Hi! I started writing this ages ago after watching Dune in the cinema. It's not my greatest writing, but I've had it sitting on my desktop for so long that I need to get it out there so that I can focus on other projects also in the same boat. The style of the dream sequence stuck in my head and I thought it would be great with Reylo. I know it's not fleshed out and hasn't been checked for errors, I just needed to get it out. Enjoy!
I do not own Star Wars or Dune.
Of Sand and Stars
He stared into the flames before him, the camp fire casting his face in a golden glow, his eyes shining with an intensity that made even the flames tremble. Sighing, he leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he propped his chin on his gloved fists. The sand shifted beneath him with the movement, cradling his body as he sat.
"My story," He spoke into the flames, reflecting in his glassy eyes, emboldening them into twin fiery embers. "Is a tale of pain, anger and betrayal."
Born on Chandrila to a princess with no planet left to sovereign, and a smuggler who had never settled down in one place, Kylo's childhood was filled with constant travel as his parents bickered.
They loved each other deeply, he could see it in their eyes, the looks they shared. But that love was never enough, not enough to keep them from drifting apart.
His father continued his travels, Kylo in tow, as his mother often stayed with his uncle Luke as she aided him with his training, with which he had a handful of students. He missed his mother dearly, longed for her attention, taken with his father who was always too blunt and harsh with him, as he stumbled over the ability to parent his own son.
This dynamic changed, however, once Kylo started to show sensitivity to the force. At first, his father had ignored the signs, looking away and avoiding his son's eyes as Kylo looked at him questioningly.
However, once they returned from that particularly trip, his mother had been at the home that she had recently acquired as they had been on their travels. Emerging through the doorway, she had taken once look at her son and he had seen her features harden as she sensed his ability beginning to rise to the surface.
Later that evening, unbeknownst to his parents, he had sat at the top of the stairs listening to them quarrel over his new found potential. His mother demanded he be entrusted to her brother to be trained, while his father had disagreed, ignorantly wanting to confine his new capabilities and prevent them from growing.
Tears had streaked down his cheeks from his glazed over eyes, dripping into his lap as he sat there frozen, unable to find to will to wipe them away.
As his parents argued about what to do with their burden, either option isolating him, Kylo had never felt so alone.
His mother finally won the argument, and he was forced to begin training with his uncle Luke in the ways of the Jedi Order.
He found that he was both grateful, yet resentful, as his uncle treated him equal to his other students that came to the house, despite their blood relation. He appreciated being treated like another one of the students, but he also found himself longing for affection. In their constant travels, bickering and work, Kylo felt as though his parents had left him starved of their love, further exemplified by pushing him away and into Luke's responsibility.
However, Kylo found himself growing close to Luke as his uncle selected him from his students to become his padawan, the Jedi youngling's strength in the force undeniable. They too went on travels, visiting Jedi temples and discovering Jedi artifacts.
This continued for a time and Kylo found himself content studying the Jedi, discovering more about them, about what he could become. But this peace would not last, as Kylo withdrew from his fellow students and his uncle, becoming more intent of finding every shred of Jedi information he could find. His interest evolved into obsession, which quickly became unhealthy.
This erupted into something worse as Kylo discovered his heritage.
He was not meant to find out, no one was planning to tell him, but as Luke summoned his mother to his wing of the house when she returned from a meeting, he had headed to his master's office intent on greeting her.
As he strode towards the doors, feeling welcome as a member of the Skywalker family, he skidded to a halt. On the other side of the mahogany doorway, his mother and his uncle argued rather heatedly, a tone he had never heard Luke speak in.
"He is so much like him, Leia," Luke sighed, defeated.
"We knew it may go this way," she replied, her voice deceptively strong. "There was always a 50/50 chance that he would be like our father, his grandfather."
Kylo frowned at the comment, unable to step away from the doors and stop eavesdropping. They had never told him about his grandfather, Anakin. Only telling him that he had died an honourable death in the Galactic Civil War.
"Leia," Luke sighed in frustration. "We can't risk it."
"I know," she replied, her voice wavering.
"I may have saved our father, but I fear that I won't be able to save him, he has such raw power," his uncle continued, his tone softening. "I can't risk another Darth Vader."
Kylo froze, unable to move, unable to breathe. His thoughts sped through his mind at lightspeed, forming a crumpled realisation.
As his mother had opened the door, the ending to their conversation and her approach having been drowned out by the ringing in his ears, she had startled, paling almost immediately.
The look on his face was enough for her to realise the implication of this encounter, of what he had heard.
