Chapter One

The first time she meets him is in a small nursery, with walls painted white like the skies of Jakku when the sun is at its peak.

She squints, disoriented by the expectation of blazing heat, only to realise that the air had wrapped itself around her in a comfortable blanket of warmth. He is there, dressed in a cosy white jumper that is in stark contrast with his dark curls. The floor he sits on is carpeted and soft against her bare feet, her toes wiggle in delight at the feel or it. Drawings are scattered around the room, some in a heap on the floor, some hung up on the white walls in wooden frames. One picture strangely resembles a ship that she knows very well, but it is a mass of grey and blue lines that obstruct her from remembering just what it reminded her of; it remains in the back of her mind, a thought for her to dwell on when she's compelled enough to. His cheeks are round and flushed, marked by several freckles that scatter from the bridge of his nose to the outer corners of his eyes.

They are very innocent eyes, framed by a set of thick dark lashes that brush against his plump cheeks when he blinks. He speaks to himself in the childish way that younglings do, holding his toys up in the air as he makes sounds that resemble the blasters of starships. She grins at the sight, remembering how she used to do the same thing during her lonesome days on the desert planet, though her toys were significantly less detailed and luxurious looking than his were.

There is something about the youngling that strikes her as familiar, but the idea immediately slips from her mind when his behaviour begins to shift from a cheerful disposition to a quiet one.

His arms have stopped moving, they have instead lowered to the ground he sat on. The toys remain suspended in the air, and he stares up at the objects in what looks to be a mix of fear and amazement. She stares in awe along with the child, wondering whether it was by his own power that they floated about. A shift occurred, the room suddenly void of any warmth that had given comfort to both her and the child. A gasp, a short cry, a muffled sound erupted from the little boy's lips as he stumbled backwards on the ground. She nears the boy immediately in hopes of sweeping him into her arms, only to be held back by her own body. Her feet refuse to move, followed by her shallow breaths and a thickness in the air that fogged up her troubled mind.

The youngling covers his ears, trying to get up to flee from whatever seemed to be tormenting him. For a moment his tear-filled eyes locked with hers, dark and filled with a terror that she sought to ease; recognition brimmed in them, as though he knew exactly just who she was and begged her to help him—to take away the pain. His small hands grip at his head desperately, shaking ever so slightly in what seemed to be an effort at doing away with the noise that only he could hear. She struggles against the unknown force that kept her at bay, doing her best to speak to the child and catch his attention once again. No sound escapes from her own mouth, only a deathly silence that began to echo in her mind like the helpless cries of the child.

He finally looks up at her, only his eyes are filled with an accusing glare.

It struck her chest with a sadness that could have sent her plummeting into a dark hole of guilt. Perhaps she already was, her mind grappled for something, anything to pull her from the agony that the youngling's eyes reflected.

No.

-SW-

Rey woke up to the feeling of suffocating.

She covered her mouth to keep herself from gasping out with fear, blinking up at the star-filled sky that twinkled above her.

It was just a dream. A haunting, terrible dream.

Her chest ached as she tried to steady her breath, the last thing she wanted was for Master Luke to emerge from his little hut because her breathing and thoughts were so loud. Though a mild mannered and rather gruff man, she always felt as though she was cautiously feeling the ground for quicksand when she was around him. He would never hurt her, no, but the idea of disturbing a man whose own emotions were still so fragile was not something she wanted to do. Luke Skywalker fled to this lonely planet for peace, so Rey would do her best to maintain that peace, albeit her very presence was preventing it already.

Shifting to her side, Rey attempted to recount her memory of the dream, but her mind was a blank slate. Only the colour white dwelled in her thoughts, its brightness bringing with it a sense of apprehension that filled her. When she attempted to go back to sleep, she found that her pounding heart rendered her incapable of doing so at all. The scavenger girl rubbed her tired eyes, pushing herself up from her sleeping bag to get dressed for the day. The sun was a small blip on the horizon of the sea when she exited her tent, a calm orange that carried hues of red painted faintly over the calm waters. She let out a sigh as she stretched her arms and legs, perhaps Master Luke would be pleased if he saw her having an early start today. Sleeping in was never a habit of Rey's, what with her scavenging duties back at Jakku, but somehow her Master always managed to rise earlier than she did.

