Author's Note: This fic was written for the 2020 reyloanthology Valentine's gift exchange and is complete. Will post all 6 chapters shortly. As I am mostly familiar with movie canon and this is a pre-TFA alternate reality/universe fic, I'm gonna be playing fast and loose with Knights of Ren backstory and Rey and Ben's timeline/age related canon continuity. This is NOT compliant with The Rise of Kylo Ren comic (which I haven't yet read), though there may be somethings I lifted from wookipedia here and there.

Since the movies don't say ages, assume ALL characters (and Rey in particular) are of age of consent in this fic. Take the M Rating seriously. :)

The smell of ozone and ash still clung to his robes as Kylo stepped off the First Order transport into the cavernous bay of a first class Star Destroyer and stopped short, heart pounding.

In front of him stood a sea of stormtroopers, their armor polished to an incandescent white and their guns resting at their hips. A thousand masks of black and white, empty black eye sockets that seemed to be looking at him no matter what direction.

Stormtrooper—Imperial, First Order, he saw no difference standing here—the veritable boogieman of his childhood, the proclaimed real villains of his young adult life. The specters that he only heard in whispered conversations involving his mother or his…former master, always quickly silenced when a young Ben Solo entered the room.

Years of training and instinct had him reaching surreptitiously for a weapon at his side — that was not there.

A cold hand gripping his shoulder brought Kylo back to himself. He looked up to see Supreme Leader Snoke standing beside him, so tall that Kylo had to crane his neck back, those liquid cold eyes so alien and piercing that he felt — he knew— could see right into Kylo's very soul.

His new master, now.

"You are wary," Snoke said softly. His hand lifted to gesture at the sea of men standing at attention. His voice echoed grandiosely in the room, echoed in Kylo's head. "This is understandable — why shouldn't you be? You have spent your whole life being taught to shun what your forebears had feared in their short sightedness. You were taught to fear…this…" cold eyes seared through him, "…power."

As thousand masks tilted their empty gazes at Kylo, and yet it was Snoke's scrutiny that made him feel pinned like a specimen on a collector board. He did his best to breathe evenly, to endure it. Eventually, he felt Snoke's gaze pass over him like a search beacon, felt a physical sensation of relief as the Supreme Leader turned away, vaguely dismissive as he concluded in a softer voice, "But you have nothing to fear, Kylo. You made the right decision coming to me. Your parents would merely have failed you. And you would have become a failure like them."

Snoke always saw so much.

Fear pulsed through him, which he pushed down immediately, afraid he would be seen. But Snoke was already striding forward with serpentine grace, approaching a line of black that stood in the front of the storm troopers. Several men wore the stiff black uniforms of officers, various metals gleaming on their epaulets. But they were not the ones to catch Kylo's attention as he slowly followed after the Supreme Leader down the runway, pausing a respectable distance behind.

In front of of the officers, forming the shape of a black crescent moon that fanned around the opening of the transport, stood the infamous Knights of Ren. Six figures in dark cloaks, each wearing a recognizable mask and carrying a cruel iron weapon. There had been carefully kept records in the Jedi Temple about each of them, drawings and notes in a cramped script that dutifully recorded every rumor, name and bloody history tied to each mask. He wondered if those records had survived the burning or if they had burned as his master had.

"My Knights of Ren," Snoke was saying, opening his arms wide. "I have brought a worthy candidate for your esteemed ranks— an asset that I have had my eye on for quite some time. He comes from a great Force legacy. He holds much promise."

A Knight of Ren with a hooded mask stepped forward, voice distorted and deep. "Of course, Supreme Leader. " He turned towards Kylo, expression impenetrable under the mask—and Kylo felt a sharp surge of resentment. Another mask, while he wore only the burned Jedi robes on his back, his uncle's blood splattered on his hands and shirt, the ash of charred bodies he had to flee through still clinging to his boots and legs. His only soveniers left to remember a former life of utter waste and ruin—

The Knight hummed, then looked away. "Promising indeed. What would you have us do."

"Prepare him," Snoke said simply. "Train him. Remove from him the unnecessary habits that have been instilled by lesser men. He will become an apprentice in the force and apprentice in the art of war—"

Snoke's voice faded to the background as a slight movement in Kylo's periphery diverted his attention. Behind the knights, but clearly not a part of the officers, stood one other person, exposed to his line of sight when the other Knight had stepped forward. A short figure, dressed not in black but in a patchwork of dark and silver armor with dark hair tied in a series of knots. Kylo's eyes lingered on the Anomid vocalizer mask, filigreed with intricate synthetic filter paper and delicate wire that wound down across the face, obscuring everything from the nose down. But not the eyes.