On autopilot, he turned away swiftly, shrugging her gentle hand off of his shoulder and ignoring the compilation of both of their shouts as they called after him as he sprinted from the house.
He ran into the woods at the back of the house, his family's shouts a distant echo that soon became silence. As tears began to streak down his face, his vision blurred and in the next moment he ended up tripping over a log, hitting his head the ground, hard.
As his eyelids fluttered back open, drifting back into consciousness. He heard an unfamiliar voice echoing a single word through his mind.
Ben.
Pushing himself to his feet, his confusion didn't have chance to take hold as his head began to throb. He stumbled back in the direction of the house, following the lights through the trees and the shouting of his name as his family searched for him.
When his mother saw him, she gasped and covered her mouth with her hand before she reached out to him with the other.
He allowed her to steer him back into the house and cleaned the wound at his temple. A doctor was summoned to the house and his vitals were deemed to be fine.
He did not look at her or utter a single word the entire time.
The house of Skywalker had never been the same since. They may not have been a particularly close family, brimming with affection and love, but at least they could stand to look each other in the eye.
Kylo confined himself to his wing of the house, Luke following suit in his own, while Leia and Han focused on their work and were usually away on business.
As Kylo lay in his bed, staring at the ceiling, the loneliness hit him once more. Like a weighted blanket that got heavier with each moment, he felt it threatening to bury him deeper than he already was but with no handholds to pull himself back out. In the time that had passed, the fractures that existed in the Skywalker family had branched until the pieces had broken apart completely, a cavernous distance between them.
Breathing deeply, Kylo shut his eyes, thankfully exhausted from running through his exercises so vigorously in order to keep his mind clear. After a few moments, the veil of darkness that his eyelids wrapped him in engulfed his mind, sending him into a deep sleep.
Flowing through the darkness, a glimmer of a glowing ember reflected off of the nothingness inside his mind, glittering into a blinding sunlight.
Beams of sunshine focused upon him, making his eyelids burn as he flinched and squeezed them shut. A warm breeze caressed his skin as it passed, making his eyelids flutter open.
Raising a hand to shield his eyes from the sun, both around him and enveloping him in its heated caress, his gaze remained blurred.
The rays of light began to move, flowing through one another. Frowning, Kylo focused his gaze, startled to find that the sun beams remained unmoving, the movement that caused his attention coming into focus now.
Moving among the light, a girl drifted on the sand beneath her feet, her gaze focused upon him and a soft smile directed at him.
She ambled towards him, gliding across the sand as though the air had carried her towards him.
Staring into his eyes, their faces so close that he could see each freckle that sat on her nose and cheeks, Kylo felt the air vibrate around them, the sun rays quivering.
He opened his mouth to say something, though he didn't know what, but she beat him to it, her voice a caressing whisper.
"Ben."
Startling awake, Kylo sat up in his double bed, breathing erratically. With a sheen layer of perspiration coating his skin, he disentangled himself from his grey bed sheets, standing in his black sleeping pants.
On shaky legs, he made his way over to the fresher attached to his suite.
Relieving himself, he flushed the toilet and made his way to the sink to wash his hands, splashing his face with cold water afterwards.
Bracing his muscular arms on either side of the sink, he looked up and into the mirror, reluctantly.
The water ran down his pale face in rivulets, passing the pair of freckles and the scar on the right side of his face, dripping from his chin. His raven-black hair was longer now, brushing the tops of his shoulders and framing his face, emphasizing the paleness of his skin. Accentuated, the pink scar ran from his forehead, narrowly missing his eye, down his cheek, all the way down to his collarbone. Every time he looked into the mirror, he could not stop his gaze from focusing on it, reminding himself of it.
He followed the scar down his face, to his collarbone and then raised his gaze back to his eyes. Staring back at himself, he frowned, the sound of her voice echoing inside his mind, as though it was bouncing off of the cavernous walls the sweet sound found there.
Ben. Ben. Ben.
Entering his training room, Kylo followed his usual routine, wrapping his hands. He had already done a few laps of the grounds to warm up so his skin already had a sheen to it.
He had just picked up his lightsaber, the red of the blade crackling like a fire and reflecting a scarlet glow on his features. Each buzz of the weapon in his hand, an insult to his family, the colour a contrast to the blue and eventual green sabers his family traditionally wielded through the Jedi way.
He had just begun to run through his exercises, adjusting his stance to a more balanced and comfortable position, which was something he often got mistaken. He tended to favour a more aggressive and direct approach to an enemy but he was often pushed to his current stance. The stance would allow him to evaluate his opponent more so, study their movements before attacking head on as he usually did. However, his emotions tended to get the better of him, a fact that he was often assured would get him killed. He often rebutted by saying that he had survived so far.
