In between peace and war, there is stillness. Silence.

Luke Skywalker knew this well. He relied on it while he traveled the galaxy, searching for Force-sensitive beings like himself.

He wanted to start an academy, a place of training and learning, to help guide those who did not know how to control their abilities. He was to create a new generation of Jedi. Leaders, wise and powerful, to defend and protect against the Dark Side.

Of course, there were more than a few bumps in the proverbial road.

_SW_

Ben Solo was eight years old when his parents took him to live with his uncle at the Academy. It had been established for nearly a decade, and was teeming with students, young and old, all gifted in the ways of the Force.

He felt puny in comparison.

Leia Organa-Solo, his mother, Luke's sister, always told him how special he was and how, with training, he would become a strong and powerful Jedi. He had Skywalker blood, after all. What was to stop him from achieving greatness?

First of all, he was Ben Solo. That seemed to be the biggest stumbling block. Strong in the ways of the Force, yes, but wise? Not even close. He was young, and temperamental, and gave up easily if he did not succeed immediately. His affinity for anger would be concerning for any parent to see in their child, but it terrified Leia and his father, Han. They were far too familiar with what happened when a powerful Force-wielder and unchecked anger and rage came together.

(It had only caused a galaxy-wide war or two.)

As a result of this, all of his teachers were endlessly attempting to reel him back him, keep him from reaching his utmost potential. They did it subtly, of course, but it was just enough to be bothersome to young Ben as he worked on his studies.

Second, he was quite possibly the most awkward Human in the entire universe. His too-long legs were attached to a too-long torso with too-long arms hanging at his sides. He was pale, with dark moles and freckles speckled across his face and shoulders. His ears seemed too big for his head, and his nose was slightly crooked after he broke it while play-fighting with his father. He walked faster than others, half because of the length of his stride and the other half the nervous energy he always exuded, and his arms swung along as he moved. Ben never fit into places designed for normal-sized beings. He would have to crouch down even further than his typical slouched posture or use doorways for larger species.

Third, he felt inadequate in the face of what was expected of him. To follow the legacy of both Anakin and Luke Skywalker seemed too much to ask. His parents never pressed it upon him, or even insinuated that it was what they wanted him to do, but he knew that it was. The weight of projections and unwarranted pride, simply of his heritage, settled heavily on small, thin shoulders.

_SW_

Rey didn't know what life was like outside of the endless deserts of Jakku. It was all she had seen for as long as she could remember.

Unkar Plutt had never been kind to her, making her scale and scavenge through crashed Star Destroyers that stretched long miles across the hot sands. She reported her findings to him at the end of each day, and if he didn't find them satisfactory, she went to bed without food.

That happened quite often.

Every day, before setting out across the wasteland to search for spare parts to sell, she'd tour around the marketplace she had seen a thousand times before, dressed in her outfit of all tan, her arms wrapped with thick strips of cloth to protect them from sun blisters and protruding pieces of jagged metal in the wrecks she worked on. Other children, also belonging to Plutt (he didn't sire them, he owned them, the same way he owned her), would run in circles around the various booths and stands, messing with as many trinkets as they could before being yelled at or beaten away with a dry-bristled broom. Rey was hardly ever one of those who caused trouble.

Rey's parents had left her on that God-forsaken planet two years before, and while in the back of her heart she hoped and prayed for them to return, to rescue her, she couldn't quell the burning rage she felt toward them. How could they leave behind a child, in the hands of someone like Plutt, while they went off exploring or did whatever else they wanted to do?

She did her work. She was quiet when admonished, and never cried loud enough for the others to hear. She ate what she was given—if any—and never asked for more. She put in long hours in the boiling sun, toting tarps full of salvaged equipment from starship to starship, sometimes having to use her long metal bowstaff to fight off other scavengers that were twice her size. Sometimes she lost.

The day that changed her life forever began the same as any other. She awoke before the sun, changed from her old sleeping tunic into her slightly-less old working tunic, wrapped her arms and head to shield them from the harsh rays, slipped her bowstaff (which was about two feet longer than she was tall) into three loops attached to the back of her top to hold it in place. The gauzy material of her overshirt brushed the ground, so she hastily tucked it into her leather belt and set out to visit the market.

The air felt different somehow, as she approached the square she spent the last two years haggling for decent prices and selling pieces of junk for Plutt's profit. The hair on her arms and neck prickled, each piece standing on edge. She looked around, past the old sun-weathered woman with tendrils of long, gray hair who sold chunks of sea glass dug up from the parts of Jakku that used to be filled with great oceans. Past the Rodian with a severed antennae and peeling scales, past the rows of desert speeders used by the better-paid scavengers.

Ah, there it was.

There he was, to be precise.

A man, with graying hair and a beard, of average height, clothed in brown robes and beige swaths of fabric beneath. Rey knew for a fact she had never seen this man before. She would have remembered.

Power, like some sort of wave, seemed to radiate off of him. He must have sensed her staring at him openly, for he turned and locked eyes with her for a long moment. The soft blue, like the sky just before sunrise, held not a hint of evil or maliciousness. They were kind, and honest. Rey felt like sobbing. There weren't any kind or honest people left on this planet.

They all died, swallowed up by the sands that used to lie beneath their glistening seas, nearly a millennium before.

Rey didn't know much about the original people of Jakku. Maybe they were just as cheap and wicked as everyone else.

_SW_

Luke Skywalker had never felt anything like this before in his life. The Force seemed to surround him, the energy pulsing vibrantly, humming around him. In the center of it all, a small girl, with auburn hair tied up in three buns.

He knew what it meant, thought it bewildered him almost beyond belief. The Force never communicated directly; things didn't work that that. This time, though, it seemed that everything pointed to her.

He wasn't going to leave this dustball of a planet without her.

And after surprisingly little convincing, he didn't.

A/N: yooo its ya girl, me, back at it with another storyyyyy

This piece is basically going to be an AU of Ben and Rey at the Jedi Academy throughout the years. (when I say AU, I mean very, very AU. I'm basically doing whatever I want, so you'll have to deal with it, I guess.) I don't know how long it will be, but I'm really excited because I very rarely write within the actual star wars universe, and I think it's really fun!

(P.S rey and ben are going to be the same ages in this piece, because I said so.)