He was not sure what he had expected to see— vocalizer masks were as common among fugitives and bounty hunters as the Anomid species themselves. What he had not expected to see were dark eyes fringed by long lashes and pale freckles looking at him solemnly. Young, open, human — the shock of it made him forget where he was for a moment.

"Apprentice Kira." Snoke's voice, languid and dangerous.

Those dark eyes broke away from his gaze, then flicked down as the the short figure stepped lithely between the knights and dropped immediately to one knee at Snoke's feet, head bowed. Snoke peered a long distance down at her and for a moment, Kylo had the half wild thought that his master might grip the bowed head with one hand and crush it between his fingers.

"Look who I have brought, Kira," Snoke said instead, the same warm tone that Kylo recognized Snoke addressed him with. A sick lump settled in his gut, hearing for the first time how wrong it sounded from the outside. "A peer in the Force. Perhaps his presence will inspire you to greater strides in your force training."

Kira shifted ever so slightly. "Yes, Supreme Leader."

Snoke was gazing at him now though, a spotlight on his mind. Kylo swallowed, then on pure instinct, moved to the empty spot beside Kira and knelt too, head bowed, a pale freckled hand bracing against the cold metal floor.

Kira did not glance at him, did not so much as move from her bowed position. She — now that he was closer, he could see Kira was definitely a human female — seemed so very small. Young dark eyes in a sea of white and black masks. Her brown gloved hand, braced against the floor near his own, was tiny compared to his — the tips of her fingers would barely reach the knuckles of his hands.

There was a smile in Snoke's voice as he said over their heads, "You will come to find, Kylo, that the First Order will not die on the sword of stubborn egos. The teachings of the Jedi, if short sighed and limited, have uses. So too, the teachings of the Sith. So remember this: take all what you have learned. Discard what is unnecessary. Hone what is left with purpose. Learn what is to be offered. Learn what is to be teached."

"Yes, master," Kylo said. A drop of sweat dripped down his nose and onto his hand, merging with a lurid red blood splatter on his knuckle.

"Good." Snoke turned away, and then paused. "Oh and Kira?"

Kira shifted beside him. "Yes, Supreme Leader?" Even through the added layers of the distortion mask, her voice was thin and high and Kylo had to force himself not to blink at how young she sounded. She sounded hardly older than a girl.

Snoke's eyes gleamed cruelly. "See this as an opportunity to rise to the occasion. To prove your master's great expectations of you."

Perhaps it was the trick of the light. Perhaps because he was at an odd angle, kneeling just close enough that he could see behind Kira's mask. But for a moment he swore he saw Kira bare her teeth at Snoke's words, fierce and hateful. For what reason, Kylo did not know.

"…Yes, Supreme Leader."

It took mere weeks for Kylo to be swiftly disabused of his assumptions, and a few more to realize exactly how far off he had been in the first place.

Apprentice Kira was not a girl.

From his position on the floor, the blunt end of a staff digging harshly into the exposed crease between helmet and jaw, Kylo glared up at the person in question and sneered, "You are an animal."

Kira's eyes narrowed. As usual she had forgone full headgear — today she wore a tie fighter ventilator, the bulky filters missing and giving the mask an eery resemblance to a skull. The three knots of her hair were coming undone from when he had gotten frustrated and grabbed for them, and one of her eyes that had met with his elbow was already starting to swell. He didn't have to see to know she was baring her teeth at him. "You grabbed my hair."

He was about to retort that maybe she should cover it if she didn't want it to be yanked, when he was interrupted by a slow clap from the edge of the sparring mat. "Yes, yes, you are all beasts," said Cardo Ren. The flat black of his mask, only slitted around where the eyes should have been, suitably conveyed the boredom in his voice. "Let us skip the usual noise and finish this, yes?"

Kira and Kylo stared hard at each other. Finally with a rough sound, she jerked the staff away, metal grinding along his mask edge and making his teeth hurt. She stalked to the end of the room, throwing the staff on a table and moved to examine a wicked looking scythe.

