"Let me tell you a story.

Let me read you a romance.

I will read.

You will listen.

And this terrible night will pass."

The port of Bagsho on Nim Drovis is not a place where Anen Disra wants to remain long. Aside from the never-ending rain, the sounds of the locals with their tribal instruments and animals, the force-dead planet keeps her from accessing a part of her which has always been so dear: her force sensitivity.

As the sun begins to rise over the sopping wet streets of Bagsho, the young Jedi apprentice is meditating on her failure. Not just one of the many she has experienced in her life as a pupil of the famed Luke Skywalker, but the biggest failure of all- the one that is still in progress, even in this very moment.

She can't find her sister.

Not that Anen has misplaced her, no. And not even that the silly nit has wandered off in the midst of one of her mind-locking daydreams. Myra Disra has been kidnapped. Something is terribly wrong. And Anen needs to find her. But, three months, seven planets, and two run-ins with bounty hunters into her search, she has come up empty. She has heard not a whisper, not a peep, of her sister's whereabouts, and the days of a million questions and no answers begin to wear on her.

She is a failure. Plain and simple.

The logical side of her mind- the calm, trained side- knows that she isn't a failure. She simply isn't a success yet. But the emotional, rational side of her peeks through the blinds she has pulled around her soul, whispering vilely that she is a failure. That she has failed her sister. That she has failed her Master.

But even in the wake of her own failure, Anen is at peace. Master Skywalker taught her well; her mind is clear of all thoughts and her soul is one with The Force. Then, all at once, in the middle of her meditation, that peace is broken as a memory hits her with the impact of a freight train, striking her square between the eyes with the force of a speeding Star Cruiser.

"Anen. Come in."

She hadn't even raised her hand to knock on the door of Master Luke Skywalker's temple chamber, but he knew she was there anyway. He always did that, using his powers to take his students by surprise- a way of amusing himself, she supposed. With a sigh and a small shake of her head, Anen entered the room. It looked the same way it had since the moment she arrived at the small temple settlement almost twelve years ago- not even a dust speck was out of place. Clutter covered every surface, and her Master somehow managed to find enough room to sit right in the center of it. The aging Master sat on the floor, his eyes closed in silent meditation of his own. Anen stood in the doorway, waiting to be recognized, not wanting to interrupt the peace of another's stillness.

"It's rude to stare, you know," Master Skywalker said, not opening his eyes or adjusting his position.

Anen looked down at the hard packed dirt floor, noticing how dirty her boots had become when she spent half the morning pacing up and down the halls, debating whether or not to approach her Master with this problem.

"I'm sorry, Master Skywalker," she said.

A smile crossed the older man's face, though his eyes remained closed even as he tutted at her under his breath.

"No time for apologies when you've spent half the morning wearing out the floorboards, hm?"

So he knows, then, Anen thought to herself. He knows why I'm here.

"You have felt something in The Force. Something that troubles you."

It was true. That night, she woke from her normally pleasant slumber with a start as a vision took hold of her mind- her sister, her only blood left in this whole world- being taken by figures cloaked in darkness. And from that moment, her entire world was consumed by the image. It replayed again and again in her head… It disrupted her training, her meditation, her every waking thought. She knew what she had to do. It might kill her, but she knew somewhere in her soul that The Force was calling her. And she had to answer.

"My sister, Master Skywalker. I think she's been…"

She couldn't even form the words. Taken? Stolen? Kidnapped? Coughing to cover her own inability to speak, she interlocked her fingers in an attempt to keep them from shaking.

"And I have to go to find her," Anen concluded, gulping back any indecision.

For a long time, there was silence in the Jedi Master's chamber. No words, no sounds, but Anen paid careful attention to Luke's face. Serene and centered though he was, he never had any interest in hiding or burying his emotions. Scrunching his forehead and tightening his jaw, he appeared to be in deep thought about something troubling him.

And then, he opened his eyes.

Master Skywalker always had a way of looking at her as though her life were an exciting puzzle that he wanted the two of them to solve together. On any other day, that look might make her feel important, special, even. But today, it made her feel queasy.

"Did you have a vision?"

He knew the answer, but asked the question anyway. It was the way he always taught. Anen nodded, her head heavy and burdened with the weight of her own worries.

"Where do you think she is?"

"By now, she could be anywhere," Anen said, but the end of her sentence hung in the air like an unfinished thought. Luke raised an eyebrow at her.

"But?" He prompted.

A storm of conflict rose up in Anen's chest and for once, she did not even try to fight it. After twelve years of training, such control over her emotions came naturally; her training was as apart of her as her very skin. In this moment, though, nothing could save her from feeling precisely what it was that she was feeling: fear. She wanted so desperately to not be wrong. She wanted Master Luke to trust her judgement, she wanted to rescue her sister from whatever disaster had befallen her. Any outcome less than would mean her absolute destruction.

"…But I don't believe that she's left The Meridian Sector," she concluded.