It had been a month now since she had found the last Jedi in Ach-To, her progress as his Padawan was fairly good, but not fast enough to please her. What took nearly and entire childhood and more of learning the ways of the Jedi, Rey had to learn within a span of a few months. She had made it a personal goal of hers to leave the sea covered planet with Master Luke in less than a year. Time wasn't on her side, the Resistance would need her and Master Luke as soon as possible, especially with the First Order still a force to be reckoned with. Both sides came out of the short-lived battle with relatively grave wounds, but the stakes were high and they still had no idea where its Head was and where his other servants were.

The Knights of Ren.

Rey kept a steady rhythm to her breathing as she jogged around the tiny islet, careful to watch her steps upon descending from the stone pathway; stumbling had become a common occurrence for her ever since she'd arrived on the remote planet. She thought of the person behind the monstrous mask that haunted her before she fell into her usual dreamless sleep; there was a time when she had been stunned into silence at the realisation that it was a mere man, with his unremarkable features and strange eyes, but it didn't take very long for her to realise that his face was as much of a mask as the one that he wore. Though she didn't want to admit it to herself, knowing that her Master would see the answer in her heart if he asked her such, Rey hoped that he had died on the Starkiller base. She thought of that cold night—when Han Solo had died, when Finn had been hurt so badly from trying to protect her that he nearly died from wounds that the monster had given him, when she fought the monster and conquered him.

When she desperately wanted to finish Kylo Ren off herself as he gazed up at her with what looked to be an expression of shock and reluctant fear.

She imagined what it might have felt to feel his flesh slowly seared open by the radiating heat of the lightsaber in her hands—she imagined that her hands would have only gripped the hilt of her blade even tighter at the sound of his tortured screams. The Padawan did her best not to dwell on that cold night. She often succeeded at it, but today was a different case. She couldn't afford for her Master to hear her perverse thoughts, or the way her heart sped with excitement at the thought of cutting up the man who was once his Padawan and nephew.

Such Dark thoughts should never be entertained.

Nearly slipping for the first time in what she thought would be a triumphant week, Rey bit back a curse, slowing down her pace to steady herself again. If she was going to be distracted, she should at least distract herself with inconsequential things such as how many fishes she would catch for their meals today, or how Finn and BB-8 were doing back at the Resistance base. To no avail, her thoughts circumvented back to the cold night; Rey huffed in frustration, jogging to the edge of the islet's cliff to perch herself at its top. Perhaps she would be able to clear her mind if she meditated.

Closing her eyes, the Padawan held her hands together and adjusted her posture as Master Luke had taught her. 'There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force'

It was a mantra that she learned on her second day as Master Luke's Padawan; he had made her sit still at the edge of islet's cliff in the midst of a thunderstorm for an entire night. The anger she felt towards her new Master crackled as great as the lightning that struck the ground around her, Rey barely lasted ten minutes until she broke down in tears. Thunderstorms were completely foreign to her until that night, and she felt as though she was thrust back into the horrid vision she had seen when she was at Maz Kanata's cantina. The images she saw that day were hazy to her memory now, but the fear she felt coursing through her veins would never be forgotten.

She sighed with relief when she began to feel the serenity wash over her. Though rare, there were days when Rey could feel it ebb from her very body, moving back and forth like the lapping waves on the islet shore. The green trees that covered the land filled her lungs with fresh air mixed with the salty taste of the sea, there was more life on this little islet than there ever was on Jakku.

Master Luke taught her that meditation not only brought peace to the Jedi, but gave the Jedi the ability to draw strength from the elements of the world. In his case, he thrived when surrounded by the sea. Like Rey, her master spent much of his youth on a desert planet; he was unsurprised when she stated how averse she was to the sun, no matter how accustomed she became to its merciless heat. She herself was more at ease surrounded by the seas of the remote planet they inhabited, though she didn't feel a connection to the sea in the same magnitude that Luke Skywalker seemed to. The Padawan wondered if it had to do with her true family, the one that she forgot. The elderly man had said one day that the sea reminded him much of his sister, but there was a flicker in his eyes and wistfulness to his voice that told her it meant more to him than General Organa.

"I assume you didn't have a very pleasant sleep."

