A/N: Ever since The Force Awakens was in theaters, I knew Kylo Ren and Rey's past had to be intertwined. I know soon the new movie will be out and of course blast all of my theories out of the water. So this is written in an AU where the new movie doesn't exist and instead my story occurs. I started writing this in April of last year and except for the last few chapters which I'm currently writing, it's complete. My best friend Alatariel4488 is kindly betaing this story for me, so it will be posted when we both find time in our busy schedules. I will never discourage readers from expressing their thoughts and comments on my story, whether positive or negative.

There was nothing to see for miles. Just sand that moved on the wind. Howling gales bore down from the north, brushing loose pieces of her hair out of her face. There was no purpose to the force of the wind; there was no storm brewing on the horizon.

She took a deep breath, perfectly timed and measured. She knelt down, the heat from the sun baking her back as she was perched atop the highest sand dune on the horizon, looking out onto nothing. There really was nothing to be seen but miles and miles of sand. At least on Jakku the sand leveled into dusty plains, and eventually, when the sands petered off enough and the wind wasn't harsh, a city would appear on the horizon as a beacon of hope.

In this barren wasteland there was nothing but shifting seas of sand. Every day the landscape changed from the constant breath of the winds.

It was day two.

And there was still not a scrap of human life to be seen. There were no plants, no animals, and she knew from experience that if there was any water buried on the hot, dry surface, it was so far down she'd die trying to reach it.

So she stood at the top of the dune, the wind buffeting her face, knowing that if something didn't happen soon she would be stuck here. And eventually, when her carefully rationed portions of food ran out and the last trickle of water had been drunk, she would die.

But then she had been abandoned on a desert planet before and had survived just fine. The only difference was this time it hadn't been intentional.

She took one last look over the barren landscape and then, putting her back to, it made her way down the dune to where her crashed ship lay in the sand.

She remembered most of what had happened leading up to the crash. Luke had felt a disturbance in the force and had sent Chewbacca in the Falcon to send warning to Leia. He refused to leave the water planet. He felt, with Kylo Ren still on the hunt for him, that staying on the uninhabited planet on the edge of the badlands was the only way to stay out of the way. Let Ren go on a wild goose chase to hunt him down. As long as he was still hunting for Luke and Rey then the resistance would have a chance to rebuild and get the upper hand while the New Order was weak.

But when Chewy never sent word back to them and when the sickly feeling both her and Luke had been feeling grew stronger, she insisted that they go help them. Even when Luke protested that she stay hidden and safe with him, she fired back that she wasn't leaving Finn, Poe, and General Organa to fend for themselves.

Maybe Luke was a tired old man. Maybe he was tired of fighting rebellious students. Or maybe he'd already grown tired of training her and wanted her to leave. Even now, she wasn't sure why he hadn't fought for her to stay. He stayed deathly still even as she demanded action on his part. She'd given up, tired of standing on the sidelines as the eerie feeling stirred in her stomach. So, without even an attempt from Luke to stop her, she took the little ship that had got him to the little water planet in the first place, and dove back into space, headed home to save her friends.

Everything else from that point on, when she tries to remember is blurred and hazy.

She woke in the dark, smoke choking her, the blaring sounds of alarms screaming in the cockpit. She scrambled out of the burning ship as fast as she could but she'd taken a beating in the landing and could barely move. She didn't get the fire out in time to save any of the electrical systems. Her only way of letting anyone know where she was had been a small signal beacon which burnt up with the rest of the ship.

She waited hours for the sun to fade off into the horizon, for night to come and cool air to settle in and give her a relief from the rabid sun. But it never did. The sun stayed in the middle of the sky, blazing so hot that she finally buried as far into the sand as she could to keep the heat off.

She had no idea how long she slept that first 'night'. Her injuries were mostly superficial but there was a dull ache under her ribs and a tick in the back of her mind that told her that things weren't as well as they might seem. There was no way to tell time because the sun didn't shift in the sky. Later, once she had found an old watch in one of the few cargo bins that escaped the flames, she was able to measure time. The fire in the cockpit burnt for two days. There was nothing to stop the flames, the wind wasn't stiff enough to put it out and the blaring sun just encouraged the fire. It burnt until everything but the outer shell and some of the deeper compartments were left.

By then, she was so parched she barely had the strength to pull the environmentally resistant containers out of the cargo hold. She could have drunk gallons and gallons. But there were only two ten gallon containers and a recycler and so she was careful, even though her self-control almost broke and she felt like she could gulp down half a container in one sitting.

It was there, on that night-less planet, that she really came to understand what survival meant. She had been doing it all her life. She had been on her own as long as she could remember, but now, truly alone, truly just surviving, she felt as if the world shifted a little. Her view was suddenly harsher, more focused.

To keep her mind off of the pain in her ribs and the scolding sun at her back, she ran through a mental list of things she needed to do.

She needed to get off this planet, back to Finn, Poe, and eventually Luke. She wanted to finish Kylo Ren's reign of terror. She wasn't sure if she could kill him, but he needed to stop and she felt as if it was her personal mission to end him. The First Order, of course, needed to be stopped. Those were her immediate goals. The ones that burned in the back of her mind like the blinding sun above her.

Maybe it was the sun, or dehydration, or pure desperation, but soon her mind began to wander to other things she wanted so very badly. She wanted to become a Jedi. As she sat in the shade of her crashed ship, she pulled out her sabre. It was heavy and despite the oppressive heat the metal was still cool to the touch. She didn't activate it, just imagined how she would eventually learn to slice it through the air with a meticulous precision.

Her thoughts wandered, the heat catching up to her. She wanted to finally meet her family, if they were even out there. She imagined her mother. Soft eyes and sharp chiseled features that carried a kind, motherly expression. Nothing seemed better than warm arms that would wrap around her in the darkest of times. If she listened closely she could hear her mother's voice on the wind, singing.

She drank some more water and buried farther into the sand, trying to keep the heat at bay and her mind sharp.

She would make it off this god forsaken planet.