Kylo wrenched to his feet, breathing heavily, and went to retrieve the flat blade knocked from his hand. His hair and face were wet with sweat under his mask, but he'd be damned taking it off now. He wouldn't give them—her—the satisfaction of seeing him try to contain his emotions, especially since Kira brought out particularly vitriolic ones from him.

Kylo scowled at the bright red First Order symbol emblazoned on the mat. A few months, and here he was, on a training mat once again. For all that everything had changed, the daily routine of Kylo's life with the First Order was not much different to the one he had lived as a student at the Jedi Temple. Training, meditation, teaching, study. Missions with the Knights that showed him his strengths and his (many) significant inadequacies; visits with Snoke that left him gutted and in pieces that he was forced to re-forge anew each time. Between all that, there ran an endless parade of peripheral faceless people that served as stepping stones to further along Snoke's expectations and Kylo's great destiny.

Except one. One face refused to fade into the background of his life, instead striking like vindictive lightning into the careful structure of Kylo's days.

"Again," Cardo said, flicking fingers at them. "And this time, plasma on. Perhaps then Kylo will take this exercise more seriously."

Kylo's head snapped towards Cardo, glowering. "If you let me use the Force—"

"No Force," Cardo interrupted. "It's Ushar's job to figure out how to protect the ship from you two imbeciles, not mine."

Kylo growled, channeling his anger into a strike at one of the practice walls already riddled with slashes. The spark and screech of metal was satisfying—now if only he could land a hit like that during one of their sparring matches.

If he was using the force...

"Weapons?" Cardo asked from the side lines as Kylo moved to the center of the ring once more.

"Blade," Kylo said immediately, and sneered as Kira snorted from the corner.

"So predictable," she said, tone scathing. "You ever think that might be the problem?"

"Lightsabers are blades," he growled, fed up with having this repeated discussion. "Why would I bother with anything else."

Kira said nothing, fingers running over the black chain of a spiked flail. He felt a drip of sweat trickle down his neck—he hated when she used that thing—when suddenly Kira whirled around, grabbing a slim saber from a rack on the floor. "Blade," she said flatly, moving towards Kylo and readying her stance.

Kylo stared speechless. Even Cardo paused for the barest second. Kira never used a blade against Kylo in training. Not because she wasn't good with one, but because in no-Force matches, he far out-classed her in both weight and raw strength. If there blades locked, it was game over.

"Letting him get to you, Kira?" Cardo mused even as Kylo couldn't contain the feral grin breaking across his face behind his mask. He hunched over, stroking his own blade in a loving caress.

Kira's eyes were on him alone. "Blade," Kira repeated lowly, and with a twist of the weapon base, hot plasma erupted along a single edge, purple and crackling. In response Kylo ignited his own, feeling the metal blade vibrate under his hand in a shower of red hot sparks. He hefted the blade a moment again, feeling the weight of it. A crude, heavy instrument in comparison to a lightsaber, and yet suitable enough for its purpose when plasma powered.

Oh, he was going to enjoy knocking her to the ground for once.

They were already circling each other when Cardo gave a small shrug and retreated to the far wall. "Begin."

Kylo lunged forward, his blade slashing powerfully at her chest. Kira whirled away, sliding towards his weak side and whipping the tip of her sword for his blade hand. A powerful parry from him had her staggering back, her arm shaking. She retreated, eyebrows knitting, but he was not far behind.

Strike and parry, slash and block, stab and side step. Kira and Kylo danced across the practice hall under a parade of showering sparks. Her blade was lighter but his reach was greater, and the more she retreated the faster he bared down on her. The longer the battle lasted the more the scales tipped in his favor— they both knew it.

As the precious seconds ticked by, he watched with pleasure as Kira's normal control began to fray at the edges. Her strikes became wilder, more erratic. And eventually she slipped—a stab at his chest out of frustration, when she should have retreated— and he seized his chance.

Two steps and a running leap before she could roll away and Kylo had her—their blades locked at the hilt, sparks flickering and sizzling hot against their skin. Behind the plasma halo, Kira's eyes widened and Kylo felt the ambrosia of victory fill his chest. Delighted laughter spilled from his mouth as he bared down, forcing her to bend under him, watching in full up close glory as fury and panic filled those dark plasma ringed eyes

And then somehow… he slipped into them.

The desert of Jakku was a barren wasteland and Rey had known nothing else. Her mother touching her hair with a frail, shaking hand, eyes glazed. Her father drunk in the corner, unmoving—

Kira's eyes widened, pupils dilating.