Master Luke's voice pulled Rey from her reverie, she bit back a frustrated whine that made its way up her throat. The peace she felt had all but disappeared, and her thoughts shifted back to the dreadful dream that she couldn't even remember. The Padawan turned around and tilted her head up to meet the gaze of her Master, feeling the frustration begin to dissolve at the look of Luke Skywalker's calm blue eyes. Rey chewed on her lower lip at the realisation of her unjustified anger towards her Master, nodding her head with guilt in response.

"Just a nightmare, it's all but forgotten now." She said, pushing herself up to stand before Master Luke and bow in respect.

The corners of Luke's mouth twitched downward ever so slightly, and he gestured to the stone path back to their quarters, where they would have their first meal of the day. "Meditation is a powerful way to counter the negative feelings and thoughts of an individual, but it shouldn't be used as a means of forgetting, because it is impossible to do such." He stated, his voice raised up a timbre, something he did when he attempted to speak of something serious with feigned nonchalance. It was a strange way to teach her, but Rey figured that it was a tactic he had been using since he was a child. She envisioned her Master as a young boy, telling his guardians that he had accidentally broken their radiator with the same air of ease that he spoke with her now.

"I know...I know. It's just—I can't actually remember what bothered me so much about the dream, I don't recall anything at all. Only the fear. A Jedi can't succumb to fear." It was true when Rey said this to Luke Skywalker, in the end it all circled back to her need to become a Jedi—a good Jedi.

Her Master nodded in agreement as they sat by the little campfire they set up every morning, which surprised her, as he always managed to counter her statements with a Jedi anecdote that proved her wrong. She was right to doubt that he would agree with her wholeheartedly. "That is true, yes. But a Jedi must first counter fear by acknowledging that the Jedi is afraid. Fear is a natural emotion that we all encounter, it is what is to be done with that fear that separates the Light and Dark sides of the Force."

Rey pursed her lips, knowing where their conversation would lead to. The Light and the Dark sides of the Force. Everything she knew about the Force came in small doses from the words that her Master said, which slightly rattled her; records of the Jedi Order and its teachings were all but gone, leaving everything to be passed on through oral tradition. Nonetheless she still managed to keep up, Rey just wished that she could already learn everything that she needed to learn.

Training with Master Luke began not long after their meal was finished, Rey was always made to clean the pots and fish for their food as a supposed form of her preparation as a Padawan. It didn't come as a surprise to her that her Master expected as much from her, cleaning and fishing was practice for patience and reflexes respectively. She once spent 5 hours trying to catch fish with her bare hands, her hands and feet were both sore and wrinkled from wading in the shore for too long. Rey had progressed a lot since then, taking no longer than 15 minutes for their catch of the day; though she'd grown used to her daily routine with Master Luke, her patience was wearing thin from anxiety. They spent the second half of the morning travelling to different islets, each land assigned a different task for Rey to fulfil—stamina, endurance, balance, strength—the list went on. Knots formed on her back and her muscles screamed in agony for her to give up, but she pushed on, never stopping to wipe the sweat from her brow or tuck away whatever stray hair tickled at her flushed face. If she could tear apart spaceships larger than a village in Jakku, she could take anything that her Master cast on her path. The physical aspect, though exhausting, never drained her in the way that the mental aspect of training did. On some days she practiced her telekinesis, others she practiced her mind tricks on the flocks of birds that occasionally flew by; when she grew tired of having to catch the fishes with her bare hands, she manipulated them into doing swimming tricks for her before taking them. Strength of the will was generally more difficult to control than strength of the body.

Mental training took place on a single islet, the smallest that Rey had seen in her exploration of Ach-To. It was a piece of rock and land that barely stretched 6 meters, but oddly never disappeared when the tide arose. The water around it was still at all times, as though it were in a vacuum of its own; she didn't have to try sensing the Light force that the islet emitted. What made it most special was the underway the centre of the islet. They had never ventured into it together, Rey was often made to stand guard and practice outside of its entrance when her Master spent his time within the mysterious tunnel. Several times she had attempted to sneak after Master Luke, only for her plans to be thwarted by a forcefield that she still wasn't strong enough to break through.

"Come along." Rey looked to her elderly companion in stunned silence, her hazel eyes filled with disbelief and confusion. She said nothing as she watched him descend into the underpass alone, taking some time to consider her options; slowly, Rey walked forward and smiled in triumph, realising that her Master had meant for her to follow after him.

