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Terms of Surrender

Chapter 16: Discovery

Notes:

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

Chapter Text

The overhead lights flooded a dim, sickly spectrum of yellow against walls that collapsed around him like the sallow skin of a closing fist. Maybe Armitage should have been more concerned by the unfortunate state of the cell he was to call home for the indefinite amount of time it took to bring him to trial. Maybe he should have taken more time with the guards on his rotation, particularly during those first few days when their curiosity had been greatest, their checks upon him most frequent, their simple words beguiling an opportunity that could have, perhaps, been forged into a symbiotic coexistence.

But his cell had a window, and that had been, as they say, all she wrote.

Coruscant was, for lack of a better descriptor, a technological marvel.

Armitage could only presume that he was still housed within the tower the Millennium Falcon had brought him to, because from a sea of already tall spires, his vantage afforded a sweeping view of a cityscape that sprawled beyond the curve of the horizon, spilling past the low-hanging clouds that drifted by his window with almost the same impunctual schedule as the many transports and ships and shuttles and air speeders and droids that swarmed Coruscant like it were not a planet, but a hive. A hive working in perfect, if incongruous order.

Every chaotic interaction belied a system that functioned not on timetables or logic, but on the sudden congestion of too many vehicles vying for the same airspace, the blathering wail of an emergency siren, or the impromptu shut down of a busy street for what, Armitage could only guess by the flashy colors and bombastic music, was some strange native festival; all of it scattering the inhabitants of the city like so many insects hurrying about a business that at once felt incredibly important, and infuriatingly too obtuse to hold any real purpose.

Armitage could not look away. He stared out his window and watched the city breathe. Watched the throes of life crest and fall and crash against one another until the chaos was no longer a baffling impossibility, but a secret language to be learned.

For instance: daytime, on Coruscant, was determined by her sun, but never by her inhabitants. Because nighttime did not bring with it the slumber of a city gone to rest. No, if anything, it was at night that Coruscant came alive.

Every night, as the sun descended and the sickly yellow of his room gave way to a dull gray darkness, a menagerie of lights belched rainbows across the towers spearing a sky of faded stars. The lights glowed almost brighter than the sun itself, bathing his cell in a constant flux of flickering pinks and yellows, cold blues and vibrant purples, the city sounds crescendoing into a lament of life lived not for any purpose or goal he could determine, but for the simple fact life existed at all. Certainly, the people of Coruscant had jobs, families, responsibilities that encumbered them with more than this apparent lack of direction. But where each tiny thread of a story wove into another, Armitage saw not so much a logical pattern, but a beautiful tapestry.

Watching the passing of time through the lens of Coruscant was as much a fascination as a distraction. Something that, at first, had kept his thoughts at bay, but now more infrequently dredged up questions of what may be, and what was, surely, to come.

And what, his mind quietly supplied, had been.

How many cities like this had he destroyed? How many souls had been lost to the ideals he had once held? How many other inconceivable wonders had he felled with the firing of Starkiller Base? These were not questions he thought could be answered, not in any real tangible way that would put into perspective just what the galaxy had suffered by his hand.

Despite the wild beauty of this planet, there was no escaping the constant uncanny reminder of what he had done. And while maybe each subsequent day spent here, at this window, was one day further from the life he had lived in service to the First Order — a life that now felt as incongruous as the haphazard logic of a city without purpose — it also brought him closer to a future that proved, day after day, it did not need him to thrive.

Because in Coruscant he saw not just lives being lived, but a whole galaxy forging on without him; where he was nothing but that spark in the pan of infinite time. Something so small and insignificant, his story nothing more than a finely woven fiber in a tapestry that was beautiful not because of one thread, but the convergence of so many together.

He had put a hole in that tapestry. A hole that still festered, that unraveled with all the frayed edges that had ended too abruptly to be patched back together.

So while maybe he had never before felt as small as he did then, he thought he understood, for the first time, the true implication of what he had done.

Understood, unfailingly, what it was Poe had been fighting for.

Just out of sight, a transport wailed by, siren singing through the early morning gray of dawn. Armitage strained onto his toes to catch a glimpse of the bold red of an emblazoned cross — a herald of warning to the thinned out flow of passing vehicles that scattered to allow its passage. A medical transport, he acknowledged. Perhaps similar to the one that would have taken Poe away.

Armitage watched it until he could no longer discern its shape, its destination. Until it disappeared into a distance that was as out of reach as the man he loved, and the future he once thought they could live together.

A future he couldn’t help but dream of, every time the light of dawn touched the horizon and the city sounds faded and sleep eventually called him from his position at the window.

It was almost worse than reality, those dreams. Because each time his eyes opened, he was brutally reminded that reality didn’t allow for softly spoken assurances, or warm, lingering touches. So he fought sleep from his position before his window, until his eyes sagged and his knees buckled and he collapsed onto his cot in a desperate, fitful bid for a sleep deep enough to keep the dreams at bay.

But it was those moments before sleep when the strangest thoughts emerged, when the early morning hours waned so thin that even the hustle of the city quieted to a peaceful hum, and Armitage found himself drifting not into dreams, but memories. Those he had buried, not because of their pain, but because of their ability to obfuscate the image of the world he had been taught to hold. Things like his mother’s voice, and the feel of her hand in his small fist. The taste of warm bread sweetened with a spread of lard and sugar and a heady spice that had made his eyes water and his nose tingle.

And that vaulted attic with the staircase he had climbed to another world. A world he had escaped to when he still had nothing to escape from. Where a childhood had been allowed to flourish for those few short, fleeting years before reality came to collect him and fate had laid her claim on the life he was to live.

They were a welcome change from the dreams, and for that, at least, Armitage felt grateful.

 

 


 

Inmate : Armitage Hux

Patient ID : 0681

Timestamp : 35 ABY 11:19:11:05

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“General Armitage Hux, my name is Doctor Edwin Goss, and I’m here to evaluate your mental state. I hope you don’t mind that I record our sessions?”

“Of course not,” The sharp scratch of cuffs against the table's security bolt briefly drowned out all other sound in the recording, “—however, if you intend to ensure I am of sound mind to stand trial, I can assure you—”

A finger lifted — a request to wait as Goss typed something into his datapad. A short note, no more than a few words. Across the table, Armitage had gone stiff, though his hands remained neatly folded together. The composition tightened, as the hovering holo-recorder focused for a sharper image.

“Right then, we’re all set.” The datapad was set aside as Goss leaned closer, face obscured by the stark shadows cast by the too-bright overhead light. A light that cast blindingly onto Armitage's face: a careful, meticulously composed mask of calm. “Have you ever spoken to a mental health professional before?”

“The Order took mental health quite seriously. For her officers, a monthly session with a psychiatrist was protocol, to ensure we remained fit for duty.”

