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The Movement

Summary:

The third Great Age of Imperialism has begun. The rise of fascist and far-right governments the world over has led to civil war, genocide, violent colonization, slavery and exploitation. These movements operate under the guise of the New Empire of the United Kingdom, and the First Order of the U.U.S.A. Rebel insurgents have risen, but none have prevailed. Poe Dameron and Finn Trooper lead the Resistance Forces in the jungles of Vietnam, defending against the evil First Order troops. Dr. Rey Skywalker, a surgeon for the Red Cross, finds herself caught up in the conflict when she dares to save a young man's life.

Notes:

Hi All!

I didn't expect to have another story for you all so soon after finishing the last one, but I was suddenly inspired and couldn't help but write this down. It's kind of speculative fiction, set several years in the future on Earth, where far-right governments have taken over the US and UK, and have instigated a third period of global colonization, under the guise of "International Aid." Rey is a surgeon who works for the Red Cross, Poe is a Guatamalan-born former USAF pilot-turned rebel, and Finn is a former child soldier.

This story will get very dark, it will deal with the harsh realities of war (everybody has PTSD, y'all!), and it will contain lots of inaccurate historical medical information, despite copious research. Hope it interests you!

Title comes from the movement to found the Red Cross.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter 1: The Dogs Died

Chapter Text

The heat is oppressive. Beads of sweat gather on her forehead, dripping down to sting her eyes faster than Rose can dab them away. Irritated, she blinks rapidly to clear the blur, squinting against the harsh light beside her head. Deftly, efficiently, she moves her gloved hands in a repetitive motion, deeply focused on her actions. With a long, slow exhalation which blows hotly back against her mask, she gently closes her patient’s final suture, then ties it off.

She breathes in, and all hell breaks loose.

With several loud bangs in quick succession, a swarm of armed men and women burst into the operating suite. Rey freezes, a sharp bolt of alarm zinging up her spine before everything sharpens and illuminates. The itching, humid jungle air ceases to matter, and her vision clarifies to the point where she can track the flight path of a fly that has hitchhiked into the sterile room with the group of filthy, desperate soldiers.

Rey knows they’re desperate – she can smell it. They’re rank with it, and the sharp tang of… Blood. Her head snaps up and her uncanny focus zeroes in on a man who is draped between the arms of two of his compatriots. He is horrifically injured, with a – gunshot? – no, puncture wound deep into the meat on the upper right of his chest, and she can hear the quick patter of blood dripping rapidly off his back. He’s barely conscious, and his handsome, dark face is contorted with pain.

As Rey moves, every gun in the room whips up to point at her. “Enough of that!” she snaps, and one or two of the soldiers take a surprised half-step back, but none lowers their gun.

“You’re here for help, yes? For your friend?” she asks, jerking her head toward the injured man.

Warily, a man of average height and stocky build, with dark hair curling wildly in the damp atmosphere, steps forward, his gun trained insistently on her. Like all of the soldiers, he’s wearing a bandana over the lower half of his face, and Rey can’t help but wonder absently if it's as stifling as her medical mask is.

“You the doc?” he asks gruffly, and she’s surprised to hear an American accent.

“Obviously,” she huffs impatiently, “And I’ll help your friend just as soon as you let my anaesthesiologist go with this patient. He’s just had his appendix out, and he needs to be monitored while he wakes up.”

The man’s eyes dart wildly to Paige as she moves to push the gurney out of the O.R., his gun swinging to land on her. “Are you an idiot?” Rey blurts, flinching a little at her own stupid mouth, the thing that gets her into trouble every time, without fail.

The man slowly turns to her, lowering his gun just slightly as he stares at her, his incredulous expression obvious even under the bandana. “Excuse me?” he says, his voice deadly quiet.

“I just said I’ll help your friend, you ass,” she scoffs, inwardly cringing. “It’s clear you and your comrades aren’t familiar with the neutral tenets of my organization, otherwise you wouldn’t have burst in here armed to the teeth.”

For such a solid man, he moves with a speed that is breathtaking, and before Rey can blink, the muzzle of his rifle is pressed into her temple. Without a thought, she snaps. Quicker than the armed man can register, she slaps his gun down out of her face, before kicking it roughly from his grip. “I will not be threatened into helping him!” she snarls, getting right into his face, not acknowledging the sound of a dozen cocking rifles all around her.

A gaze that is frightened and a little pissed off (and a little awed), meets hers head on.

His eyes are brown, she notes.

Rey consciously slows her breathing, locking eyes with him as she steps yieldingly out of his space, “I will help your friend because he needs my help.”

He stares at her for a few moments more, like he can’t quite decide what to make of her. She stares back, defiantly. Her heart is hammering, and she feels pinned by the intensity of his scrutiny, examined in a way she hasn’t been in years. A tiny thrill shocks along the base of her neck. Suddenly, his gaze shifts in a way that is dark, and deep, before he sharply nods his head.

Rey jerks her head at Paige, the anaesthesiologist, who hurriedly pushes the gurney out past the assembled men, clunking through the still-swinging doors beyond them. “You – and you,” she barks, gesturing to two of the soldiers, “Get another gurney from just out there,” she jerks her elbow in the direction of the doors behind her.

“You two,” she addresses the soldiers holding the injured man between them, “Get him up on the gurney the second it’s here. Stabilize his neck if you can.”

She points to the soldier nearest to her O.R nurse, Rose. “Scrub up with me, you’re assisting.”

The bewildered soldier, surprisingly slim and diminutive, lowers their gun slowly, following the young doctor back to the enormous stainless-steel sink to disinfect. Rey quickly sheds her gown, mask, goggles and gloves, shoving them into the biohazard bin.

“That too,” she insists, indicating the bandana covering the soldier’s face and a stack of surgical masks on the shelf above the sink. She’s moderately surprised when her gambit works, and the soldier casually brushes the fabric to the side by rubbing it against their shrugged shoulder.

They appear femme, and Rey now notices they have long hair rolled into small, golden, braided buns, to go with their softer looks. Rey watches warily from the corner of her eye, instinctively memorizing the young person’s features.

Rey coolly talks them through the scrub procedure, keeping an ear on the agonized moans of the injured man as they heave him onto the gurney and Rose performs triage. Swiftly, but with her usual proficient attention to detail, she leads the young soldier in gowning and gloving. When they’re done, she pauses for a moment, casually asking, “What’s your name? My job will be easier if I can address you by name.”

“Kay,” comes the shy, feminine reply.

“Thank you, Kay,” Rey murmurs, before elucidating that she and Rose will be intubating the injured man, and Kay will need to pump the bag in order to keep oxygen flowing into his lungs at a steady pace.

As the young doctor calmly describes what needs to be done, walking rapidly to the side of the now-unconscious soldier, Paige slips back in and begins to scrub up again as well. In mere moments, they have the young man intubated and hooked up to pulse and blood pressure monitors. She assesses his shoulder injury, and quickly determines that, though deeply penetrative, whatever blade pierced his flesh had miraculously missed anything vital.

Rose had strapped a cervical collar around the man’s neck, knowing that they’ll need to keep his spine as steady as possible while they examine his back. “Turn him over now, please,” she instructs his observant brethren, “As gently as you can.”

Rey catches a single glimpse of the injury on his back, and her mind immediately purifies into the singular crystallized need to save this man. It has happened to her only a few times before, but every time it does, Rey plunges deep into the divine focus, allowing herself to run on pure instinct as time stops and sounds fade around her into one protracted moment of distilled single-mindedness.

When Rey blinks back into awareness, shakily dropping her tools and taking a halting step back, she knows by the quality of the light in the room that several hours have passed. Sound creeps slowly back in as she gazes numbly around her. Most of the assembled soldiers are huddled in exhausted heaps on the floor of her operating room, and with a small jolt, she realizes the only person awake other than the lookouts and her medical team is the man she yelled at so thoughtlessly earlier. He sits on the floor with the others, but is watching her every move. His contemplation of her is almost unchanged since the last time she looked at him, and she shivers a little as the room tilts just slightly around her.

For a second, the man jerks like he wants to reach out and steady her, but she finds her feet before he can move. Instead, he stands warily, his movements almost feline in their fluidity. He stops at his soldier’s bedside. “He’s stable?” he asks, voice rough like he hasn’t had a sip of water in many hours.

“He’ll live,” she rasps back, equally dry.

The masked man nods sharply again, then moves to tug the injured man up. Both Rey and Rose lunge for him, bellowing at him to stop. He freezes but doesn’t move away. “Why.”

It isn’t really a question.

“You can’t move him yet,” Rey asserts, “He’ll die if he’s not given proper post-operative care!”

The man jerks his arm out of the young doctor’s grip. “You don’t understand,” he growls. “We can’t stay any longer. We’ve been here too long already. If the First Order finds us here, then they’ll slaughter you all. There’s no choice.”

Swiftly, she clasps his forearm again as he reaches for the soldier, tightening her grip to the point of bruising. He glances up at her in surprise, clearly taken aback that there’s so much strength in her deceptively slim limbs. “Then I’m coming with you. I won’t let this man die.”

He stares at her in silence for so long that she opens her mouth to begin arguing her case. Before she can get a word out, though, he cuts her off. “Fine,” he says, blowing the word out like a deflating balloon. “You have fifteen minutes to prep him for travel.”

Chapter 2: There's Nothing We Could Do

Summary:

Poe isn't happy.

Notes:

Content Warning: a character is forcibly restrained and threatened with a blindfold.

Chapter Text

Nothing is going according to plan.

It is by no means a feeling he is unfamiliar with, but nonetheless, Poe hates it when the situation is out of his control. Somehow, in the past twenty-four hours, he has seen the near-mortal wounding of his best friend, after which he witnessed the miraculous, life-saving surgery he’d undergone, and then obtained not just a tagalong doctor, but her O.R. nurse had insisted on coming as well.

How in the hell is he supposed to deal with that?

Though it would have been hard for any but his closest companions to recognize, Poe had been nearly manic with anxiety when Black Squad had dragged Finn back from a routine recon covered in his own blood and gore, barely conscious. Kaydel had rapidly plotted the fastest course for them to make it to the Red Cross outpost on the edge of Lai Chau City. With no objection, Poe and his team departed immediately. He knew, deep in his soul that he’d put his team at risk, that he was putting them all at risk, but he couldn’t bring himself to let his best friend go.

Despite his panic, Poe had had enough sense to establish a perimeter and send scouts ahead to the tiny medical outpost. Consequently, they’d managed to take the surgical team entirely by surprise just as they were finishing up an appendectomy. He’d been in for the surprise of his life with the trauma surgeon. She was quite tall, almost as tall as Poe himself, and she’d been absolutely fearless in the face of a dozen or more armed soldiers.

The former pilot had been completely transfixed from the moment she pushed back at him, her courage filling the room as she took away his control of the situation with nothing more than a few choice words and some fancy footwork. He’d tracked her every movement as a sort of trancelike focus came over her, and she’d dived into Finn’s injuries like saving his life might actually be possible. The sheer expertise she’d demonstrated, mixed with her passionate effort to save his friend had left him – a battle-scarred veteran since his teens – unable to do anything more than watch the way strands of her brown hair curled into tighter and tighter spirals as she worked so tirelessly to save a man he considers family.

Now, she’s walking quietly behind him, her feet making no noise in the leaves and decay that litter the forest floor. She’s closely monitoring Finn’s condition, who’s been strapped down to a spinal board so they can portage him through the steaming, dripping heat of the jungle. Despite decades of battle-hardened instinct, Poe can’t help but glance back at her, as though he’s a compass and she’s magnetic north.

Since the moment he met her, his gaze has been drawn to this enigmatic young woman. Emphasis on young. When she’d ripped off her surgical mask to prep Finn for transport, he’d been utterly shocked at how painfully youthful she looked. Despite her scary single-mindedness and obvious competence, Poe wouldn’t have pegged her age at more than thirty.

She’s been… Unexpected. In a lot of ways. When they’d crashed into her surgical suite with an arsenal and an injured man, he’d expected to have to bully the medical team into providing care for his friend, not to be intimidated and cowed by the achingly young head of said medical team. Contrary to Poe’s expectations, this young woman had been blazing with righteousness since the second they’d burst in on her.

As he watches out of the corner of his eye, she murmurs quietly to the equally young nurse while they trek through the trees. Abruptly, her striking hazel eyes – those eyes are so much older than her years, he thinks – flash up to meet his. She’s well aware that he’s keeping an eye on her. The doctor’s sharp, no question.

Poe tries to turn his attention back to the nearly non-existent path before him, but he keeps finding his eye drawn back to her. She hasn’t offered her name, and he hasn’t asked. It’ll be better for all involved in the fucked-up situation if no one gets too friendly. Chances are, they’ll have their two unwanted guests for a fortnight at most – just long enough for Finn to recover to a point where they no longer need her.

He’s intently watching the way the dappled sunlight that filters through the canopy picks out the freckles on her ivory skin and the red in her chestnut hair, when he misses a step. Almost faster than he can register, a slim, surprisingly strong arm catches him by the strap of his body armour and hauls him back upright. Clearly, she misjudges his weight, because he ends up stumbling directly into her space.

Their eyes only meet for a split-second, but Poe feels the moment stretch out indefinitely. He’s powerless under her sudden scrutiny, and though she releases him faster than if his flak vest had somehow burned her, he finds himself reeling. A heart-pounding, palm-dampening sensation akin to riding a roller coaster – thrilling and terrifying at once – has utterly overtaken his body.

The moment is over almost before it began, and all of his senses flood back as he dizzily tries to regain his equilibrium. A short, almost involuntary headshake later, his mind is once again clear, and he turns to lead them deeper into the swampy thicket of trees. They bypass a small, musical-sounding brook to the south, and a feeling of helpless nostalgia overtakes him, as it often does in this country – so like and yet unlike the country of his childhood.

Presently, senses on high alert, he signals for the group to stop. Despite their relatively quiet passage through the trees, it becomes truly silent when they halt. Poe uses the break in sound as an opportunity to listen for any pursuit. Luckily, the ambient jungle noise quickly filters back in to replace the noise of their group, and he slowly exhales in quiet relief.

With a great reticence that he hopes isn’t too obvious, he turns to their two… guests. “You’ll have to wear blindfolds from here on out,” he says evenly.

As he feared, the doctor immediately objects, her north London accent crisp in the humid air. “That’s ridiculous!” she snarls, “Haven’t we proven to you that we can be trusted? We only want to help!”

Poe’s attention flicks minutely to either side of the young doctor, and before she can do anything, two of his soldiers have seized her and the nurse. More bandanas are produced as improvised blindfolds. The nurse seems pretty willing to go along quietly, but it’s almost as though the doctor explodes.

With a vicious jerk, she slams the back of her head into the face of the man holding her, instantly breaking his nose. The man stumbles back with a howl of pain, the bandana covering his features quickly soaking through with blood. The doctor drops into a distinctive defensive stance. It sparks a faint recognition in Poe, much the way it had when she’d so suddenly disarmed him in the O.R.

She’s been trained, he manages to think before three soldiers throw themselves at her, bringing her down with sheer bulk while she fights like a wildcat.

Poe leans down to look her in the face, hoping to possibly reason with her, but stops when he gets a good look at her. The pure, animal fear he sees in her expression pierces through him like hot shrapnel.

Stop!” he whispers dangerously.

Simultaneously, all three of his men freeze to look at him, but he’s already moving to rip them off of her. She hunches immediately back into her fighting form, and Poe throws up his hands, palms out to show he’s not armed. Slowly she relaxes, her limbs twitching with fatigue, holding his gaze with unerring intensity. Cautiously, he approaches her.

Stopping just outside her immediate reach, he says lowly, so quietly that she’s the only one who’ll hear: “Blindfolds? Or was it being held down?”

She’s breathing rapidly, almost hyperventilating.

“Blindfolds,” she says, baldly.

Poe’s taken aback, much like he is every time this young woman speaks.

He straightens suddenly, attention snapping to his soldiers. “No blindfolds,” he orders softly, calmly.

They hesitate, watching him warily.

“Did I stutter?” he asks.

Like the well-trained militia he’d thought they were, they jump to attention and release both the nurse and the doctor to walk freely, unbound and sight unobscured. With a short nod, muscles jumping in his jaw, he turns on his heel to lead them out of the clearing. He notes with satisfaction the flurry of low sound as they immediately fall in behind him.

They’ve been walking for another ten minutes when the doctor places a gentle hand on his shoulder, bolts of electricity shooting up his spine as she leans forward to speak lowly in his ear, breath dancing across his skin. “Thank you,” she says.

Chapter 3: Every Single Door

Summary:

Rey's tired.

Notes:

Content warning for swearing in this chapter. We're dealing with a bunch of soldiers, here. They don't mince words.

Chapter Text

The green expanse of jungle blurs heavily in the late afternoon heat. The teeming buzz of flies and the far-off calls of langurs in the distance is fading in and out like a badly tuned radio. Rey is completely exhausted, though she’d never admit it to anyone but Rose. A quick, muzzy glance at her watch confirms that she’s now been awake for around… forty-seven hours. Her head pounds in the muggy air, and despite her best efforts, she’s begun to stumble occasionally.

At some point earlier, (and honestly, Rey isn’t sure how much earlier – time is beginning to lose all meaning), Rose had literally fallen asleep standing up. To the doctor’s unending surprise, the man who is clearly the leader of this little rebel band had coaxed the half-asleep nurse gently onto his back, piggyback style. They had returned to their journey with businesslike efficiency and no comment.

Rose’s limp form, draped incongruously over the man’s broad back, becomes the signpost by which she navigates as the symptoms of sleep deprivation begin to set in. She’s so overtired that her brain only has room for three thoughts. First, the clockwork monitoring of the injured soldier’s vitals. To the intense amazement of everyone in the rag-tag band (including Rey herself) he is still stable and clearly battling fiercely for his life.

Secondly, she concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other. It’s highly unlikely that she’ll have the same luxury as her friend – she doubts that another one of the soldiers will be willing to carry the young doctor on their back. Therefore, she has no choice but to power through. She’s been through worse. Further to that, there’s no way she’ll show any kind of weakness, exhausted or not, to an armed group of people she has no reason to trust.

And that’s the third thought her mind is stuck on. In a very real, very terrifying way, she’s trusted her life and the life of her friend to their leader. They’ve barely spoken to each other – and most of those few words were spat in anger, by Rey – but her instincts are screaming at her to trust him. Which is something that has only occurred once before in her short, eventful (for lack of a better word) life. It scares the ever-loving shit out of her. Yet everything in her tells her he can be trusted. So, she observes his every move. She needs to know why her finely-honed reflexes are blatantly contradicting every sign that she’s gotten from this man.

He had threatened her with a gun. He’d led more than a dozen armed men and women into her O.R. The man had even tried to remove her patient without any kind of medical support!

He’s given you other signs.

The thought crosses her mind like mist over the Thames.

Had he? Had he given her other signs? She catalogues snapshots of their interactions with her tired brain. A flash of deep concern and fear for the injured soldier. The way he’d done his best to protect not just his people, but hers, knowing that the longer he stayed, the higher the risk posed to her medical team. The fact that none of what Rey had said or done to him had provoked violence, or even any real anger.

He’s carrying her exhausted friend up a mountain.

He’d recognized her panic for what it was.

He hadn’t made them wear blindfolds.

She can still sense the panic lurking at the base of her neck, threatening to tighten into bands around her chest and pumping enough adrenaline into her system that she’s able to keep walking despite her fatigue. It’s muted, though, the anxiety reduced to simmering below the surface because he’d seen her.

He’d seen her.

A faint note of disbelief floats to the top of her mind at that thought. This stranger – a man she’s never spoken to, who, in all sense she should be terrified of – had read her emotional state with a single look. He hadn’t used that knowledge to hurt her but protect her. Why would he protect her?

Other than her medical ability, she isn’t really useful to them, and her usefulness is certainly not reliant on her being calm or even conscious when they eventually arrive at their – camp? At this point, she might be more of a hinderance than anything, and she wouldn’t have put it past another man to let his soldiers blindfold her just because she’d stood up to him. Nor does he have any reason to trust her. Yet here they are, both willingly working together despite all signs that they shouldn’t.

Rey’s so completely lost in her contemplation of the man in front of her that she almost runs into him when he suddenly stops. As she stumbles back to avoid a collision, she glances up, and then has to look up a second time, stopping to stare in awe. They’ve walked out through a gap in the dense trees. Spread out before them, seemingly constructed out of stones from the mountain and hidden deep in the dense jungle canopy is an enormous, clearly ancient citadel.

Buzzing with intense activity, the outer ramparts are bristling with armed troops. Motorcycles heavily packed with supplies and soldiers laden with weapons pass through the closely guarded gate in an orderly fashion. The scale is so far beyond anything Rey had imagined, and she’s absolutely arrested by the sight before her. She’s literally struggling to comprehend the information her eyes are translating to her brain.

A gentle nudge to her shoulder snaps her out of her reverie. “Let’s get these two to medical,” the man she’s mentally assigned the Leader prompts gently.

Determinedly holding back a weary yawn, Rey nods her head towards him, indicating that she’ll follow his lead. The three of them and the two soldiers bearing their comrade split off from the main group, and hurry toward the gate. To the young doctor’s surprise and curiosity, they aren’t stopped or searched at the entrance. Instead, each person steps aside at a short, sharp nod from the man still carrying her sleeping O.R. nurse.

Now, she’s beginning to feel truly nervous for the first time since she was taken by surprise after an emergency appendectomy. They pass through another set of ramparts before they arrive at the citadel itself. It’s a rectangular cluster of structures built from cut stone, the largest of which appears to be built directly into the side of the mountain. The sun glances off the red-tiled roofs, highlighting the way the jungle has fought hard to reclaim the land the citadel stands on. Their little group similarly meets no resistance while entering the first fortified building. Once inside, they take a sharp left into what can only be Medical.

Again, Rey is fairly flabbergasted. The somewhat rough stone room has been transformed with all sorts of grafted combat emergency tech, well-sterilized and equipped with a small treatment and recovery area. Around a corner the room extends to include several tidy cots for long-term recovery. “Hey, Kolonia,” the Leader calls as he gently deposits Rose onto one of the cots.

The two soldiers conveying the injured man are carefully moving him towards the main gurney, and Rey hurries to supervise as a somewhat rough, older voice calls out from a corner of the room she hadn’t noticed before. Levering herself slowly out of a rolling desk chair that has seen better days is an older middle-aged woman who looks like she has more grit than a gravel road.

“Christ, General, you made it back!” she barks, then does a double take as she sees Rey and the heavily injured man.

“Finn’s still alive?” she gasps, suddenly rushing over to assist in the transfer from spine board to gurney.

Rey’s gaze flicks over the older woman, assessing her skills and experience in a split-second. The other woman – Kolonia? – is clearly trained in emergency medicine, but it’s unlikely she’s a surgeon. Rey would bet her licence that she’s an EMT, possibly was also a combat medic, but something about her said 'civilian.'

“And who the fuck are you?” she says aggressively, clearly noticing Rey’s scrutiny.

“She’s the Red Cross doc,” the apparent General replies.

Kolonia grunts as they finally succeed in sliding the injured man onto the gurney, then fixes an intense, sideways stare on the masked man.

“I wasn’t aware that the Resistance was in the business of kidnapping neutral third parties…” she says, pointedly.

He shrugs. “Don’t look at me,” he protests, innocently, “She insisted on coming. The nurse, too.”

He indicates Rose, still sound asleep on the cot next to him. The older woman scoffs a bit, then re-trains her eagle eye on Rey, who has busied herself with once again checking her patient’s vitals. “Alright, doc. He still stable?”

Rey nods efficiently, maintaining eye contact. “Well, holy fucking hallelujah. You’ve achieved a miracle, girl,” the older woman says, flatly.

After a short pause, she continues with a surprising depth of compassion. “You look dead on your feet, love. I can watch over him while you rest. We’ll come get you if anything changes.”

Rey hesitates, but the woman gives her a gentle nudge over the gurney. “Go on. I cut my teeth as a paramedic in LA in the 90’s. I’ve got this.”

The young doctor steps gratefully away from the table, finally convinced. She finds herself looking questioningly at the man in charge. “Your nurse’ll be fine here; we’ll let her sleep. Follow me,” he says quietly, turning to exit the medical area from the same door they came in.

She tiredly trudges behind him, expecting a long walk, but he stops almost as quickly as they started. Embarrassingly, Rey actually does run into his back this time, though thankfully not too hard. The man turns to her, running his hand through his hair as he does so in an uncharacteristically nervous gesture. His fingers catch on the knot of the bandanna tied over the lower half of his face. He ducks his head to take it off, the gesture almost sheepish, as though he’d completely forgotten he was wearing it.

“Kolonia sleeps across the hall,” he says, but Rey’s too busy staring to make sense of what he’s said.

He has the most open, earnest face she’s ever seen.

The deep brown eyes she’d noticed before are set underneath straight dark brows, balanced by a broad nose and full lips. The most arresting thing is his smile. He’s smiling at her, almost bashfully, a hint of white, straight teeth flashing between his lips. Her chest feels tight.

“I thought you’d appreciate being near Medical,” he continues, gesturing in front of them.

Rey turns to follow the movement of his hand, her brain trying desperately (and failing miserably) to catch up to the situation. Then it clicks. He’s showing her a small private room with two cots, clearly unoccupied. “The nurse could join you here once she’s had some rest – does that sound okay?”

Rey looks around to examine him again, his new, somewhat self-conscious attitude an extreme contrast from his earlier effortless command.

“Fine,” she says, nodding tightly, still somewhat offput.

He winces a little at her shortness, but it doesn’t really diminish his modest grin. “Um…” he begins, “It locks from the inside. The door. Just – so you know.”

The man nods awkwardly after this statement, then begins to back away, leaving her to this small oasis amidst the chaos. She’s frozen, caught in the shock of his statement. Without sugar-coating it, he’s just guaranteed her safety and autonomy in such a fundamental way that it’s nearly breathtaking.

“Hey, General?” she calls, just before he makes it out of her sight. “Do you have a name to go with that title?”

The micro-expression that flickers across his face is gone so quickly that she can’t identify it. His voice is tight when he answers. “Dameron. Poe Dameron,” – a pause – “you?”

She doesn’t hesitate at all when she answers. “Rey. Rey Skywalker.”

Chapter 4: Oh, but Praise Them

Summary:

Poe gets schooled by old ladies.

Notes:

Content warning for more swearing.

Chapter Text

This is a problem. A huge problem.

Poe had watched her as they came upon the base; he’d seen that look before. She stared around her in excited awe, unable to keep a positively devastating smile of wonder from her face. He doubts she’d even realized her own expression - despite a nearly impenetrable façade of strength, Poe knew she had to be completely exhausted. It’s no wonder she’d been so easily awed by the scale of their operation.

Very few civilians have any knowledge of the massive network of Resistance fighters organizing globally against the First Order of the U.U.S.A. and the New Empire of the UK. Most are so paralyzed by their own fear, as well as rampant right-wing propaganda and misinformation, that they're unable to see past their own survival. Poe doesn’t blame them for it, but he can’t help but feel hopeless at times. Even with their current network, they don’t have anywhere near the numbers they’ll need to prevail. Sitting around and wishing won’t do him any good, however, so most of the time he focuses on the day-to-day realities of war.

But that smile.

He’d almost been knocked off his feet by her smile.

Suddenly, Poe had been seized by the desire to tell her everything about what they’re trying to do here. Even now, having left her to some clearly needed sleep, he’s filled with a sort of fizzy, uplifting excitement he hasn’t felt in recent memory. He wants to ask her to join up. It’s ridiculous. Poe knows literally nothing about her aside from her obvious skills as a surgeon. Why on earth is he so certain not only that he would be able to convince her, but also that they’re going to need her with them?

He gives his head and emphatic little shake as he re-enters Medical, ruthlessly suppressing his unfounded excitement. Kalonia is still with Finn, hooking him methodically up to the pulse and blood pressure monitors, giving him oxygen, and checking his sutures for any tearing. “He doing alright Dr. K?“ he asks, using the Resistance’s affectionate nickname for their medic.

“Still not a doctor,“ she responds tiredly, as is her custom, but her smirk softens her words a bit. “Unbelievably he’s still hanging on.”

The relieved sigh that escapes Poe’s chest is powerful enough that he can suddenly feel every strain and pain he’s been ignoring for hours. Kalonia gently draws a sheet up to Finn’s shoulders, finally ready to let him rest. She fixes his Poe with a shrewd look. “I’m going to give it to you straight, Dameron. I’ve never seen surgical work this good. Literally never – plastic surgeons aren’t this precise with their sutures. Where the hell did that girl come from?“

He shrugs helplessly. “I have no idea. I swear – she completely blindsided us. She just... Took over. And I let her.“

“I’m sorry, run that by me again?“ Kalonia responds incredulously. “You, General Poe Dameron of the Resistance, let someone else take control? Fuck. Never thought I’d see the day.“

Poe jabs her with his elbow none to gently. “I’m no more a General than you are a doctor, Kalonia,“ he says. “And yeah, I did… Surprised me, too.“

He’s still surprised, to be honest. He’s not exactly well known amongst the Resistance for his ability to relinquish control. Poe’s called “The General” for a reason, despite the lack of a formal chain of command in the Resistance. How, how did he yield to her so easily?

“Hm,” Kalonia grunts next to him, breaking him from his thoughts. He glances at her as she walks over to check on the nurse, seemingly content to leave her commentary that. Briefly, Poe considers calling her on it, but frankly, he’s too tired to argue. “How does she look?” he asks, gesturing vaguely to the sleeping nurse.

“Oh, she’ll be fine. Just needs to get some water and food into her when she wakes. Speaking of which, you’ll want to let Maz know we’re going to have two additional mouths to feed for the foreseeable future,” she points out.

Poe, who’s been busy thinking about his own cot, groans, “Yeah... Fuck. Maz is going to adopt them. You know how she likes to take in strays. We’ll never get rid of them.”

He feels a bit like a kid who’s about to be given detention when she hits him with a long, appraising look.

“You sure you want to get rid of them, General?”

Poe wishes he had something to say to that, but he doesn’t really know the answer, so he gives Dr. K a sarcastic little wave and heads for the Mess. It’s located across the inner courtyard, so there’s a bit of a walk for Poe to get there from Medical. Rebel fighters show him deference as he strides across the open space, saluting and calling him by his unearned title. As is his habit, he waves them all off good-naturedly.

The Vietnamese arm of the Resistance is technically under his leadership, but it isn’t a title or job that he wants. The troops are under the carefully crafted impression that Poe’s dismissal of his role is purely casual modesty. Not one of them, not even Finn, knows that he bears his role with reluctance and almost impassible self-doubt. He’s been in command before, and the experience is not one he'd ever trusted himself to repeat. Now, he doesn’t have a choice.

As Poe approaches the large building they’ve adapted to house their kitchen and feed the troops, he swings around the back, keen to avoid being caught up in the mess hall. As silently as possible, he eases open the kitchen door and slides inside. A wall of heat and savory smells assault him as he enters the enclosed space of the kitchen.

Maz, their head cook, always has at least three huge pots bubbling away on her massive fireplace, as she’d insisted that the kitchen needed no updating when they discovered the ancient citadel. Maz is a bit of a character like that, but Poe would never deny her, simply because her food is exceptional. He’s been fighting for a long time, and he long-ago come to terms with the fact that military rations simply do not taste good.

Maz had proven him wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt. The tiny Jamaican woman of completely indeterminate age performs literal miracles with their food. Because of this, Poe tries very hard to stay on her good side. Squinting through the steam and smoke from the fireplace, he attempts to locate the diminutive woman through the haze. “Maz?” he calls, then yelps when she appears at his side practically out of thin air.

“What are you doing here, pretty boy? Looking for handouts?”

Part of the reason Poe likes Maz so much is because she shows absolutely none of the deference to him the others do. “Don’t think I’m going to take pity on you just because Finn’s at death’s door. We all know he’s going to pull through.“

Paul winces at the mention of his injured friend. “Maz… He was hurt pretty bad – “

The small woman cuts him off with her characteristic affable disrespect. “None of that nonsense! I heard about the surgeon. She’s special, that one.”

At this, Poe pinches the bridge of his nose, shaking his head in disbelief. How on earth does news travel this fucking fast? “Who told you about her?” he says, closing his eyes in exasperation.

Maz smacks him upside the head. “No one had to tell me, hot stuff. I know everything that goes on here. Everything.“

Her gaze on him is unsettlingly perceptive. He glances away, uncomfortable, worried somehow that she knows how deep in shit he already is with this girl. His forehead prickles with sweat – whether from the heat or from Maz‘s sometimes spooky intuition, he’s unsure. He startles again when she reaches up to pat his arm comfortingly. “I’ll make sure they’re fed, handsome. You go get some rest.“

Poe smiles gratefully, leaving Maz to her concoctions with a quick kiss to the top of her head. She bats him away, giggling like a schoolgirl. He sneaks back out the way he came, hoping to avoid any further encounters with someone who will inevitably need something from him. Thankfully, luck is on his side, and he meets no one on the way to his quarters. A private room is the one thing he appreciates about his ostensible command – there’s no way he’d ever want to impose his nightmares on a barracks full of new recruits.

As he tiredly undresses in the small private room he’s allowed himself, his thoughts turn helplessly once again to the Red Cross surgeon.

Rey.

Fuck.

She’d asked him. She’d asked him, and he hadn’t been able to resist giving her his name, his full name. Then it was easy, so easy, for him to ask for hers in return.

Rey.

Rey Skywalker.

It’s completely impossible. There’s no way she could be related to Luke, to Leia. He’s absolutely positive Luke had never had children… He’d vanished without a trace nearly a dozen years ago. She’s too young to be his daughter, though, so…

It’s impossible.

Luke’s disappearance had made international headlines. There’s absolutely no way he’s still alive, much less a relative of his, other than Leia. Poe is unfortunately very much aware of their deeply tragic shared past, and he knows they don’t have any living family. So, it’s impossible. Just a coincidence. And yet…

Luke had been a world-renowned brain surgeon before his disappearance. Known for his incredible philanthropy, he often flew all over the world to treat patients for free. The fact that she’s also a surgeon… No. Poe makes up his mind. It’s a coincidence. And he’s got to distance himself from her as much as possible.

He’d already fucked up by giving her his name. He knows himself well enough to know that he shouldn’t let her get familiar. The way she already occupies most of his thoughts after he’s known her barely a day is extremely concerning.

He flops down onto his cot, face pressed into the thin sheets, mind swirling. Desperately, Poe squeezes his eyes shut harder, trying to exorcise her from his thoughts, but it’s useless. It’s as though she’s tattooed to the backs of his eyelids; he can’t stop seeing her under the trees, stunning in the green-filtered light despite her exhaustion.

He falls asleep picturing her smile.

Chapter 5: I Hold All the Keys

Summary:

Rey continues to be a bad ass; Poe is afraid of his feelings so he acts like a jerk.

Chapter Text

Rey wakes with a violent start, an aborted scream trapped behind her teeth. Her surroundings are steeped in shadow, and for a few heart-stopping seconds, the unfamiliar room and the last traces of her usual nightmares have her right back in her childhood, shaking with terror in the dark. Memories of the past few days come slowly flooding back, and her panicked breathing begins to slow as she realizes she’s safe.

If her life hadn’t been so strange from day one, she might not believe that she’s currently camped out at some kind of rebel base in the middle of the jungle; likely assumed kidnapped, and in charge of the post-op care of a severely injured guerilla fighter. Wiping cold sweat from the back of her neck, she shakes her head at herself in admonishment.

Trust Rey Skywalker to take things too far, again. No matter who has tried to mold her and shape her, they've never managed to quench the fire of her passion. She’s been fighting tooth and nail to protect herself and those who needed it for her entire life. Honestly, she doesn’t know how to live any other way. It’s the reason she became a surgeon. It’s who she is to her core.

Pulse lowering as the fog of her dream lifts, she takes stock. According to her watch, she’s slept for at least a few hours thanks to the locked door between her and the rest of the world. She doesn’t feel much better than she did when she fell asleep, but a little rest is better than none. Of course, her legs, feet, and back all ache from the long climb up into the mountains, and her mouth tastes like something died in it. Her head is pounding.

Clearly, Rey's in the early stages of dehydration, so that will have to be her first task: finding water. She swings her legs down off the cot, sitting up as fluidly as her various sore points allow. The room is tiny, barely fitting the two cots inside its narrow stone confines, but she allows herself one more moment of gratitude for the locked door across from her.

She stares at the barrier, steeling herself to go and face the consequences of her decisions. Finally, with a deep, weary sigh, she heaves her tired frame up off the cot. Taking just one more moment to center herself, she snaps the bolt back on the door, emerging into the organized chaos of the base.