Running through the movements, he heard the footsteps approach behind him. He didn't have to turn around to know who was there, as they too began to wrap their hands. As they moved towards the weapon stand, their figure came into view.
His father's closest friend, Chewie, but practically an uncle to Kylo, grabbed one of the spears that held a similar size and weight to the saber in Kylo's hand. When they practiced their daily routine of exercises, Chewie often chose a similar weapon so that they could practice fairly. Outside of their daily routine, however, they used an array of different weapons.
A battle is never a fair fight, so one should train in such way as to be prepared for any offense.
Chewie, a tall, muscular man with golden skin and caramel hair that he had too much of, reaching his shoulders and a beard covering his jaw, came to stand next to him, running through the exercises alongside him.
When done, they faced each other and ran through their daily routine, both taking the offense and defense in turns. Kylo, wallowing in his ever-daily despair, was thankful that the man he just parried was a man of few words. If Kylo spoke or Chewie had to correct him on something, his language was a variation of grunts and nudges.
Despite their lack of conversation, Kylo knew that the man before him, whom had known him since he was born, would do anything for him, despite the rift between their mutual connections.
The golden glow of the sun cascaded him in warmth as the sand shifted beneath his feet, the soft breeze brushing his ankles as he walked across the dunes. He had walked for what felt like hours before he came across an island of rock, crevices fracturing it into tunnels.
He didn't know where he was going, but his feet somehow knew, as they tracked him into the centre of it.
As he entered the central cavern, cracks in the rock above allowing rays of the sun in, the beams shining diagonally across the space.
Sitting forward, her face came into view, blocking the rays so that shone solely on her tanned face, tendrils of her brunette hair framing her face. Her brown eyes pierced his as the beams reflected off of her skin, making her glow like an ember.
She slowly moved forward, off of the rock, so that she stood before him on the other side of the space.
A soft, warm breeze echoed through the rocks, brushing the loose tendrils across her face, remaining too enraptured in his presence to care.
They remained like that, staring at one another, calculating stares that never reached a result.
The air in the rocky space shifted, almost vibrating with warmth, as she whispered.
"Ben," the sound travelling through him and echoing throughout the fracturing tunnels surrounding them. However, the more he gazed at her, the more she began to blur, shifting in and out of focus, no matter how intently he tried to focus on her.
"Ben," she repeated, louder than he had ever heard her voice in the numerous dreams and visions of her he had seen since that first encounter.
As she shifted back into focus, he saw her face in a state of worry and concern, her hand slowly beginning to reach out towards him as he felt himself fall to his knees in the sand.
Looking down, he saw he hand placed over his gut, pulling away to reveal his hand covered in scarlet.
"No!" she screamed as the dream became shadowed in a smoke-like darkness before turning to black as he slept on, the remainder of his rest remaining dreamless.
Kylo startled awake, the sheets pushed to his ankles, unsure as to what had awoken him. The darkness outlining the drapes covering his window informed him that it was still night. Frowning, Kylo sat up in his light grey shirt and sweatpants and ran his hands through his raven hair.
Sighing, he sat there for a few moments before a bang in the corridor startled him. Carefully, disentangling himself from his bed sheets and standing up out of bed, he grabbed his lightsaber from his bed stand, grateful that he had chosen to keep it with him in more recently times.
Stepping closer to his door, he listened carefully, hearing footsteps towards the end of the corridor which became more distant with each passing second.
Once he could hear them no longer, he slowly turned the handle and opened the door, emerging into the corridor. He was carefully to keep his lightsaber deactivated, as the unconventional way he had made it had split his kyber crystal to create the cross guards, making the blade crackle with instability, a louder blade than traditionally made.
Chewie's room was closest to his wing of the house, so he prowled the corridors until he could get there. He heard some shuffling nearby as he reached the room, swiftly opening the door and and leaving it open just a crack so that he could see and hear more clearly if the shuffling became closer.
As he turned around, however, the room was empty. The sheets were sprawled across the bed in a similar way to his own, suggesting that Chewie had been awoken in a similar manner.
Listening at the door once more, he heard no more shuffling and could see no one in the corridor through the crack. Emerging into the corridor once more, Kylo continued to stalk the corridors, choosing to go to his parent's room next, as Luke's wing was on the opposite side of the house.
As he got closer to their room, he could smell her perfume before he felt her grab him from behind and pull him into a room.
She quickly shut the door and put her hand over his mouth as he faced her, as she released a shuddering breath of relief.