“A psychiatrist? Were you given a diagnosis, treated with medications?”

“No. Well—” a pause, almost too short to be noticed, “—I suffered from an anxiety disorder for most of my career. Panic attacks. They were diagnosed as stress related but the recommend treatment was regular weekly sessions with a therapist and my schedule hardly allowed for them.”

“Do you still suffer panic attacks?”

Another pause. Longer, this time, “Less frequently.”

“When was the last time?”

“When I boarded the Mandator to engage in a mutiny.”

“What triggered it?”

“I believed someone to be dead.”

“Who?”

The staticy sound of a breath being released overwhelmed the holo-recorder’s microphone. The view dipped, lens fogging out of focus, as the tiny recorder tried to find its subject’s face. It was hidden behind a loose fall of golden red hair, but the droid angled low, closing in until pale eyes finally met the recorder’s lens in a brief, intangible moment of exposure.

“You’ve seen the holo-news, haven’t you?” spoken slowly.

The doctor nodded, made a note.

“When did your panic attacks first start?”

“When I was a child.”

“Do you know how old you were when you had your first?”

“I must have been five or six.”

It felt as though the gravity of what was spoken reached out and grabbed hold of time itself, with how long the moment stretched.

Eventually, Goss made another note on his datapad, then set it upon the table and folded his hands in his lap. “I assure you the questions I ask are relevant to your situation. As much as we know about your life, General Hux, we know very little about you. I have been tasked to document a picture of who that is. Your honesty with these questions can only serve you, and rest assured that I have no desire to rehabilitate that person.”

Almost suspiciously, “Is that not your job? Rehabilitation?”

The holo-recording caught just the shadow of a smile, there on Goss’s face, burned into the glare of the lights.

 “My area of expertise is the sentient mind and how it functions under extreme conditions. Believe me, I tried to clear a brain scan prior to this session and was unfortunately denied. So we’ll have to make due with these questions instead.”

Silence. One that festered; broken only by the clatter of cuffs as Armitage shifted.

“Do you know what triggered your first panic attack?”

“Yes," spoken carefully, like a secret, "It was the Battle of Jakku, when I fled the planet with my father and the remaining Imperial high command."

“You were surface-side during the fighting?”

“I was a soldier.”

“You saw the battle?”

“I fought in the battle.”

A pause. “Fought?”

“Yes,” said softly, then louder, “It was supposed to be a safe assignment, but, we all know how Jakku unfolded.”

“You would have been…”

“I was five standard at the time. Nearly six.”

Goss’s hand reached for his datapad, as he said, “I’ll have to make a note of that as well, you understand.”

“Of course, doctor.”

Hands clasped tightly, the cuffs gave another clatter, as the holo-recorder dipped in close to focus upon its subject’s face. This time, Armitage turned away.

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He woke to the clatter of his cell door opening, the heavy girth of the double-bound durasteel grinding against gears that still, after days of use, resisted his release. It was as if the cell had taken it upon itself to determine his fate, and Armitage imagined that one day it would simply decide to never open again. There were worse places for him to rot. Places that didn’t have a window; that were flung so far into the reaches of the galaxy that the comfort of a climate-controlled room with a cot to sleep upon would have been considered amenities worth slitting another man’s throat for.

He’d seen those places. Observed them from the vantage of the Finalizer’s deck as he’d dispatched platoons of troopers to their surface. Paid their inhabitants for the children they had maybe never wanted to rear, but had been saddled with because of a lack of other options. Then he’d traded supplies in exchange for their loyalty, for men and women and bodies to be sent to neighboring mines where maybe the working conditions were as harrowing as their current circumstances, but there would be credits in their pockets and food in their mouths.

It hadn’t been a perfect system. Not all the worlds they conquered had been poor, or desperate. They had to subdue many who would have been happy to keep their ports closed and their airspace absent of First Order or New Republic influence. But for as many people they sent to labor camps, or conscripted into the trooper program, there had been just as many happy to take their place. To leave their desert world behind for the rainy moon with the plentiful mines. To rear their children from the comfort of a roof over their head and a military protecting their town. Because in a galaxy where the wealthy had collected itself to these Core worlds, and then absolved themselves of any responsibility for the rest, it had been the chance for something better. Not even the looming silhouette of the New Republic’s swinging gallows could convince him otherwise.

But it was not the gallows the two guards ushered him towards, but the cold expanse of an empty refresher room.

Only after the guards sealed the door shut did they release his cuffs, his wrists aching and chaffed from where they’d been secured too-tightly behind his back. Because even with two well-armed soldiers and a labyrinth maze of cells-blocks, he was still considered enough of a threat to garner the maximum amount of precaution.

He’s not a flight risk — he’d turned himself in for kriff’s sake — but the guard’s eyes still roamed his exposed body with quick, perfunctory stoicism as he shed his clothing, as if the danger they expect was to be found scrawled on his skin rather than tucked away safe in his mind. But just like all those months ago, when two other guards had collected him from a much different cell, and another officer had stood sentinel over his apparent grooming for a mission he’d not yet understood the scope of, Armitage hardly cared. Because this was the first actual opportunity to bathe he had been allowed yet.

Just like before. It was enough to make him laugh, a thin reedy thing that wheezed out of him after days of not speaking to a soul. The guards heads turned towards him, eyes narrowed at the surely strange sound of his voice. Maybe they would think he’d lost his mind. Maybe he had.

The shower head sputtered a weak spray of barely warmed water. But there was no denying the joy he felt at the tingle of soap against his scalp, the way the bubbles slid down his neck and slicked across his chest. Atop the small caddy that held the soap sat a sponge, and Armitage scoured his skin like it was something to be shed. Layers of dirt peeled away, and that, more than anything, made him wonder if he hadn’t actually lost track of time — if maybe Coruscant's chronos worked on a different scale, though he’d learned at an elementary age that this planet had been the source of most galactic standards as presently kept.

Coruscant, the original seat of the New Republic — the home of the human race — if the ancient historical accounts he’d learned from were believed accurate.

And his once planned seat of power, when dreams of the First Order’s conquest had led his mind here, to the Core, and a planet which represented far more than a single race’s heritage, or the New Republic’s long fraught clutch on power.

Now, all he wanted was to be allowed to walk its streets. To follow the pathways down into its underbelly and discover the places all those people were always going. See for himself firsthand what it was that Poe had fought so hard for. Because there was value in this world, he understood that now, even if his commiseration had come too late.

There would be food to try, better stuff than even what the Resistance had served. Certainly better than the rations the Order had provided. He would find something sweet to take back to Phasma, maybe search out a tea house, somewhere that might know how to prepare Taurine in the traditional way. Poe would know where to take him — he had lived here, after all — and he would show him all the things Armitage could not even think of, because his mind had not the vocabulary to dream in the right shapes.