Scraping through her somewhat spotty memories of the route she’d followed to her quarters; she finds her way back to Medical. The instinct to surveil the situation inside is hardwired, and she lingers in the doorway, stopping to observe the room’s inhabitants. Rose is awake and working alongside Kalonia, changing the dressings on the injured soldier’s wounds and administering a push to his IV drip. Shockingly, the soldier is conscious.

Admirably, (or foolishly, depending on your opinion), he’s biting back any hint of pain as the two women gently sit him up to better access the long slashing wound across his back. The laceration had been deep enough to actually expose his spine, and Rey’s lightly amazed at how well her sutures have held. From her position by the door, she has a good view of his wounds, and she’s pleased to already see signs of healing. Thankfully, there isn’t any visible sign of infection, which is a bit of a miracle in and of itself given their post-op trek through the jungle. They hadn’t exactly been travelling in ideal sanitary conditions.

Rose makes steady eye contact with the soldier, speaking quietly and reassuringly to him as Kalonia tapes new gauze over his wounds. Suddenly, Rey’s almost overwhelmingly thankful that Rose had insisted on accompanying her. If she’s being brutally honest, Rey knows she’s acutely lacking in bedside manner. Rey's well aware that she’s hard to relate to; the message she tends to deliver with her body language is a very clear: stay away. Her nurse is definitely the right person to comfort this man.

She makes her way into the room, footsteps silent out of many years' habit. Luckily, Rose and she have been working together for long enough that the nurse is accustomed to Rey’s habitual stealth. As the young doctor shifts in the doorway, Rose’s focus flicks briefly to her, before she directs it back to their patient.

“You’re doing so well, Finn,” Rose encourages, flashing him with a brilliant smile, “Dr. Skywalker is here to check in on you, if that’s all right.”

The soldier, (Finn, that’s right), attempts to look over his shoulder at Rey. With a sharp hiss of pain, he abruptly stops, aborting the movement. Swiftly, Rey circles around the gurney so he can see her as Rose lays a steadying hand on his shoulder. Despite the sweat of exertion drenching his skin and the pain twisting his expression, he’s an undeniably attractive young man.

A deep pang of sadness echoes through Rey’s chest as she realizes Finn’s very likely no older than she is. There are many reasons that she’s ended up in a place like this so early in her life, and most of them aren’t good. She doubts life has been any kinder to this young man, considering the situation. The doctor gives him a warm little smile.

“Hello, Finn,” she murmurs, kindly. “I'm Rey. How are you feeling?” she asks, already assessing his reflexes and reactions.

“Like I’ve been stabbed really badly, doc,” he wheezes, “How are you feeling?”

Despite herself, Rey stops gauging his pupillary responses in order to chuckle. “Me? I’m feeling like I’ve followed some idealistic fools through the jungle for hours so that I can make sure their friend doesn’t die,” she snarks, secretly delighted when it prompts an astonishingly lovely smile on his face.

Rose laughs just a little too loudly, and Rey glances over to see her friend’s gaze fixed on Finn’s face, a deep blush spreading across her cheeks. Glancing at Kalonia, she cocks an eyebrow, but the older woman just rolls her eyes. Putting that aside for a moment, the doctor efficiently finishes her points of assessment. Despite how strong and aware he’d appeared when she first stepped into the room, he’s quickly tiring, and she wants to let him rest.

Gently, all three women work together to ease Finn back down onto the gurney, his eyelids already heavy with exhaustion. “Well done,” she reassures him as he settles back into his pillow, “Rest now, soldier.”

Quicker than a thought, he’s asleep again.

After a moment, Kalonia guides the two young women around the corner to her desk. She pulls out the ancient chair and a folding stool from beneath her desk, then hops up to sit atop its surface. The medic gestures grandly toward the two seats, clearly inviting the other two to sit.

Rose immediately takes the stool, but Rey remains standing. The older woman acknowledges her choice with a sharp nod; she clearly has the measure of Rey, just as a young doctor does of her. The medic clears her throat.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat it for you, ladies,” she says, the L.A. slang incongruous in her soft English accent. “I wouldn’t have been able to do anything for that young man out there, and that isn’t going to change when you to leave here.”

The older woman pauses and releases a long breath, and for the first time, Rey notices the bone-deep exhaustion that suffuses the medic’s entire frame. “We used to have a full medical team, trauma surgeon and all… They were taken by first order troops three weeks ago.”

Rey flinches, familiar with the worst-case scenario for those compassionately involved in conflict. Though it’s internationally frowned upon, the kidnapping, ransom, torture, and murder of medics in wartime is hardly anything new. In the past, an enemy force might simply take them as prisoners of war; but the First Order and New Empire troops are notorious for boldly committing war crimes. Their med team is more than likely dead.

“I know that you two didn’t exactly sign up for this,” the older woman admits, “But we could really use your help around here. What do you say?”

Rose opens her mouth to answer, but Rey cuts her off, her heart unexpectedly pounding. “Absolutely not.”

Rose’s mouth closes with a snap, and she casts a resentful glare in Rey’s direction. “We’re here for one reason: the post-operative care of a Red Cross patient. We work for a humanitarian organization. We can’t take sides.”

The doctor’s words are clipped and precise, her statements absolute. Even so, Kalonia counters, “I think you’ll find that the realities of this fight don’t allow for noninvolvement, Dr. Skywalker. It’s been said that claiming neutrality when a people is being oppressed is to take the side of the oppressor.”

The doctor tenses, indignation boiling to the surface. “It’s also been said that not all those fighting for the oppressor are offered the choice not to,” she snaps in response. “I treat patients from both sides, but more importantly, I treat the innocents who are caught in the crossfire. I do this within the tenets and guidelines of my organization. My hands are tied.”

Kalonia regards her evenly for a long moment, then once again nods decisively. “Help yourselves to all the water you need – I’ll send someone along with food in a few minutes. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you to keep an eye on him,” she states, jerking her head in the direction of Finn.

Still fuming, Rey doesn’t deign to acknowledge her comment, but Rose quietly assures Kalonia that they will. As soon as the older woman leaves the room, the Rose rounds on the young doctor. “We could really help these people, Rey!” she accuses in a furious whisper, “You know as well as I do that these aren’t the bad guys!”

Rey slowly inhales, much more willing to regulate her emotions around her friend. “Of course, I know that,” she says softly, “And I do want to help them. But have you considered the consequences of a move like that?”

The fiery expression on the young nurse’s face is slowly extinguished as she stops to contemplate Rey’s question. “You’ll automatically be labelled a traitor,” she gently pushes, “If you’re captured, they’ll either kill you, or worse, torture you. How do you think Paige would feel if that happened?”

“Paige wants to join up even more than I do,” Rose sullenly states, but she avoids eye contact, an indication that Rey’s at least been heard.

Folding her arms, she worries at her lip with her teeth, crossing to lean on Kalonia’s desktop. “I’m not immune to this either, Rose. They’re doing what they can to fight injustice, and I admire it,” – a pause – “But I’ve also witnessed the very worst ways conflict can affect those caught in the middle. I dedicated myself to protecting them, and all I’m trying to do is protect you, too”

Rose nods slowly, but Rey can sense that she isn’t fully convinced. She’s done her best though, so there’s nothing else for it. She pushes herself to stand straight, then wanders out into the main area of Medical to see if she can find some water. There’s a jug and several plastic cups perched next to a tap that has clearly been installed recently. As she’s filling a cup for each of them, she’s interrupted by the abrupt arrival of the General.

Poe.

Unwillingly, Rey feels the corner of her mouth quirk up in a small smile of greeting. She’s taken aback, however, when the expression that meets her smile is stony and distant. He regards her gravely for several moments, and her seed of a smile dies before it can blossom. Reflexively, Rey’s eyes narrow, her posture tightening as she slowly puts down the half full cup of water she’s holding. Gone is the charmingly bashful man who walked her to her quarters. Something’s changed.

“Status report, Dr. Skywalker?” Poe asks, his tone formal and distant.

“He’s stable,” she says carefully, noting how his shoulders relax almost imperceptibly. “He’s doing remarkably well, actually. He was conscious earlier.”

The General whips around to look at Finn, an expression of painful, almost helpless hope flashing across his face virtually faster than she can register.

“Fine,” he says, still looking toward his fallen friend. “You and Nurse Tico will be responsible for his primary care while you’re here. For the duration of your stay, you are not to provide treatment to any other Resistance soldiers. You are not to speak to any Resistance members other than myself and Kalonia. You will be confined to your quarters and Medical. You will be escorted back to the Red Cross clinic as soon as you assess Finn’s condition to be stable enough to give over his sole care to Kalonia. Understood?“

The ringing silence that meets this pronouncement is broken by Rose, barging around the corner, blood up and ready to argue again. Rey feels a fond twinge in her chest for her tiny, fiery O.R. nurse, but she interrupts calmly before Rose can start yelling. “No, General Dameron,” she responds, reverting to formality as he had, “I’m afraid it’s not understood. We're here in a humanitarian capacity, and we will not be treated like prisoners in return for our kindness.”

Rose immediately switches to grinning expectantly at Rey, thinking that the doctor’s natural opposition to authority will result in a typical explosion. As Rey continues, however, it becomes clear that Rose doesn’t know her as well as she thinks she does. “I agree; we won’t treat any of your other soldiers. Doing so is a risk for us, and I’m as serious about protecting my friend as I am in protecting yours,” a pause, “Understood?”

The statement is deadly in its tone and in its implied threat. What Rose doesn’t know about Rey is that there is an undercurrent of fear beneath all of her strength, and she hasn’t yet found the cause or the person worth prioritizing over her own survival or the safety of the few people she loves. This man and his fight are not enough to change that, and he needs to be aware of it.

Rose turns on her heel and storms back into the relative privacy of Kalonia’s corner to fume. Rey’s sure she’ll be in for more of her nurse’s typical bleeding-heart guilt-tripping as soon as the General leaves. Despite the flurry of movement from Rose, Ray and Poe remain motionless, eyes locked on each other. Their stalemate lasts for an almost uncomfortably long time before the general finally breaks it.

“Fine,” he concedes. It’s clipped, professional, but she can’t help but feel a slight thrill of victory. She senses that he’s not a man who gives up control so easily.

“You’ll care for Finn, and you’ll be escorted anywhere you go on base, except for your room. Obviously, there will be certain areas you won’t be allowed to explore,” he states, clearly expecting to have the last word on this issue.

She watches him dispassionately, waiting until she can see a bead of sweat escape his hairline and rolls down his jawline. She’s suddenly strangely thirsty and darts out her tongue to wet her lips before she speaks. “Naturally,” she agrees, “In return, I want your word that Nurse Tico and I can expect a reasonable amount of privacy and a guarantee of protection from your troops,” she evenly states, firm in her defensiveness.

This finally prompts a real emotional response from Poe. “You do know we’re fighting the First Order, don’t you Dr. Skywalker?” he growls, “We’re not in the business of hurting people.”

She approaches him until she’s just inside his personal space, face-to-face with him thanks to their nearly equal heights. “I do know that,” she says evenly, “But I also know that people fighting for a good cause can still do bad things.”

Chapter 6: Let it Ring

Notes:

Here comes Rosalind, back on her bullshit...

Hello and welcome back to our irregularly scheduled program!
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Poe is in too deep already; Poe's gotta go on a mission; Poe is, unfortunately, Poe, haha

I've played pretty fast and loose with Vietnamese geography, here, but I loved the idea of a deadly pass ending in this incredibly dramatic cave system to the west, sooooo sorry for fucking with reality, lol I've also been flexible with the membership of Black Squadron. So sue me.

Warnings for language in this chapter, as well as a near panic attack and sliiiiiight self-harm.

Chapter Text

“But I also know that people fighting for a good cause can still do bad things…”

Her words echo and clamor through Poe’s brain as he all but flees from medical. Every tiny piece of herself that this woman gives up makes him thirstier for answers, makes him want to fight the world for her, makes him come one step closer to caring and that will not do.

For a moment, Poe pauses in the shadow of the medical building to catch his breath. He’d gone in there, metaphorical guns blazing and a solid sense of command, and she’d once again managed to knock him off his axis with no more than a few choice words. All that he’d been trying to do was make sure they were kept safe and out of the way of the Resistance while he’s gone. As is already the norm between them (and Jesus it’s only been a couple of days) all of his well-laid plans blow up in the face of Rey Skywalker.

Something in him doesn’t believe that Rey’s parting words came from nothing more than her observations. She’s been hurt in the name of a good cause. It’s pure speculation, but years of hardened instinct have made him incredibly adept at reading people, and he knows, deep in his core, that he’s correct. The thought sickens him so profoundly that he has to lean over and gag for a moment, heaving at nothing but oxygen and a visceral sense of wrongness.

His nails tangle in his hair and scrape at his scalp as he gulps for air, forcing his eyes shut and focusing on the small bites of pain. With a monumental effort of will, he forces himself not to go any further down the road of just what the young woman has been through to make her the way she is – powerful and smart and kind, yet full of anger and paralyzed by fear.

Poe’s surely drawn blood, now, with how deeply he’s digging his nails in, but he uses the pain as an anchor to put his head on straight. Now is not the time. There are more immediate crises for him to focus on than the troubles of Rey Skywalker.

This morning, he’d awoken shaking and covered in sweat from one of his usual nightmares. The wake-up call had come in the form of Beaumont with word of terrible news. Upon his rather dramatic arrival at the Command Centre, where he’d skidded through the door with his shirt half-buttoned and his boots untied, he’d been dismayed to learn that one of their supply drops had been intercepted by First Order patrols.

Under normal circumstances, their base could afford to miss a drop or two, but this case was different for two reasons. Firstly, this drop wasn’t food or gear or even ammo, it was meds. Secondly, the drop was being made by a group of civilian aid workers. Given the First Order’s reputation for human rights abuses and war crimes, there’s no way those civilians will be kept alive after questioning.

And there’s no way the Resistance can survive without those medical supplies.

Knowing that he’d need to be with his team for the extraction, Poe had immediately headed to medical after they’d adjourned. Skywalker and the nurse needed to be kept as far in the dark and as safe as possible. It would have been so much easier to convince the young doctor stay put if she truly understood the danger she was in. Instead, she’d reacted exactly the way he’d hoped she wouldn’t, and now they’re once again at odds.

Damnit, and he needs to keep his mind on the goddamn stolen supplies.

With the still-fresh memory of that devastating report, Poe furiously re-directs his anxiety into action. He strides away from the medical building, leaving behind all thoughts of the young doctor and her charge. He heads with purpose towards the training field behind the barracks, certain that Black Squad will be there. No soldiers greet him cheerfully this time as he crosses the open land between the buildings of the citadel. Most still flash a respectful salute, but some of the newer recruits catch the expression on his face and actually turn tail and run.

As he rounds the west side of the enormous barracks building, Poe can hear the raucous teasing – whip-smart jibes and petty insults being tossed back and forth with no more sincerity than a game – that Black Squad has become famous for around the base. It’s not a formal unit, and “Black Squad” is more of a nickname than anything, a reference to some of the shadier shit they get up to.

Membership is based upon skill-set rather than rank, and Poe knows that they’re the ones who can be trusted with the more difficult missions; spying, intel, sabotage, smuggling, and covert ops are just a few of the things he’s asked these men and women to do. And because Poe never expects one of his soldiers to carry out a mission that he himself wouldn’t do, he’s just as much a part of Black Squad as any of them are. Where they go, he goes.

He’s greeted by the sight of Kare and Jess sparring before the eager eyes of the rest of the Squad. Snap, Iolo, Suri, L’Ulo and Tallie watch on, shouting equal parts encouragement and invectives. Kare has the advantage of size on Jess – she’s every inch the Viking warrior her stature suggests. Jess is much smaller, it’s true, but she’s also devilishly quick and – Poe watches with amusement as Jess executes a take-down so fast it’s a blur – a hand-to-hand specialist.

The spectators cheer as Kare flings her weight around, attempting to break Jess’s hold. Snap looks like he’s about to jump in and help his wife, but to no-one’s surprise, Kun easily breaks the smaller woman’s hold on her before tossing her like a ragdoll. Jess rolls, laughing wildly, her long black hair whipping around her face in a tangled mess. The entire group dissolves into laughter, several thumping Snap across the back for thinking he needed to intervene.

Poe finds a slight smile cracking through his grim expression, despite himself. “Black Squad!” he shouts, and they all turn to greet him without an ounce of respect, just as he wants them to.

A cacophonous overlap of comments assaults his ears, but he waves them off, his expression once again turning grave. To his squad’s credit, they immediately snap to attention, recognizing the seriousness of Poe’s visit instantly.

“What’s happened, Poe?” Tallie asks, ever the strategist, her mind probably already busy with a list of gear they might need.

He sighs, scrubbing his hand through who-knows-how-many days of growth along his jaw. “It’s the med drop. They were intercepted by the F.O. We have to rescue the civilians and get those supplies back in our possession, before the First Order can make it to their base. It’s too heavily guarded; we’d never be able to breach it.”

“Location?” Iolo prompts quietly, knowing that they’ll need to use the terrain to their advantage. As their pathfinder and tracker, he’ll be instrumental in setting up the ambush.

Poe crouches down beside the group, unsheathing his knife before scraping the flat of the blade across a clear patch of dirt, providing himself an area in which to sketch out their plan of attack. He draws two long, curved parallel lines – a passage that grows narrower the closer it gets to one end. About a foot beyond the narrow end, he inscribes a large circle in the dirt, guarded by a series of half circles, extending almost out to the narrow end of the passage.

The tip of his knife lands dead centre in the circle. “Right now, our meds are on their way here: the F.O.’s main supply depot, hidden deep in the Pu Sam Cap caves. Because our drop point was at this end of O Quy Ho pass, here,” – he jabs his knife down on the opposite end of the passage from the First Order base – “it would be easiest for the First Order to transport it through the pass, as it’s the most direct route around the city to the caves. It’s also the ideal place for an ambush.”

He glances up at his team, meeting each of their gazes briefly, intently. “Scouts report two armoured vehicles and eight bikes protecting the truck, so it looks like they aren’t anticipating any resistance from us. No extras on this outing, kids. Black Squad only.”

As one, Black Squad nods, then each cuts off in a different direction, heading to their individual prep. Only Tallie hangs back. Gently, she grasps his sleeve, keeping him in place for the moment. “Poe,” she says quietly, “I don’t like the sound of this.”

The general opens his mouth, ready to reassure her, but the comforting words don’t come. “I know,” he sighs, “Our chance of success is slim-to-none, but the Resistance can’t afford to lose those meds. We have to try.”

Tallie shakes her head, a fond, if exasperated smile lingering on her lips. “I know that, but it isn’t what worries me. We’ve had longer odds by far,” she pauses, as if searching for the right words. “I don’t think you should come with us, Poe.”

He pulls away, taking a step back so that he can squint incredulously at her. “Tallie, where you go, I go. Why on earth wouldn’t I come with you all?”

“You know as well as I do that the F.O. would do pretty much anything to get its hands on you. Up to and including intercepting a vital supply drop in order to draw you out. My gut tells me that this is a trap.”

With a scoff, Poe turns to walk away, then stops. Tallie’s words drop into his stomach like stones. “You might be right, T,” he admits, “But it doesn’t matter. We need those meds, and you guys need me. End of discussion.”