Anen knew that she could leave in the dead of the night, abandon her position here like… like he did. (Even now to think his name caused her grief.) But she knew that she would never do something like that. Like Master Skywalker always said: All things are permissible. Not all things are beneficial. She would never have the guts to leave without his blessing.

Silent deliberation raged on in her Master's head for an immeasurably long stretch of time, and she intently watched every painstaking minute of it. But when he finally speaks,

"No. You're needed here," he said, accompanying his dismissive words with a sharp nod of his head that was meant to signify the end of the conversation.

Disappointment bred in the pit of her stomach, but she flushed it away with thoughts of compassion, of understanding. She knew what this was about; she knew why Master Skywalker did not want her to go. The he that she could not think of, the he that abandoned the order…. Ben Solo. He left like a thief in the night and no one had been able to find him since. His disappearance planted seeds of worry and fear throughout all of Luke's apprentices, and now, it seemed, that same worry and fear blossomed like a weed within The Master himself.

"I need to go, Master Luke. You need to let me go. I've learned so much and I-"

He cut her impassioned plea off by simply and slowly raising one hand in a "stop" motion.

"Your training is not complete," he said, his voice still as an undisturbed pond.

Anen took a brave step towards him and said the one thing she thought might change his mind, opened up the one wound she knew would cause him to bleed a little.

"I'm not like Ben, Master. I will return," she said in what she hoped was a reassuring tone.

In all of her years as a Jedi apprentice, Anen had never had a cross word with Luke. They never raised voices, they never fought. So the sound of Master Skywalker's angered voice striking the walls of his chamber sent shockwaves through her entire body.

"You must complete your training!"

The instant the harsh tone escaped his lips, Master Luke softened, his eyes losing their focus and his mind seemingly retreating from the room. He did that sometimes-get that far off look in his eyes, as if he were trying to piece together the half-remembered images from a dream long forgotten. Sometimes Anen wondered where he went when he got lost in his mind. Was he in communication with The Force? Or was he just absorbed in his memories?

Clearing his throat as if to wash away the venom he spat only a moment before, Luke looked at his oldest apprentice, his first student. Anen Disra. Powerful in The Force. Devoted, single-minded, in her training. A mentor to the older apprentices and something like a mother to the younger ones. A clever warrior. Not without her weaknesses, of course. She wasn't particularly brave or fast. She was often slow to ferocity in battle. She was distant... absent, sometimes, to the point where he wondered if her mind was completely with her. But, even so, Luke's eldest pupil was the star in his sky, the jewel in his crown. How could he lose her after losing Ben? After his failure with his own nephew?

On the other hand, how could he call himself a teacher if he never let his students free? He wanted to be a teacher of young Jedi, not a jailer of them.

"If you think you must go, then you must," Luke said.

"I will return," Anen vowed, meaning every syllable.

She turned to go, taking one last look around his chamber before she did. Though her mouth said that she would someday be back, something in The Fore whispered to her that this would be her last goodbye. Shaking such thoughts from her head, she reached for the door handle, but not before a few parting words from her mentor warmed a part of her soul she wasn't sure she had.

"May The Force be with you."

It is the hurtling nature of this memory that blinds her to the arrival of her guest in the squalid tenement she is renting on Nim Drovis.

No, not guest. Guests.

"Anen Disra. The golden child."

Anen would recognize that voice anywhere. The voice of a brother in arms. The voice of a fellow apprentice, a fellow Jedi. The voice of a friend. The voice of…

"Ben," she says, her words made of the brittle tones of indecision.

Should she be happy that he's found her? Should she be furious and demand that he return to the Temple immediately? Should she be frightened? Why has he come? And why now? Eyes opening and her chin tilting upward to look at him, she surveys him. A set of dark eyes blaze back at her, his face contorted with a discrete but unmistakable fury. Anen recognizes him as the same man who disappeared from the Temple months ago, but she wishes she didn't; even without her force sensitivity, she can tell that there is something fractured in his very soul.

"Kylo Ren," he corrects her.

Kylo Ren? The name is foreign, unreal to Anen's ears.

But then it strikes her. The pieces of this surreal puzzle fall exactly into place as she remembers the words of Luke's teachings. The Dark Side is powerful, seductive. Anyone can fall.

Ben has fallen. Ben has fallen. The words repeat themselves over and over in Anen's skull, rattling around like bones in a fortune teller's cup, but they make less and less sense every time she thinks them.

"Why have you come here?" Anen asks, her voice as smooth as glass, unaffected by the emotions boiling in her blood. She will not let Ben's decision to lose his way corrupt her own walk down the path of the light side.

Ben nearly struts across the dirty floor to Anen's side, unaware that the dirty floor covered the bottom of his boots with dirt. Anen cringes when he steps on a line of passing bugs with a crunch; Ben does not notice the insignificant massacre. Without bending down, he extends a small holo disk to her.

"To show you something," he says, cordially, as if he were giving her a gift.

Heart bouncing in her chest, Anen reaches for the holo disk; she does not attempt to play it, but simply holds it in her hand. Her greatest fears live in that holo. Could Ben have something to do with her sister? Is that why he is here? Has he been tracking her?