Hux tamped down his thoughts, refusing to allow himself the indulgence of imagining a future with Poe, let alone escaping into what that might look like.

He’d had his chance to escape, had chosen surrender instead.

“Hurry it up, we’re on a schedule here.”

A schedule? It would explain the break in routine, and the fact that they’d allowed him to bathe suggested something more significant than a simple deviation from the standard agenda. Unfortunately, the guard saw no reason to expound further. Their eyes remained fastened to the far wall, as Armitage shut off the water and retrieved a towel from the bench beside the stall.

There was a clean jumpsuit beneath it, socks and underwear and, curiously enough, Poe’s ring.

Armitage felt a tremble jolt through his body, his stomach dipping, and then threatening to come up. It had been taken when they’d processed his arrest, stripped alongside everything else he’d had on his person. He had not expected to see it again, let alone here, atop a pile of prison clothes without a word of explanation.

“What’s this?” he at least tried, voice just as rough as it had been when he’d laughed, but this time, it was not from disuse. But both guards stared stoic into the middle distance, as if he weren’t standing there at all, let alone asking a question.

He slipped the chain around his neck, let the ring slide over the tip of his thumb, rubbing over the familiar shape as he twisted it around. Against his skin, the metal was worn smooth, rapidly warming from the heat of his body. Familiar, where everything else in his life felt detached from reality. And it hit him, all at once — memories: the feel of Poe’s skin against his, the texture of his hair, his scent, his voice. The way his hands felt when they’d take his own, so careful, and honest, like all his touches had been. There was nothing Armitage could do to prevent the sudden swell of emotion. Heat prickled his eyes, strung his nose. And he turned away from the guards as he felt his cheeks warm over with a flush Poe had long ago pointed out he was terrible at hiding.

The ring pressed hard into his scarred palm, the metal biting into the curl of his closed fist. His hand shook as the rest of his body turned weightless, and for one long, protracted moment, Armitage thought he might pass out. But as he closed his eyes and found himself staring face first into the memory of Poe's blinding presence in his life, he found he couldn't push it away. He clung to it, like it were a lifeline; like the memory of him could be enough to ground him in the absence of his hands, his arms, and the strong fold of his hug.

And despite the pain of it, there was a strength there too, in the knowledge that no matter what happened next, he'd had Poe's love — still had it, no matter how out of reach it felt — and that of everything that he had left to give, that was not something that could ever be taken from him.

 

 


 

Inmate : Armitage Hux

Patient ID : 0681

Timestamp : 35 ABY 11:21:11:38

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“You were raised on Arkanis?”

“Yes, I was born there.”

“Your father, Brendol Hux, was he a large part of your early life?”

“Not particularly,” spoken with a barely perceptible waver: emotion, or a flaw in the recording — it would have been impossible to tell, except for what was said next. “My mother raised me during my weening years. After it became clear my father wouldn’t sire a child with his wife, he came for me, insisted I be raised in a proper Imperial home, receive a proper Imperial education. Shortly after I moved into his estate, but even then I was cared for by a nanny droid.”

“Your memories of your mother are pleasant, then?”

The voice that answered broke when it eventually answered, “Yes.”

“And those of your father?”

A sigh, or a hiss, quickly released, “He was a violent drunk and made no secret of it.”

“Did you continue seeing your mother after you moved?”

“I was not permitted to interact with her, but she was a cook in his kitchen, and I was a child with an uncanny ability to outsmart my nanny droid.”

“And now?”

A cruel question, but she understood why it needed asked.

“When Arkanis was put under siege, I fled with my father. I have no idea what happened to my mother, and I have never returned to Arkanis to find out,” spoken so softly as to sound like a secret.

A note, quickly tapped out. “You were there for that, too? The siege?”

“I was.”

“What can you remember?”

“Everything.”

“Do you care to—”

“I remember the shriek of shells dropping from the sky, the crack of star fighters breaking hyperspeed within atmo, the screams of the servants as they evacuated the manor house, only to be driven back inside when they realized there was nowhere safe to run. I remember being dragged across the lawn by my nanny droid, because my father’s arms were full of whatever of worth he could carry from the house. I remember his wife's screaming as he left her behind, and her equal unwillingness to chase after him. And I remember the family who did follow us to the shuttle craft, and the way they begged as they tried to bargain their way onto the ship. And I remember the look on the mother’s face, when my father agreed to take only their children, and the sound of her sobs when they came aboard.”

Goss remained, gratefully, silent. Long enough that Armitage was able to visually compose himself, though his breathing remained ragged long after his words tapered off.

Eventually, Goss asked, “He took the children?”

“Do not mistake it as kindness," wrenched out, roughened with emotion. "They would not make it out of Jakku alive.”

Here, the recording quieted, the figures unmoving, only the slow tightening of the lens into better focus betraying that this was a live recording, and not a paused image.

Goss made another note, and another. Time passed in slow, meandering seconds, long enough that when the silence broke, it was like a chasm opening, like someone had gone in and spliced the feed, inserted this abrupt, crudely manifested confession into a conversation that felt as dissonant as it did unexpected.

“Besides your father, who else took care of the children during those early years of the Order?”

“He remained in charge of the Academy until his death. The instructors were as close to parents as we had. Most days, we were worked hard enough that we went to bed exhausted. There was little time left for childhood squabbling. We had our classes and our duties and we would fulfill them or we were disciplined.”

“Disciplined?”

“Beaten.”

“Did your father—”

“Yes.”

“Because you struggled in classes or—”

“Because I was a weak-willed boy and an embarrassing bastard.”

Goss paused, not because he was awaiting more, but to type out a note.

“As your primary adult caretaker—”

“He was not my caretaker,” snapped out like a strike. It seemed to surprise them both, as they stared across the table at one another.

“Of course, Mr. Hux,” Goss carefully deferred, though his head inclined, curiosity peaked.

It took five maybe ten seconds, for the confession to come.

“I killed him,” Armitage said quickly, quietly, his eyes cast down to the table but chin held high. “Poison. I watched him disintegrate in a bacta tank. The Order never connected me to his death, it was ruled an accident.”

Goss was silent, but only for a beat. “That is not in the file we have on you.”

“I’ve not revealed it to many.”

“Why tell me now?”

“I don’t know,” Armitage said softy, voice barely broken, like it was the real confession.

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Consciousness drifted intangible, just beyond the dim cast of a gray light and a gentle voice that was as familiar as it was unnamable. The desire to reach out to it came and went, less an intention than an idea, one discarded more easily than the thoughts attempting to surface from the miasma of his mind. Because as familiar as the voice was, it was not the one he sought. It was not Armitage’s voice, and that realization traveled like a crack through the durecrete walls of the dam that was his unconsciousness, until the weight of his thoughts overwhelmed all else, and reality came crashing down upon him with the strength of a tidal wave.