He doesn’t wait for Tallie to answer, only heads off to prepare.

~~~

A short time later, Black Squad heads out on motorbikes, speeding along forest paths worn down by animals and villagers over the centuries. Poe leads the column, weaving and dodging expertly through the trees. For a split-second, he feels the thrill of his childhood, of careening down the lip of the caldera near his home on hand-me-down dirt bikes. His cheek quirks up in a small smirk as he hunches down tighter over his handlebars and revs his bike into a higher gear.

There are answering whines from the bikes following him, his team quickly adapting to the increase in speed as the trees begin to thin around them. They soon emerge on the exposed ridge above the O Quy Ho Pass. They’re about a kilometer away from the from the mouth of the pass, which ends at the Pu Sam Cap caves: the near-impenetrable supply depot of the north Vietnamese arm of the First Order.

From their perch high above the road of the pass, clinging to the sheer edge of the green mountain that plunges down and past the road for hundreds of meters, they have a clear vantage-point from which to spy the first edges of the motorcade. Iolo immediately and efficiently sets up his high-powered scope to survey the landscape. He begins identifying weak points in the terrain while the rest of the team prepares their charges.

Intent on his task, Poe almost doesn’t notice L’Ulo’s quiet approach. He’s the eldest of Black Squad, and the one who keeps them all together, if Poe’s honest with himself. L’Ulo brings a steadiness to their missions that could otherwise be hairy, a quiet confidence that calms and focuses the rest of them. When the new recruits get to know about the (in)famous Black Squad, many of them question why L’Ulo, a career soldier without outstanding skills or specialities, would be included amongst their ranks.

Black Squad wouldn’t be half so successful if they didn’t have L’Ulo. When he talks, Poe usually listens.

“Finn’s still doing well, I heard,” he mentions quietly, inclining his head ever so slightly towards Poe.

“He seems to be,” Poe agrees, “Thank Christ.”

L’Ulo glances at him sideways, a sly eyebrow slightly arched. “I don’t think He had anything to do with it this time, Poe.”

The younger man snorts, rolling his eyes before he reluctantly admits, “Yeah, I guess the doc deserves most of the credit.”

“Damn right, she does,” L’Ulo chuckles, jabbing a sharp elbow into Poe’s side.

“Hey!” he coughs, hands up to defend from the harder-than-necessary hit. “Watch it! I’ve gotta come back from this mission, Sarge. Don’t kill me yet!”

The rueful grin slips from the sergeant’s face faster than Poe can blink, and he flinches back almost as if he’d been slapped. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Poe. We can’t afford to lose anyone else. We need new people, and fast.”

Head shaking and mouth already open to argue, Poe’s cut short by L’Ulo’s next unexpected statement. “It’s like she fell into our laps, Poe. Not only is she the medic we need right now, she’s seen battle before. I know you’ve noticed it.”

For a deeply tense moment, Poe can’t speak. It can’t happen. There’s simply no way he’d ever put Rey at risk like that. “No, L’Ulo,” Poe growls, his face stormy, “We aren’t talking about this. There’s nothing to talk about.”

With that, he stuffs the explosive charges into his pack and abruptly stands. With little more than a nod at each member of his team, they silently begin to fan out and get into position. Poe checks comms as he heads for his own post, ensuring that all will receive Iolo’s signal as the First Order begins to appear. Once he reaches his position about five hundred meters west of the rest of the group, he checks out his surroundings with his rifle scope.

He’s a little startled to realize that he can now see the opening of the cave system that’s been commandeered by the First Order as a base. Fascinated, he fixes his scope on the well-fortified entrance, using the excuse to gather intel on the location while he can. Two tanks flank either side of the monumental steel doorway, as does an entire battalion of stormtroopers, glaringly out-of-place with their white body armour in the jungle. Closed-circuit cameras cover the entire open vestibule between the end of the pass and the mouth of the caves, and three guard towers cling to the slopes, bristling with artillery.

As Poe counts ground troops, some sort of changing of the guard begins right under his watchful eyes. He’s focused intently on their patterns, trying to identify a weakness, when he suddenly notices a slight difference in these trooper uniforms. Refocusing the lens of his scope, a sharp breath of fear and shock sears into his lungs. Those aren’t just First Order troopers. They’re marked with the insignia of the Empire.

He reaches for his comms, when suddenly his radio crackles to life with Iolo’s signal. Poe whips his rifle around, searching desperately through the scope for the approaching First Order vehicles. There. His heart speeds up immeasurably as his focus narrows and a fresh prickling of sweat breaks across his brow and under his arms.

Four civilian prisoners march at the head of the snaking line of vehicles, an obscene number of guns aimed at their backs as they stumble through the rocky pass.

His heart clenches. Bastards. They’re flaunting the prisoners. They’re fearless. They’re… FUCK. Poe presses at his comms, desperately hissing, “Don’t detonate! Repeat: DO NOT detonate! We’ve got vulnerable friendlies!”

“Copy. We see them, Poe,” Snap replies back, voice deadly calm. “What do we do instead? We need to get them away from the vehicles – they’ll be caught in the crossfire if we don’t.”

“Shit,” Poe curses, frozen for a moment as the convoy draws ever nearer.

“Kun!” he barks abruptly, “Set off a half-charge to draw their attention, see if we can’t get the lead vehicles to stop. I’ll head to the top of the line and secure the hostages. Give me two minutes from Kare’s blast before you all set off the rest of the charges.”

“You got it, Commander,” Tallie confirms, the loose title the closest they ever get to acknowledging his rank.

Poe’s off and sprinting, darting down through the greenery to intercept the hostages. He catches flashes of their bright blue scrubs between the trees as he dashes surely over the leaf litter and fallen logs. The glimpses become more frequent as he closes in, when suddenly the first explosion sounds from behind him.

As he breaks out from beneath the canopy, he skids to a halt directly behind the prisoners. All four have turned to watch as the side of the mountain appears to rip, then slip, then speed toward them with a great ROAR. Poe sprints towards them, closing the distance as fast as he before they get caught in the path of the slide. “Hey!” he shouts as he races to the nearest blue-clad aid-worker.

The man turns, and Poe’s stomach drops as the world explodes.

Chapter 7: And I Hope You Found

Summary:

Rey has some unpleasant and confusing interactions, and gets some unpleasant and confusing news.

Notes:

Warnings for a near-panic attack, and dissociation. Brief references to past psychological abuse involving bindings and blindfolds.

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

After monitoring Finn closely for several hours, Rey now crouches in the hard-packed dirt behind the medical building. She watches carefully as numerous soldiers cross the yard in the evening light. They seem to head in every direction, busy like a colony of ants. The crunch of earth under heavy boots and the crisp scent of crushed greenery reach her senses, drifting upwind to her hiding spot. Pressing her thin frame as close to the side of the building as possible, she’s well-concealed in the deep shade cast by its roof and the surrounding jungle canopy.

A young soldier passes close to her but doesn’t sense her presence there. Logically, she knows it’s risky to be going against the general’s orders, but she can’t help herself. Her mentor had once been known to regularly accuse her of making choices for the sole purpose of being contrary. While that isn’t exactly true, Rey does have a problem with people telling her what she can and can’t do.

The doctor watches carefully until the coast is momentarily clear, all the rebels present either distracted or facing away. Quick as a flash, she darts silently from one building to the next, creating a mental map of the citadel. When they're within her reach, she peeks through windows, trying to ascertain which structures are used for what. Before too long, she’s located the barracks, the armoury, and what appear to be the command quarters. All of a sudden, a delicious, spicy, savoury smell hits her like a ton of bricks.

She’s concealed behind some of the thick foliage that encroaches along the east end of the compound, tucked outside a small outbuilding. Facing the little wooden shack is one of the larger stone buildings of the rebel base. A clamour of noise and steam pour out of a small window high in the wall, overtop of the door. She realizes this is the kitchen and mess hall.

Still tetchy from her fight with Rose and prickling with defiance at the general’s orders, she huffs, weighing the risk of being caught against the painful rumble in her stomach. The rational part of her mind that Dameron wasn’t deliberately trying to antagonize her, but unfortunately, Rey’s never been very good at listening to her rational side. She bristles with annoyance at the way he runs so hot and cold, one moment the calm, distant leader, the next just a man, bashful and sweet. That, and the conflicting roil of emotion she feels every time she thinks about the possibility of joining the Resistance results in her making the same stupid decision she always does. Nobody tells Rey Skywalker what to do.

With a grin as sharp as glass, Rey slips between the structures on silent feet before ducking through the kitchen door. It’s very dim inside, the only light coming from several small windows that stud the wall, and a glowing bed of coals strewn across a massive hearth. Smoke and steam obscure the air; the large room is full of sound. The slow crackle of the embers, the rumble of boiling liquid and the soft rattling of pot lids rolls over the distant buzz of many people in conversation and the rhythmic tap, tap, tap, of a knife meeting a cutting board.

Sliding to one side of the doorway, Rey makes sure she’s as concealed as possible against the light from outside as the door swings slowly closed. She remains there for some time, waiting and trying to determine which direction the chopping sounds are coming from. “Don’t just stand there, doctor!” comes a surprisingly loud voice from somewhere in the vicinity.

The young doctor squints into the gloom, trying to see whoever has detected her presence, but the ambient sound and hazy air make it challenge. Despite her years of experience, the voice next comes from somewhere around her left elbow. “I’ve heard about you, Rey Skywalker.”

Rey visibly jumps, something she hadn’t thought herself capable of anymore. Perched well inside her personal bubble, a tiny black woman stands peering up at her through thick, bottle-bottom glasses. A note of alarm zings up her spine as she swiftly recovers from her surprise and registers what was said. “How do you know my name?” she demands warily, putting distance between herself and the unexpected presence of this tiny woman.

She chuckles at Rey’s guarded reaction. “People talk, young Skywalker,” she offers, revealing nothing of substance.

Rising anxiety forces her back another step, but she tries for bravado. “Oh? And what’s been said?” she inquires, her voice surprisingly light and steady.

The older woman raises a placating hand, but doesn't really answer the question. “You have nothing to fear, Rey. My name is Maz. Come! You need food.”

With that enigmatic series of statements, she turns away and begins to disappear back into the thick steam on small but swift steps. Rey stands frozen, staring after the strange woman with her mouth open in shock. She hovers there, paralyzed by fear and indecision, before her stomach chimes in with a timely and particularly emphatic growl. Before she’s really conscious of moving, Rey inhales slowly, sharpening her awareness of her surroundings as she plunges into the heady cooking fumes to follow Maz.

Two desires war in Rey as she makes her way slowly around huge kettles, baskets and crates of food. First and foremost, always, is her survival instinct, which both insists she eat and that she not let down her guard. Yet it clashes spectacularly with her natural curiosity - her desire to learn - and she needs to know what, if anything, this woman actually knows about her. Gaze flicking back and forth, never landing anywhere for long, Rey catalogues potential threats, obstacles and weapons as she searches for the elderly cook.

A rattling sound echoes to her right, and she turns swiftly to see the curious old woman placing a large tray upon a freestanding butcher’s block. The tray is leaden with food. Fragrant, steaming rice and a riot of colourful vegetation is served alongside skewered, barbequed meat. There’s also some type of egg dish and a glass of water cold enough that it’s beaded with condensation in the humid air.

When Rey doesn’t move for a long moment, Maz scoffs and pushes the tray across the wooden surface, closer to Rey. “Eat!” she orders, sweeping her hand grandly over the table as though she’d prepared Rey a feast and not just a meal.

In actual fact, from the young doctor’s perspective, she is being served a feast. She tries not to think too hard about the protein bars and rations she’s been subsisting on for the past few months. There's no other way she could have sustained the near-inhuman hours she kept, so it’s entirely possible that this is actually the first time she’s seen a proper meal in weeks. With very little hesitation and the comforting knowledge that it wouldn’t make much sense to poison or drug her, she falls upon the food in front of her.

“Slowly,” comes the soft warning.

Gulping a few short breaths in to make it past the instinct to binge, Rey forces herself into taking smaller bites, knowing full well that her body would be unused to such good food after such a long time.

“Good,” Maz nods approvingly, “This place will be good for you. It’s time to join the fight against the dark, Rey.”

The young doctor freezes with a bite halfway between her bowl and her mouth, fixing her gaze on the older woman. “What exactly do you think you know about me?” she asks, bluntly, already tired of the verbal games.

Ever the survivalist, she allows her food to complete the journey to her mouth when she’s finished speaking. Maz squints sharply at her through the thick lenses, clearly sizing her up. “I’ve been around for long time, young Skywalker. You live long enough, and you learn to see the same things in different people. You look to me like a woman who is full of fear. But I also see legacy. Destiny.”

Rey glances away, refusing to make eye contact. “I learned a long time ago not to trust people who spoke to me of ‘destiny,’” she replies acidly. “Right now, my only destiny is to help Finn. The rest is frankly none of your damn business, no matter how well you claim to know me,” she bites.

The older woman laughs in response. “Oh, I like you!” Maz crows, grinning delightedly at the now-dumbfounded Rey. “You’ve got spark! Finish your food.”

Apparently, that’s all she’s going to get out of the strange old woman for the moment, so she simply shrugs her shoulders and tucks back into the mouth-watering food. Whether or not Maz is certifiable, she’s clearly an excellent cook. She’s a whirlwind of precise activity around Rey as the younger woman eats steadily through the food she’s been given. Spices are produced and thrown into huge, steaming crocks, vegetables are chopped, and meat is grilled with a speed that’s impressive given the woman’s clear old age.

The occasional curse or utterance makes its way back to Rey as she chews, and after the fourth time it happens, she can’t help but huff out a short laugh. Maz immediately appears, hands on her hips and a wicked grin on her lips. “Oh yes. I like you, Rey Skywalker. I can see why he likes you, too. Don’t fear for Poe. He’ll make it back for you.”

“What?” she chokes, her meal instantly forgotten. “Make it back? Is the General gone?”

Maz nods like she hasn’t just dropped a metaphorical grenade in the middle of the kitchen. “He went to rescue our stolen supplies and some people who were taken hostage. Something went wrong, and Poe was captured.”

Rey’s heart jumps into her throat, horror rising like bile from her stomach. “Captured?” is all she manages, the swirl of emotion and anxiety inside her so complex that it chokes off the rest of her speech.

“Yes. Black Squad made it back with the supplies, but Poe is in the hands of the enemy.”

She’s trying to breathe, but her lungs don’t seem to be doing their job. There’s a panic attack barrelling down on her like a jet engine, but she fights it, trying to focus on Maz’s words. “Don’t worry; Black Squad will bring him home to us. There isn’t anyone better…”

Maz’s voice is drowned out by the roaring of blood in Rey’s ears, and the dishes crash soundlessly together as she clumsily pushes herself away from the butcher’s block. She turns as if in slow motion, the older woman’s mouth still moving mutely behind her. Her limbs feel uncoordinated, and she stumbles a bit as she rushes back out the door.

Rey’s head clears like she’s plunged herself into a frozen lake when she erupts out into the light, breathing heavily. The panic retreats. She rolls her neck and shoulders with discomfort as she turns to walk quickly away from the mess hall, back in the direction of the medical building. She swallows, her mind glancing fearfully off memories of deafeningly silent expanses of lonely desert, of bindings and blindfolds and questions, always questions.

Needing to centre herself, needing the familiarity and stability of her practice, Rey bypasses her quarters and heads directly for the clinic. It’s deserted, and the lights are dimmed, just as she left it. Rose had made her exit in a huff long ago to take a Dameron-sanctioned tour of the base with none other than Kay (last name apparently Connix). Finn had been resting comfortably when she crept away, and she expects he’ll still be doing the same.

The young doctor walks softly up to his bed, prepared to check his vitals as gently and quietly as possible. When she glances up to his face, however, she sees that his eyes are open. He watches her with a sort of playful intelligence, his dark eyes glittering in the soft light.

“Hello, Finn,” she murmurs, attempting a poor excuse for a smile. “Not that I’m not happy to see you alert, but you should be resting.”

Methodically, she begins to strap on a blood pressure cuff. The painfully young soldier clears his throat to answer. Silently, she offers him a cup of water. He swallows a few times, throat clearly dry; nods. She lifts the cup to his lips, patiently waiting while he sips his fill.

Once he’s done, she goes back to the cuff. A period of silence follows before she glances up at him with a minute smirk and prompts: “I believe you were making up an excuse about why you’re awake?”

Another short pause. “I’m worried about Poe,” he mutters, his voice low and a little frightened.

Her head snaps up, the panic from earlier threatening to resurface. “They told you he’s been captured?” she hisses, shocked.

Finn shakes his head slowly. “No. Connix doesn't know I overheard her telling Rose when they came back here.”

Rey bites her lip, looking away again. Despite herself, she asks, “What exactly did Connix say?”

The soldier closes his eyes and leans back into his pillow for a few breaths, clearly needing a break before they can continue to speak. “She said that the First Order intercepted a medical supply drop and took hostages. Civilian volunteers who weren’t doing anything wrong.”

He pauses again, and Rey cringes with remorse. Speaking with her is clearly costing him a great effort. She senses, nonetheless, that he still needs to talk about it. Why else would he be telling her the truth about his wakefulness? Gently, she dabs some sweat from his forehead, again offering him the water.

“Poe took Black Squad,” Finn continues, ignoring the proffered cup, “- they’re our black-ops team - to try and rescue the hostages and steal back the supplies. They think it was a trap. They think Poe was the target all along.”

His breathing is becoming laboured, the beats on the monitor stepping up in frequency as his heart rate elevates. Finn weakly swats her hand away when she tries to calm him. “You don’t understand,” he gasps, tears now running freely down his dark cheeks, mingling there with the sweat of pain and anxiety. “Poe isn’t just a prisoner. He’s in the hands of the bastard who did this to me, and it’s my fault because I couldn’t kill Kylo Ren when I had the chance!”

Rey’s vision instantly tunnels. It’s a bit like being underwater – everything is muffled and slow, blurring around her. She slowly stands, mechanically reassuring Finn, calming him with a detachment that feels wrong, feels unnatural, but even then, it doesn’t feel like very much. The soldier is quickly tiring, slumping back into unconsciousness even as he continues to blame himself for his friend’s capture. Once he’s out, she automatically administers what will be a much-needed push of the Resistance’s woefully limited painkillers to his IV.

Numbly, Rey turns and leaves the room. As she passes by, her fingers automatically reach out to seize a pen and small pad of paper from Kalonia’s desk. She heads down the hall towards the room she shares with Rose, still feeling oddly disconnected. Silently, she eases the door open, peeking in to see the nurse solidly passed out on her cot. She steps into the room as quietly as she can. Pausing to stand over Rose’s bed, she quickly scrawls a short note onto the borrowed pad.

Rose,
I have to leave for a little bit.
I need to ‘borrow’ some supplies from the Resistance in order to carry out my plan.
So, I can’t tell you where I’m going – they’ll try to catch me and stop me.
I’ll come back.
Rey
P.S. If I don’t come back – I think you’ll be safe with them.

As she walks purposefully away from the medical building, heading for the armoury she’d spotted earlier, the numbness she’s been feeling begins to ease. It’s quickly replaced with white-hot fury – fury and an undercurrent of terror so deep it just feels like more rage. There’s only one reason that Kylo Ren would be in Vietnam.

It isn’t Finn’s fault that Poe’s in Kylo Ren's hands. It’s hers.

Kylo would only be here if he knows Rey’s here.

She’s brought him here.

She’s brought him here and she’s going to kill him.

Notes:

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Hey all,

I hesitated to post a new chapter with all that's going on in the world right now, but I know we can't all be out on the front lines protesting, and that some will need solace or an escape. If you can be out this week, please do. Black Lives Matter.

Rosalind

Chapter 8: Elk Blood Heart

Summary:

Oh no, Poe.

Notes:

Hello! Firstly, sincere apologies that this took me so long. It's been sitting fully formed in my head for a while, but given the subject matter of this chapter, it was difficult to write.

CONTENT WARNING:

Look, in this case, I don't give a shit about spoilers - I don't want any of you to be harmed by my writing. This chapter contains a graphic description of modern and ancient torture techniques, as well as the actual torture of Poe. A physical beating is also mentioned. TW: blood, gore, body horror, medical horror, scalpels, cutting, torture, psychological torture, pharmacological torture, administering drugs without consent, narcotics, medical procedures without consent, restraints, flaying.

HISTORICAL NOTE:

Kylo's description and understanding of the Lingchi is from a deeply problematic, colonialist perspective. For a more nuanced perspective, check out Death by A Thousand Cuts by Timothy Brook, Gregory Blue, and Jerome Bourgon.

PS Also, I think this story might be a trilogy... oh no why do i do this to myself please join me for years and years and years...

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Consciousness arrives less like a slap and more like being slowly dipped into a pool of fire. Every square millimetre of his skin seems to hurt. There’s really no telling where he ends and the pain begins, at first. Slowly, his other senses begin drop back in, layering atop each other like sedimentary rock.

After pain comes piercing light so bright, he has to close his eyes against it; then it's the unpleasant, metallic taste of blood in his mouth. Finally, the scent of disinfectant and steady beep of medical monitors. The dull panic that’s been threatening to rise in his chest momentarily lies back again. Is he back at the base, in medical? If he looks, will he see Rey’s face?

He opens his eyes again. When his blurred vision sharpens, his stomach suddenly drops precipitously. He isn’t going to see Rey, because he’s not back at the Resistance base. Poe is in the custody of the First Order.

Thankfully, if somewhat unpleasantly, with this realization, he instantly regains his recall. Poe can’t be sure exactly where he’s being held or how long he’s been here (though based upon the extremely thorough beating he’d received earlier - plus the colour of his bruises - suggest he’s been here a good couple of hours, at least.) All he knows at this point is that he’s been strapped to an extremely menacing, gurney-like steel table. The walls, floor, and ceiling around him also appear to be constructed of dull, dark steel.

He gives his restraints a few half-hearted, perfunctory if experimental yanks to test their strength. Yep – they’re ridiculously solid.

With a groan of disappointed frustration, Poe thumps his head back against the table and instantly regrets it when the pain in his skull becomes momentarily blinding. How could he have forgotten to confirm ID on the hostages before he went barrelling in there to save them? No one had realized they were a smokescreen - F.O. soldiers disguised as the missing aid workers – until it was too late. The actual humanitarians are more than likely dead by now. Worse still, he has no idea whether or not his team had been successful in the mission to reclaim their supplies.

Poe clenches his fists and screws his eyes shut against the shame and the searing pain, panting shallowly under the sharp stabs of one – no, two – at least two broken ribs. The lightening that arcs across his shin as he fights against the threat of unconsciousness is a tad worrisome. The image of the black sole on an incongruously white boot swinging in a slow curve toward his foolishly unprotected leg briefly overwhelms him. If that bastard broke his shin, he’s never gonna get out of here.

Not that there’s much chance he’ll get out of here at all, but it’s nice to dream.

Finally, his nerves stop shrieking quite as loudly, and his muscles go lax with exhaustion as he slumps back against the table. His head tilts to slump against the creepy fucking headrest. For a few moments, he just counts breaths and drifts, somewhere in between consciousness and sleep.

Unbidden, his treacherous brain swings back around to his first conscious thought – of waking up to see Rey. In this place between asleep and awake, where the pain has retreated from all-consuming to merely overwhelming, the image of her face wavers behind his eyelids. One moment, she looks down at him, dressed in scrubs and hair pulled back into the surgical cap she wore when they met. The next instant, she’s smiling down at him, hair loose and curling around her jaw, his fingers buried in the silky strands. Her lips part as she leans down

“I’m simultaneously disappointed and impressed, General Dameron.”

Adrenaline floods Poe’s limbs, and every joint locks with terror. The low, distorted voice at his back is something that’s only been whispered about in the Resistance. “No one has been able to get anything out of you.”

Poe instinctually tries for his default setting – cocky bravado. With a voice that grinds like wet gravel in his throat, he spits, “You might wanna rethink your technique…”

Disturbingly light – barely audible, even – footsteps begin to round the table, and the general tenses, trying to brace himself. The voice continues as if he’d never spoken. “Your endurance of pain has been formidable, yet you were stupid enough to fall into a trap so transparent, a child could have laid it.”

Poe strains at his peripherals, trying to catch a glimpse of the deeply ominous presence. Sweat prickles along his hairline, and despite himself, his breathing kicks up a notch as he hears the barely-there scrape of a boot to his right. His head lolls, fear clawing at his throat as a shadow seems to peel off from the rest of the room, looming before him until it finally comes into view.

There have been rumours, but Poe had never put any stock into them. Now, the evidence is standing before him in all of its horror.

Word of the mask has spread through the Resistance and civilians alike. Nothing that’s been said or imagined, no story that’s been woven can compare to the reality.

Kylo Ren, chief psychopath of the First Order and nightmare in human form stands before him. The monster is only spoken of in fearful, hushed voices amongst the upper echelons of the Resistance. Now, Poe understands why.

He’s huge, standing well over six feet and nearly twice as broad as Poe. The architect of the worst of the First Order’s cruelty and malice is like a black silhouette that’s been punched out of the fabric of the room, darkness personified. Dressed in a pitch-black, stylized version of the uniform of a First Order officer, his face is completely covered with a horrific facsimile of a gas mask – all ebony and chrome and sinister.

A silvery, grated air filter fits closely over his mouth and nose, and the harsh, mechanical breaths that sound through it run down Poe’s spine like ice water. The threatening man’s entire head is covered by the tight-fitting mask, and the neckline of his uniform is high enough to meet at the seams of the false visage. There is no visible skin. Not even his eyes are discernible behind the shielding, and somehow that’s the most disturbing feature of all.

If Poe’s going to die for the Resistance, he’d prefer to look his killer in the eye before he goes.

“If the rest of the Resistance is as – pathetic – as you, then the First Order has already won.” The modulated voice echoes oddly in the small metal room.

Poe suddenly chokes on his breath, agony ripping through his ribs as he coughs up a bright red mouthful of blood. With a grisly grin, he spits it at his captor’s feet. “Seems like you don’t need me much then, huh Ren?”

The hulking figure prowls closer, pushing his masked face close to Poe’s as though examining him like a bug. There’s a long moment punctuated only by the distorted, mechanical breathing noises issuing from the wretched mask. “No, General Dameron. I think you will find, despite all your failings, that you will be – quite – useful to me.”

Poe tries to suppress a shudder of repulsion, snarling and jerking his head away from the masked man. It’s an abortive, unsuccessful movement which only serves to point his gaze in another direction, but at least he no longer has to look at that fearful, blank countenance. “FUCK you,” he growls, bracing himself for the pain he’s sure will come with Ren’s response. Instead, he’s met with a robotic chuckle, so profoundly menacing that Poe’s entire body falls instantly cold.

“We’ll – discover – your worth shortly, General,” Ren continues blandly, poised in stillness like a snake before it bites, “But first, tell me what you know about the Lingchi.

Poe’s terror is momentarily dampened by annoyance. “Jesus. This is how you’re torturing people now?” he snarks, throat still wet with blood, “With lectures?”

This finally provokes the reaction he’d been expecting. For a time, his head reels from the heavy, gloved fist across his face, vision obscured by sparks and blackness. The voice continues, still disturbingly emotionless. “Have you ever heard the phrase: ‘death by a thousand cuts?’”

The general stills, alarm creeping over him. “The Lingchi was a common form of execution for traitors in Imperial China and Vietnam. The practice involved the slow, meticulous - flaying - of the condemned." A horrible pause. "Some executioners became Lingchi artists, prolonging the suffering of their victims over several days and thousands of cuts. Ultimately, the goal of the procedure is the death of the traitor. The pain was merely an extension of death.”

There’s no doubt that Poe’s expression betrays naked dismay, and he can feel bile burning up his throat, mingling with the blood. The terrifyingly blank figure is once again eerily still, his entire being focused on his prisoner. Poe feels exposed in a way he can’t protect against. “However, I am not interested in death,” Ren seems to somehow expand, taking up space in Poe’s field of vision, “I’ve made it my life’s work to study the effects of pain on the human psyche, particularly… when it comes to altering and regulating behaviour.”

“Is that so?” Poe asks, his voice shaking only slightly, “Published anything recently?”

Ren suddenly drops into a sort of hunched, menacing posture, somehow seeming to take up even more space. Poe’s frozen, staring at him with the sudden terror of someone who realizes they can’t predict their opponent’s moves. He’s a rabbit, and Kylo Ren is a wolf. Then, with surprising swiftness, the masked man is once again moving around him with a detached kind of grace, gathering items and placing them maddeningly outside of Poe’s view.

The flat, mechanically regulated speech unfortunately also returns. “I am going to take what I want from you, Dameron. Let’s begin.”

The masked man appears at the edge of his vision on his right-hand side. It seems as though he’s preparing an IV line. “With – extensive – testing, I’ve succeeded in refining my method to a level of excellence and consistency that’s never been achieved before.”

Violently, Poe flinches away from the beast’s gloved hands, twisting his arm as far as the restraints will allow. One huge, black paw descends on his forearm like an anvil. The strength in Ren’s hand is truly terrifying, and Poe finds himself being forced into stillness with little apparent effort on his tormentor’s part. Sharp, clean pain pierces through the all-over ache as the IV needle pushes through his skin and into the vein.

With an ease that suggests legitimate medical training, Ren finishes setting up the drip, ignoring Poe's snarls and attempts to move away. There’s something about the way he… talks? moves? that is especially unsettling, but Poe can’t quite put his finger on it. A sharp tug on the line directs his attention back to his captor. “This,” he explains, “Will administer a cocktail of several tranquilizers that I’ve perfected over the course of my… studies.”

The dark figure disappears behind Poe for a long moment, and every bit of him strains to hear what he might be doing. All of a sudden, the vacant mask is on Poe’s left, prepping another drip. “And this will administer amphetamines.”

Helplessly, he is once again submitted to the IV. Unexpectedly, Poe realizes why he finds this man so acutely disturbing. The way he explains what he’s doing... His calm methodical movements… Ren reminds him of Rey. It’s like being doused in liquid nitrogen, and his brain immediately shies away from the thought.

The soft clip, clip, clip of scissors follows the completion of the drip, as the massive man begins to calmly cut off his shirt, speaking as mildly as if he’d been ordering a coffee instead of describing his Super Secret Torture Method.™

“I have a great debt to pay. For my success. The Lingchi artists began what I’ve finished. I honour them by continuing their work.”

Every molecule of breath freezes in Poe’s lungs at the clear implication. This man, this demon, intends to drug him and flay him alive until he gives up everything. His eyes dart frantically up to the mask now looming above him, desperately searching for a single sign of humanity. The blank, black horror-show betrays not a single hint.

A desperate, helpless kind of rage swells up with the fear, and breath stutters past his lips as he pants once, twice, then spits, “The Resistance… will not… be intimidated by you…”

But the words die in his throat as Kylo Ren produces a long, wickedly sharp-looking, black-bladed scalpel, seemingly from nowhere. The blade looks oddly glassy, glinting with fearful malice. Without warning, Poe’s vision suddenly begins to darken, muscles going lax all at once. With dawning terror, he realizes that the sedatives in the first drip have begun to take effect and he’s unnaturally relaxed. It's a feeling almost like being trapped in his own body.

As if in slow motion, Poe watches the dangerously sharp tool descend toward his exposed chest. The voice from the mask sounds impossibly louder and deeper, vibrating through his skull like a slow-motion jackhammer. “This is an obsidian blade: the finest, most precise scalpel in existence. The artist’s paintbrush if you will, and you’re my canvas.”

At first, it feels like little more than pressure against the skin of his upper chest. It’s almost fascinating to watch the blade slide into and along his flesh, its edge so fine that it takes many moments for blood to begin seeping up in its path. It’s as if the sight of the bright crimson of his own blood flips a switch in his brain, the pain flaring up like a path of fire behind the scalpel. Poe grunts, twitching, unable to escape the hurt.

Yet the meds also make him feel oddly detached from it, almost like he could live in the burn if he had to. He can feel his brain begin to retreat from the agony, riding out the waves of searing pain. He watches as Kylo Ren delicately peels the first strip of skin from the top of his pectoral – he can feel it, the biting pain, the horror, bone-deep, but it’s almost as though it’s happening to someone else.

“Practitioners of the Lingchi have argued for centuries over whether it’s better to begin cutting on the extremities or the torso, but given the value of the information you hold, I think we’ll… go big or go home.” The monstrous man continues to work, ignoring Poe’s grunts and gasps of pain.

“The barbiturates currently circulating your bloodstream are suppressing your central nervous system, lowering your inhibitions. Making you more susceptible; suggestible. They have the added benefit of muscle relaxation, which does make my work, well – less complex, for the moment.”

He peels another strip of flesh.

Poe’s stomach roils in horror, his breathing becoming laboured and slower as the edges of his vision blur and blacken still further. Ren’s careful blade continues to slice, slice, slice. “Unfortunately, as you may have begun to notice, large doses of barbiturates can slow the breathing enough to cause unconsciousness, coma, and eventual death.

Everything’s closing in on him, the pressure on his lungs becoming slowly unbearable as the world grows dark. That horrible, nightmarish voice pierces through the darkness, chilling on an entirely new level. “That is where the stimulants come in.”

With a heady, disorienting rush, vision painfully returns to Poe, followed by the feeling of his heart rabbiting so frantically in his chest he fears it might burst. Ren begins another cut, and this time, the pain is exquisite. It’s acute, as if his very cells are on fire, and he has no defence against the immolation. His body arches off the table as every muscle clenches in a rictus of pain, and he can’t help the ragged scream that’s ripped from his throat.

As Ren continues to slice, Poe can barely hear the continued monologue over his own screams. Nonetheless, every word lands with cold certainty and perfect clarity in his brain. “Four days ago, you and your troops sought medical treatment at a Red Cross Clinic near Lai Chau City. Apparently, the traitor's life was saved by a girl.

Poe roars as the scalpel cuts deepen, as Ren moves in steady parallel lines down Poe’s pectoral. “You know where she is. You will give her to me. Where is Rey Skywalker?”

Poe’s screams reach a new pitch.

Notes:

Please feel free to send me a message on tumblr at find-me-a-grave-man if you need to talk.

Chapter 9: Let it Breathe

Summary:

Rey kicks so much ass.

Notes:

Hello all! If you haven't gotten a chance to read my Damerey one shot "Where Are We Going", I'd love it if you'd check it out!

I'm splitting my writing time between this and lighter fare, and I wanted your votes on which plot bunny to follow next.

In the comments below, please let me know which of the following you'd prefer to read first:

-A/B/O Damerey AU
-Speed (1994 film) Damerey AU
-Top Gun Damerey AU

 

WARNINGS:
Aftermath of torture
Explosives
Mentions/References to past abuse (Rey)
Blood

Chapter Text

Rey pauses for breath, feeling the struggle for oxygen that comes at higher elevations. Her fingers have long since gone numb, and her arms and legs are beginning to tremble with fatigue, but at least she’s nearly at her destination. It’s been far too long since Rey’s had the chance to work out this particular set of muscles. With a deep inhale through her nose, she risks a glance down over her shoulder at the scene spread out below her.

Dusk has fallen across the pass, the sun hidden behind the mountain opposite – all of the greenery now appears blue-black in the twilight. No more than ten meters below where she clings like a bug to the precipitous, plant-covered slope, the mouth of the Po Sum Cap Caves is lit up brighter than a football stadium at night. Every floodlight is directed out, toward the mouth of the pass, directly across from Rey’s position above the cave entrance.

All scopes, rifles, and eyes are likewise pointed away from her. She’s happy to press any advantage she’s given, and so she’s chosen her method of infiltration appropriately. Turning back to the task at hand, she double-checks her footing, kicking her toe into a small divot in the rock a couple of times to ensure its stability. It’s nothing for her to find a lower foothold, and its only moments before she’s fallen into the rhythm of the climb again.

Of all the unwelcome souvenirs she’s brought with her from her old life into the new, the only trait she doesn’t resent is her skill at climbing. The days and nights of her childhood had been filled with endless stimuli, very little of it good, so whenever she’d been sent to climb the walls of the canyon, she’d relished the relative silence and time alone with her thoughts. The singular physical and mental act of climbing helps her focus to this day.

Reaching the bottom of the sheer gradient, Rey silently drops down to a small ledge, edging along until it widens out into a gentle incline directly over top of the entrance. Rubble and dirt have been piled above the extended entranceway in a clumsy attempt at concealing it in the natural slope of the mountain. Surprisingly, the jungle has finished the job of concealment for them – it’s already encroaching on the smooth rise.

Further up, Rey spots her eventual goal – a square metal ventilation shaft jutting up out of the rock. Smirking to herself, she turns away from the shaft and crosses to the lip of the artificial cave mouth, easily concealed by the intruding flora. Swiftly, she slings the borrowed pack off her back, pulling out two explosive charges, both of which she places near the centre of the slope over the huge door.

Laying out flat on her stomach, she grasps the lip of the door and pokes her head out to take a quick, upside-down look at the door itself. She’s shocked to see that, at the moment, it stands open. Perhaps they’re expecting the delivery of more supplies. That there could be a worse possibility – they might be preparing to move the General, for example – occurs to Rey, but she refuses to entertain it.

She flips back up out of view as swiftly as a wink, rolling onto her back so that she can consider her options, staring blindly at the first few stars winking into view above her. She’d glimpsed a few jeeps and motorbikes parked mere meters from the entrance, and considering that she’ll have no idea of the general’s condition until she finds him, she files that knowledge away as a potential means of escape.

Taking a moment or two to plan, she mentally catalogues her supplies. In her rucksack are several more charges, remote detonators, and enough fuse and plastique to cause a lot of chaos, should she run out of her – borrowed – Resistance explosives. In addition to the supplies in the pack, she has a machete, multi-tool, grenades, and coils and coils of light, thin, high-performance rope strapped to her person. Not to mention the knife in her boot.

Her mind keeps circling back to the idea of causing chaos and anarchy. She experiences a powerful surge of rage and vindictive pleasure at the thought. It also gives her an idea.

In a flash, she’s collected her things and set the remote detonators on the charges above the door. Swiftly and silently, she makes her way away from the entrance, heading uphill towards the ventilation shaft. It’s less than a meter across, too narrow for even an average-sized man to struggle through, but an easy fit for Rey’s slim frame. Larger chunks of rubble are piled up around the opening of the shaft, almost as if in another lazy attempt at concealment.

Their supreme overconfidence is kind of staggering, and for a second she’s carried away on daydreams of small, covert teams infiltrating and dismantling countless poorly secured and hidden F.O. bases. She gives her head a little shake, redirecting her attention to the matter at hand: not some idealistic fantasy resulting from her unconventional upbringing. Unfastening the lead of one of her climbing lines, she secures it around the largest boulder.

She stands at the cusp of the shaft, casting her eye once more over the defences around the cave mouth. With a grin, she grasps one of the grenades fastened to her borrowed belt. Taking careful aim, she pulls the pin and lobs the explosive with all her might at the nearest guard tower. With a small hop, she drops into the vertical tunnel, an explosion following the instant she’s out of sight.

Before she can fall too far, Rey catches herself by bracing both feet and hands on opposite walls of the pipe. In this way, she slowly inches downward, the rope a mere precautionary measure should she lose her footing. The shaft darkens rapidly only a few meters down, and Rey is forced to rely on her sense of touch more and more. Her breath picks up, the squeezing darkness terribly familiar.

To try and calm herself, she focuses on what she’s come here to do: rescue a good man from the clutches of an evil one. She knows better than anyone what Kylo Ren was capable of as a younger man; she doesn’t even want to speculate on what he might be like now. Luckily, she doesn’t have long to dwell on that chilling thought, as the shaft reaches a sharp intersection. Just below her feet, it opens into a typical rectangular metal ventilation system.