—The raging desert storms rattling the cage of a broken down AT-AT. They hadn't made it home. Rey huddled under the table with her straw doll in one hand and an empty quarter portion bag in the other. There was a dry chalky powder lining the bottom of the bag that she tried to lick with a dry mouth—

Kira's face twisted, a scream ripping from her throat.

—A blonde woman crouching in front of her, holding her chin sharply. Her lips were red and her eyes was cold. "Fifty imperial credits. She's hardly worth thirty."

The clink of credits. A black flag with red circles, whipping in the wind. Her mother, weeping in the sand. Her father, thin as a rail and yet more lucid then Rey had ever seen him, screaming into the horizon as someone dragged her away hard by the neck. "She will kill you! She will kill you!"

There was a pulse in the force. Then Kira shoved, the room rattling from a sudden surfeit of wind that shook the room. Kylo, shocked, felt the full brunt of it and staggered back, only to find Kira charging him with a furious shout, her blade aimed for his head. He parried, arm shuddering with effort, only for her to reverse her strike, blades locking and catching him at a bad angle.

Her eyes were hot and furious and blacker than the bottom of the Chandrillian ocean—

—Their house on Chandrilla was a mansion filled with servants. His father smiled nervously as he ruffled his hair. "I'll be back kid. Get you something new instead of that old ratty thing." Ben looked down, unable to speak, clutching a small stuffed animal to his chest, the faint perfume of his mother long since faded—

Shocked, he threw his weight into their blades to disengage, but she pulled back, blade reversing quick as lightning, her eyes—

—Yavin 4 was humid, wild, uncivilized. He was too big and awkward, the other students too wary. The only time Ben felt he could breathe was on a space ship, traveling as far away as possible from modern human civilization. But even then, there was solitude. His uncle was always looking out a window or a transparisteel viewport or with eyes fixed on the sunset, always searching for someone else to rescue or to teach, never seeing him standing right there—

This time he couldn't move away in time, watching with shock as purple plasma shot like a white super nova towards his face.

—Sickly green haloing his uncle's face, horror and disbelief as the stones of the roof struck his back, that ancient Skywalker blood splattering on to Ben's face and hands as both lightsabers sputtered, crushed, winking out—

Instinct saved him. A quick jerk of his hand had him force blasting her arm up to divert the deadly edge of the strike…but it was not enough to prevent the flat of her blade from smashing into the top of his helmet like a sledgehammer.

Metal crinkled around his face like so much paper, his neck jerking to the side. Pain seared his skin, driving like a needle straight into his brain. The world disappeared as he went limp, blinking out. A microsecond of a blissful, unfeeling black world.

"Ben, no!"

Reality crashed into him, pain and noise. Kylo caught himself on one knee before he face planted into the ground, gasping for breath and his ears ringing. Through the cracked, sparking glass of his visor, he could see the purple blade lodged in the ceiling. And he saw her.

Kira stared down at him, her face flushed and fierce, eyes dilated in glorious, unholy fury.

Instead of feeling appropriate reciprocation, Kylo merely proved himself the beast he was, as the sight sent blood rushing straight to his cock. Fuck.

"Match over," cut Cardo's cold voice through the sudden fog in Kylo's brain. "Kylo, report to the medbay immediately. And Kira, report to the disciplinary division for unsanctioned force use and for making me do needless paperwork."

Kira immediately stepped back, but despite the reprimand she'd didn't look a bit remorseful. Latching on to that, Kylo staggered to his feet, hands already reaching for his helmet. He heard Cardo tut disapprovingly but he ignored it, ripping the hunk of metal off his head in a movement that made his head screech and the world sway. He ignored that too, turned the mask over in his hand to survey the damage and…his jaw worked wordlessly.

"Again," Kylo thundered, staring at the irreparably crushed helmet. He blinked up through spotted vision to see Kira's back to him, storming out of the hold. This was the fourth one she had destroyed.

"Perhaps if you like that stupid mask so much, then you should get better," Kira shouted over her shoulder, and then with a whoosh the electronic door closed behind her.

Kylo whipped towards Cardo who was already trailing towards one of the adjacent doors. "I'm off the clock, bother someone else with your squabbles." He paused, pointed a finger at him. "Medbay."

Jaw working furiously, Kylo turned and threw the helmet with a crack at the wall, splintering it into pieces.