A shrill trilling precluded the chirp of a droid, as Poe’s eyes opened, blinking against a sticky film that dragged at his lashes and made foggy shapes out of the figure hovering above him.

“Hey there,” said a voice that was too old to be his father, the person above him too exhausted to be the man Poe had left behind on Yavin-IV so many years ago. But his smile was the same, even if it produced too many wrinkles across his sun-browned cheeks. “It’s good to have you back, son.”

“Dad?” Poe croaked, sounding as wretched as his throat felt, though his heart swelled at the sight of his father hovering over his bedside. Eyes dark, face kind, he smiled down at Poe like it hadn't been years that had separated them, but decades. Poe felt swallowed whole by that stare, and for one long moment he wondered if this wasn't reality, but his subconscious mind at work. If only he could remember— "Are you— where are—"

A cough caught in his chest, and then a hand slid behind his shoulder to prop him up, and a straw was quickly brought to his lips. The water just this side of cool to be refreshing without seizing his nerves with a shock of cold. Poe swallowed in large, thirsty pulls — throat working, nostrils flared. And as the water eased over the desiccated landscape of his esophagus, relief welled like a revitalized spring, cool and calming like the water, until Kes pulled the cup back with another easy smile.

“Not too fast. You’re not a fish Poe, last I checked.”

“Definitely,” Poe tried again, relieved when his voice only sounded worn, rather than completely wrecked. Even if, when he flopped boneless back down to the bed, he imagined he might look like one. A fish out of water, that is. Poe grimaced, “definitely not a fish, dad.”

A string of binary, and an almost offensively trilled, bird, and BB-8’s lens peeked over the side of his bed with a long, plaintive whistle that sounded, somehow, as tired as Poe felt.

“Heya BB.” Poe stretched his fingers out, too worn out to do much more than brush them over its housing in an affectionate greeting. BB-8 wobbled in place, chirping again as it bumped Kes aside so it could roll closer.

“Your droid has been worried sick. Hasn’t left your bedside in weeks.”

“Weeks?” Poe breathed as he shifted, again trying to push himself upright and finding he didn’t have the strength.

“Oh here, like this.” Kes fumbled with a small remote, before the head of the bed lifted with a gentle hum into a steep enough incline for Poe to sit up, revealing a small room with a large window obscured by a light-diffusing curtain that set the walls aglow in a cool green-gray.

Green-gray, just like the sea foam on Yavin-IV. The same color as Armitage’s eyes.

If reality had crashed down upon him before, now he felt drowned by it. Memories surfaced: a fraught farewell in an unfamiliar hangar, as he'd been taken away, and Armitage— Armitage— When he looked up to meet his father’s eyes, he saw a mirrored concern, as if Kes knew exactly where Poe’s mind had gone, because his was already there waiting for him.

Kes had to know about what was going on — he wouldn’t be here otherwise. Someone would have reached out to him, told him what they could. At this point, he was bound to know far more than Poe did.

Anything could have happened, in weeks.

“Dad,” Poe whispered, already feeling fatigued enough that he could hardly keep his thoughts straight, let alone wrangle the fear seizing his chest, “what have I missed?”

“You’ve been in an induced coma for sixteen cycles,” Kes said as he stood aside to allow BB the room it wanted to get fully under Poe’s palm, where it settled into a quiet trilling hum. “Doctors wouldn’t even let me see ya until you were out of the radiation unit. That was just this morning, been waiting for you to wake up ever since.”

Kes’s eyes did not leave his as he settled himself into a seat on the edge of Poe’s bed. His face was cast in shadow, deep enough to hide the usual sparkle of his eyes. But the angle put in relief the datapad tucked into his back pocket. Poe couldn’t help but want to reach out and take it, open up the holo-news and find out what his father wasn’t telling him.

“What about Armitage?” He tried instead. Only a little guilty that the first time he’d seen his father in over three years was being spent talking about a man who, to his father, was nothing more than a name in the news cycle — a man who was to be put on trial for the murder of billions

“He’s alright, as far as I know, which isn’t much. No one’s been allowed to see him, not even Leia. But the news has been quiet about it all. Just the same recycled updates for the last week. Most of it are talking heads turning themselves blue in the face, but no real substance about what’s going on. I figure that’s for the best. If they were making a spectacle out of it all—”

“Dad,” Poe cut him off, eyes pleading, “I gotta see him.”

“Sure know how to make your old man feel special, son.” It would have cut to the bone if not for the smile plastered across Kes’s face. “Go three years not seeing your old man no problem, but a few weeks without your beau? I get that you’re making up for lost time but—”

Dad—” Poe pushed out, panic festering fully to life, triggering a rush of adrenaline he thought he could only feel in Black One’s cockpit, “—dad, they’re gonna kill him.”

And then he was shoving the blanket away, hands shaking as he gripped the guard rail of the hospital bed, unused muscles seizing as he drew his legs up and over the side of the mattress. BB-8 squealed as it rolled back, trilling a shrill song of admonishment when Poe’s feet hit the floor and his legs wobbled unsteadily under the sudden weight. But he’d pushed through worse, and he would get through this too. Had to, because Armitage needed him — needed help.

And here he’d been for sixteen long cycles, safe in a hospital bed healing from injuries sustained while saving the life of the man he loved, while that very man rotted away alone in a prison cell. He must think everyone had abandoned him. That Poe had abandoned him. That he’d be left forgotten without even a visitor before they fucking dragged him to the gallows so all the world to watch him hang.

He made it one short, aborted step before his legs crumbled beneath him.

He never hit the floor. Kes was there, arms coming around his waist, to haul him against his barrel of a chest, solid and warm and as familiar as the embrace winding a fierce vice around Poe. It was laden heavy with years of yearning and worry, all the fear and terror of losing a person who meant the literal world to him — that was what he felt in his father’s grip, in his father’s hug.

“Poe, it’s okay. You’re okay. He’s okay.”

Nothing was okay. But there in his father’s arms, it almost felt like it could be.

Was this how Armitage felt, every time Poe whispered those words into his hair? Every time he pulled him into an embrace? Every time Poe affirmed, with a somehow insurmountable conviction, that everything would be okay?

That was all it took. Poe’s chest tightened and his throat seized, and he imagined all the water he had drank had already turned to tears because how else would they be streaming down his cheeks. There, crumpled against Kes’s chest, Poe sobbed. He wept, openly mourning for so much more than what he could ever put into words. For the man he loved and the time he had wasted in finding him, who was now slipping through his fingers, beholden to a world that Poe thought he’d already given everything up for. Somehow, it still asked for more. And somehow, Poe still had something left to give.

“It’s—” tears clogged his nose, ran into his mouth, and he had to swallow the phlegm in his throat before he could rasp, “—it’s not fair, dad.”