Carefully, she lowers herself into it, boots landing softly on the thin metal. She crouches down and slides to her stomach again, spreading her weight in case the vents aren’t securely fastened. As quietly as possible, she scoots forward into a shaft of light emanating from below. It’s a metal grate, and she peers down through it. Beneath, the caves open up, completely deserted as far as she can tell.

It seems to be a sort of passageway between the larger chambers of the cave. With a quick look at the vent around her, she determines that the only way out is down. Digging her nails under the seams of the grate, she carefully lifts it away, depositing on the far side of the gap. She leaves one rope tied there, connecting to the top of the shaft should she need to consider it as a route of escape.

As she drops down into the dimly lit cave, goosebumps erupt over her flesh, the cool air biting after the heat of the jungle. The caves smell damp and earthy, and they echo with the soft drip of water. Slight hints of sulfur linger in the air. Down, she thinks, and begins to follow the slight slope descending deeper into the cave system.

She doesn’t encounter anyone, but she can distantly hear a huge hubbub behind her, so it seems that her grenade indeed worked to create a distraction. Around her, crates and boxes are stacked in every available nook and cranny. Despite the urgency of her mission, she takes the time to read labels as she flits past, automatically committing the contents to memory.

On silent footsteps, she descends, the constant echo and trickle of water following behind. As the tunnel drops lower and lower, the grafted infrastructure she’s observed all along begins to become sparse. The lights strung above become dimmer and farther apart, some flickering with age. It’s likely that this wiring remains from when these caverns were nothing more sinister than a tourist attraction.

Before too long, Rey can see the quality of light change ahead of her. The echoes are louder here, and it’s obvious that she’s heading toward a larger cavern. She slows as she approaches the open maw of the cave, mindful of her continued stealth. Hugging the passage wall, she presses close enough to the opening that she can get a quick lay of the land.

The cavity is comparatively huge, floor and ceiling leaden with the fantastic sci-fi shapes of mineral deposits, stalactites and stalagmites glinting enticingly in the semi-darkness. In the center of it all squats an ugly black box, the approximate size and volume of a standard shipping container. It’s being guarded by two stormtroopers in their ridiculous white body armour.

Then, she notices the power box less than a foot above her head. Most of the power for this area seems to be running through it despite the dim lights – and Rey can see how the pipes shielding the wiring lead down to the menacing box. She digs the smallest charge from her pack, setting it with a remote detonater. It’s almost too easy.

Rey hesitates for a moment, heart pounding. Considering the light guard, the relatively unsecured high-status prisoner, and the absolute lack of personnel within the base, she pretty certain this is a trap. For her. It’s sickening to consider, but she’s literally run to the ends of the earth to escape Kylo Ren – a scheme this complex is most assuredly not beyond him.

A grim smirk spreads over her face as she considers her options. It may be true that this is indeed a set-up – but a trap only works when properly sprung. Swifter than a blink, Rey scoops a large-ish pebble from the floor of the passage and chucks it across to the far side of the cavern. It lands with a spectacular rattle. As Rey peeks inside again, she can see that the far ‘trooper is already moving to inspect the noise.

She slips silently into the large open space, ducking behind jagged outcrops and mineral spikes until she’s practically on top of the other guard. Feeling a little petty, she sneaks up behind them and gives a sharp tap to their left shoulder. Rey ducks quickly to the right before popping up directly in front of the soldier. The stormtrooper’s last conscious sight is a bright, snarky grin and a flying fist.

As soon as the guard’s been incapacitated, she leaps lightly up, catching onto the lip of the box with barely more than a rustle. Agile as a cat, she pulls herself atop it. She can hear the other guard returning, her modulated voice bouncing around the cave as she reports back to her unknowingly unconscious comrade. Rey watches quietly above, muscles coiled, tense and ready.

“RK?” she hears the guard call.

“RK-1432! Respond!” sharper and closer.

The instant Rey sees the white helmet round the corner and stop in its tracks, she pounces. Both ‘trooper and doctor go down with a clatter of polymer armour, Rey with her arms around the other’s neck. Flexing up under the seam of the helmet, she effectively cuts off blood flow to the brain. As the soldier’s struggles cease, she eases off the pressure – Rey’s looking for incapacitation, not murder.

That’s both guards down.

Now, she must contend with a door and whatever’s beyond it.

A swift, calculated examination of the locking mechanism proves that it’s electromagnetically sealed. Reaching into her pocket, she extracts her multitool, flicking open the small knife as she brings it around. She uses it to unscrew the panel over the lock; with a few stripped, clipped, and crossed wires, it takes her no more than a few moments to reverse the polarity. The mechanism instantly releases.

Rey pauses for a breath, watching as the heavy metal door falls open a few inches. Steeling herself for the worst, she grabs it and swings it wide. Unfortunately, there’s no way Rey could have prepared herself for what she finds inside.

It’s decked out like a high-tech operating suite. Instead of a standard gurney at its heart, an adjustable metal slab bristling with restraints waits like some sort of vile monster. She takes a cautious step inside, and then it hits her.

The stench of blood and antiseptic hangs heavy in the air. The sheer despair of the place is so intense it’s nearly tangible. It feels almost as though she has to trudge through it like thick, oozing mud.

This is a mobile torture chamber.

Rey chokes on the realization. It freezes her in place, horror ricocheting through every fragment of her heart. Her body feels like it wants to physically reject the knowledge that a man she’d once – “He’s bad… he’s bad,” she repeats under her breath, unaware she’s speaking aloud.

“But this…”

She’s answered by a muffled moan. Her feet move forward without her permission, circling the terrifying table.

Rey slaps a hand tight over her mouth to keep from crying out.

Poe Dameron lies strapped to the heinous device, semiconscious and damaged.

Her eyes track rapidly over his body, clinically cataloguing injuries. The shallow way he breathes definitely suggests the presence of broken ribs, and the slight gurgle that accompanies each inhale immediately has her worrying about internal injuries, collapsed lungs, bleeding… That and the gigantic fucking black and blue boot print in his side. Multiple contusions and abrasions litter his arms and torso, but her observation wrenches to a halt as it reaches his chest.

Fingers now digging into her own jaw hard enough to bruise, she muffles a sob behind her hand. His wounds have been tended to, more or less, in that he’s been given cursory care. This so-called treatment is clearly designed to do nothing more than to prolong his suffering, to prevent his body from succumbing to infection or shock too soon.

Dressings that are reddened, nearly saturated with blood cover most of his left pectoral below the clavicle and extend up almost as far as the front of the rotator cuff. Further to that, his fine hair is matted with blood; shallow cuts have been allowed to freely bleed beneath his right eye and on his forehead. Almost unwillingly, she reaches out towards the bandage. Something itches at the back of her skull, and she pauses, fingertips hovering centimeters from the sodden dressing.

Some instinct prompts her to revisit those cuts on his face, examining them more closely. They’re oddly… precise.

A pair of soft brown eyes unexpectedly open wide, and Rey nearly flinches back. It takes a moment for his gaze to focus on her face, but the look of bright, pure recognition that soon follows sears into her bones like an iron brand, permanently imprinting itself on her.

Rey,” he gasps, the word laced with pain.

Something in her cracks. It’s the first time he’s called her by name. Hearing it fall from his lips on a tide of misery sort of makes her want to die. Viciously, she bites the feeling back, fixing her expression in an image of calm control.

“Yes, General. It’s – Rey,” she confirms, her voice surprisingly steady. “I’ve come to rescue you.”

They stare at each other for a few seconds, Poe’s short, pained breaths punctuating the silence.

WHAT,” he growls, and sucks in a breath. It's no doubt to start protesting, but it catches in his throat and he dissolves into weak coughs.

The air wheezes out of him, his body curling protectively over his injured ribs as far as the restraints allow. Rey immediately bursts into movement, quickly disabling the heavy locks with the press of a button she finds on the side of the table. She experiences another surge of smugness in counterpoint to her overall fear and adrenaline.

She gently catches him as his body tips toward her. “I’m going to get you out whether you like it or not, General,” she huffs as she ducks under his right arm, careful not to jostle the damage on his left side.

Another short pause is allowed while Poe regains his breath, but spikes of anxiety are beginning to stab through her. Any horrors that the general has suffered are not enough to kick years of militant conditioning for long. She’s already noticed that the faint hubbub she’d heard earlier from near the entrance has suddenly grown dangerously close.

“Do you think you can walk?” she asks, her voice beginning to shake with tension.

His answer comes out more like a groan than actual speech, but Rey can recognize an affirmative when she hears one. “Alright,” she mutters, eyeing the entrance to the cavern, where she’s beginning to see bouncing lights and eerily dancing shadows followed by the sounds of many feet. “This is going to seem insane, but you have to trust me.”

She doesn’t give him a chance to respond, only slips her right hand into the pocket of her borrowed pants to grasp the detonator switch. She closes her eyes, already counting down. “Don’t let go of me, no matter what.”

“What?” Poe says, and Rey hits the switch.

A small blast echoes red-hot from the entranceway as the chamber is plunged into total darkness.

The subterranean space immediately erupts with noise, but Rey can still hear Poe’s panicked, painful gasps in her ear. She squeezes his hand as reassuringly as she can, but keeps still, eyes closed, listening to the chaos around them.

She counts.

Rey opens her eyes, dashing into the fray with Poe at her side. Right now, she’s relying on a complicated combination of senses and instinct to navigate. The general clings to her as hard as he’s able, his gasps and cries of pain at each sudden movement inconsequential in the overall din.

If Rey weren’t so actively terrified, she’d probably be laughing at the slapstick comedy unfolding around them. The explosive had gone off precisely when an entire battalion of stormtroopers began to pour into the cavern. Because she’s prepped herself, her eyes have already adjusted to the dark. Though they’re mere shapes in the blackness, their white armour makes them easy to spot as they blunder around, stumbling into one another.

She works her way through them, dodge by heart-stopping dodge until they’re fleeing back up the passageway, tripping towards the light. The general is trying to say something between heaving gasps, but she can’t really make out his words. It turns out not to matter much, when he’s interrupted by a chilling, inhuman roar from the caverns at their backs.

They explode out into the vestibule of the cave mouth, which has thankfully been nearly emptied of troops. The guard tower she’d sabotaged earlier is still smouldering, and most of the remaining personnel have their eyes on it. The terrible roar lengthens and reverberates behind them, and Rey casts a panicked glance over the clearing. She skids to a stop near the first motorcycle she sees.

Poe’s slowly beginning the descent into unconsciousness, so she drags him over to the vehicle, slinging him onto the back of the seat so she can climb in front. Most of his weight sags against her back when he sluggishly wraps his arms around her middle, but she ignores the hot bulk of his naked chest pressed into her. A sharp hiss of pain is all she hears from him as she revs the engine.

In a quick stroke of genius, Rey lifts the remaining coil of lightweight cord from her torso and wraps it around them both, effectively securing his body to hers should he pass out. Suddenly, the roar from the deep cuts off, and she can hear the approaching boots that had been inaudible under the noise. Her stomach leaps into her throat, and with a high whine of the engine, she guns it toward the mouth of the pass.

Just before they reach it, Rey skids to stop, risking a glance backward.

She turns to look right at him.

Kylo Ren stands at the mouth of the cave. Even though his eyes aren’t visible, she can feel his gaze on her like a spotlight. He hunches, hulking muscles obvious beneath his finely tailored uniform, and screams her name.

Her fingers once again find the remote detonator switch, and she stares at him stonily, teeth clenched in a feral snarl as she presses the switch and the mountain comes roaring down around him.

Chapter 10: Tastes Like

Summary:

Poe makes it out the other side, and it leads to some revelations

Notes:

(I'm sorry this took so long but *shrug* life?) Anyway to make up for it, there's now a chapter count :)

Content Warnings:

Brief description of flaying injuries
Hints of past trauma (Rey)
Dissociation in response to trauma
Language
Mentions of torture

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

Consciousness is much kinder to Poe this time around. It comes slowly and gently, awareness filtering in through the darkness. There’s very little ambient noise, not even the sound of medical monitors, and when he opens his eyes, the light is dim and soft. He’s looking up at a stone ceiling, covered with a soft blanket, and a line of warmth is pressed down his arm.

He risks a slow, deep breath in. His ribs shift and grind a little, and the skin of his chest pulls and burns. It’s definitely not comfortable, but it’s incomparably better than the agony of before.

His eyelids fall slowly shut several times.

There’s no telling if any time has passed between blinks or not. He’s remarkably calm, the memories of what he’s just been through crystal clear, but somehow distant. Almost as though they happened to someone else.

The strange detachment is odd, but not something he’s willing to examine further.

More time passes.

The stone ceiling is still there.

Fuck. He’s lucky to be alive.

Poe had been prepared to give his life for the Resistance – had even wished for, begged for death while that monster peeled the flesh from his body – but Jesus fucking Christ he’s still here. And it’s entirely thanks to the most incredible, enigmatic woman he’s ever set eyes on. Honestly, he’s still unsure if it wasn’t all a dream.

When he’d opened his eyes in that awful place to see Rey’s face, Poe had been sure he’d died. Dressed in borrowed Resistance fatigues and loaded up with enough gear to make an action hero cry, she’d appeared like some kind avenging angel out of the darkness. She’d been – holy fuck, she’d been incredible, almost chillingly adept in extracting him from the enemy base.

The escape had passed in a blur of pain and semi consciousness, large portions of it blacked out from his memory. Then again, he could… remember blackness. Rey had… had guided him through the inky dark - dodging foes like a ghost, like she had some kind of extra sense – and out into the blinding light. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to describe it as a kind of… rebirth.

Poe opens his eyes again, no idea how long it’s been. He finally begins to wonder where he is, exactly. He should probably be panicking. He ought to still be feeling the terror and confusion and pain of his interrogation and subsequent escape, but he feels oddly… safe.

Looking around with mild interest, the general eventually tilts his gaze down to investigate the warmth along his arm. The sight makes him catch his breath.

It’s Rey.

She’s deeply asleep. Her left forearm is pressed along his right arm, and her right hand is lightly curled in his. Her hair is loose, flared out around her head like a tangled halo. Every bit of her face is visible to his hungry gaze, almost as if she’d fallen asleep watching over him. Her cheeks are faintly flushed with sleep, tendrils of brown curls stirred by the breath between her lightly parted lips.

Her cheekbone rests on his forearm.

Poe can’t move. It’s a little like that roller coaster feeling again – fear mixed with excitement. Her skin is impossibly soft against his, her thick eyelashes lightly tangling with the sparse hair on his arm. He sucks in another breath, heedless of the pain in his chest. She shifts slightly, a soft sound escaping her lips.

Blood rushes in his ears. Her beauty is undeniable, but more than that, it feels like just being near her is somehow addictive. Waking up next to her makes him feel more alive than he has in - fuck, he can't even remember the last time.

He watches her unabashedly, putting aside the shame he knows he’ll feel later just so he can take this chance to look his fill. In fact – his heart seizes a little bit – he’s going to have to make sure he never gets this chance again. There's so much more going on with this woman than he’s even begun to parse out, and somewhere in the mess is apparently Kylo Ren. Poe shouldn’t want to touch her with a ten-foot pole.

For now, however, in this quiet dark place that might be less than a dream, he gives in. Poe stares greedily, eyes tracing the slope of her nose: the way it almost turns up impishly at the end. Rey’s lips – pink and ripe and sweet – curve up naturally at the corners. She must smile often, despite everything.

He wants to count every freckle that dusts across her cheeks, wants to bury his fingers in her soft coffee-coloured locks. For an instant, he finally allows himself to feel it, acknowledge it – the unbelievable physical craving that’s taken up residence in his core, boiling beneath his flesh since their eyes first met. If there was nothing in the world but the two of them, he’d take her in his arms and kiss her until those pink lips were bitten red and swollen, until she had nothing left to say but his name.

He twitches involuntarily, his body keening to touch. It’s an unbelievable effort of will to push the feeling away, but he can’t afford to be weak for more than a moment. So, gently, he begins to pull his arm from her grip. It hurts to his core; hurts almost like he’s physically tearing himself from her grasp.

Suddenly, Rey inhales sharply, deeply. A soft moan follows as she begins to stir and awaken. Poe freezes, his entire being flushing with heat despite his pain. She rolls her head loosely against his arm, lips briefly brushing across his skin like a hot coal. He bites back a gasp.

Her luminous hazel eyes blink open muzzily. All of a sudden, she bolts upright, fully aware. She jerks her hands away. A bright red flush creeps up her neck, cheekbones flaring and freckles darkening. Her expression, however, is completely cool when she meets his gaze.

General,” she murmurs, voice rough with sleep in a way that thrills up his spine, “You’re awake.”

She stands, her fingers already fluttering over his body – a detached, clinical assessment that unfortunately still manages to light up his nerves like a Christmas tree. Goosebumps erupt everywhere her hands land. He opens his mouth, letting it hang open stupidly as he tries to come up with something to say. She huffs out a little laugh, mystifying him further.

“Sorry,” she explains, laugh still evident in her voice, “My hands are always freezing. It’s a curse for a doctor.”

Oh. The goosebumps. Poe wishes he was cold. She passes a finger slowly across his field of vision, no doubt gauging pupillary reactions and focus. “How are you feeling?” she asks, businesslike once again.

Poe finally finds his words, but they aren’t an answer to her question. “Why is Kylo Ren looking for you, doc?”

His voice is slightly muted, unsupported as it is by his injured ribs, but it’s also flat and numb in a way that isn’t natural. Somewhere, buried deep below this unusual calm, Poe knows he’ll find panic there, fear and burning anger. Against all of his better judgement, he’d allowed her, this unknown element, unprecedented access to the lives and safety of the people he’s responsible for. He – fuck – he doesn’t have it in him to believe that she might somehow be involved with the First Order, but if she’s significant to them, then it’s on Poe’s head if anyone, including Rey, gets hurt. He’s the one who allowed to her to become mixed up in all this, after all.

Surprisingly, his question prompts very little reaction from the young doctor. For a moment, he’s not even sure she’s heard him. She continues her examination, eyes not meeting his. “My immediate priority is your health, General," she eventually states, "We’ll talk about it once you’ve told me how you’re feeling.”

It’s ire that finally penetrates his emotional haze. Poe could swear that it’s Dr. Skywalker’s sole purpose in life to constantly undermine him. In any other circumstance, it would be impossible force meets immovable object, but something about her always throws him off his game. “What do you think? I’ve just been tortured, doc,” he growls, wishing she would just look at him, “And I’d like to think I deserve to know why.

A terrible stillness comes over her, almost as if he’d stunned her. He watches warily, waiting like a child about to punished, before he realizes that her hands have frozen in the process of removing the dressings on his chest.

Shit.

Suddenly, a heaping serving of the panic he’d been unable to feel before now pours down his throat, and his heart seizes. The moment expands, taut like a drum. Poe can’t breathe.

“If you let me finish my exam,” she eventually says, voice little above a whisper, “I’ll tell you why… this is my fault.”

The last four words are laced with exhaustion and deep devastation. Finally, her eyes meet his. The remarkably soft hazel brims with tears, dark eyelashes clumping with moisture and brows drawn together with hurt. It isn’t until his palm lands hot on her flesh that he even realizes he’s reached for her.

She freezes like a frightened gazelle, arrested by his touch at her bare shoulder. Despite every fragment of him that’s still vibrating with suspicion and fear at her continued evasion, he can’t help himself – he needs to reassure her. “I’m hurt and confused, doc,” he finds himself saying, “I’m not mad… I’m afraid.”

The young doctor nods tightly, tears still standing in her eyes. It seems to take a few moments for her to gather herself enough to speak again, and that reaction, more than any other, is what shocks Poe. He hasn’t known her long, but he’s never seen her shy away from hard truths. Despite the pain burning across his chest, he doesn’t move his hand from her shoulder.

Rey doesn’t move to brush it off.

“I promise, I’ll tell you… Just, please, let me make sure you’re going to be alright.”

The exhale that escapes his lungs is shakier than he’d like. Pins and needles race from his ruined chest up his arm. Ultimately, his hand finally drops numbly from the doctor’s shoulder. Blackness blooms across his vision at the bolt of pain that rattles through his bones. Then, Poe’s abruptly jolted back from the agony by the icy brand of her fingers on his skin again. She has a hand on each of his shoulders, holding him steady as she instructs him to breathe, “Just breathe, General...”

When he’s able to look at her again, several tears have escaped and tracked their way down her cheeks. Rey looks absolutely distraught, but as soon as he’s calmed down, she continues to examine him without pause. Poe cuts her some slack, lying still and quiet while she changes his dressings. He looks away from her work, finding he can’t bring himself to witness the damage that Ren has wreaked upon his body.

Instead, he watches the young doctor’s face. He’d never admit it, but he’s a little bereft that its Rey who’s seeing him like this – helpless and victimized... Not that he’d allowed himself to follow certain lines of thought about how he would have preferred for her to see him with his shirt off. Definitely not. Still, he can’t help the shame and disgust that boil up in his stomach, sour like bile as she tends to the tattered remnants of his flesh.

If he hadn’t gone in half-cocked, as is fast becoming a dangerous habit of his, he never would have been captured in the first place. At that, a thought suddenly occurs to him: “How did you know where to find me anyway?” he squints at her suspiciously. “You shouldn’t have even heard about my capture…”

He pauses shortly. “Who do I need to demote?”

To Poe’s secret delight, Rey snorts out an ungainly little chuckle at that. “Your cook.”

She glances at him sideways, suppressing a grin. “And Finn. Somehow I don’t think you’ll be demoting either of them…”

The short laugh that Poe barks out hurts his ribs, but it’s worth it. “Nope,” he manages to grunt, “We’d all starve if we lost Maz, and Finn…”

The general pauses, throat suddenly tight. “Finn’s my best friend,” he finishes quietly, just as she finally disposes of his old bandages.
Their eyes lock for a long moment. It’s difficult to interpret Rey’s expression, but if he had to take a guess, he’d say she’s – unsurprised. Fuck. She doesn’t miss a trick, does she?

“Maz,” she starts, licking her lips a little nervously, “Maz was how I heard about your capture... But I came after you because of Finn. He told me it was Kylo Ren who took you.”

He searches her face, looking beneath the anxiety there to something deeper – a real terror – naked in her eyes. “You – you know him, somehow,” he states, the words loud in the room despite his near-whisper, “Don’t you?”

Rey’s throat visibly bobs as she swallows. She looks away, casting her gaze downwards as she nods. “Yes.”

Her voice is dry, her hands shake where they clutch tightly together atop his blankets. “We were – colleagues.”

He lets the silence sit, waiting. There’s no way he’s settling for that weak pronouncement. She glances up at him, sighing resignedly when she catches a glimpse of his expression. “He was – he was Luke Skywalker’s protege. His successor. When I began studying under Luke-”

Whoa.

“I assisted with their research. When Dr. Skywalker and I realized what he intended to do with our data… Luke made me take the rest of our work and destroy it. I – I haven’t seen Ren since that day…”

She inhales as if to continue, but it’s as though she’s suddenly been petrified. Her gaze fixes on a point somewhere far outside their little bubble of quiet. Poe counts far too many heartbeats before she releases the breath. “When Ren found out what I’d done, it was…” Rey trails off, apparently lost for words, unable to articulate what she’d witnessed.

Knowing what he now personally knows about Kylo Ren, Poe isn’t surprised. Jesus. She must be terrified of him. How had she found the courage to waltz right into the lion’s den and steal his prize right out from underneath his masked nose?

“I imagine Ren’s interested in finding out whether or not I continued with our research,” she eventually shrugs, a near-perfect imitation of a casual gesture. “Of course I didn’t. After that, I immediately switched my focus to emergency surgery. I couldn’t have my work used for evil again.”

Poe chews on the inside of his cheek for a moment. “Skywalker. He’s… no one’s seen him in years, doc. What the hell happened to him?” What the hell happened to you? he desperately wants to scream.

She shakes her head, still not looking at Poe. “I don’t know,” she whispers. “I wish I knew.”

He watches her carefully for a few moments more, wondering whether he’ll ever reach the cool water in the deep - perhaps bottomless - well of her past. Risking quite a bit on nothing more than a hunch, Poe opens up his big mouth again, spilling possibly the biggest Resistance secret in the name of finding out more about this woman. “You know, the head of the Global Resistance might be interested in knowing that her niece is caught up in the fighting in Vietnam.”

The young woman gapes at him in shock. “Leia?! She’s the lead– ” Rey cuts herself off, clearly having caught on to what Poe’s just made her reveal: that she didn’t just study under Luke Skywalker.

Rey’s his daughter.

Rey narrows her eyes at him, once again all distrust and defensiveness, closer to the woman he first met, only days ago. It wasn’t his intention to make her feel threatened, but he understands the response, nonetheless. After Poe stews for a while under some of her intensely uncomfortable scrutiny, she seems to hit fuck it. Rey slumps down with a fatalistic sigh, gesturing defeatedly at him to continue.

“How come no one ever knew about you?” he asks quietly.

She seems a little surprised with herself when she answers him. “I – he didn’t adopt me until I was sixteen. I was only with him for a few years before he was just… gone. He disappeared before I’d even finished my residency.”

It doesn’t really answer his question, but Poe decides to let it lie in favour of watching Rey’s emotions chase each other across her expression like clouds on a blustery day. Her features ultimately settle into a harsh scowl. “I’m so sorry that this happened to you because of me,” she whispers, her words harsh and full of self-blame.

Poe’s traitorous heart wrenches at the pain and guilt in her voice.

“I can’t even properly care for your wounds here, General. I brought you back to the citadel, but everyone’s gone. There’s… no one left. It’s been abandoned.”

Despite the anxiety in her tone, Poe actually sighs with relief. “Don’t worry doc,” assures her, “It’s Resistance policy to abandon the base if its location might be compromised. It’s likely they’re already at the next location.”

She nods, still looking miserable.

“Alright,” he sighs, “We need to talk more about Kylo Ren soon, but right now we need to focus on getting out of here. I wouldn’t put it past the First Order to have trackers installed on all their vehicles. It’s likely they’re looking for that motorcycle you stole. They’ll be here soon.”

At that moment, Poe witnesses something he’ll never forget.

Rey’s spine straightens, her gaze turning distant and calculating. Smoothly, she pushes herself to standing, all movement suddenly precise and measured, almost feline. He watches, spellbound, as she once again transforms into the terrifying soldier who singlehandedly orchestrated his escape.

“We have to head for the jungle.”

Notes:

Please please please let me know what you think! Comments are the best

Chapter 11: Go Hunt for Honey

Summary:

Rey and Poe... work on their issues.

Notes:

Hi everyone! It's been a hot minute! I'm sorry there has been such a long delay between updates - writing this chapter was a huge challenge (I'm still not sure it's right), and I also started working full time again and had to try and figure out when to squeeze in writing. But I've got it sorted now, so I'm hoping that posting this will help motivate further updates!
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Now edited, lol

 

WARNINGS:
Rey roughly outlines the details of a past assault
Rey experiences PTSD flashbacks/dissociations
Mentions of torture/injury

Chapter Text

“You know him, don’t you?”

Rey dwells on the question long after she’s already answered Poe. Does she know Kylo Ren? When she thought she knew him, he went by a different name. He was… a teacher, a role model – at times almost like a big brother – until he… until he wasn’t.

Then again, she reasons with herself, the change had been a lot more subtle than that. While she’d initially felt welcomed into his large, multi-tiered, often unrelated familial clan, he’d slowly isolated her further and further until the only thing she ever did was work. With him.

Wet leaves go ignored as they brush her face, leaving trails of droplets that roll down her jaw to her neck. She and the general are traveling on foot – swiftly and silently – away from the abandoned citadel. A sudden, sharp inhale from the man in question behind her, nearly inaudible, wrenches her from her rapidly spiraling thoughts. Thankfully, his soft footfalls remain steady, his breathing quickly evening out.

There had been enough supplies left at the old base that Rey had been able stabilize Poe and bind up the worst of his wounds. In the small room that she and Rose had briefly shared, the doctor had found enough basic survival gear for two people.

She’d nearly cried with grateful relief when she’d discovered it. Thank the gods for Rose. The woman is a genius.

They’ve already managed to put several klicks between themselves and the mountain on which the citadel rests. The gear is a comforting weight on her back. Rey carries it all, of course, and hasn’t the general raised holy hell about that?

No matter how much noise he’s made, she refuses to budge. Poe is injured. Quite severely. He shouldn’t even be traveling under his condition; there’s no way he’s carrying any weight. Not that he could – she’s strapped his left arm to his torso, and he’d be no use with his right, either. Cracked knuckles.

The well of strength he’d managed to tap into beneath his doubtless considerable pain is once again impressing her against her will. He’s so strong. All of these rebels seem to be… She only hopes that she can make good on her intention to return him safely to his friends. They might be the only hope left in this miserable world.

Suddenly, she freezes. Far behind them, deep in the jungle, she can hear faint signs that the First Order has found the citadel. Counting on the noise and chaos of the search to cover any faint signs of their escape route, she gestures for the still and silent resistance fighter to follow her. He does. Without hesitation. Trusting her yet again. It never ceases to surprise her.

Trust from patients isn’t unusual to Rey. Trust from a hardened fighter like Poe? It’s something she never could have expected. It – it hurts. Like many of their interactions, something about his trust makes her feel raw, open to the air and stinging. Aware in a way she’s never experienced outside of the operating suite.

Chewing hard on her lip, she ruminates on the rapidly evolving nature of the relationship between her and the soldier behind her. At this point, if nothing else, she has to acknowledge some hard truths. The doctor isn’t just here for Finn anymore. There’s a really good chance that she’s been here for more than Finn since almost the beginning. The Resistance – it’s people – they've left a permanent impression. It’s so much bigger than she could have ever (secretly) hoped. And this man, one of its leaders, he –

Well, he’s frustrating. Stubborn. Sometimes infuriatingly obtuse.

But Rey can’t stop herself from trying to figure him out. Damn her curiosity, but he’s a puzzle she’s dying to solve.

Moreover, she feels responsible – is responsible – for the misery that’s been wrought upon his flesh. She can’t just abandon him now. Not when she’s so close to saving him from Kylo Ren. Rey needs to get him back to his comrades, and she has to stay with him long enough to ensure both he and Finn recover. She’ll admit she’s in that deep, at least.

For now, she’s careful not to let him push himself harder than he should. Ideally, she’d rather see a lot less movement from him generally, not that they have much choice. Still, Rey feels no shame in soundly hushing him every time he tries to complain or contribute further. They’ve been trekking in the direction of the general’s choosing for several hours when his repeated insistence that he’s fine finally breaks her calm.

A sudden about-face has him nearly stumbling into her.

“Oh my god!” she whisper-screams at him, “I swear you are like child, Dameron. Why can’t you just shut up and do as you’re told?”

His dark eyes flash up to meet hers, and for a split-second, she sees it: the anger she’s been expecting since the second she slapped his rifle out of his face. As soon as she finds it, however, it’s gone, replaced by a look that’s more… dangerous. Her body feels rooted to the spot, as though she’s become one with the trees.

“An eye for an eye, doc,” he replies, voice a low growl.

She flushes, well aware that her behaviour has been little better than his up until now.

It’s only with the setting sun behind her back, casting light on Poe’s face, that she sees how bloodless and clammy he’s become in the last few kilometers. Clearly, it’s time to stop for the night. With a weary sigh and a roll of her eyes, the young doctor turns away.

While he sputters in response, Rey has the opportunity to look around for a suitable place to set up camp. Just ten or so meters up the slope above them, a huge, green-covered rock juts out. She begins to hike toward it, ignoring the general’s exhausting questions. The man can’t follow to save his life.

Behind the rock, the earth has settled into a bowl-like hollow. It’s flanked by several sturdy-looking trees. It’s perfect. Turning back to hail her irritating companion, she’s interrupted by the unexpected thrash of vegetation and the scrambling of heavy feet. Ducking around the front of the rock, Rey seizes the front of Poe’s shirt and hauls him as gently as possible up the last bit of the slope.

They’re pressed chest-to-chest, as she straightens. Why does his weight on her arms make them ache in a way that’s almost... good? Because – because he’s looking at her in that way again. Like he’s trying to examine her, figure her out… No. He wants to know her.

Rey flinches.

Wordlessly, she releases him, turning away to lead him into the hollow, muttering loudly as she does so: “I should have known you’d be a nightmare patient.”

There. Instant distance.

His teeth grind together audibly as he follows her. She can’t help but feel a little bad for her shortness. It is without a doubt that Poe is in significant discomfort. There were no painkillers to be found back at the base beyond topical numbing gel.

Rey slings the packs off her shoulders, depositing them on the leaf litter beneath their feet. When she turns to look at the general again, he’s already stridden past her, kneeling to fumble with the supplies. He’s just doing it on purpose now. The doctor tilts her face to the sky, clenching her teeth as she counts silently to ten.

It doesn’t work.

“Enough of this!” she hisses furiously, pulling the packs out of reach of his useless fondling.

“Sit.” She prods his shoulder hard enough that he’s knocked off balance, tipping over onto his ass with a heavy “Oof!”

“Stay! Do. Not. Help. I know what I’m doing, Dameron.”

It’s silent for long enough that it starts to get awkward. Rey can feel her shoulders creep towards her ears. His furious gaze feels like it’s burning a hole directly into her spine. Luckily, it takes very little time for her to stretch a tarp between the three trees. She angles it so that any rain will run off and out of their cozy little nest in the earth: for that is instantly what it becomes once she’s lit a small fire in the shelter of the rock and arranged their packs in such a way that Poe is able to recline in relative comfort.

She flushes, taken aback by the sudden intimacy of the space. Gingerly, she sits down opposite him, the flames flickering between them. Silence lands heavily, weighty and expectant. Rey knows that so much has been left unsaid, but she has no idea how or where to begin, so instead she waits for the axe to fall.

In a way, it’s almost surprising that the general has been able to hold his tongue for as long as he has. Rey would have expected him to begin harassing her for information the second they left the Resistance base. Other than his needling insistence that he’s had ‘had worse,’ he’s actually demonstrated admirable restraint. If she were in his shoes, she would have demanded an explanation long before now.

She’s still gazing through the flames, lost in thought, when he finally speaks. “So, are we going to talk about it, doc?”

Startled, she glances up at him, hackles already raised. How on earth is she going to talk her way out of this one? One of his eyebrows arches skeptically when she doesn’t immediately respond.

“You haven’t said a single thing about the cuts on my chest, Skywalker. You’re obviously not stupid. I know you’ve realized exactly what he did to me.”

Each word is like a bomb dropped into the space between them – indiscriminate about who they might harm. She’s shocked, actually. This isn’t quite the direction she’d expected the conversation to turn. An interrogation about her past with Kylo Ren is arguably the more prescient issue, despite the obvious horror of his wounds. Rey gapes at him.

Then, she responds as she always has – defensively. “I may be a doctor, but that doesn’t mean that I’m a therapist,” she barks, her body language dangerous, her words targeted.

She stops, bites back any more. He doesn’t deserve her indignation. She breathes.

“It’s clear you’ve been tortured. Horrifically. And what he did to you is… unforgiveable. But General… I – I don’t think I have any insight to give you. I have no idea why he’d hurt you this way.”

Poe levels his powerful gaze at her, simultaneously fearless and wounded. “He wanted to flay me alive, Dr. Skywalker,” his tone emotionally exhausted. “That’s how far he was willing to go to find you.”

There it is.

Fuck.

“I…” she starts, but there’s no way to continue. She’s speechless for the first time in her memory. The young doctor looks away, uselessly trying to avoid his scrutiny. Poe’s attention bores into her skin, like he could look right through her and see all of the hurt and the lies and the fear beneath. Her heart speeds up, breaths short. Shit. Familiar panic bubbles up.

The general’s next words are quiet, yet Rey flinches away as though avoiding a blow. “No more work bullshit. Who are you to him?”

Rey’s shoulders hunch further, reacting to his implication despite herself. How is it that he sees so much? He waits. The silence goes on but for the crackle of flames and the sounds of the jungle. She chews on her lip so hard she tastes copper.

The strangest thing is that she wants to tell him. She wants to unburden herself to this man, a near-stranger. Not only does she feel that she owes him an explanation, but that instinct is there, once again: he can be trusted.

Quite suddenly, Rey’s muscles unlock, and she crawls around the fire to sit nearer to the general. For reasons she can’t explain, she needs to make her confession to him in a way that feels more private, intimate. A foolish thought, given the fact that the statistical probability of them being overheard is practically nil. Yet she finds herself near enough to the man that she can feel the faintest hint of his breath on her skin.

He looks at her almost like a prey animal – spellbound.

Her throat is dryer than a desert.

“He… I didn’t know him as Kylo Ren,” she begins.

What she’d told him before is true, to an extent. They really had been colleagues under Luke, but that didn’t begin to cover the complexity of their relationship. “We were friends, of a sort. I suppose. Like with Luke, I saw him as someone to look up to – to learn from… He – he wanted something different.”

She can feel the general stiffen next to her, muscles rigid with tension as he listens in silence, for once. “I was… young,” then, almost to herself, “So young..." "When I begin studying with Luke, I was only nineteen and I had… no experience. I didn’t see the signs.”

Rey trails off, momentarily lost in that strange feeling again. She’d felt pride in her own work when he praised her; pleasure at his attention and seeming understanding of her past, her loneliness. And underneath it all, that strange prickling sensation at the back of her neck every time she caught him looking at her for a beat too long. The tiny jolt of alarm very time a casual touch came with intent.

“He – wanted. He wanted everything I represent – what I can do for him… Wanted me to help his twisted work. Wanted… Me. For himself.”

The doctor clenches her eyes closed, as though losing the ability to see will somehow make Poe disappear. Instead, she’s suddenly plunged back into that moment; the moment her entire world had crumbled for the second time in her young life. A deep ache, like the echo of an injury, throbs across her lower back where the lab bench had dug in as he loomed over her. She’d had bruises for weeks.

Rey isn’t a short woman, but she’d never felt smaller than when faced by Ben Solo.

In her – ignorance, naivety, blind, foolish hope – Rey had gone to confront him, when they’d finally realized where his research was leading him. Rey had been so certain that it was all a misunderstanding, that there was no way he could have betrayed them like that.

Ben had been working late at the lab. Alone.

“I never saw it coming,” she whispers, her voice barely audible over the small campfire. “He had me cornered before I even knew what was happening.”

Ripples of anger, of pure rage are practically radiating from the soldier at her words – she senses it in the tension of his posture, the change of his breath, the sharp tang of his sweat. Strangely, she feels no more vulnerable than before; she’s somehow certain that the anger is on her behalf, rather than at her for bringing Kylo Ren down on their heads. Poe feels outrage for her. For what was done to her.

It gives her the courage to continue.

“He – it – he was… insidious. Tried to convince me. C-coerce me.”

All of a sudden, Rey needs to look at him. First the first time in her life, she wants to – no, needs to – be seen. The young doctor’s hazel eyes snap open, her focus immediately drawn to, fixated on his deep brown ones. “It didn’t get violent until I tried to say no.”

She chokes, gagging on the final admission she needs to make, her guilt and disgust at what she’d had to do. Rey’s teeth grind together as Poe’s stare burns into her, barely suppressed ferocity simmering beneath his skin, hotter than the fire barely feet from them. The truth is, she’s hardly holding on – is wavering from here to there. With him.

