She was on Ach'to, balancing rocks and holding them in place when she felt a cool breeze on her back. She turned and faced Kylo Ren in simple black robes, looking above her and talking to the air.
"That was years ago. She means nothing to me now." He paused, his eyes growing wider and concern creeping over his face. "Supreme Leader, I think it would be pragmatic to bring a troop with us to ensure we capture her…I'm not questioning your judgment. I will do as you ask, and I will bring her back alive."
He lowered his head and spoke to an invisible someone at about his height.
"That information is for me alone, captain. If he wanted to assign you to capture her, he would have. Ask him yourself if you don't trust me."
He sank down to his knees as if he was mediating, his eyes unblinking and red.
"Leave me alone, Grandfather. I don't need your guidance. I will learn from your failures. I am not weak like you. I will not make the same mistakes as you."
Rey reached out to touch his shoulder and—
She woke up curled on his arm, her nose buried in his sweaty hair. She swallowed her scream, slowly broke away from his sleeping body, and crawled back to her bed in the opposite corner of the tent.
When she woke up a few hours later, he was already sitting up and doing touch ups on his healing wounds. She tossed him a spare dark brown robe to cover himself with after he complained about needing to go back to his ship for another shirt.
"So when's backup coming?" he asked.
"When the storm's passed."
"It's still going?"
"Ilum's storms can last for weeks, months sometimes. That's why my crew's ship left so quickly."
"But my ship—"
"Will either be lost forever or crushed by the storm," she said with a strained smiled. "I'm surprised you didn't do your research before coming here."
"I wasn't planning on staying here," he said and held out his hand for a moment. "Where's my lightsaber?"
"It's probably in one of those wolf dens and being used as a chew toy now."
He slammed his fist against his knee. "That's my second ship and lightsaber I lost because of you."
"Maybe you shouldn't have tried to go after me a second time."
"It wasn't my idea to go after you a second time."
"Following orders?"
"Yes."
That was true if the dream she had was another memory she was reliving. He still hadn't mentioned about noticing her in his dreams, and she didn't dare say anything about it either.
"Well, you're getting a new set of orders to follow," she said as she fried up two individual portions worth of powdered scrambled eggs and kelp-green slabs of veg-meat. "After we eat, we're packing up and going into the caves. With luck, I'll have my new lightsaber just in time for the storm to end. Here's your breakfast."
He accepted it with a suspicious eye. "You're giving me a full portion?"
"Enjoy it, because it'll be the last we'll be having for a while."
She stabbed at her veg-meat and chewed a salty morsel of it slowly, recalculating the amount of food she had and how to portion it over so many days so neither of them starved. It would be hard, but she had survived near-starvation before. Kylo Ren, however, didn't come off as the kind of person who had to worry about when his next meal would come.
"Thank you," he said before shoveling eggs in his mouth.
In a surprising show of gratitude, he insisted on carrying the backpack down into the caves. Rey rejected the offer at first on account of his wounds, but he argued back that she had carried the backpack and him in a snowstorm after being injured by the wolves. In the end she carried a lantern while Kylo Ren carried the backpack over the reflective blanket he wore like a shawl. They traversed the wide stone hall with icicles that dangled high above their heads.
The cylindrical mouth of the cave was sealed by a frozen waterfall, until Rey used the Force to shatter it. Balmy warm air washed over them as they entered. Rey lifted her lantern to get a better look at the smooth, clearly polished black walls of the cave. As they walked, the swirling sounds of chimes rang in her ears.
"What is that?" she asked.
"The crystals."
They both held their silence as they hiked down the gradual and smooth slope to another opening where soft, rainbow light spilled out into the darkness. They passed through and stopped at the sight before them.
Hundreds of kyber crystals sparkled like stars in a galaxy on the black rock. Even the stream that curled along the cave floor glowed from the golden crystals lining its bottom. Smaller chamber openings on the other side of the stream revealed hints of even more crystals deeper within. Above them the ceiling shimmered from the light of green, blue, red, and even a few purple crystal clusters. Rey switched off the white light of her lantern and walked to a green crystal on the wall. When she tapped it, a high pitch chime rang from it, and a lower hum from above responded.
"It feels like they're talking to each other, doesn't it?" she murmured.
He nodded. The Force was very concentrated here, and the endless conversations the crystals had buzzed through Rey as if she wasn't even there. She walked down towards the stream, careful not to step on any crystals as she did. Even the water was strange here. She could see her tired reflection perfectly in the glittery stream.