“I know, son,” his father’s voice wavered, swelled with his own grief, his own memories, of a life taken from him. Of a love lost too soon, and a war that had spanned generations, “I fucking know it isn’t, Poe.”

 

 


 

Inmate : Armitage Hux

Patient ID : 0681

Timestamp : 35 ABY 11:22:11:29.

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“Did you keep many secrets from the First Order?”

“No, never from the Order,” was quickly clarified with a perfunctual honesty, “from Supreme Leader Snoke, and Kylo Ren, and Enric Pryde, yes.”

Goss’s finger pushed up his spectacles, quiet stretching for a long, long moment. The question he eventually asked was not, however, the one she expected.

“That necklace you’re wearing is unusual, it belongs to Poe Dameron, doesn’t it?”

It might have felt like a shot from the dark, if not for the target that hung over his chest. Her plan, it seemed, had worked.

“Yes,” said softly.

“The relationship you and Mr. Dameron have is romantic, is it not?”

“General Dameron,” snapped like a reflex, and then, very carefully, “Yes.”

“Have you pursued other romantic relationships, previously, during your time with the First Order?”

The quiet, tremulous, clatter of the cuffs locked into the table’s bolt was his only betrayal. “No.”

“Why not?”

Despite the way his hands shook, his face remained neutral — a calculated mask, as devoid of emotion as his hands were full of it.

“My father was a very influential man, and as his son I was held to a higher standard than other recruits. My commitment was always to the Order,” a pause, a swallow, loud enough to be audible over the ambient hum of the recording, “but even had I been interested in pursuing a relationship, I would not have done so. There were very few people I would have trusted with that sort of knowledge of myself. I was already viewed as weak, I could not risk any sort of activity that would actually make me physically vulnerable.

“And,” this time, the pause drew out long enough to sour, so that the implication of what was said next was not lost, “the older men of the Order took liberties with their positions, I saw this through my father as well as the men he surrounded himself with. My view on intimate relationships was not a healthy one.”

Another note, another drawn out pause, and then Goss asked, “Would you call the relationship you have with Poe Dameron healthy?”

“Yes,” he confessed quietly. “Yes, I would.”

“Why so?”

“I don’t have to—” he cut off, looking away from Goss and to the holo droid which hovered above. His eyes didn’t reflect fire, but a woeful, desperate panic, “—I don’t see how this is relevant.”

“I assure you, Mr. Hux, it is all very relevant to your situation. My colleagues would happily diagnose you sans this conversation, based solely on your actions as recorded until now. You have a unique opportunity to shed light on your own internal machinations, and I am, in this respect, happy to have the opportunity to hear them.”

Armitage swallowed again, eyes flicking back over to Goss, though the droid remained focused on his face alone. “My relationship with Poe Dameron is very private to me. I think enough of it has been publicly shared with the galaxy for me to want to keep what I can to myself.”

“Yet, I insist. Considering your history of abuse, do you feel you are capable of judging what constitutes a healthy relationship?”

This time, there was no hesitation, no inkling of doubt, “Yes, I would.”

“And how would you describe a healthy relationship?”

“He has never hurt me, and I have never hurt him, if that is your definition of healthy.”

“Is that yours?”

He balked, taken aback, mouth hanging open a brief moment before he answered, “I don't know, but—”

"Is it at all possible, Mr. Hux, that your judgement in this might be unreliable?"

Armitage’s voice broke, then rasped, “He loves me." It dragged out of him like a tooth gone to rot, pulling at the root of it all, when he pushed out, "—and I love him.” Said like that was enough. Like anything else would be asking too much.

Wasn't love enough, though? Shouldn't it be? After all, love kept proving, over and over, that it was strong enough to overcome even the darkest layers of the Force. She had seen it first hand herself, too many times to count.

In the recording, Goss paused, waiting time out with a calm, placid ease as if he expected more to be said. But silence stretched, until it became clear the conversation had reached an end. Goss turned back to his datapad with barely a blink.

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“You’ve got forty minutes.”

The sun was bright, glinting gold into his eyes enough to make him blink back tears. And the air had a mild, slightly arid quality that filled every corner of his lungs as he pulled in a deep, satisfyingly fresh breath. It was clean, surprisingly unburdened by the taste of pollution, something he had expected from a city-planet’s atmosphere. But so much of Coruscant had already defied expectation, maybe this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Or maybe it was simply that Armitage had not been outside in weeks.

The last planet’s air he had breathed had been Ajan Kloss’s, and those memories felt like a lifetime ago.

Around him, the yard sprawled unassuming. Tended into a state of almost hostile perfection, the grass was short, the sand of the path unscattered, the duracrete walls arcing above as white as the day they were poured. There were slats in the walls, long narrow things that peaked out over the city but were far too small for a leg to fit through, let alone a body. Or sound, apparently. Absent was the distant clamoring of the bustling city that filtered through the window in his cell. Instead, wind breathed through the reedy vines of the trees, scattered as they were amongst the plots of grass, somehow able to thrive in the thinner atmosphere of the high altitude. A gust of wind caught their drooping branches in a symphony of gentle, whooshing rushes, the only sound besides his footfalls to break this peaceful, if somewhat tenuous solitude.

It reminded him, suddenly, of the mountaintop on Ajan Kloss.

He took a single, careful step, fully expecting it all to be swept out from beneath him. Instead, his feet landed on solid, ineffable ground.

The yard was empty of any other prisoners. Armitage had already come to the conclusion that the prison itself housed only him. If there were any other inmates being held, he was not privy to their existence. The cell block he was kept in had been silent but for the occasional pattern of footfall from a passing patrol, as few and far between as they were. The guards stationed outside his door kept dutifully quiet when not exchanging shifts, and even then the perfunctory hand-off of responsibility bartered no words he could discern.

So it seemed particularly strange, as his shoes sunk into the soft white sand of a narrow path bisecting a plat of vibrant green grass, that he thought he could see a figure in the distance.

Stranger yet, was that as he drew closer, and the figure began to take shape, he was hardly surprised when Rey’s form emerged from the fragmented shapes surrounding her.

There was a crystalline quality to her body, like her skin was made of glass, her clothing poured silk. Details that could easily be mistaken for the rippling pattern of sunlight that dappled through the willow tree above her.

Armitage knew better. He’d seen Snoke’s Force projection enough times to identify that Rey was not so much here, as much as her spirit was.

“Hux, it’s good to see you.”

“Hello,” he said simply, waiting for his unease to rear, but instead feeling himself drawn closer, until he was sat on the wooden bench beside her.

Rey smiled at him, not the calm platitudes of a passive politeness, but a toothy grin that revealed a genuine pleasure in seeing him. It would have been infectious, if Armitage hadn’t noticed at that very moment another figure, hidden away behind the drifting tendrils of the willow tree, tucked so deeply into in the curve of its trunk to almost be mistaken as a shadow.