Quicker than lightning, her hand darts out of its own accord, seizing on to the general’s good shoulder like a lifeline. When the words finally do come, it’s like they’re being broadcast from far, far away. “I’m the reason he wears the mask. Because of what I did to him.”

The sound around her is strange. Muted somehow. Creeping dread is there, too. Cold sweat. Her hands and feet are numb. Then, she hears it, crystal-clear and nightmarish: the wretched, horrific, struggling breaths as Ben clutched at his face, his one good eye staring up at her, the soft chocolate brown no longer inviting and familiar, but alien, vicious, and deeply, deeply betrayed.

“Doc! Dr Skywalker! Doc!” Poe has to several times, but his voice breaks through.

Doctor Skywalker. That’s right. She has a patient to care for.

Oxygen floods her brain as she shudders back into herself. The general’s good arm is gripped around hers, his fingers wrapping almost clear around her bicep. The contact, as soon as she acknowledges it, is electric.

She stares at him, signals misfiring through her nerve endings. The complicated snarl of sensations and emotions are enough to render her completely immobile for one moment so long it seems to last several lifetimes. The soldier opposite her is equally still, his face now near enough that his breath is hot on her mouth.

The slightest movement, some hint, some twitch from him suddenly breaks the spell.

Rey jerks herself from his grasp none too gently, wincing with regret as his groan of discomfort chases her retreat back to the opposite side of the small camp.

“There!” she spits, viciously, “Happy?! I don’t want anything to do with him! Ever again. He’s a monster!

Her voice drops, nearly inaudible. “And there’s no escape. Not for me.”

Chapter 12: The Arch of My Skull

Summary:

Poe's brain and his heart are NOT on board with each other.

Notes:

Hello all! Thanks for your patience, as always, through my slow process.

A quick warning that Poe's self-talk in this chapter is pretty negative. Just because he thinks that way about himself doesn't make it true, lol

The last section of this chapter, written in italics, is NSFW. You're welcome.

Warnings:
Negative self-talk
Swearing (always)
Speculations on assault severity
Nightmare
Medium smut

As always, comments are lovely :)

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The jungle is loud, especially at night.

In the 24-hour span of a day, there is no time at which it isn’t positively teeming with life and noise. Insects chirp, frogs croak; nocturnal birds and mammals call out to each other, the eternal discord never pausing. It merely changes its tone and flavour as the hours pass.

One of humanity’s unsung superpowers, however, is its near-infinite ability to ‘get used’ to almost anything. General Dameron had long ago grown accustomed to the wall of noise that comes from the trees. His sleep is more often disturbed by a cacophony of a much more internal nature. Tonight, however, he can’t seem to keep out the external pandemonium, either.

Poe lies awake, listening to the din, unable to escape his thoughts. They’re loud, too, and mostly centered on the young woman asleep on the ground next to him. His mind whirls, unable to settle on anything, constantly swinging back like a boomerang to the fact that Rey Skywalker is lying less than a foot away from him, asleep in his presence for the second time in as many days – nights?

Time has no meaning in her company.

Rey has revealed more of herself to him tonight than he had ever hoped to learn, and yet all he’s left with are more questions. Why would she offer to help Finn? Why would she trust him, a stranger, with such deeply personal secrets? Why would she rescue him?

As far as the general is concerned, she has every right (and more) to focus on absolutely nothing but her own survival, and yet here Poe is, living proof of how selfless she is despite her experiences.

His blood runs colder than liquid nitrogen when he thinks about what she’s been subjected to.

She’d appeared so fragile when she’d outlined Ren’s treachery that it hadn’t felt right to press for details, but its abundantly clear that the doctor had suffered a sexual assault at his hands. Given her remark about the mask, he can surmise she’d been able to fight him off at some point, but he doesn’t want to even consider how far it might have gotten before that.

Poe’s survived more horrors than any one person deserves, but he’s never been betrayed like that – by someone he trusted.

He tears his eyes away from the tarp over their heads, blank and black in the darkness, and risks a glance at her. She’d fallen asleep on her side, facing him. In the dull glow of the firelight, he can see that her expression is still blessedly peaceful. Poe shuts his eyes briefly, silently and fervently grateful that she’s sleeping easy. When they open again, he steadfastly directs his gaze back up to the roof of their little shelter.

It hurts too much to look at Rey, for more than one reason.

The first and most literal is that when he tilts his head to look at her, it pulls horribly at the mess of his chest, sharpening the ever-present dull agony to near-intolerable levels. But is also just hurts. Deep in his chest. Below his ribs. It’s a soul-deep hurt.

He’s ashamed. Can he really claim that his behaviour towards Rey has been any different than that monster? No, he hasn’t attempted any violence on her, nor would he ever want to; but he has put her at risk of violence. He’s scared her. More than once.

And he wants her.

Guilt flushes though him like frigid water running head to toe down his skin. It’s horrifying to think that he might have anything in common with Ren, but he also can’t deny how viscerally he craves Rey. It’d been mere hours ago that he’d allowed himself to watch her sleep, for fuck’s sake. How is that any less of a violation than what Kylo had done?

What the fuck are they going to do now? Now that she’s told him; now that he knows; what can they do? His speeding train of thought screeches to a halt at that. What can they do, now, with the information they have? That’s somewhere to start.

He thinks back over what she’d given him, laying out the facts in his head. The most unshakeable truth, at least in his opinion, is that Dr Skywalker is entirely blameless – the victim – though he hates the way that word sounds on her. As far as he’s concerned, she’s done absolutely nothing to deserve what she’s been through.

Though she has acted in her own self-interest in the time he’s known her, he’s also witnessed first-hand the way she’ll put her own safety on the line to right what she perceives as wrongs.

Secondly, Rey’s right. She isn’t safe from Kylo Ren. Whatever Ren’s motivations are now – whether he lusts for Rey’s blood or Rey herself – it’s clear to Poe that the First Order’s Supreme Psycho is here for Rey. His focus is on her; she’s in his sights.

Though, given what she’d revealed to the general, he thinks it safe to assume that Ren’s lust runs deeper than blood – although that conclusion makes him literally shudder with rage as he fights not to turn right back around and murder him. That is, if he isn’t already dead from the cave-in. Rey seems certain he’s survived.

That concerning thought leads him right back around to the place his mind keeps ending up: the reason why Rey Skywalker trusts him enough to sleep next to him. He’d offered her something he’d been certain would earn her trust. And he can’t fucking take it back now.

Unbidden, the image of her terrorized expression as she’d told her story crawls insidious like a spider back up to the surface of his brain, reminding him of why he’d made the offer in the first place.

“There’s no escape,” she’d all but whispered, “Not for me.”

The urge to follow her back around the campfire, to pull her into his arms, to comfort her, had violently warred with the intense shame he’d felt at his own covetous desire for her, unknowingly laid out alongside Ren’s twisted agenda. He’d been sick with himself. Still is, to be honest. If she knew, there’s no way she’d trust him like this, feel safe with him like this.

His first instinct (because of course it was) had been to comfort her. “We’ll get you back, doc,” he’d tried to assure, “A soon as we reach the base, I’ll have my best team take you and Rose back to the Red Cross clinic. You’ve done more than enough for us.”

She’d shaken her head in the negative and so he’d shifted, leaning earnestly closer to her even though it pained him terribly. “Getting involved put a target on your back that you don’t need and you don’t deserve,” he’d tried to explain.

The doctor had laughed bitterly at that, and Poe was alarmed to see tears standing in her eyes again as she looked up at him.

“You’re not listening, General.”

He remembers the way her voice had been rough, angry.

“Kylo Ren knew I was in Vietnam before you ever burst into my O.R., Dameron. My guess is the only reason he didn’t get to me at the clinic is because you accidentally happened to get to me first. When he lost access to me there, he set a trap and tortured you for my location.”

She’d sat up a little, turning to face him, to confront him with the truth. “I’m not safe from Kylo Ren at the Red Cross. I’m not safe from him anywhere.

Like a bullet between the eyes, the hopelessness of her situation had finally hit him.

And he’d been unable to help stop himself.

“Then stay with us,” he’d breathed.

Her gaze had been fixed on him, eyes widening with realization.

“Join the Resistance. You need a place to hide; we need a doctor!”

The desperation in his tone had been disgracefully audible.

“Please,” he’d found himself begging, “Please come back with me.”

A dawning expression of breathtaking hope had overtaken her, and Poe was helpless in the face of it.

“I can protect you, Rey,” he’d whispered.

She’d agreed.

Now he’s left pondering whether or not he’d done the right thing. No matter which way he looks at it, he reluctantly comes to the same conclusion again and again: The Resistance is now her only hope of survival, at least until they can find some way to smuggle her out of Vietnam.

Maybe Leia can help.

Of course, Poe had neglected to mention the ‘smuggling her out of Vietnam’ part of his plan to Rey. He somehow doesn’t think that the doctor will react positively to that idea. Having her temporarily join up as their medic is just the means to an end, which is taking her out of harm’s way. At least, that’s what Poe keeps telling himself.

He can’t help the tiny spark still burning in his chest, the one that he’s felt since he first laid eyes on her. Something in her untold depths calls out to people; she’s special. She’ll become something vital to them, to him if he lets her stay with them for too long.

And he’s still bound and determined to keep that from happening, because… Because he’s already been broken beyond repair, and if something were to happen to her, if she falls victim to that monster because of him, Poe’s not sure he could ever recover. It’s not that she’s come to mean so much to him in so short a time… That’s not it at all.

It’s because she’s somehow managed to retain this… this light inside her.

Part of him wants to bask in that light until it burns so bright it scorches away his all of his sins like some ancient saint. Simultaneously, he wants to turn away from it in shame, too marred and blackened to ever deserve to be so visible. If he were the cause that light going out or even dimming, he’d never be able to forgive himself.

Yet the instinct to rejoice is there, too. Even with his extreme aversion to the mere concept of the doctor at risk, he can’t help but feel secretly thrilled that she’ll be with them for a while yet. Almost unwillingly, he imagines her at the new base, blending in seamlessly with the other Resistance fighters. She’ll walk through the square of the empty village deep in the mountain valley, calling out greetings to members of Black Squad. He can clearly picture her seamlessly taking charge of medical operations, eating meals with Finn and Rose. Eating meals with him…

The way the Rey in his fantasies fits into the Resistance like a piece of a puzzle – he knows that it would be like that in real life if she stays and its… a beautiful vision, but nothing more than that. He stares at the darkened cover above, willing it to provide him with some kind of escape from the tangled web he’s blithely crawled into. First it had been for the sake of his best friend, and then he’d stayed: snarling, knotting, and weaving himself deeper until he’s not sure he’ll ever break away.

Does he even really want to?

At least he can rest easy knowing that, for the moment, she’s safe.

She’s safe.

She’s sleeping next to him, and she’s safe.

Poe finally drops off to sleep with that comforting thought.

-

When he opens his eyes, it’s hot and muggy – which is nothing new – but there is something indefinably different about the quality of the air and the light. He looks up to dappled sunlight slanting across the ceiling above him. What’s so surprising to him is that the plaster that slowly comes into focus is not what he’d expected to wake up to.

For a powerfully strange moment, he’s completely disoriented, but then the soft scent of mangoes drifts in on the breeze, and he remembers. Fighting off a contented grin, Poe rolls over to his side and throws the sheet off his legs. He’s wearing nothing but boxer briefs, the moisture in the air clinging to his skin in a way that is deeply familiar as he pushes himself up to sit on the edge of the bed, the soles of both feet landing on the warm wooden floor.

The bedroom around him is cozy and lived-in, a familiar clutter of knick-knacks, potted plants, and books. The walls are punctuated by numerous windows, open wide with nothing but thin screens between him and the elements. He gazes out the large window that takes up almost the entire wall next to the bed, appreciating the view he’s looked at for the happiest months of his life.

Overlooking a deep and tranquil caldera lake, they’d built their house on the verdant, rising slope of the crater. Vibrant green leaves hang heavily around the house and Poe listens to them rustle as he picks up on the nearly silent footsteps approaching their room from the veranda, even over the distant calls of birds and monkeys. He perks up at the faint sound.

Grin broadening into a smile, he looks towards the screen door expectantly, waiting with bated breath for her, even after all this time.

She doesn’t disappoint.

Rey pushes through the door with a massive armful of multicoloured flowers, already talking about what they should have for breakfast. He can barely see her face for all of the foliage, oranges, yellows and reds mingled with glimpses of creamy skin and glossy hair. Flashes of her stunning smile hit until he feels punch-drunk.

She’s still listing possible menu items. Of course, she would know he’s already awake. Rey somehow always knows.

Poe stands, wrapping his hands gently around her upper arms as he stops her rapid-fire speech with a kiss.

“Morning, Sunshine,” he murmurs against her mouth when he pulls back just a little.

“Morning!” She giggles as the flowers tickle her face, leaving a bright smear of vibrant orange pollen across her freckled cheek.

He wants it to stay there forever.

He wants her to stay forever. He tells her so.

“Of course, I’ll stay forever…” she breathes, dropping the fragrant blossoms to cascade around their feet so she can grab a hold of him and kiss him properly.

Poe dives into the kiss like he and Rey sometimes dive into the cool of the moonlit lake underneath billions of stars. Every single time he kisses her, it makes him feel untethered, like he would feel at zero gravity. He grasps her hips, pulling her body flush to his. She responds in kind, inviting him to devour her as she always does, like she needs it as much as he needs her.

Their lips break apart for a gasp of air; she sighs out in pleasure and Christ he’ll never get tired of hearing her. Poe clutches young woman to him hard, ducking in to capture her mouth again. He’s probably kissed her thousands of times by now, but tasting her never fails to wake him up, make him feel alive. And hungry.

As her fingers move to snarl tightly into his curls, his hands find their way down her hips and around behind to cup her firm ass cheeks in both hands, squeezing harder when she squeaks at the feeling. Curling his fingers under her ass, he tugs her up, growling with satisfaction when she takes the hint and hops into his arms, easily circling his hips with her strong thighs.

Her core is astonishingly hot as she automatically grinds against his rapidly swelling length, tangible even through her shorts and his underwear. Poe hisses as her blunt nails bite into his scalp, the fiery passion that constantly boils beneath her skin unleashed like a tornado every time they touch. She nips sharply at his lower lip before working her way down his neck, biting bruises into his skin.

Her hands come around to cup his jaw as he slides one palm up her spine to grip the nape of her neck. The ring she wears on her left hand scrapes thrillingly against his stubble as she forces their mouths back together in a vicious kiss – more teeth than tongue. Poe moans helplessly, consumed by her willingly, offering himself up to the flames with no regret.

Petals crush beneath their feet as he stumbles backward, tumbling to the unmade bed with the incredible woman in his arms. He lands on his back, Rey deliciously draped atop him, her slight weight seeming to sink into him like sugar dissolving into coffee.

“Too – mm – too many clothes – huh – sweetheart,” he growls between heated kisses, trying to get his fingers under her brief little jean shorts while she writhes and wriggles atop him.

“What about – ah! – breakfast?” Rey asks, but without any real heat.

“Later,” Poe snarls, rolling until she’s trapped beneath him, wrists shackled by his hands above her head.

She tilts her head coyly, looking up at him with a dangerously mischievous glint in her eyes. Breath catches in his throat. Rey is absolutely stunning. Cheeks rosy pink, lips parted and glistening, hair already wild from his fingers. She practically glows she’s so beautiful.

Her hazel eyes dance wickedly as she arches up into him, teasing, “Are you sure there’s nothing that you’re hungry for?”

An embarrassingly desperate noise issues from his chest at the question, and Rey laughs throatily. His arousal already borders on painful, prompting a sharp hiss from his lips and the brutal tightening of his grip on her wrists. “I can think of a few things,” he pants, licking into her mouth as he deftly undoes the button of her jean shorts, sliding his fingers inside.

Without warning, Rey’s entire body tenses in his grip.

Something’s wrong.

He rips his mouth away from her, horrified to see that somehow, her face has become sallow, drenched in sweat and bloody from a split lip, eyebrow, and a nasty gash on her scalp that has gore matting in her chestnut hair.

“Rey?” he gasps, unable to believe his eyes, unable to say anything else; frozen in shock.

Poe can see her mouth trying to form the word, blood bubbling at her lips as she mouths his name, but no sound comes aside from the wet bubbling of blood.

-

The general jolts awake.

Her face hovers into view above him, expression obscured by early morning dark.

“Time to go.”

Notes:

I have a new story coming up in the next week or so (FBI Agent!Poe and Reporter!Rey) so please keep an eye out for it and let me know what you think! <3

Chapter 13: Through the Teeth

Summary:

Steps forward and steps back. Poe pokes at the wound. Rey reacts.

Notes:

Hello everyone!!!

Alright, so first off, I have to thank each and every single one of you personally with a virtual SMOOCH and a hug for continuing to support this story while I took a pause! Truth be told, I had this chapter half-written for months, and just hated it. I finally figured out which direction I wanted it to go, and then, of course, had to re-write the whole thing.

I surprised myself with this chapter, and we're getting the second part of Rey's past reveal a lot earlier than I'd originally intended, but Poe and Rey have decided to take me where they want to go, not the other way around lolol.

Thank you for all of your kind comments and urges to continue writing, and thank you for reading everything else I've put out in the mean time while I tried to resurrect this fic.

Thank you! I love you! Your comments are LIFE <3

Warnings for this chapter:
Dissociative Event
Unhealthy coping mechanisms
Childhood abuse
Cults
PTSD Always

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

There hasn’t been a moment’s peace since Rey and her injured companion descended into the remote valley concealing the new Resistance base. Almost the moment their feet had touched the valley floor, she and the general had been surrounded by heavily camouflaged troops. They’d popped up seemingly out of nowhere.

Despite the way every fibre of her being had protested, Rey had allowed herself to be taken and restrained. She trusted that Poe would set them right.

He had. Quickly. Efficiently.

Sooner than Rey would have believed possible, she found herself enfolded into the Resistance; put to work with Rose and Kalonia in medical. It happened so fast it made her head spin, and before she knew it, every aspect of her life was scheduled and monitored and mostly revolved around the care of two men. Poe and Finn.

On the fifth evening after their arrival, she awakens in her stilted dwelling and stares up at the thatched roof, regretting every single decision she’s made since the general of the Resistance had attempted to hijack her operating room.

Being with the Resistance is like every dream and every nightmare she’s ever had has become real at once. In some very big, very scary ways, it’s everything she’s ever wanted. She’s a part of something bigger than herself, she’s on the side that’s good and right, and she’s actively helping and contributing. On the other hand, aspects of it still make her freeze in horror on a near-daily basis, throwing her into the past without her desire or consent.

The worst part is that she doesn’t feel like she has control any more. Poe is in command, yes, but he’s still recovering. Therefore, the majority of decisions are being made for Rey right now, and not with her. She’s by no means a prisoner, but she also has no input or information beyond what pertains to the medical care of her two charges. Otherwise, she’s being kept completely in the dark. Rey isn’t even sure if the general has shared the details of her past with anyone else in command, and it’s unnerving.

There’s been no opportunity to speak to him in private, though. Finn, for one, still requires near-constant care and physical therapy, and Poe’s recovery has been extensive as well. Not to mention, the general continues to be one of the orneriest patients she’s ever had. Between he and Finn, all three medical professionals have their hands full night and day.

Fuck. It was agony to tell Poe about her relationship with Ben, or Kylo Ren – whoever the fuck he is – and she’d barely even begun to detail the years of manipulation and grooming she still struggles to overcome. The morning after her confession, Poe had been unnervingly silent, almost pensive. She knows there was more to his reluctance to speak than the formidable pain he’d been enduring. He was dwelling on what she’d told him. She’d been too afraid to prompt him to talk, too terrified that he might change his mind about her. Not that she has any idea of what he thinks of her in the first place. He’s too mercurial to get a good read.

At the end of the day, there had been no choice but to tell him the truth and let the chips fall where they may, though. She knows it doesn’t really put them at any better odds than before, but… Something inside her does feel – looser, like she can breathe a little more easily. That tiny loosening… It makes her want to talk to Poe more, but the soft, receptive version of the soldier has once again been replaced by the difficult, distant commander, and Rey fears that she’s losing her chance to break through the façade again.

Doing so might be the only way for Rey can get the access to information she needs in order to feel secure here.

With a frustrated groan, the doctor sort of – flops – over onto her side, well aware that despite her discomfort with the situation, she still has responsibilities. Pushing herself heavily to her feet, Rey shrugs into the loose drawstring pants and sleeveless top which have become her habitual garb – a uniform of sorts, she supposes – here amongst the rebels. Pulling her hair efficiently back into a short ponytail, she stares unseeingly ahead, mentally preparing herself for her day. Or rather, night.

She’s seized control of the overnight shift entirely. Trying to integrate into the crowded base during the day is absolutely out of the question for her (no one needs to know why it hurts too much to try and be a part of the community, why it feels horribly like home), so Rey had insisted. It’s the only way she’s flexed the privilege of her professional seniority. Otherwise, she defers to Kolonia.

Much as she had done the first time she ever awoke at a Resistance base, back when she’d forced herself into the situation (classic Rey), she squares her shoulders and exits the hut, spine steel, showing no weakness. Her dwelling is located quite near the medical building, so her commute to ‘work’ in the ‘morning’ is a short one. Like all the other buildings, hidden deep in the jungle-choked valley, it’s built on stilts in order to avoid the heavy rains during monsoon season.

She climbs up several stepped rungs and enters the large, rectangular building – ostensibly the former home of a village leader, abandoned when the First Order swept through the region. It’s now been taken over as the surgery. Much like the previous base, a surprising amount of sophisticated medical tech has been amalgamated into the structure. They’re supplied with power and back-up; Rey has access to diagnostic equipment like x-rays in addition to well-stocked trauma kits. The supply drop Poe’s soldiers liberated from the First Order has proven to be a huge boon.

Her two patients are well-cared-for. If nothing else, she can comfort herself with that thought.

Speaking of: Rose is sitting with Finn, keeping a hawkish eye on the sleeping soldier. In the time Rey was gone on her rescue mission, something has happened between those two. Rey isn’t sure what, exactly, has transpired, but the young doctor doesn’t miss the way Finn’s eyes follow the nurse. Nor does she ignore Rose’s flaming red face any time the young rebel directs that handsome smile her way.

She’ll leave it alone for now. Rey will need to have a talk with the nurse soon, though, about protecting herself from heartbreak. The middle of an invasion is not a time to fall in love.

Hopefully her frustrated sigh isn’t audible over the soft hum of medical equipment.

“Hey Rose,” she calls quietly from the threshold.

The nurse has been expecting her shift to end, so there’s no surprise on her face when she turns to the doctor.

“Hi Rey. Glad you’re here… I’m beat,” she says around a jaw-cracking yawn.

“Did you and Kalonia run into some difficulties today?”

Rose somehow manages to produce the most long-suffering groan Rey’s ever heard. The doctor joins her at Finn’s bedside, concerned the noise might have woken him. He’s an anomaly, though. Sleeps like the dead now that he’s on the mend.

Difficulties is one way of putting it,” Rose growls like a cat, glaring toward the only other occupied bed, “That one busted his stitches open. Again. Claimed he’d just rolled the wrong way, but I know he’s been up and moving –”

“Which you promptly accused him of…”

“ – Which I accused him of, and of course he blew up at me. Pulled a few more stitches while he yelled…” she sighs heavily, “I know he’s doing this because it’s hard for him to be out of the game, but if he just shut up and let the healing happen, he’d be out of here so much sooner.”

The nurse lets out another frustrated sigh. For a moment, her hands flutter over Finn’s form, fussing needlessly with his blankets. Perhaps that conversation should come sooner rather than later.

Rey reaches out, covering one of Rose’s nervous hands with her own.

“I’m going to talk to him tonight, Rose. This has got to stop. He’s undoing all your hard work.”

Rose glances up at her, grinning devilishly. It’s an expression the young doctor is intimately familiar with, and she knows it spells trouble – just hopefully not for her.

“Give him hell,” the nurse crows, and not for the first time Rey feels thankful that she isn’t on Rose’s bad side.

The short woman bobs up from her seat, offering it to Rey with a truly wicked grin. Laughing softly, Rey sits, casting a practiced eye over her sleeping patient while Rose makes her exit. She’ll no doubt go in search of food and sleep, and the doctor will be alone with the injured men until Kalonia relieves her in the morning. Hopefully, it will be a quiet night.

Lost in her contemplation of Finn, it comes as a bit of a surprise when a grumpy voice sounds from behind her.

“Well? I’m waiting.”

Rey rolls her eyes, briefly touching the tips of her fingers to the middle of her forehead in frustration before she turns to face him.

“Good evening, General. Dare I ask what you’re waiting for?”

Exasperation drips from every word, an emotion she makes no effort to conceal from the man across the room. He huffs. It’s almost a laugh, almost like he’s amused by her snark. His dark brown eyes pin her to the spot as effectively as railway spikes, his light smirk dangerous in a way that makes her stomach squirm with something like anticipation.

“For you to give me hell.”

His voice is low, and it shivers through the air between them in an odd way. She sighs.

“No, General Dameron, I don’t plan on ‘giving you hell,’” Rey quietly responds, “But I do want to discuss some things with you.”

He seems a little taken aback by her reasonableness, which is probably a fair reaction. Their interactions tend to be nothing if not antagonistic more often than not. Poe doesn’t have any evidence to suggest she’d be peaceable.

The soldier clears his throat, shifting a little on his bed, trying to sit up and see her better. Satisfied that Finn is well asleep, she pushes to her feet, striding over to Poe’s bed without a thought. Gently, she helps him adjust, propping another pillow behind his back to ease the process. Wordlessly, he lets her do it, seemingly unconscious of the way his body allows her to help him. She can’t help the way her face heats under his grave gaze, still unused to being the subject of such focus.

Once he’s settled, a reluctant sigh escapes his chest.

“Look,” he begins, pointing at her as if to emphasize his words, “I know I’m being an ass. I – I just… I can’t just sit here while everything goes on out there without me.”

A bolt of sympathy, surprising in its intensity, arcs through her. Not that she’d ever acknowledge it aloud, but it’s obvious that part of the reason she and this difficult man clash so often is because of how similar they are. No doubt he too feels neutered here, trapped and uninformed. Rey perches on the side of his bed, facing him, the heat of his thigh against her hip notable even through the layers of fabric between them.

“General, I – I feel the same way. You brought me here, and told me I would be safe because you’re in charge… But it’s feeling like you don’t have much control while you’re stuck in here.”

She falters, realizing how selfish she sounds when he could have just fed her to the vultures several times over, now, “And I’m grateful, I am, but I want to… know my place in all of this and I can’t expect that to happen until you get out of here and begin to lead again.”

His mouth drops open in surprise before he snaps it shut again, apparently at a loss for a response to that. Poe’s eyes search her face in that deep, knowing way of his. She nervously swallows, her mouth suddenly bone-dry.

“You… You are on my side, right, General?”

She clenches her teeth too late to stop the words, looking away, suddenly not so sure she wants to hear the answer. The question comes without permission, borne on a tide of insecurity and longing. She wants so badly for this place, these people to become the home, the belonging she’s always sought.

The pause, the silence afterwards, seems telling, and her heart lurches. Without warning, his hand gropes for hers, and she looks up to see an expression almost breathtaking in its openness, it’s honesty. Her breath catches.

“Of course, I am,” he assures her, his voice gravelly with truth. “I promised you would be safe. I intend to keep my promise, Skywalker.”

He issues it almost like a challenge, like she should dare him not to try and protect her. It’s stupidly endearing. Rey blinks.

“Th-thank you,” she manages to stutter, still trying to regain her emotional balance with him.

Poe nods like it’s the most obvious, no, the only choice he would ever consider, and the doctor is struck once again by how well-intentioned the general and his troops are. She resolves to try and have a little bit more patience herself. The Resistance is currently attempting to function with a severely crippled leadership, and they’re excluding Poe (and, by extension Rey and Rose) only in the interest of his health.

Once he’s well, things will change.

“Listen – I will get you out of here as quickly as I can, General, but in order for me to do that, I need you to REST,” Rey firmly states.

Poe sighs as though she’s just asked him to move mountains, but he inclines his head after a moment. It’s the closest she’ll likely get to a promise to behave, so she must be satisfied with his non-answer. Stubborn. Difficult man.

He doesn’t seem anywhere near sleep at the moment, though, so Rey stays put at his side, trying to think of some way to encourage him to rest. Even though she’s looking down at her hands in her lap, she can still feel his attention on her. It’s a very strange feeling: she wants to leave it at that, to come up with some excuse or busywork so she doesn’t have to speak with him anymore, yet at the same time, she can think of no place she’d rather be at right now than near this man. Her ally. Her friend?

Poe takes a breath as if to speak, then stops. A short silence punctuates the awkwardness. Finally, he tries again.

“Okay, doc… You don’t have to answer right now, but… I’d really, really like to know where you picked up all your skills. I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that emergency surgeons aren’t generally trained in covert infiltration…”

Rey only hears about half of what he says. All of a sudden, sound is muted, muffled. She’s frozen, but somehow the bed is shaking?

Oh. No.

She’s shaking the bed. That’s odd.

It’s also odd how she can’t seem to move or speak, and the world is darkening at the edges. Time slows and she realizes in a detached kind of way that she’s on the edge of a dissociative episode.

She can forestall it, if only she could take a breath.

A large, calloused, heavy, tan hand suddenly descends into her slack palms, shocking a sudden, plosive gasp into her lungs like a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart. It completely reroutes the fear, allowing the world to flood back in with all the force of a tsunami. She finds her fingers gripping around his hand hard enough that her knuckles stand out white, but she has a hold of herself again thanks to him.

“Hey…” his voice is unbearably gentle, understanding in a way that makes her want to run, “It’s alright. I can wait until you’re ready – ”

“I’m ready!” she barks, snatching her hands away, “I’m fine.

Steeling herself with a brutality borne of years of self-reliance and discipline, Rey straightens her back, piercing the general with a furious, challenging look.

“My parents. I never knew who they were. They l-left… Me.”

An expression of dawning horror is breaking across Poe’s face, a look that causes her nothing but regret, even as she continues relentlessly on, forcing her body into autopilot so she can’t feel any of it.

“Abandoned me… Went above and beyond and left me in the loving arms of the doomsday cult they belonged to.”

Rey glares at him, daring him to disbelieve this: the worst truth she’s yet given him.

“Spent my youth in paramilitary and survivalist training in the Arizona desert. That’s how I picked up my… skills, as you put it.”

By the time she’s finished speaking, her voice is barely above a whisper.

The injured soldier is as still as she’s ever seen him, face frozen in shock as she completes her short explanation. His chocolate eyes are so wide she can see the white all around the iris. The moment lengthens unbearably, and all her fragile numbness threatens to crack if something doesn’t change, and soon.

Fuck. If only his slightly parted lips would give way to words. Rey doesn’t even care what he says – she just can’t take the silence anymore.

His eyes soften. He reaches out again.

Rey flinches, a full-body thing that has her on her feet and several steps away before he can even come close to touching her.

Pity.

She doesn’t want, doesn’t need his pity.

Doc,” he breathes, and she can hear it in his voice, the pity.

“Don’t you dare,” she hisses, cutting him off. “I made it out. I’m here. I’m capable.”

She can see his hackles raise in real time, his habitual defensiveness surfacing in a blink. Again, she heads him off, refusing to let him get a word in.

“You know better than anyone here what I’m capable of, Dameron. What matters are the skills I have, not the way I obtained them. I will put every single one of them to work for you and your people when you need it.”

She fixes him with a look.

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.”

He’s glaring at her furiously, practically shaking with suppressed rage. Something else, too. For the first time since this disaster of a conversation began, Rey has her wits about her enough to look a little more carefully at his expression.

He’s hurt.

Something she said… She’s hurt his feelings.

The realization is like a slap to the face, and suddenly, she can’t take it anymore. Iron-willed, she wrestles the numbness back under her control, wearing it like a blanket, flat-out refusing to feel anything. Almost as though she’s outside herself, Rey knows that her face now holds a curious blankness, her body language slow, almost laboured. Her hands drift down to her sides like they’re moving through molasses, and she blinks at him slowly before speaking, her voice sounding flat even to her own ears.

“You’ll stay and you’ll rest tonight, General. I’m discharging you tomorrow.”

“W-what?” Poe’s voice is weak with shock.

“I said you’re getting your wish, Dameron,” she states, a bit of a snarl creeping into the flat tone of her words, “After tomorrow, I never want to see you in my surgery again. Get out and stay out.”

She viciously snaps the privacy curtain around his bed closed, ignoring his protests. Rey whirls, dismayed to meet the watchful gaze of Finn through the dark. She flees.

Notes:

Heyyyyy please stay tuned for a new Rey/Poe A/B/O fic, and a cute little Olympics AU starring our favourite OT3 <3

Chapter 14: In the Park Last Night

Summary:

Poe's back in command and dealing with the fallout from his last interaction with Rey. Rose has some information that no one is going to like.

Notes:

Hello! Guess who's kind of getting her shit together?! Rosalind, that's who.

Thank you for all you kind comments on the last chapter... Your comments give me life so please please please let me know what you think :)

Warnings for this Chapter:
Trauma/PTSD/Aftermath of Torture
Language, always
Medical Procedures without consent

Chapter Text

Poe leans heavily against the wall, trying for all the world to make it appear as though he’s doing it casually rather than out of an urgent need for support.

He’s back in command and paying for it. Everything but the deepest gash on his chest has closed over, yes, and he’s actually being quite careful not to let the stitches on that last one tear. It’s not as though he can go crawling back to the surgery. But the exhaustion is bone-deep, and the extra energy his body has directed toward healing is sapping his strength.

He isn’t hiding, exactly, but he’s tucked in a back corridor of the massive, multi-room dwelling they’re using as a base of command. All he needs is a few moments to catch his breath, and then he’ll be fine to go on. He always is.

Despite a certain doctor’s dire predictions about his effective recovery, he does know his own limits. That’s why he knows he’s still fine to be in command. Even exhausted and battered, General Dameron can be relied upon to lead with his head, and not with his heart. At least, that’s what he keeps telling himself. Never mind that during his rare rest time, he still can’t sleep. He’s stopped bothering except for cat naps snatched in corners. The nightmares are too bad for him to want to sleep longer than that.

His hands shake. He couldn’t live up to his mom’s dream for him now, even if he wanted to. Can’t fly a plane when you can’t drink coffee without spilling. He’s hiding it well enough, though. He’s only noticed Connix’s sharp eye on him once or twice since he resumed command, and she’s the most perceptive person he knows. It’s why she’s so good at her job.

Poe breathes through the ringing in his ears, trying unsuccessfully to push away the thoughts that inevitably surface each time he’s left in silence. Rey and Ren circle each other like spectres in his head, shadow and light made thought. The powerful draw he feels toward Rey – moth-like to her flame (especially bright with so much darkness around her) – Poe’s helpless to resist it. That is, he’s helpless to resist it until he’s wrenched from the goodness she represents and plummeted into the abyss of Kylo Ren’s making.

It’s when he’s in that place that he’s furious with her. Furious that she keeps putting herself second, throwing herself into danger. And underneath it all, he’s furious with himself.

The truth is, he’d gotten cocky. Rey had rescued him. Rey had opened up. Rey had even agreed to join the Resistance. With so much hope on the horizon, he’d been eager to press his advantage, too hungry to taste another morsel of the woman underneath the armour. So, he’d pushed, like the asshole he’s been since he was a kid counting millions of American dollars in the vault of a Guatemalan drug lord; always greedy, always pushing for more. More of the take. More of the business. More seniority.

More of her.

Well, he’d gotten more than he asked for, and then some. How one single human could have survived so much evil and come out good on the other side will forever be a mystery to him. She’s a goddamn phenomenon made flesh. The horror and cruelty that people can descend to, especially when it comes to children, shocks him every time. It’s almost as if the trauma of just hearing something like that is bad enough to make him… put it aside; almost forget. But then again, despite all his flaws and mistakes, Poe’s default switch isn’t set to evil. So, in a way, it isn’t a surprise that the mere concept of something so heinous would never occur to him on his own.

The things Rey had told him, even in barest detail, are almost too horrible to comprehend, and yet, here he is, as always, revisiting her in his head. It’s probably time to acknowledge that he’s completely and utterly fucked when it comes to Rey Skywalker. It isn’t just… lust and admiration that he feels for her. If anything, learning more of her story has only made him realize how deep his primal need to keep her safe runs. Seeing how good she is, even despite her pain, just makes that pull stronger.

He has no doubt - he’s unshakeably certain – that he’s physically well enough to be in command, despite his still-healing injuries. What Poe doesn’t know, what’s been keeping him up late at night even more than his nightmares, is whether he’s fit to be in command over her. The possibility, the threat that’s been gnawing at the edge of his consciousness since the second she refused to be intimidated by him… It’s the awareness that he will never have true control over whether she’s safe and well that’s eating him alive.

Because if he were to lose her, even now when she refuses to speak to him… Poe has no faith that he can be trusted to act in the best interest of the Resistance if she were lost. He fears that he’d burn the whole world down. Burn it to ashes because the last truly good thing would be gone so what the fuck would even be the point?

Poe groans impotently, his jaw, fists, and eyes clenched shut as he thunks his skull back against the hard wooden walls. Everything tilts and swoops a little, and he realizes that instead of slowing, his breath has sped up until he’s practically snarling, his nostrils flaring as he tries to physically contain the storm of emotion within him.

She can’t ever know, of course. The way she makes him feel. Telling her will invite disaster from all sides.

“General Dameron? Sir?”

The timid yet determined voice of Rose Tico startles him out of his thoughts so violently that he physically flinches like a goddamn teen jumping at noises in a slasher flick. The nurse is equally as startled by his reaction. For a long moment, they take calming breaths together, somewhere between laughter and fear before Rose bursts into real, nervous giggles and begins talking at a mile a minute.

“General Dameron, I’m so sorry to startle you, sir, but… I – well, okay. You know how you ambushed us, back in Lai Chau City? And there were three of us in the O.R. that day, but only Rey and I came with you to help Finn – ”

Poe’s jaw flaps uselessly, shock etched into every line of his face as he struggles to take in the heart of what’s being said, even around the extraneous detail thoughtfully provided by Rose.

“The Anesthesiologist? Who stayed behind. She’s my Paige.”

Her face flushes cherry red.

“Paige is my sister! And – she stayed behind. In the city. To keep working for the Red Cross? Well, she’s still there, and… Rey told me I shouldn’t stay in touch with her, that it would be too dangerous, but – ”

Poe’s mouth snaps shut, concern overwriting the confusion on his face.

“But you did anyway?”

The young nurse nods miserably, intimidated into silence by his abrupt interruption. Shit. Goddamnit. A regretful sigh escapes his lungs he tries to compose himself enough to give her bad news.

“Look,” he begins, his voice laced with remorse, “If your sister’s been taken… If staying in touch put her in danger… I’m sorry. The Resistance isn’t a rescue operation, no matter what precedent your friend the doctor might have set – ”

Poe’s the one surprised when she cuts him off in turn.

“Paige is fine, but the city isn’t. Lai Chau City was taken by the First Order last night!”

What?!”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”

“No, that’s not possible,” Poe immediately denies it, “We’re too well-connected in the city; one of our spies would have reported something!”