Her first months living on Jakku were merciless, lonely, and thirsty. In exchange for food and water she cleaned the junk other scavengers found to be traded to Unkar Plutt. She did her work quietly and quickly, and actually earned enough portions to be saved in her clothes. She even made friends with one of the scavengers, who was only a few years older than her.
They were friends until the scavenger knocked her out with her short club, and when Rey woke all of her portions had been stolen.
Rey coughed and wheezed as she stared up at the blue crystal ceiling. After a moment she realized she was sopping wet. She sat up and noticed that Kylo Ren was wet too. Her hand jumped to her lightsaber.
"What happened?" she demanded hoarsely.
"You fainted," he panted.
She glanced at the stream and back at him again.
"I think I was having a vision," she said. "I've been having them since I arrived, but not when I was awake."
"It probably has something to do with the crystals. They're so concentrated with energy from the Force that…" he trailed off and his eyes glazed over for a moment, then he rubbed them with a thumb and forefinger. "You need to choose a crystal."
"The crystal chooses me, if I remember how the Gathering trial is supposed to work, so it may be some time before I can leave with one. Did you have to do a Gathering when you trained with Luke?"
He bristled. "Yes, but that was a long time ago. And he came with me too."
"Did he? I wish he was here," she said, shoulders sagging.
"Why isn't he? The Gathering always had a more experienced Jedi to escort initiates."
"Because I thought if children could do this, I could do this easily by myself. That and he's training Finn, and I didn't want to—" she stopped when cool tears pricked at her eyes. She wiped them away and changed the subject. "How did you and Luke choose a crystal?"
Kylo Ren squeezed water out of the damp sleeves of his robe. "He brought me here and my crystal stood out from the rest."
"A red crystal?"
"No, it was green. But when I swore allegiance to the First Order and took my crystal out to build a new lightsaber, the crystal cracked and turned red."
Rey nodded, knowing there was more to the trial but not wanting to delve further. They set up the tent by the main entrance and laid out their beds. Rey's head had started to ache horribly, and it took some tossing and turning before she could finally sleep.
She was a child again and holding the wooden staff she found in a collapsed AT-AT. The staff was too long for her to use very well, but so far it was effective at scaring off people who didn't want to fight.
She was spelunking in a destroyed freighter when her traitor of a friend approached her. She greeted Rey and Rey hit her across the face with her staff. The older girl collapsed, blood flowing out of her nose and mouth. Rey ran away from the freighter with only a handful of scrap in her pouch.
It was impossible to sleep that night. She sucked on her fingers to try and ignore the hunger pangs, and when she closed her eyes she saw the crumpled girl with the blood on her face. With only a couple of hours before dawn, Rey dreamed of an island with no people, not even her family. There was no one there to hurt her, and no one for her to hurt.
Rey's head hurt so badly she wanted to crack her head against the rock just so it would burst open and release the pressure inside. Instead, she searched blindly for the first aid kit for some sort of pain relief. Kylo Ren got to it first, asked what hurt, and handed her the tiny capsule for her to swallow. It wasn't until the cold tingle spread across the back of her neck that she considered that it was not a smart idea to accept medicine from him.
When she woke up again, he had combed his hair and had the cooking supplies set up. Her headache was gone, but her body felt empty.
"If you're awake then I'll make breakfast," he said.
"I'm not hungry," she whispered.
She buried her head in her pillow to hide her tears, even though her loud sniffling gave herself away. Rey never did see that scavenger girl again after that day, and it had been years since she had since thought of her. Now the memory seared her heart like a fresh cut.
"I made tea," he said, and poured the dark green tea in Rey's only tin cup.
Without thinking she took a great, scalding gulp of it and coughed half of it up. He watched her with genuine sympathy.
"Don't look at me like that," she said. "This is all about the trial, right? The crystals are testing me to see if I'm worthy enough to use one of them for my lightsaber. I'll prove my worth."
"I don't doubt that," Kylo Ren said as he gently took the tin cup out of Rey's hand. "However, it will get harder from here. Did you have another vision?"
"More like a memory, from when I was much younger." She rubbed her stinging eyes. "You can have my half portion to eat. I'm going to meditate."
"Don't do that by the stream," he warned with a twitch of a smile.
"I won't," she chuckled and stopped at the tent flap. "I know you're trying to bring me alive to Snoke, but thank you for pulling me out of the water."
He sat up a little straighter as if startled. "You did pull me out of the snow to bring me to the Resistance alive. So we're even now."
Rey rolled her eyes and left the tent. She hopped over the thinnest part of the river and to the wall with five archways the led to more of the precious gems. Rubbing the last of her tears away, she sat down, closed her eyes, and cleared her mind of questions.