"Play it."

The command is so dark, so imperative, that Anen feels no choice but to comply.

As the blue light flickers, images flash across her walls… Images that make no sense…

The Temple….

It's raining…

The apprentices- all of them, of every age- stand outside in the mud…

Lightsabers ignited…

Only to be cut down by Ben and a sea of cloaked figures in masks.

Children. Her friends. Lying dead in puddles of rain.

Ben... Her friend Ben...slaughtered…everyone…

"…No…." She tries to speak, but no sound comes out even as she mouths the words, "It isn't true… It can't be-"

Tearing her eyes away from the lifeless bodies flickering in her hand, Anen looks up at Ben. Kylo. Kylo Ren. She searches for remorse, for an apology, for guilt. Anything to tell her that he made a mistake. That he's come to her for help.

She finds nothing but a proud gleam in his impossibly dark eyes.

In that moment, Anen feels something she had perhaps never felt in her life. And she lets it consume her: rage. Pure, unadulterated, sickening rage. One sweep of her arms brings the lightsaber from her waist to the ready, only to be blocked by Ben's lightsaber. The blades clash recklessly- his green striking her blue- as vomit and tears rise up in Anen's system. He killed children. He killed her friends. And she wasn't there to stop him. She failed the family that has taken care of her for so long. Muscles in her arms rippling, she lets out a fierce yowl as she throws Ben from her, pushing him back against the wall of the tenement. She has always been stronger than him, and in this moment, she shows it.

But the bastard doesn't slump to the floor like she hoped. He doesn't even wince in pain or struggle to regain his stance. Instead, he smiles. Back at the Temple, Ben used to smile often. Though not a particularly big or bright smile, it was always warm and thoughtful. The smile that he flashes now is malicious and cold. Like a monster out of one of Master Luke's stories. All at once, the man who was her friend is now a stranger, a foreign being who has somehow betrayed her like a brother.

"Ren!" He bellows, the sound shaking the paper-thin walls.

It's as if that one word opened up the skies of Anen's entire world. The same phantoms from the holo recording, the men in the black cloaks, descend on her room and surround her before she can even swing her lightsaber.

"Drop it!" Ben says, triumphant, "Drop it now!"

A scan of the room tells Anen that she has exactly no other option. She cannot fight her way out of this room; to do so would mean her certain death. She cannot break past the circle of figures that loom ever closer by the second; to do so would mean her certain death. She is trapped. She has failed.

So, with tears running down her cheeks and defeat filling her heart, Anen places her lightsaber on the floor.

Master Luke…. she thinks to herself as they begin to close in on her, knowing he cannot hear her desperate plea, What do I do now?

The First Order is young. Not just in years since its founding, but in its very personnel. Its youth can be defined by the newest General, given his first command right out of the Academy on Ord Mantel.

General Hux is standing on the Destroyer's bridge, looking out over his new domain. The floors are polished to a high mirror shine, his boots reflect his perfectly stern expression. The center of his command stretches out in front of him, filled with his impossibly busy and disciplined inferiors working diligently at nav screens and communications outlets. Perhaps he should feel small, humbled, by the vastness of this ship and the endless space it occupies, but instead, he feels, for the first time in his life, powerful. The feeling is intoxicating. It warms his blood and sends a haze over his gaze, spreads his shoulders and raises his chin. He orders about lifeforms whose names he'll never know. He can bend systems to his will. He is among the stars.

He feels like a God.

The feeling is cracked- not broken, but cracked- by a hail on his comm.

"General Hux."

He fights back a sigh and struggles to maintain his professional composure. Kylo Ren. The Supreme Leader's new pet. The petulant child- though not much younger than Hux himself- seems consistent in only two things: temper tantrums and condescending commands. Today, it seems like Hux will be the recipient of the latter.

"You are to transport a prisoner. Divert directly to the The Meridian Sector. By orders of The Supreme Leader," Ren says, leaving no room for debate.

Hux would like to remind Snoke's project that Hux doesn't answer to him, but he bites his tongue. It's only his first day on command, after all. Taking such liberties hasn't been yet earned.

"Brief on the prisoner?" Hux asks, clipped and curt.

A pause. Then, Ren drags a body into frame. Hux surveys her through the fuzzy blue holographic projection. Dressed for a forest, barefoot and dirty, the young bears all of the hallmarks of Ren's true enemies- The Jedi. And though her captor drags her by the hair, she does not struggle. She does not yelp in pain or stare defiantly toward Hux's open gaze. She looks... Peaceful. At ease. A smile stretches across Kylo Ren's face, and he gleefully answers Hux's question.

"She's the bait for Luke Skywalker."

First chapter! This story is a shameless AU. I'm really fascinated by the redemption of characters, and I just don't think Hux is a redeemable character in current canon, so I wanted to explore something different! In this story, Hux will meet Anen at the beginning of his first command, before he has been totally indoctrinated by The First Order. I hope you all like it! Please send me some reviews with your thoughts on this first chapter! I'm hoping the second one will be out in the next day or so!