“Then I’m afraid your spies may all be captured or dead, General. They somehow managed to take the city entirely by stealth. No one outside the city knows. There’ve been no news reports, no messages, no freaking tweets! Nothing! No one except me and my sister and our shitty pagers from the nineties has the ability to communicate with the outside.”

Her eyes are wide, her gaze earnest and desperate – she’s desperate for him to listen to her, to believe her – and that’s how he knows it’s true. He grabs a hold of her upper arms like she might escape, like he needs to hold onto something steady for fear of being blown away. She tenses, not scared, exactly, but expectant.

“Rose, you’re telling me that we lost Lai Chau City, and your sister is the only one who can help us get it back?”

Yes, but that’s not all!” she cries. “Okay, I don’t know many details because there’s only so much information she can convey over our dinosaur tech, but it sounds like the First Order might be up to something worse.”

His hands drop from her shoulders like he’s touched something hot. Poe knows first-hand the kind of creativity they can put into their cruelty. He almost doesn’t want to hear any more, and suddenly feels the urge to run more powerfully than he’s felt in a very long time.

“Apparently they’re introducing some sort of mandatory city-wide medical exam. Every single resident. But Paige says that people are being corralled and run through the medical tents like they’re livestock. Way too quick for an actual exam. They aren’t letting her into the tents, obviously, but they are apparently using anyone in the city with medical training to clean up after them. She said… She said she’s never seen so many needles in her life.”

His mind freezes as he tries to absorb the enormity of the information he’s been given. Sometime in the past twenty-four hours, the First Order has conquered an entire city by stealth. They’ve cut off all form of communication except the most outdated. And now they’ve instated mass injections of some kind. They’re doing this at a scale and speed that would suggest most residents will have been given their ‘medical exam’ within the month.

There’s no doubt whatsoever that the shit they’re giving to those people can’t be good. Which means that they need to stop this before it goes too far. And contrary to what he just said to Rose only moments before, they do have a responsibility to try and extract Paige. She’ll only remain a valuable asset for so long, and they can’t count on her continued safety if she stays to continue passing them intelligence.

Poe’s strategic brain immediately kicks into high gear. They need more information. Now. He looks sharply at the nurse, trying to think from every angle.

“I need you to tell me absolutely everything Paige said. Does she know where they’ve set up their base of command?”

“Yeah, actually. It’s weird. Apparently, they’re using the Red Cross clinic. Paige isn’t sure, but she thinks there might be someone extra important there, like, high in the ranks. Tons of guards.”

His chest constricts with fear. It has to be Kylo Ren. Freaky medical shit? Excessive shows of force? The fact that he’s taken over Rey’s place of work, looking for signs of her, feeding his obsession with her? Sounds right up the psychopath’s alley.

“Do you – ?” Poe hesitates, well aware that he’s about to request something huge, and from a civilian, nonetheless, but it’s not as though they have many options. “Do you think Paige might be able to get us inside the city?”

Rose glances at him sharply. Good. She’s smart. She knows the gravity of what he’s asking.

To his immense relief, she doesn’t reject the idea outright, instead taking a few moments to think it over seriously. Even though time is very much of the essence, he’s got enough of a conscience left to give her some time. If Paige is discovered passing intelligence to the Resistance, or worse, if she’s caught sneaking members of the Resistance into the city, then her life will be over. They will murder her without remorse and that’s the best-case scenario. If Ren decides she has some useful information or will make a good bargaining chip, then she’ll be detained, and she will be tortured. Like Poe was tortured.

As soon as he sees the set of Rose’s spine, he knows he’s going to get what he wants.

“Yes, I think she will, General,” she says quietly, determinedly, “Paige and I… we know what’s wrong, and what’s right. She always says that you have to fight for what’s right, even when it’s hard. I’ll contact her right away.”

Before the nurse can turn away, Poe halts her progress with a gentle hand. “Rose, before you go, I – I need to ask…”

Rose’s questioning look is a little more suspicious than he’d like, but it can’t be helped.

“Have you told Dr. Skywalker that you’ve been in touch with Paige?”

Her eyes narrow even more.

“No. I value my hide, Dameron. I try not to poke the bear. She’d kill me if she knew.”

A relieved sigh is already halfway out his mouth when she adds: “Why do you want to know?”

He coughs awkwardly.

“Because – I need you to do me one more favour.”

The short, tough woman crosses her arms across her chest expectantly.

“Don’t… Tell her about this. It’s in the hands of our soldiers, now. We need you and the doctor here, providing medical support.”

His request gives her pause for a moment, and he fears that she might question him further. Instead, she nods her head slowly, eyes searching his even as she agrees. He inclines his own head in return, his gratitude obvious. Her resolve seems to solidify, and she claps him on the shoulder companionably before turning to make her way back to medical.”

Poe allows himself a few seconds of relief, a few moments to breathe. If Rey finds out that Paige is in at risk, he knows she’ll insist on being part of the mission. It’s an unacceptable thought. The general has only just managed to secure the doctor’s safety, and he’s not about to let her waltz right back into danger.

Thanks to Rose’s promise, that won’t happen now. Poe can put this mission into the capable hands of Black Squad where it belongs. They’ll go, rescue Paige, and stop Ren. Even if Poe knows he needs to stay behind this time (he can admit that he’s too hurt for an incursion – he’s not a total asshole) he trusts that they’ll do what needs to be done.

They always do.

With a deep breath, Poe straightens his posture, trying for ‘Capable Leader’ instead of ‘Exhausted Basket Case.’ He marches the few steps required to get him back in the main command room, turning the corner sharply in search of Connix. He needs everyone. Here. Together. Now.

“Lieutenant Connix! Call an emergency briefing!”

It’s only about twenty minutes later that Poe finds himself at the head of the room, surrounded by Black Squad and his most seasoned company of ground troops. There are close the eighty people crammed together, enough that except for his commanders and officers nearby, he can’t really pick out individual faces.

“Thank you all for coming,” he begins, his voice sonorous and confident despite his weariness, “We’ve received some distressing news from a spy in Lai Chau City. The First Order has taken it. They were able to do this covertly, and with enough control to disable all but one of our sources within its borders. There are reports of some kind of medical testing on its citizens. It’s enforced, and whatever it is, we intend to put a stop to it.”

Aggravated murmurs break out like the low susurrus of dried leaves over concrete. For those of them who’ve been the last line of defense in the war of attrition against the First Order for several years now, the city’s loss hits hard. Somewhere from the back, Poe hears a low curse.

Bastards!”

Before things can get out of hand, he speaks again, “It’s still early, and we got lucky. Our spy has agreed to get Black Squad inside the city. Once there, the target is the Red Cross clinic at its edge. Intelligence suggests that Kylo Ren may be there. The order is to clear the area of civilians and take out any First Order soldier they find. Once we’ve disabled their command centre, company outside the city will disable any remaining guard presence.”
A raucous cheer goes up at the mention of Black Squad, their reputation for success undeniable. Poe feels a great swell of pride for his people, for the way they always manage to find hope, even at the darkest of times. Some even reach out to pat Snap on the back as though he’d already led them to victory.

He smiles a bit – a crooked one, with sharp edges.

“One last thing. Most of you know that I was injured not too long ago, and so it’s my regret that Black Squad’s gonna be a man short.”

Another excited round of chatter breaks the stillness of the room, louder than before. Though membership is loose enough that other rebels, especially those with special skills, often accompany the Squad on missions, Poe has never stepped aside to let someone else take his place. Every other regular member earned their place through years of loyalty and usefulness. A free spot on the team, so to speak, has never come up like this.

“I’m looking for volunteers with experience in infiltration. Black Squad will need the backup. Any takers?”

When a voice rings out from the back of the room, Poe’s stomach drops.

“I’ll do it.”

How? How did she find out? How had she even gotten in here?!

Dr Skywalker steps out of the crowd like a queen.

“I’ll do it.”

Chapter 15: To Open Up

Summary:

Tension resolved?

Notes:

Oh ho ho! I'm still somehow ahead of the game and ready with another chapter?!

Oh boy, I would really love to know what y'all think of this chapter... demisexual!Rey is close to my heart. It's a little longer than usual because I don't know how to censor myself lol

Warnings:
NSFW
Basically the whole chapter is smut, y'all
Unprotected sex
Language

Chapter Text

Rey steps out from the crowd, feet and voice carrying her somewhere she’d been sure she would never really go. “I’ll do it.”

She hasn’t fully appreciated the phrase you could have heard a pin drop until this moment. The words can’t be taken back, though, so she stands in silence, the room’s attention on her like a spotlight. Squaring her shoulders, she seeks out the only opinion in the room that actually matters – the general’s.

Poe meets her gaze head-on, his voice low and dangerous.

“This meeting is adjourned.”

The other members of the Resistance’s loose command structure glance shiftily around the room at each other, clearly unsure how to proceed.

“Dismissed!” he barks, and a flurry of muted sound rushes through the space as they all scurry to make themselves scarce.

Rey stands her ground, her steely gaze never leaving his. As the room rapidly empties around them, Poe returns her expression, every bit as stubborn and hard-headed as she is. Once the last officer has slid away, trailing anxiety and loose sheets of paper behind them, the ringing silence that follows stretches out thin and taut like a wire, ready to snap at any moment.

“There’s no way,” the general finally growls, his words like a dull slap.

“We’re doing this now, then?”

She doesn’t bother to let him reply – Rey already knows the answer.

“Fine; but not here. Let’s at least attempt to not be overheard.”

She stalks toward the exit, not waiting for a response, her ire rising like molten lava when he follows after her exactly like she’d known he would. Outside, they walk nearly side-by-side across the open square, a typhoon in the inches of space between their shoulders. The broad area of packed dirt is suspiciously devoid of troops – it’s rarely fully empty, even at this late hour. Rey suspects that Connix told everyone to politely fuck off until the smoke clears.

Too distracted to think about where they’re going, Rey doesn’t realize she’s led him to her small dwelling at the edge of the village, near the medical building, until she’s closing – and barring – the door behind them. Her entire body flushes hot with surprise, but she can’t take it back now. Instead, she rounds on Poe, allowing her embarrassment to fuel her anger.

“I assumed you were an idiot the first day we met, General, but I had hoped you’d prove me wrong,” she hisses viciously.

The banked fire behind his gentle brown eyes flares to hungry, crackling life at her words. A muscle jumps in his jaw even as a vein begins to pulse in his forehead. He’s visibly trying to hold back his wrath, clenching his fists at his sides.

“This isn’t a negotiation, Rey,” he snarls.

Her first name is a shockwave in his mouth.

It surprises her enough that she doesn’t immediately respond, goosebumps rippling across her skin at the sound of it. She could probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he’s called her by name, and each time it impacts her like a blow. What is it about the way he says her name that affects her so?

Poe jumps on her hesitation, using it as an opportunity to steer the argument. “It’s just too dangerous. You’re a liability.”

Indignation flashes white-hot through her chest, and she bares her teeth at him, barely clenching back a snarl. Through tight lips, she attempts to remain calm and spell it out for him. “Don’t be foolish. Even putting my medical skills aside, you’ve seen firsthand what else I can do. Most importantly, I know Paige. She and her network aren’t going to trust just anyone. A better leader than you would have asked me to join this mission instead of looking for a volunteer.”

Oops – that mouth again, Skywalker.

The expression that darkens his features is more than just thunderous, it’s dangerous. Poe prowls toward her across the small space, closing the distance in a blink. He halts just outside her personal space, close enough to touch. Furious energy seems to have filled him to the brim, expanding him in her vision until it really hits home, for the first time since they’ve met, just how much larger he is than her physically. Sure, they’re similar heights, but she suddenly feels surprisingly delicate in comparison to him. There’s a barely contained tension in his posture as his gaze slides and skips frantically over her face.

In a distant, detached kind of way, she registers his laboured breaths. His unruly, silky, black-and-silver hair has fallen across his forehead, and she finds herself wanting to brush it away. Beads of sweat roll down his neck from his wildly curling hairline. Her eyes follow the path until she’s inexplicably distracted by the well-defined muscles of his forearms as they flex and release like he wants to seize her and shake her. Instead of anxiety, the sight inspires a strange little thrill down her spine.

“Rey… I – ” the sound of it rumbles through her like an earthquake.

Her attention snaps back up to his heavy gaze, and heat suffuses her body. They’re somehow standing closer – close enough that she can sense the vibration of the air through his lungs and his throat when he speaks. His eyes track over her face again, hesitating once, twice, thrice on her mouth before he licks his own lips and continues.

“If you leave here, I won’t be able to protect you… I can’t let you take that risk.”

A sharp breath shudders into her lungs, one she hadn’t realized she desperately needed. Slow, heavy pressure swoops through her, settling deep in her body. She sucks in the air like she’s starving for it, but it does nothing to slake the strange, deep, gnawing hunger that’s suddenly taken up residence in her core. Closing her eyes against the sensation, she tries to get a handle on her unexpected physical reaction to his proximity.

It’s too late – and the words she’s wanted to say since that first day tumble out of her mouth.

“Please. Just let me help you, Poe.

A brutally suppressed, intensely animal sound escapes his chest, and her eyes snap open. Poe’s deep brown eyes flash with something dark, and thirsty… parched. He looks like he wants to devour her whole and she – she suddenly feels like she might let him.

The weighted, empty tension in her muscles intensifies, and she sways toward him, lips lightly parted and eyelids heavy as though she might be able to taste him in the air. They’re close enough for Rey to see the way his every muscle seems to coil in wary readiness. Suddenly, a tiny hesitation, a dull bolt of anxiety pierces through the strange haze, and she begins to waver back out of his space, unsure.

What is this?

His hands land big and heavy at her waist, keeping her close, his touch searing into her like a fiery brand. It’s a feeling she knows she’ll remember to her dying day. She’s always been touch-averse, but something about Poe’s hands on her body is thrilling in a way she’s never felt before. Her flesh buzzes with the contact – so unexpected. So unexpectedly wanted.

Poe looks terrified, like she might attack him at any second for the sudden physical contact, which – fair – but instead she lurches forward.

To kiss him.

Rey’s shocked into absolute stillness by the sheer audacity of her own body: acting on impulses she wasn’t even aware of and doing so most assuredly without her permission. Ten seconds ago, if someone had told the doctor that she was about to ambush the general with a kiss, she would have laughed them off the face of the planet. But oh, how wrong she’d been. She’s still frozen with her lips pressed lightly to his, vibrating with indecision, when the hands circling her waist tighten to a grip and she’s pulled flush against Poe’s chest with a strength and speed that jolts her back into herself.

In a flash, she’s surging into his embrace, into the kiss, opening her mouth and devouring him the way she finally realizes she’s been ravenous for since they met. The realization settles over her body like a weighted blanket. It’s earth-shattering. It’s moving. It’s unlike anything she’s ever felt.

Like a chain reaction, unfamiliar, overwhelming arousal explodes within.

He makes that feral sound in his chest again, and this time, she can feel it resonate through every aching millimeter of her flesh. There’s no telling exactly how long he’s been gripping her hips hard enough to bruise, no telling when, exactly, she buried her fingers so tightly in his curls that it surely hurts, but Rey can’t stop. Viciously, she draws her teeth across his lower lip just to feel him shudder.

Fuck, but a kiss has never, never felt like this before.

Rey,” pulling back, he cups her face so gently that she feels hollow, scooped out and aching to be filled. “Fuck. I…” he trails off, eyes fixed on her lips as he watches her tongue dart out reflexively, chasing the taste of him.

With a helpless groan, he dives in again – had barely even come up for air – but the only thing that matters is the heat that flushes under every spot where their bodies connect, the sandpaper rasp of his stubble on her soft, freckled skin – the slick, torturous slide of their tongues. This bone-deep craving she suddenly feels for him, for more (more of everything) is a shock to the system, like a leap into freezing water.

Rey whines softly in the back of her throat.

Fuck, she wants him.

“Christ – sweetheart – want you, too,” he all but breathes into her mouth, and she’s scorched by the knowledge that she’d accidentally spoken aloud. She’d said that to him.

But – it doesn’t matter. She wants him, dammit.

Rey’s fingers snarl into the material of Poe’s shirt, tugging – yanking it violently up from his waistband to get to the scorching skin beneath. Her thighs clench together, muscles shaking, hips rolling in a vain attempt to gain some goddamn friction. Suddenly, he forces one thick, hard thigh between hers, a temporary solution to her obvious desperation.

H-holy fuck,” she sighs out, voice thin and reedy, and head suddenly spinning with the way she rapidly slickens between her legs.

Grinding down unashamedly on his leg, Rey feels intoxicated with desire… drunk, a little drugged even. Her muscles are simultaneously lax and trembling with the strain of how much she suddenly wants him. His mouth spreads a tingling kind of numbness down her neck as he worries desperately at the unblemished skin there. It’s as though he’s primally driven to mark her for all the world to see.

The thought should shock her, should outrage her – that she’s to be marked up like his property – instead, it makes her knees weaken. Her head drops back, a startled whisp of breath trembling through her lips as Poe’s roughly calloused palm catches on the soft, supple fabric of her pants before slipping down to cup beneath her ass, fingers curling briefly into the hot cleft between.

A desperate, embarrassingly needy sound escapes her when he moves his hand back up to span her lower back, so much further away from where she wants it. His hips grind forward in response to the breathy noise, and suddenly it’s like a switch is flipped somewhere inside and she’s out of her mind. It’s physically impossible for her to get as close to him as she unexpectedly needs to.

She’s never, never WANTED like this.

Her mouth is back on his again, ferocious, desperate –

Poe brings a large hand up to cup her jaw, gently tilting, guiding, and slowing the kiss until it’s unexpectedly incredible and addictive in a different way. It’s languid, and sensual, and hot. Deeper, more intense, somehow. Like she’s being memorized. It sinks like molten rock straight to her core.

Still, his relentless touch grounds her in her skin, and she’s eventually able to pull away, pull back, and look at him. A strange little surge of pride shoots through her at the fact that the general looks absolutely ruined. His lips are red and wet, hair utterly disheveled thanks to her fingers, and eyes heavy with pleasure. She examines him, searchingly, needing to see her own unhinged desire reflected. Desperation still thrums beneath her skin, ready to erupt again at any second. Poe hardly seems better. His fingers still grip her hard enough to bruise, and the intensity of his touch threatens to burn her alive. Lust simmers in her veins hotter than she’s ever experienced. Deep down in her gut, she knows they have only moments before it overwhelms them again.

Poe’s a little wary, like he’s expecting her to change her mind now that they’ve had a moment to breathe. Half-stepping out of his arms, the young doctor is too busy peeling off her sleeveless top to worry about it. Casually, unconcerned with her own nudity, she tosses it aside. It falls to the floor with barely a sound.

A blistering series of swears colour the air between them as Poe sees that she’s been braless beneath her top this entire time. She huffs out an amused little laugh at his nonsense but doesn’t waste time. “Off,” she growls, divesting him of his shirt in turn, ripping off the garment like it’s caused her offense.

For a breathless moment, they pause – suspended like flies in amber – facing across the small space from each other. A cocky, frustratingly endearing half-smile flashes over Poe’s lips an instant before he makes his move. A pleasurable spike of adrenaline thrills up her spine. In a split second, she reaches out to meet his advance, using his solid bulk as leverage to pivot his body around hers, twisting to land atop him as his back whumps down onto her cot.

Poe gapes up at her, the expression on his face a mixture of surprise and sharp, predatory interest. She shifts to kneel next to him, straightening her spine and wiggling her hips to slide her pants down over her ass. He’s positively rapt, and she’s almost wild with it, welcoming his eager scrutiny, aching to be desired for possibly the first time in her life. She wants him to want her.

His deep, dark eyes watch the play of the dim light on the flex and stretch of her limbs as she shifts her weight, gracefully pulling the loose fabric the rest of the way off. Now, she’s perched above him, dressed only in a pair of simple underwear, the rest of her body on display. His tongue sweeps out to wet his lower lip before his teeth emerge to bite down hard.

Poe’s broad hands alight like red-hot shackles on her upper thighs.

She freezes, quivering, caught in the intensity of his focus, a doe unmoving in the harsh beam of headlights. A slow, searing bead of moisture seeps through the cotton of her underwear, easing down the inside of her thigh like a lover’s caress. Poe somehow sees it – watches its trail – and then he’s sliding his hands under her ass. Goosebumps prickle like a rash across her chest and her nipples tighten almost painfully as he tugs her gently up his body.

Her knees land on either side of his head, and then she’s looking down at his face between her thighs.

A deep, heavy emptiness sweeps through her again. She needs to have his cock inside her yesterday, but fuck… She wants this, too.

As if sensing the indecision rising in her like a tide, he gives her hips a soft, deliberate pull as he rumbles a broken, “Please, Rey…” and settles her over his mouth.

Suspended just above his lips, she can’t tear her eyes away, fascinated, as he slides his fingers around the hem of her remaining undergarment; he appreciates it like a thousand-dollar lingerie set as opposed to the plain (old) white briefs they are. Without warning, he wrenches aside her panties and licks into her.

Electricity explodes under her skin.

She’s being consumed by it, electrified, and crackling and incandescent due to his hands and his tongue. Her spine liquifies as he wantonly moans at her taste, vibrations and reverberations skipping across her nerve endings like stones on smooth water. The sensation of silk between her fingers tells Rey that she’s once again snagged his curls, tugging and yanking with every arc of lightning that shrieks through her core.

Rey is utterly overtaken, lost to the sensation of him trying to devour her whole. Long licks that dip deep into her centre before flicking over her clit have little, whimpering cries rhythmically dropping from her slack, kiss-bruised lips. He’s barely begun, but the young doctor can feel her orgasm building already. With the way her thighs are beginning to shake around his ears, it's nothing if not inevitable, now.

Tossing her head back to shudder out an inarticulate plea, she chases the coil of heat knotting itself tight and deep within her body. Her hips jerk and grind almost uncontrollably; she rides his face the way he’d practically begged her to. She begins to fracture apart, splintering into blinding bursts of pleasure. Rey yelps, her spine arching, muscles tightening almost unbearably as she comes.

Poe’s hands are still on her, holding her, guiding her gently onto her back until he’s hovering above her. His face is still shiny with her pleasure, but he’s waiting, assessing. His nose bumps lightly against hers.

“Rey?”

The sound of her name in his mouth shivers deliciously down her spine, like droplets of cold rain.

Rey tilts her chin up, kitten-licking at him, chasing her own taste on his mouth. He hovers just out of her reach, teasing. She huffs in frustration, her head dropping back down onto the cot bonelessly.

Rey,” he draws out her name like a warning.

It’s clear that he wants this to last, but she’s still so empty... She scowls, prepared to put him in his place, but before she knows it, Poe’s trapped her two thin wrists in the span of his one hand – and isn’t that something to think about? – and slung them up above her head. He’s half on top of her, his solid weight holding her down far more effectively than any restraint could. Automatically, she goes to challenge him, but the expression that meets her frustration has her momentarily captivated.

“C’mon, Rey,” he challenges lowly, his tone maddeningly conversational despite the hungry look in his eyes, “Let me take my time with you…”

She feels pinned to the thin pallet like a mounted insect, sharp points of longing and something keener forcing her limbs into stillness.

He shakes his head almost reflexively, like he’s scolding himself, expression impenetrable. She remains frozen, waiting to see what he’ll do next. At first, he stares at her like he could stare right through her skin and into her soul if he so chose. As she lays there, essentially on display, his gaze begins to darken almost alarmingly. It isn’t something she’d normally allow, this examination, but it seems she’s intent on breaking all her own rules for this man. Far from making her feel trapped, the way he stares at her – like he intends to make a very long meal of her – makes her thrill with desire.

Never taking her eyes off his, she arches a little to brush the tips of her hardened nipples along his tan chest, smirking, provoking. All his breath leaves his lungs in a heated gust that raises a crop of goosebumps across her neck and collar bones. Poe’s head drops down to hang between his arms, his curls tickling her parted lips. His body is a taut pillar of muscle as he fights for control. She searches out his mouth. Three or four shallow exhales mingle with her heavy breath as his lips skate along hers – just out of reach.

Briefly, she succeeds on licking into his mouth, moaning at the slight tang of her own taste on his tongue. Quicker than she can chase him, he pulls back completely, arching his body away from hers. She huffs out an angry chuckle, hips jerking uselessly, seeking pressure. “I’ve seen your bloodwork,” she growls, “We’re both clean; I have an IUD. So. Stop -ah- stop fucking with me,” she threatens.

An eternity in a moment greets her statement. Any motion from Poe is stayed. She watches his throat bob as he swallows hard, and she knows he’s trying to absorb the fact that she’s essentially just demanded to have unprotected sex with him. His jaw clenches, muscles jumping as his nostrils flare with the effort of controlling his breath. “You don’t mean that,” he rasps, shaking his head.

Another small whine escapes from her throat. Poe’s mocha eyes flutter open, heavy-lidded with desire. She squirms beneath him, hotter than ever. “I know my own mind, Dameron,” she tries to snarl, all aggression lost in how breathless she’s become.

Suddenly, he grins – that bashful-yet-cocky smirk that infuriates her as much as it enflames her.

Jesus,” she gasps, valiantly rolling her eyes, “A-are – you… always this difficult?” but his smile only sharpens.

“I don’t know,” he parries flatly, almost too seriously, “Are you always this reckless?”

His words are somewhat undercut by the way he then begins grinding her into the cot, showing her just how much she’s affecting him. He’s hard, hot, and swollen against her centre, even through the rough material of his pants. He’s shifting their bodies up by several inches every time he bottoms out. Before long, they’re both gasping with it. Rey clenches her teeth, biting back a moan.

As quickly as he’d begun to slake her indomitable lust, Poe once again ceases all movement. Before she can stop herself, his name falls from her lips – sharp – almost sobbing with frustration.

Poe!”

Time seems to stop. His dark eyes bore into hers. She can’t breathe.

Before she knows it, Poe has manhandled her until he’s got her flipped onto her front. She’s suddenly shockingly exposed to him: vulnerable in a very real, very physical way. Briefly, it feels as though she’s been dunked into a bucket of ice water: the scars on her back are frighteningly visible. Hesitantly, she pushes herself up slightly on her elbow, looking over her shoulder at him, terrified of his reaction yet completely at the mercy of his sudden fever.

He’s beautiful: toned chest on full display, his own barely healed wounds revealed to her gaze in the slanted shadows of the room. He’s not even looking at her glaring imperfections, not really. Briefly, his face is stormy and dark, the rage that simmers within him coming to the surface once again on her behalf. Then, he’s just enraptured, expression naked with lust. Oddly, that makes her feel somehow safer, and the heat comes roaring back with a fury.

His pants are slung low on his hips, the top button undone. Sweat glistens along acres of skin. As she watches, biting her lip, a rivulet runs slowly down between his pecs and along his abs. Its path ends at the dark line of hair disappearing into the waistband of his boxer-briefs.

She shivers with want, watching him with hooded eyes as he slowly inches the fabric down until his cock bounces free. Her mouth is like the Sahara from the moment she sees it, and she scrunches her eyes closed in desperation. A light tug at the side of her underwear has them flying open again.

Poe’s grinning at her, his head tilted like he’s questioning her – or challenging her. He’s leaning over her, body covering hers. One thick finger is hooked in the crotch of her simple underwear, shoving it aside to expose her glistening centre. He’s waiting.

After a long moment, she nods at him, face partially hidden in the crook of her elbow so he can’t see any more evidence of how much she clearly needs this.

Yes,” she says clearly, if a little roughly.

“Thank fuck,” he grinds out.

With two sharp rips she barely feels, her underwear is suddenly gone. For a breathless moment, nothing happens. Then, Poe notches the head of his shaft at her entrance and slides inside her with one tender and slow, deep thrust.

The breach seems to go on forever, endless and nearly shocking in its bare intimacy. It seems to keep going and going until she almost fears that her body won’t have the capacity to take all of him. The initial stretch and sting of being filled isn’t exactly comfortable, her slickness notwithstanding. It’s been ages since the last time Rey was penetrated by anything thicker than her own fingers, and the difference is significant. Despite the slight discomfort, once he’s fully seated within her, she’s shocked at how profound it feels – the heat of him inside her body.

Rey shudders, clenching around him reflexively. Poe responds with a punched-out noise, his breath like fire across the nape of her neck as he half-collapses along her back. The heat and pressure of him atop her is incredible, breath pressed from her lungs in a great gust as his weight settles over her. It should terrify her; she should feel trapped. Instead, she feels safe, shielded.

Clutching at the top edge of her cot, small, thin breaths hiccup into her chest as she tilts her hips up and back into his, changing the angle enough that he slips in just a little deeper.

They moan in tandem, the sensation overwhelming, nearly too much. With a bone-rattling groan, the general begins to thrust shallowly, barely moving, yet striking sparks all down her spine. “Fuck, -ugh- Poe!” she gasps, her voice raspy and unrecognizable to her own ears, “S-stop teasing and fuck m-”

Her words are cut off with a sharp gasp as he draws all the way back, then snaps his hips forward with a thrust so powerful it drives her down into the thin mattress of her cot. Breath coming out almost like sobs now, she moans at the feeling of fullness that comes and leaves her open and aching again and again. Her fingers twist so hard into the pillow beneath her that she can hear the telltale popping of stitches ripping open one by one. Poe’s breath is brutal and animal in her ear, his teeth sharp and punishing at the juncture of her jaw and throat.

With his weight pushing her down into the hard, thin pallet, every single thrust of his cock draaags along her walls deliciously. The compression somehow magnifies the pleasure; she can’t help but cry out. It only prompts him to pound into her harder.

Rey feels… unleashed.

Nearly everyone she’s ever known, all her life, has tried to use her body for their own ends, to serve their own agendas, twisting it and training it, but this. Everything about this is her choice. Hell, she’s demanded it. This is something she wants down to her very bones.

The power of it, the freedom of it, feels akin to those rare moments in which she completely loses herself in the act of saving a life. Rey pants out his name as his right arm curls under her, forearm spanning across her chest and hand coming to curl protectively, possessively, around her throat, tucking her back up against his chest so that she’s fully flush against him. Poe’s other hand lands atop hers, where her fingers are clutched tightly into the now woefully misshapen pillow. A near subsonic noise rumbles out of Poe’s chest and through her thin frame as he clenches his fist tightly around hers.

Heat and pressure bloom and compress deep within her, and she sobs out a sound so desperate, so lonely that she knows she’ll regret it later, horrified at her own vulnerability. At this moment, however, Rey is so far from caring. She can’t care about anything except how much she needs him.

Poe’s arm around her upper chest constricts as she pants out his name again. Her core clenches at the pressure, a shock of pleasure arcing like lightning through her spine.

Rey,” her name tumbles from his mouth like a landslide, her yearning spiralling ever upwards at how deeply wrecked he sounds.

He pushes deep, deep into her, sliding hotly through the blinding pressure of her walls. Rey’s head snaps back and her eyes pop open. A short scream is forced from her lungs as she comes harder than she would have imagined possible. Pleasure rockets through her frame, echoing and rebounding, stretching time until the moment seems endless. Her body locks up under him, muscles rigid and quivering as he follows her over the edge with a soul-shaking groan.

She’s rocked a second time, smaller yet no less profound when she feels him pulse and jerk inside her, her every sense magnified and attuned to him.

Shuddering, Poe slowly releases her, his breath hot on her neck as she slumps back down onto her ruined pillow. There’s a sudden shock of cold when the air hits the sweat along her back. As the soldier pushes himself up and off her, his semi-hard cock slides out, leaving her empty once again.

Rey just manages to stop herself from making a bereft noise at the sense of loss she feels once they’re no longer physically connected. She allows herself a full thirty seconds, counted slowly in her head, to hide her face and catch her breath, thoughts racing wildly. There’s simply no way that this can be anything more than a quick fuck. Earth-shattering, soul-destroying, completely intense, and unexpected as it was, it was also a mistake. Whatever it is inside her that responds to Poe so keenly is a weakness she simply can’t afford.

Oh god, oh god, she’s going to regret what she has to do next so fucking much.

Chapter 16: There's Nothing

Summary:

Our heroes react in unexpected ways.

Notes:

Okay I hope you're still going to like everyone at the end of this chapter. I also hope you'll be pleased with the way someone responds.

Warnings:
On the edge of NSFW
Moderate nudity, language, and sexual content throughout
Crappy trauma responses
Manipulative behaviour
Attempted(?) blackmail

Please let me know what you think! I love comments :)

Chapter Text

Poe half-stumbles up from Rey’s cot, legs still wobbly from the most intense orgasm he’s ever had. Even reeling in sheer disbelief, he can’t tear his gaze away from her. Acres of skin – bared and beautiful – on display. For him. He’s astounded.

How? How did that just happen? How could she have ever wanted him?

His eyes catch again at the scars marring her back. Lashes. Burns. A gnarled knot of silver tissue.

Blurred, terrible rage boils even beneath the fog of sex he’s still trapped in. He watches her with a strange mixture of anger and acute, painful tenderness. She’s still laid out on her pallet, sucking in heavy breaths, face hidden in her ruined pillow. He’s intoxicated by her. Bewitched. He’s never felt this way about anyone, and it makes him want to personally slaughter every person who has ever laid a finger on her, starting with Kylo Ren.

He also wants to grab her, some supplies, and a Jeep, and run as far away from this damned war as humanly possible. So that he can keep her safe. With him.

Fuck, he needs her.

Rey stirs, pushing herself up even as he stands there, staring stupidly. As she moves, his rage is once again eclipsed by his unquenched desire for her. Still facing away from him, she pulls her legs beneath her slim frame to sit up on her knees, back straightening in that regal, unbowed posture he’d admired from the moment he met her. Her hair, usually pulled capably back, is an absolute disaster, snarled curls floating around her neck and jawline, hiding her expression from him. Her chest still expands with heavy breaths, but he can see that masterful control of hers at work, and she actively calms herself in seconds before his eyes.

Poe’s heart clenches in his chest, his throat tight.

“Rey, sweetheart—” he begins.

The doctor’s spine stiffens. A stone weight, like an elephant, drops into Poe’s stomach. That isn’t the posture of a woman basking in the afterglow. Horror shrieks swiftly through him. He frantically replays the last… Fuck. He has no concept of how long it’s been. Feels like hours and moments simultaneously. A panicked shuffle through his memory produces no moment that lacked consent, however, so he’s not sure exactly what’s wrong.

After a tense moment, he decides to try again.

“Rey, beautiful, that was—”

“A mistake,” she finishes quietly.

Icy fingers of fear curl around the base of his skull at her words, spoken to the wooden wall in front of her. She doesn’t – and he realizes she won’t – turn to face him. Even though he doesn’t want to hear it again, doesn’t want to make the nightmare real, he gasps, “What?” disbelieving, despite all evidence to the contrary.

Fluidly, Rey suddenly stands, far more grace in her limbs than there should fairly be after what had literally just occured. She begins to mechanically select articles of her clothing from the floor, efficiently covering her nakedness without comment. Poe’s hindbrain growls in dissatisfaction in at the reconcealed flesh, but most of his mind is focused on panicking. He stands there, foolishly; bare and frozen as she finishes dressing in mere moments.

“This was a mistake,” Rey repeats flatly, turning to face him.

Her voice is iron, but she can’t quite conceal the way her gaze rakes over his form before her eyes meet his. When she meets his eyes, something in her is detached, closed off, the normally bright and lively hazel somehow dulled. He’s seen her shut down like this before, but it never ceases to chill his blood.

“How can you say that?” he whispers, his heart’s wound laid open and raw before her.

She breaks eye contact, and it seems to break his strange stillness. Poe snatches his underwear from the beautifully worn planks of the floor. He slips them on quickly, relieved to feel just a little bit less vulnerable.

Silence stretches horribly. He warily watches her, like a wild animal trying to assess what sort of danger it can expect from a strange new creature. Minute tremors run through her body, barely visible even under his focus. She seems to war with herself, the internal struggle borne externally. Christ, even now, he aches to reach out and pull her to him, to hold her and help her stop fighting herself at every turn.

Hesitantly, he steps into her space, moving as though to soothe a spooked horse. She doesn’t notice or perhaps doesn’t care, too caught up in her own head to stop him. He’s petrified that he might hurt her again, scare her away, but the urge to comfort her is too strong to fight. His fingers grasp gently at her sleeve, pulling her softly inwards until she’s encompassed in his embrace. Rey shakes in his arms. Her body almost vibrates with tension along his.

For a heart-stopping beat, she doesn’t respond, doesn’t move, but then her slim arms come up to encircle his waist. Every ounce of her considerable strength goes into her hold on him for a few moments, then she finally relaxes. The young woman slumps heavily against him, almost leaning her weight on him, every line of her frame screaming sheer exhaustion. He buries his nose in her sex-mussed chestnut waves, relief and concern pouring through his system.

He can’t stop himself from repeating, “Why would you say that, Rey?”

He presses a kiss to her temple.

“Because it sure as hell didn’t feel like a mistake to me.”

Then another, to her cheek.

“That was – you were—”

The corner of her mouth.

“You’re incredible, Rey.”

He cups her jaw, turning her face inward. With an almost helpless gasp, she opens her lips to meet his. This kiss is no less feverish than the other ones they’ve shared, and he moans into it despite himself. His core temperature rises at the renewed fervour of desire. Her nails bite into the skin of his lower back as her tongue slides thrillingly across his. Poe holds her to him as though she might be torn from his arms at any moment. He’s desperate for her to understand the way she makes him feel. Desperate for her to feel the same.

Delicious little whimpers escape from Rey’s throat as they kiss. It sets his nerves afire like nothing ever has. His body thrums with yearning, his cock even twitching with renewed life.

It reminds him to slow down, to make sure. He can’t let her walk out of here without ensuring she understands. How special she is. How important she is. How her safety needs to be paramount, above all else.

He pulls away as much as he’s able when he never wants to stop kissing her, breathing out as he nuzzles under her sharp jaw, “Rey, sweetheart… I – I’m fucking crazy for you.”

She shivers at his confession.

He rumbles low words against her pulse, drunk with the realization that he affects her physically as much as she does him.

“So goddamn gorgeous, so fucking, good, Rey. I swear to god, you’re the most amazing woman I’ve ever laid eyes on...”

The young doctor’s shoulders hitch in time with the smallest skip in her breath. He passes a gentle hand up and down her spine, hardly conscious of the action, perpetually drawn to the warmth of her skin through her clothing. He presses the lightest kiss to the silk-soft skin beneath her ear.

Poe’s in serious danger of losing himself to her again, eager to find solace, oblivion in her body once more. It’s perhaps the reason why he doesn’t immediately notice the subtle change in her stance, the shift in her weight. His lips trail down the column of her neck, marked by his teeth, even as she begins to gently move away from him. Without conscious thought, his grip on her tightens possessively, instinctively unwilling to let her go.

“Poe, stop.”

The soldier freezes.

Rey takes a careful step away from him.

“This isn’t what we came here to do,” she states, turning the topic on a dime and leaving the general in her dust once more, “I’m joining Black Squad on the mission to liberate the city. You don’t have a say.”

Poe can’t help but scoff at that.

“Is that so?” he asks, his tone a warning. “In what world do I not have a say? I’m the goddamn General of the Resistance.”

It’s probably the first time he’s ever meant those words. She just shakes her head at him, face remorseful in a way that foretells his doom at her hands. Whatever is coming has her shoulders hunched up around her ears. Her body curls in on itself like she’s as wounded by her own thoughts as he is about to be by her words. He braces himself, as much as any man can in the face of Rey Skywalker, waiting for the axe to fall.

“I’m telling you that you don’t have a say, Dameron. Not now.”

