a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

Even with a full eight hours of sleep and a mug full of hot caf, you couldn't wake up properly. Your dreams were too active nowadays to allow you much rest. But with training first thing in the morning, you knew you needed to wake up. And so you let yourself outside of the base to spend time in the below freezing temperatures outside.

You sat on the freezing cold snow with your legs crossed, your back straight as an arrow, your hands covering your knees. Your black robes blocked the cold from touching your skin, but the cold still found its way into your bones. With your eyes shut, you swore you could feel the frost forming over your eyelashes. Still, you breathed in and out, desperately trying to keep completely focused.

He found you thirty minutes after. You sensed him before you heard the crunch of his snow under his heavy boots.

"I've been waiting out here for you," you said, eyes still closed. "I've been waiting out here for a while now."

"I'm sorry, I wasn't aware you were sitting out here, willingly freezing to death," Commander Kylo Ren replied coolly.

Your eyebrows raised. "I'm meditating."

"Looks to me like you're talking," he said. "If you were meditating, you'd be focused and silent."

You sighed and opened your eyes. The sky of Ilum was still a rich navy blue, even though it was well into the morning. "Well, maybe you're just distracting me."

"Come with me." He walked by you, his cloak brushing across the white snow that was well-packed into the ground. You stood up gracefully and followed him in step. "Are you going to tell me why you're so impatient this morning?"

"I wouldn't say I'm impatient," you said.

"I can sense your eagerness. It's annoying."

"My apologies," you said, resisting the urge to roll your eyes at him.

"You were restless in your dreams again last night, weren't you? You wake up and you're still tired."

"Yes," you admitted, staring at the back of Kylo's helmet. He knew you all too well. You couldn't keep anything from him. "Could you blame me? You told me there was something coming, and that it was something big. Something vital to the success of the First Order. And if I have to prepare and work harder in my training, then surely that has something to do with me. Right?"

"It has something to do with all of us," he said. "With the cause. But it is important that you work harder, and that you remain focused. You can't let your mind wander off of your improvement."

Your eyes dropped to the snow as he stopped in a clearing. You wondered if, were the planet of Ilum not to be one made of ice and snow, the clearing you were standing in would be a meadow. Full of lavender and tiny yellow daisies. Like the one you often saw in your dreams...

"___," Commander Ren snapped. Your shoulders jumped and your eyes were frozen on his mask.

You cleared your throat. This time, your apology slipped off of your tongue in sincerity. He was angry with you. You could feel it. "My apologies again, Master."

"Your mind is so easily distracted."

"I know," you said. You swallowed hard and unclipped the lightsaber from your belt. It was a completely black hilt, darker than even Kylo Ren's. Yours wasn't a crossguard like his, but it was just as broken in its crimson glare. Kylo had formed the weapon for you out of a broken kyber crystal, the same as his. Yours was far simpler and more elegant --- it was beautiful. You felt the familiar weight of it in your dominant hand. "I don't mean for it to be. I'll focus now."

"Put your lightsaber away," he said. "We don't need to practice your fighting anymore, anyway."

Silently, you obeyed. You'd disappointed him.

"Now tell me, ___, what is it that keeps you so distracted?"

Although it was the ever-so-familiar meadow on your mind, you blurted out the next truth for why you were so unlike yourself this morning. You couldn't tell your Master what was truly plaguing your dreams until you decided what it could be. It was something that occurred too often to be a normal dream. Part of you wondered if it was a memory, but if it was, then it would be your very first one of a past you didn't remember a moment of.

Your truth was spoken clearly and evenly. "It isn't just that you told me something is coming. It's more than that. I can sense there is something coming. That is what keeps my dreams full of uncertainty. What prevents me from remaining focused in my studies and meditation. I'm sorry."

For a moment, only the wind spoke as it whistled through the naked trees of the forest. You kept your eyes on Commander Ren, your hands still at your sides. The cold was getting bitterly painful now.

Surprisingly kind, his voice replied, "I feel it, too."

"It's freezing," he said. "You can finish your meditation inside today, and later we can practice your physical combat."

"Yes, Master," you replied.

As he walked back towards the entrance of the base, you walked alongside him. Teacher and student, two of the same, reflections of one another in your movements and ebony robes.

Commander Kylo Ren was the closest thing that you had to a friend. No, he was a friend. He cared about you. You knew that he did. Part of you wondered if that was a weakness, if it was dangerous to care about someone in the way that you did for him and he did for you. Be he often reassured you that fear of companionship was a belief of the Jedi, and the Jedi were wrong in every way. Your feelings were to be used, for they brought you power. Anger, hate, desire, even love. That was what brought Kylo to where he was today, and that was what would bring you the same strength and power.

You were undeserving of everything he taught you and you knew that. He didn't have to choose you. He didn't have to save you when he found you, but he did. And you were so undeserving of it. You would never be able to repay him.

Seven years ago, he found you. You were a teenager. Young, alone, and injured. He told you he found you amidst wreckage of a disaster without a family or a single possession. You were unconscious and dying and yet he could sense your life form there. You were strong in the Force. He said finding you was like finding the missing piece in his life; he was able to pass down all that he knew during his own training.

When you woke up two weeks after he found you, you were unable to remember a single moment of the previous years except for these things: rain against your face, the smell of thick smoke, the heaviness of darkness settling over you, and the terrifying feeling of knowing that you were about to die.

Everything else was lost to you. No amount of therapy or work with medical droids could change it. You had burns across your arms, bruises on your legs, and you were so weak that you couldn't lift your head for a long time.

All through it, Kylo stood by your side, promising you a future with the First Order. The Force had linked you with him and you could feel it. And as a girl with no memories, no family, and a body destroyed with trauma you couldn't place in your life, you clung to him.

He was all that you had. Your teacher. Your friend. He taught you to be stronger than you ever would have been without him. Whatever was in the past... it was better to be with your Master, you reminded yourself. You were better off here, taking advantage of your full potential.

Kylo parted from you to discuss things with his own Master, and you retired to the training room, where you sat cross-legged on the floor, hands on your knees, back straight as an arrow, mind on anything but the purple and yellow dotted meadow that kept coming back to you again and again each night.