ablaze atop the sand.

People are screaming and that feeling which had first told her that people were hurting, nearly paralyzes her with intensity.

She runs towards the ship, the intense heat of the flames scorching her. The outer hull is quickly burning itself out but the only entrance (a gaping hole in the side of the ship) is boiling with black, acrid smoke. She chokes, quickly pulling the gauze material tight around her face.

Screams of terror and coughing reach her but they are slowly fading and there's only one option. She either lets them die or she runs into that blazing inferno and tries and help. The choice is black and white.

She drops her pack, in hopes that the water and food will still be there if she manages to come back out and dives in before she loses what little courage she has left.

There's a blazing fire just inside the hole and she manages to get through it fairly unsigned, but it's the smoke that takes a toll. She accidentally gets a mouth full of the black fumes and it burns her throat and lungs.

The screaming is getting fainter and she runs through the halls, calling out for anyone that can respond.

She can barely see, but she can't miss the tell-tell black and white suits of stormtroopers. She stumbles over debris and bodies that are long dead in the crash. Her eyes won't stop tearing up and she keeps wiping at her face, trying to clear her vision so she can see.

She hears a voice calling out and she runs, not caring at all that these are the foes she's been preparing to fight for months. Right now, they are just people. Dying, hurting human beings that deserve to live. She skids to a halt, reaching a trooper that's obviously in agony.

"Where are you hurt?" She drops to her knees instantly, already pulling his helmet off and trying to get a good look at what's happened to him.

He makes a harsh coughing sound and sags. She is too late and he's already gone. She drops his helmet in shock, stumbling back. He's got a nice face, she thinks. Taking in his handsome features, she is sick at the irony that only a week ago she would have purposely ended his life for the sake of her cause and yet now when he was dead at her feet she could only feel remorse.

Another voice rises from farther in the belly of the ship and with one glance back at the man she'd lost she runs farther into the smoke. The ship is a maze, and the smoke claws at her throat and makes her vision burn so that she can barely see a few feet in front her. Her run slowly dissipates into an agonizing, stumbling trot.

It must be more than smoke, she realizes, long spoken words from Finn coming back to her about how the masks filter out smoke, but not poison. The smoke must carry something toxic in the air. It explains why suddenly she's struggling so much to breathe and why her lungs feel as if they've got weights attached and every breath is excruciating.

There had been a voice yelling for help, a single voice, but even now that's been silenced. Only alarms and the thunder of the blaze behind her are left.

She rounds a corner to find a burning mound and she blinks hard, knowing now it's not the smoke but in fact tears, because she's come too late and whoever it was that was crying out, is no longer with her.

She turns, sick, the smoke and smell making her nauseous and dizzy. In a panic to get away, she stumbles hard over a piece of steel in the hall and fumbles to catch herself. The fall knocks the wind out of her and she's lost in a coughing fit, adrenaline fading quickly. She's not sure if she has the energy to stand and drag herself out of this burning mess.

She closes her eyes in an attempt to make them stop watering and as she lies there in the dark. The blaring alarms fade out and she can feel her consciousness fading in and out. The poison air finally getting to her lungs. Her eyes are closed and all she can see is darkness and she listens to the pounding of her frantic heart beat as she struggles to breathe and find the will to rise from the rubble. There in the dark, she feels something that she hasn't felt since that night in the snow.

Her eyes snap open.

She knows he's alive. She can sense it.

She struggles to her feet, letting the darkness that's coiling in her stomach guide her. It's not much farther into the belly of the ship when she stops, realizing that he's behind the door at her right. She breaks off the paneling by the door and takes a jab at the emergency release. The door squeals, opening with surprising speed.

She enters the room. The door may have opened smoothly, but the structural integrity of the room is practically destroyed, beams from the ceiling blocking most of her view.

But she sees him there, lying in the dark, as always, shrouded in black clothing and that ridiculous helmet.

He's lying motionless, and she already knows he's alive but she checks anyway, reaching down for his neck to feel for a pulse.

His heart is beating faintly, but steadily.

There is a moment when she considers letting him die from whatever acrid smoke that is now filling the room, or to let the fires eventually consume him. But there's always the chance he could wake up and escape. Keep your enemies closer, is how the old saying goes. She makes a snap decision. She'd dove into this dying heap to save the passengers and even Kylo Ren didn't deserve to die. She can't get over the irony.

Of course it's him.

Of course, of all the people to be alive (and he's the only one, she can tell) it would be him.

There is an indentation in his helmet and she can tell the ceiling support had come down on him. It's that stupid mask. It's probably the only thing that saved him.

It's in her hands whether or not she should save him. It should be black and white. She either lets the man who's been hunting her die or she saves him, here and now. But the answer is not black and white but a fuzzy shade of gray. She finally decides that she'll be dead in about three days anyway, so it won't make a difference.

It's the hardest thing she's ever done. Making the decision to pull him out of the burning ship is by far the most difficult she's ever made. The gas is pouring in and it won't take long before it chokes her until she can no longer breathe. Time is of the essence. She is deep in the belly of the ship. Kylo Ren doesn't look as if he will wake any time soon and she wouldn't have the strength at her best, let alone after days in the desert, to carry him.

Which is why she decides that the only choice she has is to levitate him out.

She rises from kneeling beside him, aware that with every labored breath she takes, the weaker she becomes and the heavier he will feel.

She looks him over, sizing him up. The biggest thing she had ever lifted with Luke were some small rocks for a couple of seconds. He is giant, long arms and legs looking enormous.

She closes her eyes.

The hum is faint but there, winding around her like a warm wind. She pulls on it, begging for strength, trying to find the right mindset as Luke had taught her. The alarms and racket of the dying ship fade and the pain of her lungs and body slowly slip away. She feels for him in the dark, reaching out, his darkness making his form even heavier. A mental dead weight. She envisions picking him up and the weight increases, her knees aching. She thrust out an arm, trying to lift him.

She cries out. The pain is so achingly terrible. The force trembles around her, building to give her the strength she needs.

She opens her eyes and the blaring sounds of the ship alarms and the fire come roaring back in, making her flinch. Ren is hovering several feet off the ground. It is enough.

She pulls him to her, struggling. He is so heavy and she feels her lungs shuddering and she begins to wheeze. Time passes so slowly as she manages to direct him out of the room and into the halls, pushing him ahead of her.

He wants to sink lower and she struggles to keep him in the air, her hands shaking. She is pushing a mountain, a dark, terrifying, mountain sized weight. She can finally see the light of the exit and with one terrific shove she pushes him through the flames as quickly as possible, and he crumples in a pile in the sand just outside of the gaping hole in the ship. She is out in the scorching sun again. She rips the linens off of her face and heaves in real air.

She grabs his feet and drags him a few more feet away from the wreckage and then collapses herself, closing her eyes in exhaustion, coughing like an old smoker.

She had never hated anyone before in her life. She didn't hate her parents for abandoning her, simply wanted to know why. But as she lies on the ground, the scorching sun of the fire planet blistering her yet again and the stench of burning flesh seared in her brain, she thinks, for the first time, she knows what it means to hate someone.

She glances over at the black clad figure beside her. She can't move her limbs out of exhaustion. The world around her is getting darker and she knows she's going to lose consciousness any second because darkness has never touched this planet. But she knows one thing, as her mind slowly shuts down.

She hates Kylo Ren.