His stomach drops a few inches in disappointment. She’s reverted to his last name. His traitorous heart already misses the sound of his first.

“What are you saying?” he asks quietly, even though he fears he already knows the answer.

“You really want what just happened to get out?”

Poe shuts his eyes like he might shut out the realization that Rey is… She’s blackmailing him. Into letting her go. He stands still and quiet in the darkness for a moment, trying to absorb the fact she’s felt driven to this point. To her credit, when he can look at her again, it’s clear from her expression that she regrets that things have come to this.

It does little to cool the initial flare of anger. He huffs out an unimpressed laugh, shrugging casually.

“I’ve been with the Resistance a good long time, sweetheart. A little tryst isn’t going to ruin my reputation.”

A bright, white flash of pain flickers across her face almost faster than he can catch at the words ‘little tryst.’ A petty, vengeful part of him – the part that left his father alone on their pathetic little farm to go work for the cartel – gets a bit of vindictive pleasure from striking a blow in this battle whose rules seem subject to Rey’s whims. If she sees some insane reason to fuck this up, to taint what’s between them, then he isn’t just going to accept it lying down.

“Don’t presume to think you have any power here,” he snarls.

He regrets the words the instant they escape his mouth.

Her hazel eyes widen with shock. She actually stumbles back a step. Then, like the flip of a coin, her expression hardens with a look so dangerous it sends a thrill of legitimate fear down his spine.

“Let me ask you this, Dameron,” she says, voice deadly calm in the close, humid air of the little hut, “How do you think Leia would feel if she knew her prize General just fucked her poor, orphaned, traumatized niece?”

Poe knows he should be furious. Blackmail truly is one of the most underhanded methods of getting what you want. He knows people who would have exploded into violence at Rey’s blatant manipulation. He understands, however, that this is a desperate move on her part. Instinctually, he knows that in this moment, she’s completely incapable of facing what they’ve done. So, she’s lashing out.

Rey’s much too strong and resourceful to resort to something like this under normal circumstances.

While this will of course get her what she wants – because, hell, Leia’s a goddamn trump card and Rey fucking knows it – it’s clearly a move from a place of vulnerability. Despite the viciousness of her threat, the stony expression she wears, there’s more going on than just a petty attempt to get her way. She’s trying to distance herself. She’s scared – terrified – of what’s happening between them.

It’s the result of the tension still lingering in the air, the simmering attraction that’s only become more obvious now that it’s been consummated. The way she trembles at his every touch; clearly, Rey is just as moved is he is. The way they’d kissed, the way she’d clung to him – oh, fuck, the way she moaned his name – is evidence enough that something much more profound than just fucking occurred.

The silence that follows the doctor’s threat is heavy with things unsaid, and Poe finds that he’s sad. He’s hurt by Rey’s rejection. He’s devastated that he’s going to have to let her go, and rescue Paige. More than anything, though, he’s sad for her.

He wishes she felt capable of reaching out and embracing this, that she trusted him enough to do so.

But she’s too hurt.

Poe sighs, “Fine,” voice sounding defeated, even to his own ears. “Fine, Rey. Have it your way.”

The young woman looks utterly startled at his easy acquiescence. A faint line forms between her eyebrows, and her lips part slightly. Even though it’s clear she’s speechless, she looks affronted – offended almost – that Poe isn’t fighting back. Obviously, it’s what she’s come to expect from their previous encounters.

All of a sudden, Poe’s disappointed in himself. He’s been reactive, testy, and lashing out, angry and – frightened. He’s been trying to protect himself, his heart, when he should have been protecting her. Not only is Rey a valuable ally and a skilled doctor, but she’s also someone who deserves kindness.

And he’s been anything but kind.

“You’ll go with Black Squad,” he continues as calmly as possible. “You’re more than capable of completing this mission with them.”

Her expression grows more and more perplexed.

“If I can trust anyone to keep you out of trouble, it’s my spec ops crew—” he hesitates. “I can’t order you to do anything, Rey; you’ve made that abundantly clear – but please, follow their lead during the incursion.”

As she digests his words, dozens of different emotions filter across her face. Poe turns to collect his clothes and get dressed, satisfied that he’s said his piece. He half-faces away, still aware of her gaze on the back of his neck. Keeping a bit of an eye on her over his shoulder, he drags on his pants and shrugs into his shirt.

It’s only once he’s turned back around that she glances away, reluctant to look at him. Her hands clench and unclench at her sides, but she still manages a decisive nod. Hazel briefly flickers up to meet his eyes, and then he watches her master herself once again, stillness coming over her form with a deep breath.

She meets his gaze steadily, face a little softer.

“I do have some sense,” she quietly states, a poor attempt at the friendly banter they sometimes manage. “Of course, I’ll follow their lead.”

She seems sincere, and Poe supposes that’s enough. He’ll still be terrified for her every single moment she’s gone. He’ll still be disappointed that she felt the need to bring them to this point of underhanded opposition. He’ll still be heartbroken because of her, and on her behalf.

Once again, Poe cautiously closes the distance between them, carefully gauging her reaction. She watches him warily, unsure of his motives. It’s pure instinct to reach out grasp both of her cold hands between his. Rey blinks, surprised at the tenderness of the action but not pulling away. At least, not yet. He hopes she won’t.

The doctor seems a little captured by the intensity of his gaze, spellbound. He watches her pupils dilate in real time, black swallowing up blues and greens and browns. Her cheeks flush. There’s no mistaking the signs of arousal. A harsh inhale forces its way into his lungs, but he holds it for a moment before letting it out slowly. He can’t get carried away. This is too important.

“When it comes to Leia—”

His throat clicks dryly as he swallows.

Poe isn’t going to let this go. He can’t. She needs to know that she has something to come back to.

“I consider what just happened a privilege. I’d consider it a gift if it ever happened again.” He releases her left hand, bringing his right up to cup her face. “And I’d consider myself lucky to be able to tell Leia about my relationship with her niece one day.”

Almost as though she’s in pain, Rey’s eyes fall shut.

“Why are you so good?” she whispers harshly, the words bursting out of her like she can’t contain them.

He has her enfolded in his arms again faster than a thought, enveloping her in a desperate, uncertain hug while he wrestles with himself. After everything he’s said and done, how can she think that he’s a good man? God, what a mess they’re both in.

“Please, Rey. Give me a chance,” he whispers, entreating. “Let me know you.”

Her hands are fisted so tightly in his shirt that he’s sure it will be forever misshapen. She’s silent, face buried in the curve between his neck and shoulder. He can’t tell what she’s thinking.

He waits with bated breath, one small part of him registering faint surprise at the way he’s gone against every reflex to put himself out there for her. Poe Dameron of a few hours ago could have barely admitted his feelings to himself, let alone her. Rey’s worth it, though. He needs her so badly that his blood thrums for her, his skin shakes, and he feels like an addict with a craving whenever she’s close.

He’s never felt this way before, never had the inkling to try for something serious. Poe had never believed in romance, always too afraid of loss and too realistic about his own chances of survival to subject someone to anything even approaching a relationship. This, though. He wants to hold onto this, to her, with all his strength. He’ll fight to keep her alive until his last breath, and intends to wait as long as it takes for her to be ready for this.

She still hasn’t answered him, and the realization settles heavily around his lungs that she can’t answer him. Rey can’t admit to anyone, least of all herself, that this feels inevitable. That they were a chemical reaction waiting to oxidize, a bomb about to explode; untold potential energy barreling inescapably toward fusion. There’s something still holding her back from him.

There’s no telling if her reticence is the result of the trauma she’s undergone, but Poe knows that if he pushes, he’s more likely to scare her away than reassure her. He might lose any chance he still has with her. So, he murmurs, “You don’t have to answer me, Rey. Not now. I’m still gonna be here when you get back.”

The young doctor pulls back, finally looking up at him again. Though her eyes sparkle with unshed tears, her expression is puzzled, almost surprised, as if the mere idea that someone would want to wait for her had never even occurred. It’s why he wants so badly to love her, to treat her well. She’s faced unimaginable cruelty and come out good on the other side. She deserves to know what it is to be loved.

Chapter 17: Died in the Park

Summary:

Cue Admiral Ackbar.

Notes:

Hello my fellow writers and readers, I am sorry I have been so absent. I promised a few of you that I would have updates within days or weeks and then didn't follow through. I apologize.

I've been struggling through a pretty precipitous downturn in my mental health. I have still managed to get some writing done, but my output is going to be a lot slower for a while. Whirlwind is nearly finished; please bear with me.

If you have the emotional currency to spend, I'd love to hear all your thoughts on this chapter.

Warnings:
Restraints
Language
Uuuh I think that's it but please let me know if I missed anything

Chapter Text

The Hummer bounces and jolts, a bucking animal trying to rid itself of the bugs on its back. Rey allows herself to sway and jump with the movement of the armoured vehicle, eyes directed at the toes of her newly acquired combat boots, just visible in the gloom of the interior. It’s the easiest way to avoid the substantial gazes of Black Squad around her.

Like each of her comrades, Rey is dressed in heavy black gear, Kevlar adding weight she doesn’t want and certainly doesn’t need. The doctor prefers ease of movement when she fights, and layers of bulky body armour don’t make moving easy or quick. She supresses the urge to fidget, unwilling to draw further attention to herself.

They’re traveling quickly toward Lai Chau City, on route to a rendezvous with one of Paige’s trusted associates. To an outside observer, Rey looks exactly like the rest of them; one of the team. But something burns at her throat, hidden beneath the uniform, that indelibly separates her from these seasoned soldiers. Firmly wrapped around her neck is an olive-green scarf – soft, well-used, and smelling slightly of soap and a deep, masculine musk – which Poe had tenderly wound for her before they parted, to cover up the purpling marks made by his teeth.

Despite it being an action that many would see as self-serving, Rey sensed that he’d done it solely for her benefit, not his. Something told her that Poe would be just fine with everyone seeing those marks. If she let them see. If she embraced… It. This. Him.

Her mind continues to swirl like a whirlpool, as though she’d been knocked sideways a few hours ago and still hasn’t recovered from the vertigo. Truth is, she’s been lost in her head since she and the general silently parted ways. The scarf – his scarf – feels like a weight, drawing her back inside her own thoughts no matter how many times she wrenches herself into the present.

She can still sense his heated touch on her skin, present like the scent of smoke hanging in the air. Her neck aches deliciously, and an animal part of her itches to run her fingers along the claim he left on her skin, to press the bruises in harder, make them permanent. Rey’s throat isn’t the only thing that aches, either. She presses her thighs together, inescapably aware of the satisfying soreness and continued moisture there – her enduring arousal. It’s as though, having now realized it, she can’t turn her attraction to Poe off.

She sort of doesn’t want to.

Lurking behind the confusing lure of his body are his words: hastily whispered confessions and promises tattooing themselves on her brain, that she wishes she’d never heard them notwithstanding. I’m crazy for you… I’d consider myself lucky to tell her about our relationship…

I’ll still be here when you get back…

The slightest thought of it causes a blooming blush of heat deep within her, readying her body for him no matter the context. If Rey had a choice, of course she wouldn’t want to be illogically wet and ready for a fuck while on her way to confront the figure from her nightmares. Shit, though – she can’t help it. He’s gotten under her skin, burned her very blood in her veins and she can barely fucking function because of him.

Thank everything holy that her years of training – written on her very cells at this point – mean she didn’t miss the incursion plan, but she’ll be lucky to feel ‘on her game’ by the time they reach the city. A good chunk of the doctor’s psyche is still wholly occupied by pure shock. Never have her senses been overridden like they were inside that little hut alone with the general. The urge to stop and think, which usually haunts her every move, had been silent. Every moment she was alone with Poe – silence.

Nothing like this has ever happened to Rey – fuck, she’s never felt this way – and she’s terrified. Her body still thrums with the indefinable need that she’d discovered the second she kissed Poe, and she wants to bludgeon and bury the small (not so small – oh fuck, it isn’t small) part of herself that yearns to be back in his arms, not heading into a rescue mission. But she can’t let herself hope that Poe will keep his word, though, that he’ll be waiting when she returns.

Still, she helplessly dwells on the careful way he’d touched her and held her. He’d been gentle despite their sudden storm of passion. His tenderness still threatens to crack the ice around her heart.

All of a sudden, the realization that she has no memory of ever being handled with such consideration - such care - hits like a vicious blow. She tenses. A great, lurching sob swiftly threatens to rise in her chest, or maybe it’s the urge to vomit, but either way she focuses on wrestling the weird fucking feeling into submission. Rey definitely doesn’t want to go down the path of her miserable childhood right now.

She’s still fighting it, gulping and swallowing, suppressing her nausea, when the Hummer pitches to a fairly abrupt halt. Just managing to catch herself before toppling over, she straightens, casting her gaze upward for the first time in many hours. Several pairs of eyes flick away from her as soon as she looks up. Rey grinds her teeth.

“On foot from here,” the largest soldier quietly announces, and the heavily armed company moves as one to exit the vehicle, a unit in every way. Despite the gear and arms weighing them down, they’re intriguingly quiet. Now that she’s moving, her attention finally shifts to the hardened soldiers around her curiously, aware that they’re quite the motley crew. She’s surrounded by a vast range of age, skill, and experience, yet they work better together than a finely tuned machine.

She takes her appointed place in the centre of the group, content for now to follow along with Black Squad’s supposedly secret secondary objective of keeping her safe. Like she couldn’t guess from the way they’d briefed her, that the general had given them other orders. And she does want to do her best to honour Poe’s wishes, despite her natural inclination to be contrary. That impulse to obey scares her, in and of itself. Rey swore the day she left her old life behind that she’d never take orders from anyone ever again, and yet here she is, compelled by instincts she doesn’t understand to follow Poe’s word and Poe’s plan.

They creep along for several hundred metres through the pitch-black jungle, silent until a breath of a whisper breaks her concentration.

“So… where the fuck did you come from, Skywalker?” the one called Jess – pretty with long black hair – demands, glaring intently at her.

A sharp shushing sounds from her left, but Rey doesn’t bother to check who’s trying to silence Jess. Instead, she focuses on the other woman. She’s clearly dangerous (they all are), but is she a threat?

“Jakku,” she answers flatly.

For a good long moment, the soldier offers no response, her face void of any discernable expression. Then, a sudden laugh barks from her throat (followed by a harsher, more emphatic hush from the left). She elbows Rey with a sort of soldierly camaraderie, snorting more quietly. The young doctor blinks.

“Oh, she’s funny,” Jess comments a little louder, as if to include the whole group of them.

The tall blonde woman and the mountain of a man (someone called him ‘Snap,’ but that can’t be right) both glance shiftily back at her, but no one else visibly responds to Jess’s statement. Rey, however, can’t resist, and arches an eyebrow in her direction. She gives the other woman a once-over, a clear assessment.

“That’s what I’m here for. Entertainment.”

The smallest tightening in Jess’s shoulders tells Rey that her retort had the intended effect. It’s a dry joke mixed with a sarcastic reminder that there are more important things to be focused on than her. The soldier’s sharp, sideways gaze is good enough evidence to demonstrate that they’re definitely communicating.

Even so, Jess can’t seem to contain herself.

“So, you’ve joined up, then?”

Rey inclines her head, as noncommittal an action as she’s ever given, the flashing neon ‘Fuck Off and Mind Your Own Business’ sign on her forehead as brightly lit as it’s ever been. Undeterred, Jess opens her mouth again. Luckily for Rey’s sanity, she’s cut off by the group coming to a halt. The doctor casts a wary eye through the darkened trees, spying the city’s edge not too far ahead.

They settle down to wait in the blackness for a signal from Paige’s associate. The noise of the jungle and the noise of city mesh, here, the ever-present urban soundtrack of traffic and human noise mingling with nature in a way that feels artificial and disharmonic. Rey finds herself wishing for tranquility of the little valley hamlet they’d made their base of operations, the sounds of the living, beating planet nearly always overpowering any human-made sound.

Out of nowhere, the tall blonde perches herself next to Rey. Seems it’s someone else’s turn to accost the new girl. If she were a cat, her fur would be standing on end, a clear warning to stay away. But Poe’s people seem to blithely ignore even the most blatant signals.

The woman quietly clears her throat, and Rey closes her eyes. She takes a deep breath, trying to settle her rising ire at what she suspects is the incoming interrogation. Instead, she gets a surprise.

“I’m Karé,” the other woman introduces herself, voice low, level, and pleasant. “I just wanted to thank you.”

Rey glances up at her, bewildered.

“It’s thanks to you that Finn’s alive, isn’t it? That Poe’s alive. Plus, you volunteered to come along tonight. That means something.”

What the hell? The doctor can’t figure these rebels out. They’re driven, and dedicated to their cause, much like the group she’d grown up with, but these soldiers tended to be kind to a fault, with the honest intention of getting to know new people. They welcomed new people. Rey just hasn’t been allowing any of that kindness to rub off on her.

With an internal wince, Rey thinks of what Rose is always telling her: they aren’t the only ones out in the world trying to do good. The doctor forgets that sometimes. With a disagreeable jolt in her stomach, she’s reminded that she’s only on this mission thanks to the nurse. After Rose had shared her insider information with the general, she’d come straight to Rey (and against Poe’s orders no less) to tell her about Paige.

She already owes almost everything to Rose. Any sense of compassion and community Rey feels is thanks almost entirely to the Tico sisters. Now, she must begin repaying that debt by ensuring Paige’s safety. Looking up at Karé, Rey gives her a small smile and a nod, acknowledging the kindness the woman is showing her. The soldier’s answering smile is bright, and before she knows it, the mountainous man that sticks close to the blonde has crouched on her other side.

Oh Jesus. She did not come here to make friends.

“Hey, Doc.”

His voice is a soft, pleasant baritone, deeply assuring. Rey immediately gets the distinct impression that this is a man who could probably de-escalate almost any conflict just with his words and his tone of voice. Slowly, she’s beginning to get a picture of why this group of soldiers work so seamlessly together.

“You’re something else, you know that?” he says, the white flash of his grin visible from within his dark beard.

The young doctor is so puzzled by his statement that she can’t help but respond. “I beg your pardon?”

A low chuckle rumbles through his body. “No offence meant, Doc. I just mean that I’m impressed with the way you’ve tamed the General.”

Rey instantly bristles, flushing in the dark as she’s hit with a powerful sense memory of the way Poe’s eyes practically rolled up in his head as he licked her open.

Before she can recover enough to respond, a short, sharply whistled note sounds from the pitch-black trees. Every member of Black Squad is directly on alert, and after a moment, Tallie puts the tip of her thumb and her middle finger between her lips to signal back. The soft rustle of foliage is nearly inaudible under the din of the city and the fauna, but Rey and the others are acutely aware of an approach nonetheless.

Slowly, a figure emerges, and the doctor can’t help but sigh with relief when she recognizes them from the clinic. Her respite is immediately followed by a flash of guilt as she realizes she isn’t sure of their name. Was it Khuong? They’re one of the administrative officers. The tall, slender, Vietnamese clerk either doesn’t notice Rey or doesn’t recognize her, their gaze sliding straight over her face before landing on Snap.

“Paige sent me,” they say, voice a low, hurried whisper, “Follow me.”

Before complying, Snap casts a quick glance the doctor’s way, eyebrow raised in question. Rey nods. Yes. She knows them.

At the soldier’s sign, Black Squad falls back into formation around her, and they set off. They skirt the outer edges of the city, circling around to approach the Red Cross clinic from the rear. The closer they get, the more Rey recognizes familiar landmarks from her time spent living here. She keeps alert, noting how the crowds and traffic begin to thin as they draw nearer and nearer to their destination.

Rey has a bad feeling about this.

Their contact doesn’t speak, leading them with single-minded intensity. The closer they get, the more anxious she begins to feel. A knot of tension is starting up in her guts. She tries to shake it off, sure that it’s nothing more than concern for Paige.

By the time the clinic is in sight, the streets are completely deserted. Contrary to what Paige had reported to Rose, the building appears to be deserted. A few ‘troopers linger around the main entrance, keeping an eye out. A handful more mill about at the back door, no effort expended on keeping in formation. Her eyebrows draw together as she looks over the scene; the knot of concern in her stomach grows.

Has Kylo Ren already moved on? Have they missed their chance to catch him unawares? That would be… safer, certainly. Surely avoiding a confrontation would be… good? Yet Rey can’t help but feel a strange, bitter bubble of disappointment at the back of her throat. Maybe she’s missed her chance to excise the evil spectre from her life (and the world) permanently. To be able to live her life without his shadow haunting her every move would be a gift.

And Poe would be safe from him.

At the sight of the light guard, Tallie and Snap exchange a glance that seems to contain an entire conversation, but they continue to move forward as planned. Rey slows her pace by a fraction, feeling seriously off, but Jess gives her a firm poke from the back, firm enough that she trips up a tiny bit. She makes an effort to stay with the group.

At the very edge of the trees, they pause, their contact darting out ahead to make sure the coast is clear. With a wave of their hand from the shadows of the clinic, Black Squad advances as one. Rey is carried along on the tide of their movement even as alarm creeps up her spine like a spider. Her fingers clench on the hilt of the machete she bears.

There’s a partially concealed, disused service entrance that leads directly into the facility’s storage room. They make their way toward it, alert and utterly silent. Paige’s contact is tugging at the door handle, which Rey remembers tends to stick in the humidity. She opens her mouth to give warning, but it’s too late, and the door pops open with a sharp crack. Everyone freezes in terror, looking around desperately to see if they’ve been detected.

After one of the longer, tenser moments of Rey’s life, she can sense the soldiers around her begin to relax. She wishes she could do the same, but her insides are still churning even as she follows the rest of them inside. It’s after hours, so the lights are off everywhere but the emergency wing.

They plunge from light-speckled night into the deep shadow of the interior, footsteps scuffling lightly despite their best efforts. The doctor’s anxiety ramps up another level as she listens to the rustle of their body armour, the clink of their many weapons. There are just too many of them for Rey to stop from feeling paranoid, fearing discovery at any moment.

They creep behind the clinic's administrative area, heading toward the emergency wing. Paige had mentioned that the bulk of First Order activity was occurring there, but something still feels wrong. Rey glances around warily, trying to assess whether she should be peeling off from the group or not. Unfortunately, there’s nowhere else to go. She’s committed to this plan now.

Up ahead, the Resistance soldiers push open the double doors to the operating suite, the light inside a blinding white flash through the dark hallway. A few of her colleagues grunt with discomfort, ripping night-vision goggles off their faces. As one, they pour through the doors, Rey taking up point behind them, bringing up the rear as promised. The moment she follows them through into the light, Rey instantly realizes they’re fucked.

Kylo Ren stands in the centre of the room, alone but for one of the gurneys. He’s a dark stain in the sterile white space, a hole in the fabric of the universe, and every cell in Rey’s body simultaneously screams at her to run. Cold fear seems to have robbed her of that ability, however, and she’s frozen in horror, unable to accept that she’s here, face-to-face with him after all this time.

“Rey.”

Her name – distorted and ugly through the mask’s filter – sounds like a curse, and yet even behind the mechanical alteration, she can still hear the smooth, soothing voice of her friend. The icy grip of fear tightens on her chest and throat. She can’t breathe.

As if in slow motion, Black Squad lifts their weapons, every muzzle trained on the lone, nightmarish figure. His posture remains unchanged, his stillness uncanny as he stares straight through Rey, ignoring the bristling threat of the rebels from all sides. It’s as though everything but the two of them is suddenly meaningless.

“I wouldn’t make a move,” he intones, his attention shifting to Jess in a blink as she shifts forward. “Not unless you want any harm to come to your friend.”

The helmet tilts down, drawing the room’s notice to the bed at his side. Another frozen dagger of terror twists in Rey’s gut. Paige is strapped down with heavy-duty leather medical restraints, the type used on violent patients more likely to harm themselves than others. Her chest rapidly rises and falls with her panicked breaths, terrorized eyes filled with tears as she strains against the gag over her mouth, her expression imploring as she looks straight at Rey.

Her heart seizes for her friend. Rage begins to rise like magma, bubbling up to overtake the fear. She looks back up at Ren, expression furious, defiant. The way his anger and interest flares at once reminds her of when they worked together under Luke. He always did admire Rey’s passion.

“You know what I want, Skywalker,” Kylo’s voice is a menacing rumble of thunder on the horizon, the dark shadow of a storm. “Give it to me and she can leave with them.”

A derisive wave of his hand indicates that he means Black Squad.

She watches him carefully, trying to detect a lie behind the blank, black visage. The tension ramps another notch (if that’s even possible at this point), and out of the corner of her eye, she registers how Snap and Kare glance worriedly back at her, almost if they can sense what she’s thinking.

Her ears ring. Her vision darkens slightly, focus narrowing to a single point. Her fight or flight instinct is so heightened that it feels like she might pass out if she tries to speak.

“You know what I want, Rey,” he murmurs, the young doctor the only element in the room worth his focus.

Tears run freely down her cheeks as she looks at him, gritting her teeth against the words before they force their way out.

“Take me instead.”

Chapter 18: We Could

Summary:

Best friends, best friends, baking a cake! (Not really)

Poe and Finn have a talk.

Notes:

IT'S ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!!!!

Hi :) It's bee a hot minute. Still over here fighting against my own brain. But the writing is happening! Woo! This chapter is slightly shorter but chock-full of interesting stuff.

Special thanks to the Damerey Discord. Just hanging out with y'all is inspiring as heck.

 

Warnings:

Swearing, always
Some hints of Finn and Poe's past relationship
Dudes with emotions
A tiny soupçon of NSFW

Chapter Text

The medical hut is devoid of disturbance, the steady hum of machinery and the slow, deep breaths of its one remaining patient an ever-present, almost soothing soundtrack. For some, the atmosphere of healing might indeed be a balm to the soul, a shield against unease.

It isn’t working for Poe.

Maybe that’s why he sought out the bedside of his oldest friend – an attempt to escape his own fears – but it isn’t working. He’s trying to drown out his thoughts of Rey, but it isn’t working.

If only it wasn’t the middle of the night, and Finn were awake, and his own heart hadn’t forced its way out of his chest, cracking ribs and trailing gore as it followed her into the darkness, into the jaws of death. His fists clench atop his knees so hard that if he had the time to stop and think about it, he’d be sure to find bloody crescents dug into his palms. If one of his soldiers were to look in on them now, the general would seem to be thoughtfully regarding his sleeping friend, but in reality, Poe is lost in his own head, his gaze unseeing even as it rests on the still form beneath the blankets.

It's so dark, and the time for sleep has long since passed, but there will be no rest for the general. Every thought is eclipsed by terror as he envisions Black Squad’s progress to the city. He knows their plotted course; he knows the risk – the extreme risk – they are undertaking. If there had been any other way to rescue Paige and attempt to liberate the city, he would have taken it in a heartbeat.

Poe’s run the sequence in his head time and time again, and all he can focus on are the myriad ways that it could go wrong, that he could lose Rey…

He knows how capable she is. He’s seen it. Rey can take care of herself. But why does it still feel like he’s sent her to her doom?

Finn is silent, a huddled lump beneath the blankets of his recovery bed, but even asleep, he’s the man who Poe seeks out for comfort. He and Finn have been inseparable since the younger man stumbled his way into their ranks. Poe had still been a common soldier of the Resistance when they met – well, when Finn saved his life.

Becoming a prisoner to Kylo Ren wasn’t the first time Poe had been a ‘special guest’ of the First Order. Earlier in his career, he’d done a short, unsuccessful stint in intelligence. Somehow, his cover had been blown on his very first meeting with his contact.

In the Congo jungle, in a tiny village, he’d found the man. The elderly freedom fighter had taken refuge far away from modern technology, paranoia overtaking any desire for convenience. Poe remembered that his visit had been utterly unwelcome, the man terrified to the point of incoherence upon seeing another foreigner. Nonetheless, Poe’d been at the point of convincing him to help when his guides had revealed themselves to be double agents.

They’d both immediately been detained, Poe more angry than scared – too foolhardy and young at that point to be properly afraid. The First Order had begun their prisoner transport, and Poe had been certain that he was going to his death. But then, against all odds, one of his guards had broken him free, the two of them fleeing the prisoner convoy under the cover of darkness. They’d plunged unhesitatingly into the blindingly thick jungle. An exhilarating sort of adrenaline-induced euphoria had filled him to the brim as he followed the young man's white polymer armour through the eight-foot-high greenery.

To this day, Poe has no idea how long he and his companion spent running, their faces and hands sliced to ribbons on the flora. Eventually, they’d burst out onto a perfect, clear trail. It immediately had Poe’s hackles up, but the young stormtrooper had shown no hesitation, and he’d been forced to follow along.

Terror had well and truly spiked when he began to detect a heavy rustling ahead of them on the path. He’d been reaching for the enemy soldier, to warn him, to stop him, when they’d rounded a bend and been faced with the unbelievable sight of a herd of breathtakingly majestic elephants. The gentle beasts were walking in single file down the trail, lumbering unhurriedly in the same direction as them. The moment was burned in his memory, feeling small and awestruck near the docile giants as they began to follow along at the same relaxed pace, spellbound and temporarily part of the herd of – in Poe’s eyes, at least – near-mythic animals.

Finn and he have been nearly inseparable since. You don’t escape certain death and then witness a miracle with a man and not return changed and bonded for life. Thanks to that, the younger man has become the general’s strongest ally and pillar of support. Too bad he’s fucking sleeping.

“Jesus, buddy, you think loud,” the lump of blankets suddenly said.

Poe just wants someone to tell him he hasn’t made the worst mistake of his life. Not jokes. He sighs, half-relieved, half-exhasperated.

“You’ve been awake this whole time, haven’t you?”

Finn doesn’t answer his question, just rolls over and fixes him with a look.

“And you just lay there and let me stew? That’s cold, man.”

Finn snorts, pushing himself up to sitting with a smoothness that's a damn-near miracle considering his condition of only a few weeks ago. A painful kind of yearning blooms in his chest as he watches his friend. If Finn can survive Kylo Ren… If Poe could survive Kylo Ren, then maybe Rey will, too. She has to.

“What’s with the midnight rendezvous, Poe?” Finn gently prompts after the silence between them has gone on for too long.

Poe winces. Now that Finn’s awake, he finds himself at a loss for words. More than that, he finds himself reluctant to share. How can he even try and begin to explain what’s going on inside his head? How much can he even reveal about Rey? How will Finn react?

He’s never felt the impulse to hide something from his best friend before. Hell, Finn knows about his time with the cartel. He knows how the fight against a foreign government quickly became more important than all that foreign money. Finn knows how he’d been coerced into working with the American military as his own rebellion was systematically dismantled. How guilty he’d felt taking orders from the oppressors of his people.

Rey, though. Rey isn’t like those confidences. She isn’t shame or guilt to be shed and cleansed. She’s precious. A secret to protect. Isn’t she?

There’s no reason Finn should have to wish her harm, though. Surely Rey, how he feels about Rey, what he’s done with Rey, will be safe to share with his oldest friend. Finn supports him, always. So why does he feel so hesitant?

Finally, Finn breaks the silence again. “This is about Dr Skywalker, isn’t it?” he asks, his tone carefully neutral.

The general just stares at him. When did Finn learn how to read minds? Either that, or Poe is way more transparent than he thought he was.

“C’mon, buddy,” Finn says in response to his incredulous expression, “You are many things, but you’re not subtle. What the hell is going on there?”

Poe’s suddenly on his feet, pacing like caged animal.

“Fuck! I don’t know, Finn. I don’t know. She’s – Christ she’s incredible, and scarily competent, and I can’t get her out of my fucking head, and I want…”

He cuts himself off, knowing he’s dangerously close to articulating feelings that are way too serious to be having at this stage. He can’t touch those feelings, can’t even look directly at them, but the look on Finn’s face says he can see them anyway. Fuck. FUCK.

Poe turns his back, stricken to have inadvertently opened a fresh wound, bleeding out his emotions in front of his friend. He stares unseeingly through the dim room, unsure of what to say. What does he want; what does he need to hear from Finn?

Unfortunately, he doesn’t know, so his mouth decides to say: “We slept together.”

Finn’s sceptical scoff is too loud in the space, almost like a violent blow as the younger soldier looks to the heavens for strength. Poe can recognize the posture, and knows that if Finn were up and moving, he’d be furiously pacing, already fed up. He can feel his own hackles rising defensively, but he tries to rein it in for his friend’s sake.

Poe waits it out, and before too long, Finn looks back over at him. He looks disappointed. The general suddenly feels sick.

“Well, if you don’t learn from the past, I guess you’re doomed to repeat it,” Finn growls. “Damnit, Poe. I thought you knew better.”

It feels a bit like he’s a puppet whose strings have all been cut, and his body takes a moment to remind him how much he’s recently overused it in its abused state. As much as his brain doesn’t want to sit still, his body needs it. He sinks back into the chair at Finn’s bedside.

“This isn’t the same,” he sighs, resting both elbows on his knees so he can pinch at the bridge of his nose, eyes clenched tightly shut.

“Bullshit.”

Poe looks up sharply.

“Man, it’s exactly the same, and you know it. You’re the big Resistance hero. She’s the starry-eyed new recruit…” Finn swallows, vulnerable. “You cast a powerful spell, man. I should know,” he finishes quietly, kindly.

Out of nowhere, the general is seized by a sense-memory so powerful, it takes him out of the room entirely.

Water rushing in his ears and steam filling his lungs. The broad expanse of Finn’s back glistening with droplets like diamonds. The pillowy softness of his friend’s kiss-bitten lips as they stuttered open with a moan against his jawline.

The heavy heat of his cock in Poe’s fist, his tight rim of muscle around Poe’s finger.

He consciously wrenches himself out of the memory, his face flooding with heat as Finn grants him an almost pitying look. “She’s infatuated with you, Poe. And you’re flattered, and excited, but you’ll lose interest soon enough.”

The younger man’s tone contains only the barest hint of regret, an old wound long scarred over. It doesn’t stop the pang of guilt to the elder’s gut, however. Shit. Finn and Rey are basically contemporaries in age, aren’t they?

It’s – it’s different, though. And Finn’s labouring under a bit of a misunderstanding.

“I didn’t lose interest, Finn,” he says softly, his throat burning. “I just couldn’t… let us get too close.”

Finn avoids his gaze.

“Besides,” Poe rushes, “You were starting to realize that I’m not the big hero you imagined, anyway. Just your average fucking screw-up.”

His friend still won’t look him in the eye. “I know. I'm sorry. I – I’ve already apologized for this, Finn. I’m not perfect, and the way that part of us ended…” he finishes weakly.

He swallows around what feels like a heavy stone in his throat.

“But Rey’s different.”

For a moment, the general thinks that Finn’s going to tell him off, to yell at him, but then he takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

“Care to enlighten me?”

Bless Finn and his never-fucking-ending patience. Poe knows that he’s an obstinate asshole, sometimes. Often. Very few people but Finn can resist rising to his bait.

Won’t make it any easier to share this with him, though. He bobs his head and clenches his jaw, trying to buy himself a little time to figure out just what to say. What can he say?

Well, buddy, she’s twenty times smarter and more skilled than me, and she can help us win this fight, and she holds my last shred of humanity in her hands, and I’m more than halfway in lo-

Nope.

“Because there’s no way it’s just some crush. Not with her. I don’t…” he trails off, trying to define something he doesn’t actually know, but only strongly suspects. “I don’t think that she’d let me… get close if she didn’t implicitly trust me.”

Finn rolls his eyes. “Yeah, okay.”

Poe practically growls.

“Hey! You don’t know a damn thing about what that girl’s been through. She’s survived worse than either of us at the hands of Kylo Ren.” He blurts it without thinking, and it has the opposite effect from what he’d intended.

Finn bristles like a furious cat.

“I knew it,” he hisses, suddenly agitated. “When I told her that’s who’d taken you, her face… And you!”

The younger man leans into Poe’s space aggressively. “You let her into our ranks and into your bed, and she’s got some kind of history with Ren?”

Poe’s head is shaking back and forth, trying to deny, defend, dissuade the younger man from this line of thinking, because he’s not wrong, but –

“What if he uses her to get to us? What if he comes after her, huh?” he seizes the nearest part of the general in reach, which happens to be his wrist. The grip tightens painfully. “What if it comes down to Ren or her, huh, Poe? Do you really think you could make that call?”

Fear arcs through his soul at the words. Of course, Finn is the one who can immediately give voice to his greatest doubt about this whole thing. He knows the general better than Poe knows himself, sometimes. He knows that Poe’s passion is both his greatest strength and his greatest weakness. He feels all the time, and he feels intensely. He often harnesses that passion to inspire others, to lead. Unfortunately, it also means that he’s vulnerable to emotional manipulation, because he often simply cares too much.

It's almost as though Poe's mouth opens and someone else says the words.

“What’s the matter Finn? Jealous?”

What a fucking ridiculous thing to say. He knows Finn isn’t saying these things from a place of jealousy. The very idea is absurd. Finn's grown way too much for a response that immature. Poe is just defensive, Finn’s accusations too close for comfort, and he’s deflecting.

Finn’s sweet brown eyes widen with hurt even as Poe silently wishes he could take his words back. Then, in a split-second, the pain on his friend’s face evaporates like boiling water to be replaced with a heaping helping of pissed off. The tension in the room skyrockets up through the stratosphere as Poe braces himself for the well-deserved impact.

Moments before the two of them can erupt into a verbal sparring match, the door to the medical hut swings violently open with a loud bang. Both men immediately focus on the doorway as several members of Black Squad come trudging through, a tearful Rose and Paige Tico in tow. Poe is on his feet in an instant, searching the small crowd for her face.

She isn’t there.

He tries not to panic.

“Report!” he barks, wincing a little at his own belligerence.

He looks straight at Snap, the imposing man the de-facto Commander (well, Karé is actually in charge, but Snap likes to think he is) given Poe’s injury. He balks. The general’s stomach drops.

“It all went tits-up, Commander,” he says gravely, wasting no time with lead-up. “Ren was ready for us. Looks like Paige’s contact was somehow dirty, I think, even though the doc okayed them.”

Behind him, Finn violently swears, but Poe can’t speak. He needs to hear more. He needs to know that the cavern opening in his chest, threatening to consume him whole isn’t real.

Snap swallows hard but can’t seem to carry on.

Paige pipes up from the corner, where she and her sister have perched on a cot, hands clasped and heads together.

“Ren was holding me hostage.” A breath shudders into her, almost a sob. “He – he knew Rey, somehow. H-he said he’d k-kill me if she didn’t go with him instead.”

Before Poe is conscious of having moved, he has Snap pinned to the wall, all naked aggression. The solider has half a foot and at least fifty pounds on the general, but Poe’s anger is all-consuming. He feels as if he could breathe fire.

“And you let her go with him?!” he demands, his voice a wild animal’s roar.

He’s seeing red, ears ringing and heart pounding as he snorts like a bull, as out of control as he’s ever felt. His fists shake where they’ve seized his friend’s fatigues. He’s seconds from slugging him.

“Poe!”

Finn’s voice breaks through the fog of rage. The action effortful, Poe uncurls his fingers, lowering his fists to his sides. He takes a deliberate step back out of Snap’s space. It takes the larger man several long moments to relax, his gaze wary on his commander’s face. Poe closes his eyes, his very bones trembling with repressed wrath.

There’s a slight tremor in Snap’s voice when he finally breaks the tension. “She wouldn’t let us fight for her, man,” Snap says quietly while Poe keeps his eyes closed, wary of looking lest he erupt into violence a second time. “She turned her fucking gun on us. Said to take Paige and fight our way out. That the city was lost.”

Of fucking course, she did.

Finn’s voice next comes from over his shoulder, and he whirls, surprised to find his friend standing tall and steady. He looks resolved. Something in his friend’s eyes has a painful point of gratitude and hope piercing through him.

“The city isn’t lost, and neither is she,” Finn declares. “We have to try and get her back. We have to save the city.”