Ren was here. Of course Ren was here.

“Sorry,” Rey dipped her chin as she said it, sheepish enough that Armitage knew her to be honest. “I’m not too good at this Force projection stuff yet. But together we can—” she gestured around them like the explanation was obvious. It was, Armitage duly admitted.

“Can the guards see you?”

“No, just you. And the trees.”

“The trees?”

Rey just shrugged. An obvious ‘your guess is as good as mine’.

“Leia wanted me to pass on her apologies, and make sure you got the ring.”

Immediately, his hand went to his chest, to press over the ring where it hung against his jumpsuit. He hadn’t bothered to hide it. Had in fact worn it like it belonged there, its rightful place against his heart. “Did she—” he cut himself off, eyes casting over to where Ren sat, unmoving, still almost indiscernible from the shadows surrounding him, “—what can you tell me?”

“Poe is okay,” Rey read his mind without the use of her Force, something Armitage was infinitely grateful for just then, because even after spending years reporting to Snoke’s projection, this ghostly exchange landed too strange for him to easily swallow. “The doctors kept him in a coma while his body purged the radiation, but he woke up this morning. He’s going to recover.”

Relief unraveled within him, a binding he hadn’t realized he’d tied quite so tightly. And with it came all the thoughts and worries and fears he’d managed to tangle up with it. If Armitage had done anything with his near infinite hours alone, it had been to craft a safe place within in his mind where he’d placed every memory, every feeling, every passing thought that had surfaced around Poe. He had not been able to do much against the fleeting emotions that inevitably reared, but he purposefully tucked the rest safely into that hidden place. Here with Rey, the absence of Poe’s presence in his life felt acute, a consummating lack of something that had become pivotal to his everyday function that now ached empty — still there, but not, like the haunted presence of a shadow he could never catch sight of.

“What else?” he asked with a rush of breath, attempting to mask his emotion but only succeeding in sounding desperate.

“Not much.” Rey shifted as if to touch him, kind face breaking in open commiseration. “The surrender is underway. The ships have been directed to the Kuat yards, and transports have been collecting the crew to shuttle them to the intake facilities where they’ll be processed. It’s taking some time, however. Finn’s adamant we shouldn’t just place everyone without some sort of support system established first, and the Senate agrees, and then they—” she shrugged again, just as sheepish, maybe a little comical, “—they just sort of put him in charge of that. He hasn’t slept in weeks.”

“Weeks?” Had it really been that long?

“You’ve been here for almost three,” Rey said softly, “they really keeping you on that tight of a leash?”

“I’m Starkiller, of course they are,” Armitage meant it as a joke but it mostly sounded sad, the words wretched as they tumbled out of his mouth.

Silence befell them, meandering away with minutes that grew more precious with the lengthening shadows across the yard.

“This used to be where the Jedi trained, when they came to Coruscant.”

Armitage started, looking back at Rey with a coiled wariness, and then up at the tree hovering over them.

“I think that’s why the trees feel different. I think they’re touched by the Force.”

“I thought everything was touched by the Force?”

Rey laughed, “You’re not wrong. They’re different though, I can hear them. And they can hear me. It’s strange, I’ve never experienced anything like it before.”

A sound emerged from behind them, indignant, but amused. Ren. Of course — how could he have dared forgotten?

“Oh shush,” Rey tossed out with a roll of her eyes and a wide smile, and then quietly — privately — like Ren was not listening to every word she said, “He doesn’t like it here, says it reminds him of his grandfather.”

Darth Vader. Anakin Skywalker. Whatever.

“How long can you stay?”

Rey laughed again, a twinkling thing, like glass in the wind.

“Leia managed to arrange this for us. Well, your access to the yard, no one knows about our conversation. She’ll be coming to speak with you as soon as she can,” Rey said like that was supposed to make him feel better. Strangely enough, it did. “In person, though, so it’ll be another couple days. You’ll be getting another visitor first. A doctor, or a psychiatrist?” she paused, head cocked to the side, as if to ask, did I get that right? before forging on, “he’s coming to evaluate you. Leia wanted you to be prepared.”

Prepared. A warning. A scout sending a message ahead, urgent and important and of dire consequence.

“Thank you,” he said simply, allowing himself to accept the knowledge that this, along with Poe’s ring and perhaps even his cell’s window had been things fought for on his behalf.

“Chin up, Hugs, yeah?”

He did not need that name catching on. “Not you too?” Armitage grimaced for full effect.

“Yeah, me too. But time’s up,” Rey did lean forward then, hand reaching to touch his knuckles, the shimmery length of her fingers passing through him with a shock of warm tingles. It was a bold move, and the closest thing he’d felt to a comforting touch in…well, in weeks. Armitage shuddered, lips pressing closed over the breath his lungs wanted to suck in, hand trembling with its urge to turn over and feel that touch slide over his palm. To feel a warmth and kindness that was beholden to nothing but this strange urge for human connection, something Armitage had never realized he needed so much, until he was entirely without it. Without Poe.

Rey’s eyes, when he lifted his to meet his, made it clear how much she understood. “I’ll come back, if I can. And if you need anything—”

“—I’ll be sure to let the trees know.”

Rey laughed one last time. Standing as if to walk away, she instead stepped out from the shade of the willow and into the sun, light catching her clothes in a blaze of fiery refractions that burned and burned until Armitage had to look away. He blinked at the tears collecting, the sting in his eyes receding only after he’d taken a moment to close them fully and breathe through the swell of emotions that attempted to surface. Emotions he had spent weeks successfully smothering. Now was not the time. Not when the guards would be coming for him shortly, and these last few minutes of peace were all he might have left under the warm rays of a planet’s sun.

Which was why, when he opened his eyes to find Kylo Ren sitting beside him on the bench, he very nearly called for the guards to collect him early.

“Ren,” he spat out, unable to mask his unease behind his typical drawl.

“Hux,” Ren’s voice brokered no obvious emotion, his face betraying nothing but the same soft doe-eyed banality that had driven Hux to near blinding rage aboard the Finalizer too many times to count.

But he looked well. Healthy. Like he wasn’t awaiting judgment before the people he had terrorized from the stolen throne of a dead Sith Lord. Like he was a man free to walk a new path, and leave the burden of his past behind.

“So they’ve let you go free, I presume?”

Ren’s face remained unchanged, but his eyes flicked away from Armitage’s face and that was all the answer he needed. Certainly, he could have done without the confirmation Ren deigned to give.

“House arrest,” he muttered, then, “and therapy.”

Hux laughed, he couldn’t help it. It tore out of him, nasty and awful and slightly manic and entirely too loud for the serenity of this space. Neither he nor Ren fit here, in this peaceful sanctuary meant only for the people who curried the galaxy’s favor, rather than her riotous, heavy-handed contempt. No amount of therapy would change that.