There was no light within the narrows pathways of the islet, leaving the Padawan to trust solely in her Force senses. Master Luke made no sound as he treaded down the hall, and for a moment she wondered if he was there with her at all. She kept her eyes closed as she trudged after her Master, taking note of the oddly fresh smell and the smoothness of its stone walls. Minutes—hours—there was no telling how long they walked through the secret tunnel. Rey's concept of time was totally dependent on the state of her feet, which now ached and cramped up every now and then. She made no complaints, her body could barely contain her excitement at the thought of what lay beneath the tiny isle. An unpleasant thought crossed her mind; the intricate structure of the pathways reminded her slightly of Starkiller base, another labyrinth of darkness that was an unknown to the scavenger girl. This was different though, there was no sense of impending doom or evil that shook her to the bone. It amazed her how deep the underpass ran, and she wondered just how far it stretched out beneath the islet.

Suddenly Rey stopped walking, having accidentally bumped into the back of the now still Master Luke. She opened her eyes, blinking several times to adjust to the darkness that surrounded them.

It looked like an empty cavern, and without warning her senses ceased to be.

Rey collapsed to the ground, feeling the damp soil beneath her cloth covered knees as she whimpered in shock, and then the feeling of the soil itself disappeared beneath her. She felt as though she was caught between being tied to the ground she couldn't see and hovering about in a void of oblivion. She spoke and found that she could hear neither the words that spilled from her mouth nor the exhale of breath that escaped from her nose.

'There is no emotion, there is peace.' she thought to herself, considering that perhaps this was a test that Master Luke intended for her. Otherwise, why else would he keep her from the deep tunnels for so long? It was a test, most definitely a test. Her breathing steadied and her ears picked up a sound, was it her? No, it was a strange clinking sound that sounded awfully familiar to her. Rey blinked again and found the darkness that surrounded her begin to lessen as she steadied her breathing; her body still refused to move, but she reckoned that it would in a while if she just relaxed.

"This is just a test." she said, grinning when the soft sound of her voice followed after the movement of her mouth. Before the darkness completely dissolved, Rey discerned that her Master was nowhere to be seen. The Padawan pushed herself off of her sore hands with great effort, wincing at the feel of the unknown force that still weighed down on her. The clinking sound returned, prompting her to lift her head and crane her neck to look around.

Amidst the darkness sat a lone figure clad in white, small and so unassuming in posture that Rey was almost a hundred percent certain that it couldn't be real. She tried to keep her heartbeat steady, taking notice of how is slowly began to pick up a pace as she studied the figure ahead of her. The clinking sound grew louder, and this time the figure was growing less distant to her eyes. The Padawan tried to release herself from the unknown force again, though she didn't understand why the uneasiness in her heart was increasing. The weight of the force came down on her like a great boulder that she hadn't seen coming, Rey screamed in pain when she head slammed against the floor.

The clinking sound was finally right before her, but she could barely lift her head to look up and see the figure that was making the little noise. Rey thought of a bright white room with juvenile paintings and an image of an innocent youngling playing with his toys. That was it—her dream. The tunnel was making her remember her dream the night before. She was with the youngling, the innocent youngling with dark curls and rosy cheeks. The Padawan grunted quietly as she dug her palms against the ground to push herself up, fear immediately clawed its way into her mind when a hand suddenly wrapped itself around her neck and yanked her up to her feet. Rey hissed with agony when her the back of her head made contact with what must have been the stone walls of the tunnel. She cried out, kicking and grappling for whoever was assaulting her, all attempts at peace that she had made earlier were made in vain. Rey began to lose consciousness right then and there, but she fought to open her eyes and see her cruel tormentor.

She remembered his face, cold and calculating when he first removed his monstrous mask to reveal himself to her. She remembered it well, twisted with fury as they duelled to the death one snowy knight on Starkiller base. She remembered him, though she wished that she couldn't. But what she couldn't remember were his eyes, so filled with fear and pain as they were now. Had they ever been like that before? They were dark eyes, eyes that one would expect to hold the secret of a demon within—but they did not, instead they held the fear of a lost child begging for help. How? Rey felt a tear trickle from the corner of her left eye when she lost consciousness; her eyes rolled to the back of her head, followed by complete darkness once more.

What happened to the child?

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