Chapter 19: That I Hold the Keys

Summary:

Rey finds First Order hospitality lacking.

Notes:

Hey all. This is a bad one. Rey's interrogation by Kyo. I am including a summary with SPOILERS in the end notes for those of you who want to tread extra carefully.

With everything going on with the US Supreme Court right now, I completely understand if you don't want to read this chapter now. Save it for another time. Do what you need to do to protect yourselves.

 

Warnings:

- Restraints, interrogation, threat of torture/torture
- PTSD Flashback with detailed account of past sexual assault. This part is written in ITALICS if you need to skip it.
- Sexual assault/groping
- Psychological abuse, manipulation, abusive language

(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The darkness isn’t kind to Rey. Unconsciousness is plagued by terrible visions, frightening occurrences both real and imagined. No matter how fast she flees, no matter how well she hides, she is stalked by the spectre of evil, it’s embodiment whom she seems destined to meet again and again. Running isn’t an option anymore. Perhaps it’s been fruitless all along. Perhaps she belongs to the darkness.

 

Awareness is heralded through her spirit like the feeling of thousands of tiny needles piercing her skin. Her eyes fly open and her heart jumps into her throat. Instantly, she’s aware that she’s restrained – at the wrists and ankles. Stiff metal cuffs. Though she doesn’t want to acknowledge it, it’s clear where she is. This is the box – the mobile torture chamber she’d found Poe inside.

 

The same chilling metal slab he laid on, which she now inhabits. Same dark, sterile corners. Most horrifyingly, the same medical implements for macabre misuse.

 

All those details register, but she barely sees them, every fibre fixated on the man – the beast – facing her. He’s quietly seated, lounging like a panther, all potential energy and warning signs. Danger emanates off him like heat, like radiation, like a contagion too lethal and transmissible to contain. The darkness of the room and blackness of his clothing make him appear to bleed at the edges, semi-incorporeal like a phantom.

 

She stares into the soulless glass sockets of the mask for an eternity, the stillness between them almost otherworldly. Her body reacts with all the usual signs of fear to his presence: heartrate elevating, breath quickening. Rey’s eyes strain impossibly wide, her field of vision narrowing, focusing. Her mind, however, is calm.

 

There’s something of an inevitability to this reunion. Deep in her bones, Rey’s always known, since the moment she escaped his grasp, that they would meet again. That she would never be free of him. Until she ends him.

 

With the nearly ponderous movement of some massive creature, his weight begins to shift forward, his intention clear to rise. She instantly bares her teeth, practically snarling. Slowly, uncoiling – snakelike – he ascends and approaches.

 

Just inside of the edge of her personal comfort, he stops, looming over her with every inch of menace his in his six-foot-plus frame. Her lip curls as she tilts her gaze up, furiously maintaining some semblance of true eye contact, of power.

 

Still, the fear she should be feeling doesn’t hit.

 

Through clenched teeth, she spits: “Where am I?”

 

Kylo doesn’t respond for a long moment, his weight shifting from side to side in a deeply unsettling manner. It’s as though he’s on a hair trigger, constantly poised to attack. Finally, she hears that voice – distorted, disturbing – yet still familiar.

 

“You’re my guest.”

 

She sucks a sharp breath into her lungs, panic hitting like a slap as nausea rolls through her. His guest. He’s insane.

 

“Where are the others?” she demands, her imagination running wild with visions of her friends as fellow captives.

 

Something like a scoff originates from the mouthpiece of the mask, the silver filter glinting dully in the gloom. “You mean the murderers, traitors, and thieves you call friends?” his voice is soft, tone mild, “You’ll be relieved to hear I have no idea.”

 

Rey bites back a relieved sigh, swallowing it down in a vain attempt to stay calm, to appear unruffled by him. It probably futile – he’s always been able to read her so easily. Hatred suddenly rears its head, ugly and snarled deep into a thicket of resentment, loneliness, and yearning.

 

He watches her silently. He studies her. In a detached, scientific manner. God, it’s so familiar. The feeling of his gaze on her – like he’s assessing her; weighing her pros and cons and always finding her wanting – sends a shiver of intimately memorable ice down her spine. She trembles with rage, refusing to speak.

 

“You still want to kill me.”

 

It’s a statement, an observation. Not a question. As though he had read her mind.

 

Yet… with an odd note, like her hatred is almost a surprise to him.

 

She nearly chokes, a sick, disbelieving laugh tangled in her throat. Of-fucking-course she wants to kill him! He’s hounded her every step, massacred untold innocents, tortured her friends. He’s grotesque!

 

“That’s what happens when you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask!” she hisses, fury lacing her every word.

 

He’s motionless, the dark threat constantly pouring off him palpable in the air. Suddenly, his hands move to either side of his helmet. There’s an unnerving hiss of gas escaping. With a soft click and the creak of leather, the flat visage is swiftly removed. A flash of his thick, black locks precedes the wholly unexpected reveal of his true face. Her mind goes blank. For a moment, he doesn’t face her head-on, and her gasp is audible.

 

He looks just the same as she remembers.

 

His generous lips, perpetually pressed tense or downturned; his beautifully pale skin, sprinkled with freckles and moles like a constellation; the strong profile of his nose, and the dark, heavy brows that often concealed the deceptive softness of his deep brown eyes.

 

Then, he turns to meet her gaze.

 

This time, Rey finds herself unable to even draw breath. Split across his face, from just above his left eyebrow, down over his nose and below his right eye, is the scar Rey gave him. The reason he wears the mask.

 

The affected skin is highly discoloured: angry and red. It almost appears as though a long, ragged strip of skin his been peeled from his face, the resulting new flesh looking shiny, tender, and raw. As if it had only recently occurred, is somehow still healing. The scar tissue also seems to be tighter and less flexible than the rest of the skin surrounding it, slightly pulling the lower lid of his right eye down and dragging the corner of his mouth up into a permanent, alarming snarl.

 

His damaged eye is discoloured, the iris a yellowy gold rimmed with red, constantly weeping. It gives him an almost pitiable appearance. Bizarrely, even with the disfigurement, Ren could still be considered an unconventionally attractive man. The wound does nothing to detract from his unique bone structure and sheer bulk.

 

She’s mildly shocked to realize that he’s even vain enough to feel the need to cover it.

 

Rey surprises herself by meeting his scrutiny head-on, confronting the monster from her nightmares without flinching. Not that she isn’t afraid; far from it. She’s terrified, finally. Icy fingers of horror lovingly caress her spine. Still, she’s become oddly accustomed to the feeling. This precise sensation has been a constant to varying degrees from moment to moment since she escaped this… leviathan of a man.

 

Their final altercation at the university begins to run on a silent, staticky loop at the back of her head as they continue their visual stand-off. The action of the memory moves along at slow speed, Rey half-watching and only partially aware of the scene playing itself out over and over again.

 

Ben, familiar face twisted and fanatic, ranting almost incoherently about fate and destiny as he backed her toward the lab benches. His huge fists closing around her forearms as his hips ground forward, sandwiching her between his considerable bulk and the metal countertop. His voice, shaking her to her core with every horrific word that fell from his suddenly unfamiliar lips.

 

Her own weak attempts to push him away.

 

Some small part of her still hoped that he was rational enough to hear the word “no,” and back off. He wasn’t. Instead, he pressed his hot, moist mouth against hers, pushing his tongue past the gateway of her unyielding lips.

 

He was just so physically overwhelming, and his assault so utterly unexpected that Rey was completely defenceless against him. The broiling, wet intrusion of the thick, slick muscle of his tongue had her gagging. She could feel her throat close and spasm even as her fists beat at the brick wall of his chest with all her might. He wouldn’t be moved.

 

In fact, Rey had been able feel her back bowing under his power and his weight, her pained cry lost to his punishing mouth. His objective to lay her out on the bench was as clear and alarming as a klaxon, and she’d fought even harder, twisting and jerking her body in a worthless attempt to dislodge his grip. The effort was useless, any martial knowledge she retained from childhood blanked from her brain in the wake of his shocking onslaught.

 

Before she could put up any more opposition, Ben had succeeded in wrestling her to the table. He grunted, abandoning his mighty grip on her arms to put his considerable strength into forcing her legs apart. It distracted him enough that he was compelled to pull back from their forced kiss.

 

Rey had wrenched her face to the side with a short, despairing cry.

 

Ben growled in response to her distress, the sound excited in a way that sent primal fear pulsing out from the base of her skull. His teeth descended to her neck as she simultaneously tried to squirm away while keeping her legs shut. Strangled, choking sobs escaped with every panicked breath she took. Heat baked off him, stifling her, making her feel like she couldn’t breathe. Most of his weight settled along her body, pressing even more air from her lungs. Every feeble escape she made gruesomely seemed to feed his fervour.

 

His breath was harsh and foul so near her face, and she curled away from him as best she could. Her gaze rolled up and away from his face, the thought of looking at her friend while he wrought havoc and such unspeakable damage to her body simply too much to bear.

 

She could smell the sharpness of his sweat as he began to perspire with the struggle. Rey kept pushing desperately at his shoulders, trying to force his uninvited mouth off her skin. Then, with little apparent effort on Ben’s side, he suddenly snapped, prying her knees apart, his patience was at an abrupt and violent end.

 

“Tell me about him: the – general.”

 

The young doctor is wrenched from her flashback by Kylo’s unexpected question. Ever the open book, she knows her expression briefly reflects her confusion at his line of inquiry. Swiftly, she recovers, her childhood training a painful boon once again. It doesn’t stop the rage that follows, though.

 

“General Dameron?” she sneers, “You mean the man you tortured; the human being who you tried to flay alive? …You’re a monster.”

 

“He’s a traitor. And a coward. He tried to keep me from what is rightfully mine.”

 

Ren’s tone is matter of fact; his condemnation absolute. He speaks as though they’re having a perfectly civil conversation. Rey may be spitting venom, she may be shackled to a table, there may be an undercurrent of violence to his every move, but to him, this is just another Tuesday.

 

“He signed his own death warrant long before I got my hands on him, Rey… And you. You – joined – him... Became a slave. Weak. Trying to treat the symptoms rather than eradicate the disease.”

 

At some point, Kylo has gotten so close that her entire perception is him, his frame filling her field of vision with an unspoken threat. It occurs to her somewhere in the back of her panicked brain that he’s curiously scentless, now. Hints of ozone and the harsh burn of chemicals are the only smells that seem to hover around him, and only at the edges of perception.

 

She’s staring up at him, heart pounding. Her mouth is utterly dry, her tongue paralyzed by fear. She’s helpless.

 

As if the drive that point home, he whispers, “You know I can take what I want.”

 

Revulsion slams into her with the force of a freight train.

 

Not again.

 

Despite herself, her eyes clench tightly closed. Rey can’t look at him. Her ears remain uncovered, however, and his words continue, insidiously penetrating her consciousness, fated to be indelible.

 

“I know you, Rey. You’re so lonely… So afraid to reach out. At night, you’re desperate to sleep.”

 

She can still feel him looking at her, hungry, devouring her with his gaze.

 

“…And the Resistance. They feel like the family you’ve never had. They’ll only disappoint you. …He’ll only disappoint you.”

 

And then – oh god – his hands are on her.

 

Stop—” she gasps, but it’s futile. Rey can feel the caress like an insect, crawling down the sides of her neck and over her heaving chest. She shudders.

 

“Don’t be afraid,” he murmurs, his voice too close – everything is too close – and she’s trapped, “I feel it, too.”

 

Finally, she finds her voice. Her eyes snap open so she can glare daggers at him, her rage and fear nearly physically manifest between them. She’s almost surprised it isn’t visible, like a stain.

 

His mouth is a breath from hers, but she doesn’t flinch.

 

“I’m not giving you anything,” she spits through clenched teeth.

 

After a moment’s consideration, the massive man in black draws back from her slowly, his chemically marred expression bearing no emotion. He regards her for a long minute before he reaches for his discarded helmet. Once again, she hears the soft groan of taut leather as he eases the mask back over his head, securing it on either side of his jaw with an unseen mechanism.

 

He raises his head again, looking straight at her through those flat, glass eyes.

 

“We’ll see.”

 

Moving like a shark, he begins to circle her, spiraling ever inward as he observes her from every possible angle, drawing closer once again as he does. It’s maddening, this sense of him being always just on the edges of perception, in her periphery. Rey knows he can attack at any moment – the anticipation of pain is just another tool in his arsenal of torment.

 

She wants to close her eyes against it, she wants to go away and never return, she wants to die before he can take the chance to touch her again, to claim her.

 

There’s movement behind her, the soft clatter of tools being prepped.

 

She refuses to turn and try to look. She won’t give him the satisfaction of seeing her struggle. Instead, her mind races furiously, trying desperately to divine a way out before it’s too late. There is no convenient cylinder of caustic liquid this time, no improvised weapon just within reach. Every limb is held fast to the metal slab, locked in place with cuffs controlled by the push of a button. She does have some freedom of movement, though. There’s no restraining belt across her torso, no strap holding her head in place. She’s never been forced to dislocate one of her limbs or fingers escape, but she knows how to do it. With enough force—

 

Faster than a blink, Kylo Ren reappears in front of her, black-gloved hands clutching an IV bag and needle. A quick, panicked glance down to the table at her side shows several syringes also at the ready. He pauses, his manner upright, almost scholarly. As if he’s about to teach her something, exactly as he used to.

 

“I’ve developed something… really quite special, Rey. We’re using a diluted version of this on the local population. It helps – pacify them. For you, well… let’s just say it will take care of your more – rebellious – tendencies. With this—” he pauses, holding the IV bag up to the light, examining the clear liquid inside like it’s a precious gem, “you will finally fulfill your destiny, Rey.”

 

The doctor watches, frozen in terror, as his horrid, blank visage drifts ever closer to her own. Ren’s hands reach for her inner elbow, preparing to slip the needle home into her vein.

 

Oddly, (or perhaps appropriately, given her more than likely impending death) she can’t help the acute regret that aches through her. She was almost there. Rey almost had a family, or something like one. Or she could have. If she’d been brave enough to reach out and accept what Poe had been offering.

 

Oh, fuck this.

 

Without warning (and with all her might) Rey thrusts her head forward and up, aiming like she would head a football. The hardest spot of her skull connects violently with the mouthpiece of his mask, shattering resin, and plastic with a satisfying CRACK.

 

Fragments of the mask rain down over her as blood bursts from her forehead and nose, streaming down her face as he shouts in pain, reeling out of reach. She notes with pained gratification that the mask has cracked diagonally across the front, a large triangular chunk destroyed and gone. His face is bleeding, too, a large split in his lip dripping down into the spaces between his furiously snapping teeth and down his chin.

 

She flashes him a feral grin, casually spitting a generous gob of blood at his feet.

 

Instantly, he lets out an ear-splitting roar, every bit of his unhinged rage suddenly on display. When he finally runs out of breath, he stares at her, air snarling heavily through his clenched teeth. Then, with one final huff, like an aggravated rhino, he turns on his heel and leaves her, the torture box going black as he exits.

 

Rey smiles in the darkness, fist full of newly acquired potential tools for escape.

Notes:

Rey awakens strapped to the same interrogation set-up as Poe. Kylo is there, wearing his mask. They talk for a bit, and when Kylo removes his mask to reveal his face, Rey experiences a flashback to the night at university he assaulted her. It is a vivid and detailed account of the beginning of the assault, stopping at the point where he has overpowered her and forced her legs apart. The flashback is interrupted at that point by Kylo continuing his interrogation, putting his mask back on. At this point, he actually gropes Rey, touching the sides of her neck and her chest. He then prepares to use an unknown drug on Rey in order to pacify her somehow. Before he manages to administer the drug, Rey head-butts him in the face, shattering his mask. He leaves without completing the procedure, and Rey manages to grab some shards of the mask to use to attempt to escape.

Chapter 20: Blood Heart

Summary:

The Resistance musters to disable the First Order and rescue Rey.

Notes:

Hello!

I'm really very very excited because we are starting to get into the home stretch with this tale, and I finalized the last of my outline today, so the rest of the chapters are fully planned. It's my goal to have it finished before the end of this year.

That being said, things are going to keep being very much adult-themed from here on out, so please pay attention to the warnings at the beginnings of the chapters :) If I feel there is particularly sensitive subject matter in the chapter, I will also provide a spoiler-filled summary in the end notes.

WARNINGS:
Mentions of sexual assault and torture, with one character imaging another being assaulted
Use of the word r*pe
Dissociation
Some pretty dodgy medical knowledge on my part lol

Chapter Text

A deep susurrus of sound rumbles around the meeting hall, a score of voices overlapping until all conversation becomes meaningless to an outside observer. It is still dark outside, but the sky is beginning to lighten and change colour on the horizon. Rey has been a prisoner of the First Order for seven hours and twenty-one minutes.

 

To all appearances, Poe is listening intently to Black Squad’s rapidly lobbed potential plans.

 

In addition to the spec ops team, Finn and Connix, the rest of their strategists, codebreakers, and communications officers, as well as the two Tico siters all surround him, working as earnestly as they can to try and rescue someone who the old General Dameron would have written off as collateral damage. But somewhere around the time Dr. Skywalker booted his rifle right out of his hands, the man he’d become – a man built on desperation, abuse, and war – had quietly dug his own grave.

 

Even if Poe didn’t already know he’d changed deep down to his core, the way that Finn’s contemplative gaze keeps lingering on him is a dead giveaway. Despite appearances to the contrary, that attention is the only thing he’s properly aware of other than the screaming void in his head. The only thing he feels is panic.

 

It’s possible he isn’t breathing. His chest is so tight. Most of the rest of his body is numb. His fists hurt where they’re clenched together in front of his mouth to hide his unmistakeable grimace of anxiety. Maybe his nails have drawn blood between his knuckles. He’s not sure.

 

He needs to move. He needs to be doing something – anything – to help Rey. But he’s hopeless. Powerless. There’s nothing that can be done, no move to make until they have a workable plan, and they sure as fuck don’t have a plan.

 

After a further, unbearable six minutes and nine seconds, a voice finally cuts above the rest. The tone is a little timid, but the words are clear. “General Dameron? We’ve got something you may want to hear.”

 

He’s immediately alert, with eyes only for Rose and Paige.

 

“Tell me.”

 

“Rey shared some more details with me of the F.O. supply depot at the Po Sam Cap Caves…” Rose revealed, “I know she meant to fill you in herself, but –”

 

But he and the doctor were busy not talking to each other like moody teens. Fuck. What did he miss?

 

He gives a tight nod for the nurse to continue.

 

“Well, she said that they were storing tons and tons of medical supplies there. Some pretty specialist supplies, too. Like the kinda stuff you use to synthesize vaccines.”

 

“So, the First Order’s vaccinating the residents of Lai Chau?” Snap sounds bewildered.

 

It does sounds far-fetched. What reason on earth could the First Order have to ensure the health of a population they’re suppressing? If anything, any rebel with sense would expect the F.O. to do everything, anything within their power to prevent potential uprisings before they start.

 

It’s Paige who replies. “Not necessarily. Rose was just telling me about something else Dr. Skywalker saw. It’s called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis. A fungus common in Asia.”

 

“They’re… Injecting them with mushrooms?!” Finn squeaks, almost hysterical despite the dire circumstances, clearly disturbed by the idea.

 

“No,” Paige patiently corrects, “A fungus, amongst other ingredients. An incredibly unique fungus, in fact, with utterly bizarre properties.”

 

Rose interrupts in an excited, slightly creepy voice. “Ever heard of Zombie Ants?”

 

“Holy shit,” someone whispers.

 

Paige continues almost as if she hadn’t been interrupted.

 

Cordyceps is a parasitic fungus. It infests a host, usually an invertebrate, and seizes control of its nervous system. The fungus then compels the host to an elevated location before erupting out of its exoskeleton in order to spread its spores more effectively.”

 

There is a moment of silence where all assembled digest the implications of her words. Poe, though, Poe doesn’t need to digest. Something she says immediately sends terror arcing under his flesh, a cold sweat breaking out across his body. That suggestion of compulsion, of control, indoctrination... it screams Kylo Ren.

 

For an indeterminate amount of time following Paige’s words, the general is made of stone, a petrified monument to action. He’s lost to vision and sensation, sound and smell so real he might as well be somewhere else. In his mind, he’s trapped, witness to the horror that he believes, he just knows Ren is inflicting on Rey.

 

Before his unseeing eyes, he pictures the figure from his nightmares descend upon the woman who – God help him – he probably loves, tearing at her clothing until she’s stripped down and vulnerable, covered by nothing but tattered rags. The pure skin he’d been blessed to witness is bared to the profane, unworthy gaze of a monster. If Ren had wanted to flay Poe alive, he can’t even begin to imagine what he might do to Rey.

 

He can almost hear her screams, despite never having heard her voice raised in any emotion but anger or pleasure. Somehow, his soul instinctively knows the sound of her fear. In his mind, he’s helpless, trapped and immobile, forced to watch while the devil incarnate tortures and rapes the strongest person he knows. The snot and tears on his face, the ache of his muscles from pulling at his bonds and the burn of his throat, raw from screaming her name, all feel terrifyingly real.

 

Instinctively, he knows he’s imagining things, but that doesn’t stop cold terror from seizing every muscle in his body, icing over his spine. Whether or not the images playing in his head are true, Poe knows that he’s right to be as afraid as he is. There is a very, very real possibility that they might never see the doctor alive again.

 

Sitting here panicking isn’t helping her, though. With a massive effort of will, he wrenches himself back to the moment. Paige’s face blurs briefly before coming back into focus.

 

“Do you mean that they’re trying to use this fungus to somehow control people?”

 

Paige’s expression is deadly serious, as she gravely confirms, “Rose and I can’t think of another reason they’d be using and storing it in such large quantities. Not that I’m aware of any current research in the area, but theoretically, cordyceps could be used to induce docility and obedience in a subject. Dr. Skywalker would have to confirm, but…”

 

“They have her,” the general finishes.

 

For a long moment, no one speaks, the apparent hopelessness of the situation overwhelming.

 

“I know your contact at the clinic is no longer viable,” he directs to the anaesthesiologist, “but Rose has mentioned some kind of network?”

 

At this, Rose pipes up. “I mean, it’s nothing as formal as that, but Paige and I… Our family is originally from the area. Our cousins and their friends treat us like honorary locals. We’ve got dozens of private contacts across the city.”

 

“And what’s their status?” he asks, the barest bones of a plan forming in his brain.

 

“As far as we know, they aren’t compromised. I’ve been advising them to avoid the injections,” Paige ventures. “Our great aunt is kind of the centre of the spider web; she’s always talking about her days with the Bo Dai Dac Cong. I guess they weren’t just stories, though. She left the city to go into hiding weeks ago.”

 

Poe’s heart lurches with anticipation when he hears the offhand remark about the Ticos’ relative. “You have a Sapper in your family?”

 

Both sisters turn their sharp, intelligent gazes on him. “What are you thinking, General?”

 

“I’m thinking it’s time we stop fighting on the First Order’s terms,” he states, with an air of grim satisfaction.

 

~~

 

Under Poe’s direction, they immediately set out to meet Rose and Paige’s great aunt in secret, at the edge of the jungle. Several hours later, in a well-organized, temporary camp complete with dugout and sniper nests at the base of the mountains, they find themselves seated to the side while the Ticos take the reins. Black squad waits outside an open-walled hut, seated but alert, ready to move at a moment’s notice.

 

“So, what’s a Sapper?” Finn quietly pipes up, far too isolated in his youth to have much knowledge of Vietnamese history.

 

Viet Cong special forces,” Iolo supplies, ever the font of martial information. “They were responsible for some of the most significant American losses during the War of Resistance against the U.S. They were specially trained to target key areas like command centres, fuel supplies and ammo depots. Masters of attack from behind enemy lines.”

 

“Guerilla fighting, right?” Poe’s young friend starts.

 

“Exactly,” he cuts in. “We’ve already got some guerilla tactics in our armada. Let’s see if we can get history to repeat itself.”

 

Karé nods excitedly, and he can see that he’s winning them over with his ghost of a plan. “Intelligence suggest that they’ve started using the caves again for supplies. If we carried out a coordinated, multi-tier ambush on Po Sam Cap and several other key locations –”

 

“We can draw their forces out of the city, away from the clinic, and disable their command structure all in one fell swoop!” Snap finishes his partner’s thought, voice elevated with newfound hope.

 

“There’s no way we have the personnel to carry out an attack that large,” Tallie reminds the assembled troops, the voice of caution and reason as always.

 

“That’s where Auntie hopefully comes in,” mutters Poe, gaze fixed on the small group of locals surrounding the Tico sisters and their frankly ancient relative. “If she agrees to work with us, we’ll get the local resistance fighters on board.”

 

Jess leans in conspiratorially, gaze skipping over the gathered members of Black Squad to ensure all attention is on her. “Rose told me on the way over that Auntie Bian and her minions are all ex-Viet Cong or the descendants of them. They’ll have all the people and insider information we need to identify and attack key targets.”

 

“Well, let’s hope we can convince them, then,” Finn skeptically intones.

 

Poe finally glances away from the Ticos. “It might not be as hard as you’d think. The First Order is just another faceless menace in a long line of invading foreign powers. These people hold their own.”

 

No sooner has he spoken than the hubbub of voices in the hut reaches a sudden fever pitch, then subsides, receding like the tide. All eyes turn to Rose and Paige Tico. They stand, making their way to the edge of the platformed floor.

 

“Auntie gave us the go,” Rose announces. “We’ll attack tomorrow night. It’s the soonest we can coordinate an ambush offensive.”

 

Poe is internally furious about the delay, unwilling to waste any time if it means Rey might not be sound and unharmed, but he also knows the realities of an offensive like this. It can’t be successful without careful, meticulous preparation and coordination. He grinds his teeth, jaw aching from the strain of holding back the chaos within him for the last thirteen hours. He sharply nods at the two women and his team.

 

“Let’s get it done. What’ve you got?”

 

At some sort of non-verbal cue from the Elder Tico, a rickety table and bright LED lantern are produced, seemingly from nowhere, a map of the city unrolled upon it in a mild flourish. One of their younger… cousins? holds a red sharpie, ready to mark it up. Paige clears her throat, ready to translate for both groups. “In addition to the target you’ve identified – Po Sam Cap – and the Red Cross clinic, Bian thinks we should also set ambushes at the Muang Lay cave complex here, which they’re using to store munitions.”

 

The younger relative notes the location in red.

 

“And… Bian thinks her people may know where they’re keeping Rey. Apparently, the centre of command has shifted from the clinic to the government buildings in the city square, here. According to her lookouts, there’s some sort of… container or huge crate or something that’s under unbelievably tight guard. They stashed it in the centre courtyard of the complex. Ren has apparently been seen – visiting it.”

 

“How on earth were her people able to get so close?” Finn marvels aloud, voicing what many of them – trained soldiers who have been unable to penetrate so deeply – are surely wondering.

 

The elderly matriarch speaks up for the first time, in heavily accented yet clear English: “This is our home. We know its secrets.”

Chapter 21: You Found

Summary:

Rey's got some work to do.

Notes:

Hiiii...

So, I'm not dead. This year has been a huge mental health journey for me, which hasn't left a ton of room for creativity. It's honestly been such a drag to be unable to access my creative outlet, but I've been doing emotional work instead that was necessary.

Now, obviously, this emotional work is not over yet. Might not ever be over. Despite that, I am stealing moments when I can be creative, and putting them towards this beast.

I am not fully satisfied with this chapter, but at this point, I would rather advance this story than be a perfectionist (yay, therapy!)

I hope you all enjoy this chapter. I cannot guarantee that another one will be quickly forthcoming, but this story will be finished one day.

Chapter Text

The slowly congealing blood that runs down her face makes focus difficult. She can’t breathe through her nose, and the sticky plasma keeps dripping in through her open lips, causing every inhale to rattle and gurgle unpleasantly. Luckily, there’s no other damage to her lower face, so despite the blood, she is still managing to get oxygen pretty well.

 

Rey blinks blearily in the darkness, wishing she could just see what she’s doing. The doctor is doing her best to concentrate on the task at hand through a haze of fear, exhaustion, and the minor head injury she can blame on no one but herself. Shakily gripping the last few shards of Ren’s mask that she hasn’t yet managed to drop to the floor in her haste, she carefully picks at the hinge of her right cuff. There’s no way she can reach the release button herself, so tampering with the cuff is her only option for escape.

 

The hinge mechanism for the cuffs is laughably simple, a basic pin and tooth design, ridiculously easy to sabotage, and a major oversight of whoever designed this deranged torture box. Or it would be easy to sabotage, were Rey in her right mind. She can feel her muscles shake, deprived of hydration and fuel. The young doctor isn’t sure if she’s slept but she knows she’s been losing gaps of time. Her adrenaline keeps spiking and dropping, heart rate following along.

 

Total dissociation is a real threat at the moment – Rey keeps thinking she can hear the screech of vultures over the desert wastes, smell the hot sand beneath her feet.

 

Scavenger!

 

Rey whips her head around as best she can, searching for the source of the taunt through the black. She clutches the shards in her fist, heart pounding, as no figure manifests from the shadows. Trying to put all her attention on the dull pain of the mess of plastic and glass slowly embedding itself into her palm, she forces her eyes closed (even if the surrounding darkness makes this action redundant.)

 

As soon as her lids fall shut, it’s as though a soundtrack of jeers has begun, every cruel word tossed, every bit of abuse aimed her way circling the drain in her subconscious. A whimper escapes her, unheard in the lonely gloom, and without knowing how, Rey is suddenly back in her childhood home, crouched in a corner, trying to physically shield herself the verbal cruelty being directed at her.

 

Uncle Plutt, (as he’d forced her to call him – he wasn’t her real uncle, no sir) never had anything nice to say. He was too paranoid and mistrustful for his own good, indoctrinated as he was from his own early childhood to believe that the end of the world was imminent, bound to happen during his lifetime. There had once been a genuine desire there, buried deep amongst the bullshit, to try and protect his people from the supposed apocalypse, but it was always, always overshadowed by the way he held sway over his followers through bullying and intimidation. Abuse was rampant in the community. And none was more victimized than Rey herself.

 

For as long as she could remember, Plutt and his lackies had blamed her for the absence of her parents. It was her fault that they had stopped believing, her fault they had left. Because why would they ever want a child like her? Rey was a child who bit and scratched, who barely spoke. A feral child who apparently belonged in the desert, a dry and desiccated husk of a child forced to grow in the desolate sands of her parents’ abandonment.

 

Plutt wouldn’t even tell her anything about them, but the others had whispered. Apparently, they’d been somehow important to the ministry. Their absence was deeply regretted, and often noted. There had even been rumours… rumours that their disappearance had cursed them. Cursed the Jakku Colony.

 

Either way, Plutt had evidently lost a valuable asset in her parents and was determined to punish Rey for it every chance he got, and his example was followed to the letter by everyone else in Jakku. Rey was ostracized, isolated, mocked and abused at every turn, each and every mounting hurt sanctioned by the man she was supposed to see as her leader, as her family.

 

She knows it would have been enough to break most people, but it had only ever made her fight harder, to model kindness where she was offered none.

 

And she knows that her parents’ leaving wasn’t her fault. But it’s hard to forget. Rey has struggled so much for the life she’s still building for herself. There’s no way in hell she’s letting it be taken away now. Grinding her teeth with the effort, she wrenches herself back to the present, back to the perfect dark, and once again begins her careful sabotage.

 

The echoing taunts go on in her ears, but Rey forces herself to remain present, to focus. There’s a particularly useful shard that she’s determined to keep in her grip, tapered and pointed on one end. It has a sharp edge and is larger and easier to hold at the other end. She knows that if she can just achieve the right angle and combination of force, she’ll be able to push the pin up and out of the hinge.

 

Rey’s hand shifts, and through the haze of half-remembered trauma, she swears she can hear a click. She freezes. Even her breath stills in her lungs. Even the ghosts from her past fall silent. As though she is performing the most delicate of surgical procedures, Rey utilizes every practiced, habitual skill she has and ever so slowly lifts the shard. The hinge pin rises with it. Hot anticipation bubbles in her chest, but Rey brutally supresses it, knowing one wrong move at this exact moment, and her only means of escape may be beyond her. A measured eternity later, and with the smallest clink, the pin pulls free.

 

A shocked breath shudders into her lungs as she catches the pin in her palm, hardly daring to believe she’s done it.

 

Suddenly, a shifting, thunking noise sounds ahead of her, heralding the opening of the door. Reflexively, she closes her fist around both pin and shards, turning her palm inward to conceal her grip. With mere moments to spare, she relaxes back into her restraints, feigning semiconsciousness.

 

The next second, bright light pours into the space, forcing its way through her shut eyelids as the beams seem to penetrate her brain. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she sarcastically thinks that she should be used to rude transfers from dark to light and vice versa by now. God knows she’s been experiencing versions of it since childhood. Blinking through tears, Rey lolls her head toward the door, pretending confusion even though Kylo Ren’s reappearance isn’t surprising in the least. She only wishes he could have waited a few more minutes to give her a chance to escape before returning to his torment.

 

“Rey.”

 

Her name in his mouth is a curse and a caress all at once. She recoils from the sound as he strides toward her with purpose. The broken mask is gone, his strangely beautiful face still exposed and incongruous in such a terrible place. However, Rey can see that he carries a perfect replacement under his arm, just waiting to imbue him with menace once more.

 

“You’re so predictable. It’s pathetic.”

 

So. He’s going straight on the attack today. Normally, Rey would be biting back with everything she has, but she’s tired. She’s weak. All she wants to do is escape, and she can’t do that if she’s wasting her energy on fighting him. So, she detaches.

 

That same dispassion she’s used with Poe, used in the operating room, descends over her now, and her gaze loses focus. “You played right into my hand, you know,” he murmurs in that false, eerie calm he affects, “I wasn’t trying to capture you at the caves, no. Taking you by force isn’t good enough. You had to give yourself up to me, and you did. You did everything I knew you would… everything I wanted you to do.”

 

The words wash over her. They’re landing, slowly, but their effect is muted. She knows the pain will come later.

 

His voice rumbles on in the background: “Every move, every choice you’ve made since you came to this wretched, Godforsaken jungle has been mine, and now you’re here. At my… mercy.”

 

He’s too close to her, but even his physical presence fails to deliver the usual horror.

 

Instead, she’s retreating further, living in the safest feeling she’s felt since Luke took her in – the feeling of being wrapped in Poe’s arms. The presence of his large hands lingers in the way he gripped her hard enough to lay claim to her skin in a pattern of beautiful purple flowers. Inside, she’s hearing those dangerous words again.

 

Let me know you.

 

“Why are you resisting, Rey, when you know it is inevitable?” Ren demands, almost mockingly “Why? Do you still have hope for something different?”

 

Something about hearing the word ‘hope’ drop from Kylo’s lips pierces through the numb fog. Pain rips through her. She can’t hide the way she flinches.

 

“Oh. You do.”

 

His tone is scornful, condescending.

 

“Did you think your Resistance, your… General… are going to save you, Rey? …You?”

 

He offers a patronizing shake of his head.

 

“No. They’re led by a coward. He would never risk his precious little rebel band for…” he pauses, and even if he were wearing the mask, his sneer is audible, “Nothing.

 

Rey’s heart clenches agonizingly, the internal ache profound, so powerful that it slaps her back to reality with the strength of a hurricane. Her tired body launches forward against the restraints, a snarl of rage and fear (real fear – she’s been abandoned too many times not to fear it now) on her lips. “You’re wrong!” she croaks, voice hoarse from disuse and dehydration, “Poe doesn’t think I’m nothing! He would never leave me behind! He—”

 

She cuts herself off as Kylo’s posture suddenly goes rigid. For an agonizing moment, she and her torturer face one another in perfect stillness. Then, without warning, Ren’s huge, leather-covered paw of a fist is reaching in the direction of her throat. Instinctively, Rey throws her weight backwards as hard as she can, futilely trying to escape what she can only assume will be strangulation at his hands. She doesn’t even have time to curse the hard surface she’s trapped against before that menacing hand snatches at the fabric wrapped around her neck, nearly tearing it, nearly choking her in his haste to remove it.

 

Every instinct screams at her to force her way out of her loosened cuff and snatch it back, but she knows she can’t reveal her ability to escape with Ren still in the room. He would overpower her immediately, confiscate her improvised tools, and then she really would lose all hope. But, oh, it’s hard to allow herself to be exposed like this. Her heart rabbits in her chest as the hulking man’s manic, obsessive stare travels over the newly revealed flesh of her throat.

 

Rey knows Poe’s marks are nothing if not more vivid now than when he left them hours (maybe days?) before. She knows livid purple and red splotches – even some identifiable teeth marks – litter her pale skin. She’s frozen like a mouse faced with a cat as she watches the way his face slowly changes, the way his massive frame begins to literally tremble with rage.

 

There is no damage control to be done here.

 

Her heart sinks at the realization. She can deny or explain anything she wants; she can defend or flatter or cajole, but nothing she can do will stop whatever devastation Kylo is about to unleash. It’s like being plunged headfirst into icy water – the realization that the next breath (no matter how trapped inside this terrible moment forever she may feel) will ultimately decide her fate.

 

His black, mutinous eyes flash up to meet hers, and despite her fatal resignation, she braces herself.

 

“Your Poe is dead,” he spits, each word enunciated with enough viciousness to land like a fist.

 

He whirls, striding out of her torturous cell as she lets loose a scream, unbidden. “No! Ben, no! Don’t do this, please! Ben! BEN!”

 

Her cries fall on deaf ears as she is once again plunged into darkness. Pure, animal panic overtakes her for a long second, senses screeching at her to run, hide, fight, scream all at once but instead she’s paralyzed.

 

Poe.

 

Not him.

 

Kylo can take her freedom, her life. He can take her autonomy, her safety, her fucking… body, but taking Poe away from the Resistance? Away from all of his friends, the people who care about him enough to fight for him day in and day out? Away from her?

 

She can’t allow it to happen. Not when she could have prevented it. Rey’s already made this choice once, and she barely knew Poe back then. Back then, he was nothing more than a brave man who protected her and her friend as best he could. She’d laid her life on the line for him then. Now? Now, Poe has made himself a home on her flesh. He’d left his mark clear as day and Rey has lied to herself about it for long enough.

 

She wants to – desperately longs to – belong to him. His claim on her skin thrills her like nothing ever has. Even as she fights against the terror she feels at Kylo’s threat on Poe’s life, she can’t help but feel some sort of satisfaction that he saw. Ren finally saw that Rey isn’t his.

 

Her body moves automatically as she mentally revisits the look on his face when he saw the marks on her throat. For a split-second, before it was overcome by rage, his expression had been one of panic, almost fear. It was beautiful. Slowly and gently, minimizing noise, Rey wiggles at her cuff, separating the teeth of the hinge as she holds the image of Kylo’s fear in her mind.

 

There’s no telling how long she works at it. Time continues to pass strangely in the darkness and her near-delirium. Eventually, however, she works it loose. She gasps, freezing in place for a moment when her arm comes free. She can hardly believe it.

 

To top off her victory, she’s managed to hold onto the most useful piece of the mask. “Cuff number two, here I come,” she mutters to herself almost hysterically, leaning over to begin working at the second cuff.

 

Without warning, the world seems to explode with sound.

 

Alarms blare shrilly, seemingly from every direction, echoing and rebounding around her strange, metallic prison. Ears pulsing with pain, she shakes her head like a wet dog, trying to adjust to the new, overwhelming stimulus.  Soon enough, she manages, because she has to.

 

This is her chance. She must escape. Now.

Notes:

Chapter title from "Elk.Blood.Heart" by All Them Witches.

Please let me know what you think!