“So what is it you want, a chance to gloat? My apology?”

Ren’s face screwed up, just a little, and only for a moment, but Hux knew this man’s moods as well as he knew his own — had been forced to learn them, so many years ago.

“Isn’t it me who owes you an apology?”

Hux snorted at that, hoping it sounded as derisive as he felt. It would figure that the peace leading up to his trial wouldn’t last. That Kylo Ren would be the person to disturb it seemed appropriate. Maybe his real punishment wasn’t to be death, but never being able to escape the men who hurt him.

He turned away from Ren, hoped to Sith hell he got the fucking message and left.

“I am, though. Sorry.”

Armitage laughed again. Less manic, more wretched, burning as it came up, then bubbling over like acid. “You can’t even say it right.”

Hux,” and maybe that was a plea buried in his name. Armitage looked back at Ren then, letting all the hate he felt spill into his eyes as he met Ren’s dark, pit-like stare. “Just listen to me. I’m sorry. I truly am sorry for the way I treated you, Hux. I want to make things right.”

In another life, Armitage might have savored this moment. Might have made Ren repeat himself, say the words over and over again until the sound of his voice had etched itself over all the times it had not been those words spoken, but others, as his Force hand had come round his throat or his mind had been plucked to pieces. Instead, he pressed his lips together and stared into Ren’s sallow-skinned face, and he chose his words carefully, so that his point remained clear, and Ren would not mistake whatever this was for whatever he hoped it might become.

“It’s Ben now, right?” Ren nodded, lips parting like he might say something more but whatever expression Armitage wore kept him quiet. “Well listen to me, Ben, because this might be the last time we ever speak, and while I might die happy never giving you another thought, something tells me this apology is more for yourself than it is for me. So I will say this for your sake alone.

“I accept your apology. But that doesn’t mean I forgive you. And the reason I can’t forgive you, is because what you did to me will stay with me until the day I die. You hurt me, in ways I will never be able to fix, or escape. All I can do is learn to live with them, to deal with them as gracefully as I am able.

“So,” he said with a breathy rush, eyes locked onto Ren’s, like if he stared hard enough he could see through his projection and into his soul, “if you care at all for making whatever remains between us right, you will leave me alone. We will go our separate ways, and maybe time will do the healing that I assure you, I cannot manage. Not right now. Certainly not in the way you probably want. I can’t make you feel better about what you did to me. That is between yourself and your conscience. And I owe you nothing, least of all my forgiveness.”

It was true. It was all true. And it felt so good to say, to watch Ren’s face contort not into anger, or defiance, but a distant, listless acceptance. For a short, brilliant moment, Armitage felt vindicated; saw the hurt he had caused Ren strike in ways he'd never been able to achieve before. But the catharsis didn’t last. It too spoiled, carving out the space where all his anger had resided, as if the words he’d finally spoken had taken the substance of his pain and replaced it with an empty, vacant void.

He looked at Ren, into those too black eyes until they broke to rove over his own face in a slow, perfidious crawl, until Armitage could no longer take it and had to turn away.

An apology from Ren would never be enough. A lifetime of apologies would never make up for what he did. Maybe he never would forgive Ren, but he also realized he no longer needed the revenge he once sought, and that felt important. Because maybe it wasn’t so much the apology that Armitage needed, but Ren’s acknowledgment of all the ways he had hurt him.

“I think, what I want the most, is for you to understand what it is you did to me.”

“I do,” Ren breathed out. It sounded honest. It sounded like something Armitage could believe. “I understand.”

Armitage nodded, eyes focused on the hands folded in his lap, at how white they had become, caught in the vice of his grip. Sunlight scattered in a flickering array across his already pale skin, the rushing of wind through the tendrils of willow branches drowning out the heavy sound of his breath. He wasn’t shaking, but the energy surrounding him and Ren felt edged, energetic, shuddering on the cusp of something Armitage couldn’t name but felt important. This whole conversation felt important, and he had no idea why.

But there was something left between them. Something Armitage had not yet said, but needed to, for his own sake, despite how much he wished otherwise.

“I do owe you my thanks,” he finally managed, finding the words came far easier than he ever expected, “for saving Poe.”

“Of course,” Ren said softly, catching his eyes, and for a brief, tenuous moment Armitage felt a peace settle between them.

He may never know if it would have lasted, because the sound of the guards approaching crashed over him like a klaxon call to arms. Armitage whipped around, to see how they approached via the same path he had taken, stirring the sand into dusty clouds that disturbed the perfectly coiffed path and stained the grass gray. And by the time he looked back to where Ren had sat, heart hammering in his chest, and a duly wrought, wait, don’t leave me here, on his lips, he was gone.

The guards collected him, the cuffs back in place, to be led across the yard and into the looming tower before him, and then, Armitage too was gone — only the whisper of his memory left behind in the rush of wind through the trees.

 

 


 

Inmate : Armitage Hux

Patient ID : 0681

Timestamp : 35 ABY 11:23:11:12

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.

“Well Mr. Hux, I am pleased with what you’ve shared with me. I will be providing an official report to the Senate regarding our discussions, and the recordings will only be made available to those on an as-needed basis. I cannot grant you the full rights to privacy that, by law, doctors abide, but I can assure neither my report nor the holos will be made public.”

“Wait,” said with a rush, the recording picking up on the breathless quality of his voice, “We’re through? But you have not even asked me—” cut off sharply, as Armitage leaned back as if struck. He hadn’t been, but Leia re-watched the recording more than enough times to be sure. “You did not want to talk about Starkiller Base?”

Goss cocked his head to the side, hands folding neatly together atop the table. Taking his time, he asked, “Do you want to talk about Starkiller Base?”

“I only presumed—” glancing up at the holo-recorder, she saw how pale his skin looked against the dark shadows under his eyes, the lank fall of his grown-out hair. There was no trace of the man from those propaganda images, nothing of the General who had stood atop that dais and committed not just the Hosnian System, but a whole galaxy to a terror he had become the sole harbinger of. The person who stared into the lens was, quite simply, a frightened man. “—surely, that is why you came here.”

“And I assure you, Mr. Hux, that if you wish to speak about the events surrounding Starkiller Base, I am happy to listen. But as far as what I am interested in, I have more than sated my curiosity. So?”

“No,” said almost too softly for the recording to pick up. “I have nothing more to say on the matter.”

“Very good, then I believe we are done here. Thank you for your time, Mr. Hux.”

“Of course.”

Goss stood, datapad tucked under one arm, and as moved across the room, the only evidence of the door opening to allow his passage the bright rectangle of light that briefly spilled across Armitage’s face. The holo-recorder was left behind, as if forgotten, to capture Armitage where he remained shackled to the table. Where he would sit, uninterrupted, for the next hour.