It had been so long since he had last seen her, been this close to her.
She removed her hand and nodded towards the door on the opposite side of the room.
Carefully, they padded over to it and stepped into the parallel hallway. Following the corridor, they emerged onto the balcony overlooking the main entrance hall of the house, just as a group shuffled in on the ground floor dragging someone with them.
Leia gasped as Han was forced into the hall, his hands bound behind his back.
They began shouting at him but all Kylo could hear was the buzzing in his ears, and as his father got punched in the stomach and double over in pain, Kylo stopped breathing.
Hunched over, Han's eyes shifted to the balcony and met Leia's, before meeting his son's.
As Kylo stared into his father's eyes, tense with pain, everything became silent. The world around him ceased to exist.
The silence snapped as a gunshot rang through the air, the world came back to Kylo quickly but in pieces, as he heard his mother's scream a moment later, and the men's shouts a moment later.
The realisation came to him as his eyes came back into focus and he saw his father lying on the floor in the hall, a pool of blood already emerging beneath him.
He snapped his eyes to a movement in the corner of his eye and saw the group of men running up the stairs towards them.
With one last, brief look at his father, he let his adrenaline take hold, grabbing his mother's hand and dragging her behind him as he ran through the corridors.
This was his home, and in the past few years he had mastered avoiding his family, knowing all the shortcuts and alternative exits.
He could hear the men's boots pounding against the wooden floors of the corridor, as they took a variety of different turns in an effort to lose them.
They could still be heard behind them but at more of a distance now, but a sudden shuffle to their right had Kylo veer them to the left and left again.
Coming across one of the guest bedrooms, Kylo pulled his mother inside, releasing her hand so that he could prop the chair from the vanity against the handle. It wouldn't hold but it would buy them some time.
As a child, he used to climb out of the windows and stand on the tiles that covered the rooms on the lower floor beneath so he knew the best access point.
Opening the window, he walked back over to his mother who stood in shock, tears tracking down her cheeks. Grasping both of her arms, he looked her in the eyes and tightened his grip slightly to bring her back to the present, her glassy eyes meeting his.
He probably could've reassured her, but they had been apart for so long that he didn't know what he could say, and still in shock, he wasn't sure he could speak at all.
He dragged a chair over to the window, and helped her out of the window and onto the tiles, holding her hand to keep her steady while he did the same. Carefully following the tiles, they reached the end of the roof where they climbed down onto the bins and onto the grass.
Above, Kylo could heard them pounding on the door of the guest room, the chair holding for now.
He grabbed his mother's hand once more and they ran around the house towards where their ships were parked. There was no way they would be able to reach Luke, but he had training of his own so he would be able to get out.
They quickly climbed into an X-wing, Kylo taking the pilot seat and Leia as co-pilot. Fondly glancing towards the Falcon beside them, they started up the starfighter. The Millenium Falcon would be much too big and would attract more attention.
With the ship ready to go, Kylo looked up to see the group of men coming around the house towards them. Raising their guns, Kylo began to take off, tense in preparation for an impact which never came, as Chewie ran out in front of their ship, distracting the men away from the ship.
Tears finally began to well up in Kylo's eyes as he was left with no other choice but to take off, watching as Chewie was gunned down beneath them.
As they entered lightspeed, they both left their home and pieces of themselves with it.
In the panic, Kylo hadn't thought of where to go, he had just selected a course at random, however with his mind clouded in shock he hadn't considered whether they had enough fuel.
That is how they ended up crash landed on Jakku, Kylo having glided it on the fuel fumes so that they could land as safely as possible in the circumstances. He perhaps could have refueled but the dunes beneath it turned out to be sinking sand and swallowed the ship whole, nearly taking his stunned mother with it if he hadn't grabbed her and pulled her out of the way.
His mother had continued to cry on the flight but had not uttered a word since.
They ambled across the sand in silence, hoping that across each dune that some sign of civilization would come into view.
They were sun burnt, disorientated and dehydrated by the time they came by an outpost, rushing forward to drink the water, uncaring as to the animal companion also hydrating.
They both collapsed onto the ground, their exhaustion getting the better of them, the moment only broken when someone shadowed over them and Kylo felt a stick poking in his ribs.
If he wasn't exhausted, he would've jumped up and faced them, but instead his eyes fluttered open.
At first he only saw an outline of a person, a halo of sunshine around them. Blinking his eyes to bring them into focus, only to recognise the girl standing over him.
The girl he had seen in his dreams for the past few weeks.
"Are you dead?" She questioned, poking him once more.