Leia had watched the recording enough times to know that at fifteen minutes he would begin crying, and at twenty, he would collapse atop the table in a shuddering fit of a panic attack. Shoulders hunched, hands fisted into his hair, he would sob and shake and heave in short, shallow gasps for almost thirty minutes, until the guards finally came to collect him.

.

.

.

 


 

 

The room was different from the interrogation chamber he’d grown used to. For once, there was evidence of another person scattered about, solitary nods to life that seemed suddenly out of place considering the last few weeks of his own: a coat hanging off the back of a chair that was pulled out from a large, polished transparisteel table, and a tray of what appeared to be food placed between a pair of mugs, one of which had a stain around the lip, a peachy half-moon of color that stood out bold against the otherwise pearlescent white.

Goss had never brought anything other than himself and his holo-recorder to their sessions. He’d sat in his chair and asked his questions and walked away with what felt like far more than the answers Armitage had given. And he’d certainly never offered Armitage more than the echoes of their conversations, the memories they dredged up, and the haunting reminder of a life he had, somehow, begun to forget.

Poe had done that — had shown him a version of life that wasn’t filled with pain and fear. It had been so easy to tuck it away into the darkest corners of his head, in the face of the happiness Poe had offered; a balm to a wound that had festered too long, let alone been given the opportunity to heal.

Now, the wound had been ripped wide open all over again, and whatever healing Armitage was to get seemed, every day, more likely to be found at the end of a noose than in a life lived with the man he loved.

As the guards lowered him to the chair opposite that with the coat, his eyes lingered on the tray. There was fruit, and a wheel of pale cheese, and a scattering of crackers and biscuits and a tiny bowl full of multi-colored spheres he could not identify. His mouth watered at the idea of their taste, and his stomach knotted with the memory of the meal he had been served that morning: a pile of re-hydrated grains and vegetables and a nutrient shake that tasted of nothing but the tinny metal of the cup they’d served it in.

The Order’s rations had never been much, but even they had been more flavorful than the stuff served here. And though he’d never had much of a thirst for the finer details of cuisine, the food before him was simple, wholesome, and most of all, fresh.

But Armitage was not fooled. He knew how these things worked. The tray was to be a reward. A teasing temptation used to manipulate. What would he agree to, for a taste of that decadent slice of ripened fruit? What secrets would he reveal for the chance to sample the wheel of salty, rich cheese? And what part of his soul would he give up to be allowed a sip of the cold, half-drunk tea in the peach-stained glass?

Honestly, Armitage was surprised they expected he had anything left to give, not after all he’d already revealed to Goss. Well, he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. If what he had told them already still wasn’t enough, he wasn’t about to debase himself further by begging for their scraps. He’d gone without the finer things in life long enough to no longer feel beholden to their temptation. Decades of a pious lifestyle would do that to a person, it would take far more than a tray of delicacies to change that.

He turned away, though his hands shook in their cuffs, his clenched fists hiding everything but the sound of metal trembling atop the transparisteel table. A quick glance at the guards revealed their usual hawkish attention — that same expectation that he would somehow shed his shackles and pull a blaster from the belt he wasn’t even allowed to wear. Unlike his previous meetings with Goss, his cuffs were not bolted to the table, but instinct bade him to leave his hands where they were, no matter how much he longer to pull them into his lap and muffle the sound of his shaking.

He’d sat through worse. This shouldn’t feel so difficult. Not when he’d stared down Ren at his worst, when the head of his informant had sat bleeding out before him, the rumor of a spy flying off the tongues of his colleagues turned inquisitors. He’d survived their hunt, had outrun the jaws of the monster the First Order had become. That should have been enough. Truly, if fate had any sort of sense of justice that had been his. To ask for anything more, at this point, was probably selfish.

But that didn’t stop him from wanting it. Not now that he’d had a taste.

His eyes drifted to the tray again, his fingers twitching against his palms, fingernails scraping along the soft cusp of flesh as his mouth filled with the salt of his saliva. He could probably reach it before the guards realized, certainly before they stopped him. They probably wouldn’t pry the fruit from him mouth, or the biscuit from between his teeth. He could take what he wanted, New Republic justice be damned, and still nothing would change his ultimate fate. But no, while this might be a test, it wasn’t their judgment he risked. It was his own. They may take everything else from him, but Armitage still had his integrity, and he’d damn himself to Sith hell before he gave that up for a bit of fine food.

A notion which proved futile anyway, when the door to the room slid open on silent tracks, and it became achingly clear that it wasn’t his integrity of which he was going to be asked for, because the moment had come when it was to be his life.

Leia Organa nodded to him, a small smile for his eyes only, before she turned to the guards to dismiss them.

“Armitage,” spoken affably, like the last time they’d exchanged words hadn’t been over three weeks ago. “It’s good to see you again.”

“General Organa,” thankfully, his voice came out even, unaffected. But the emotion was there, cracking just under his surface, because as Organa sat down in the chair with the coat, she placed upon the table a steaming pot of what was, Armitage instantly recognized by scent alone, freshly brewed Taurine tea.

Well, apparently there were still ways to get him to talk.

“Please, call me Leia.” Their eyes met as she settled into his seat, the smile on her face gentling into the wrinkles that spidered from her eyes. She said nothing of his obvious confusion, nothing of the weeks of silence he had been left to, but it was all there in her stare as she held his gaze. Something inside him cracked, something already weakened by time and memory.

“They left your cuffs on?” Tsk’ed alongside the motion of her hand reaching for his. She stopped just short of touching him, palm up, waiting, allowing him the choice to close the distance.

Carefully, he placed his wrists in her hand. The clasp of the cuffs releasing was a near silent snick.

He resisted the urge to rub his wrists, flex his fingers, show any sign of weakness or evidence that the cuffs were a burden. But he wouldn’t have gotten the chance anyway, with how swiftly Organa pushed the mug into his hands.

“Drink,” gently commanded, as if she knew what Armitage needed right then wasn’t a kind touch or a soothing words, but the simple comfort of warm tea. “No cream or sugar, but I have a feeling you take your tea black anyway.”

“Am I so easily read by the Force?”

Her laugh was not like Rey’s. It was loud, boisterous, and bubbling with genuine amusement.

“I don’t need the Force to know how you like your tea.”

“No, you have Poe.”

Organa grinned, “He said Taurine is your favorite.”

Armitage nodded, staring down into the curl of steam as it coiled. A deep inhale and the scent filled his lungs, a clean, balmy earthen root that barely belied the bitterness of its flavor. Armitage did, in fact love Taurine tea. Poe had known, of course Poe had known. And he’d shared that knowledge with Organa in a distant attempt to reach him. A thoughtful gesture where words could not reach.

“How is he?” Came out almost as a whisper.

“He’s doing well. He woke a few days ago and should be cleared to leave the hospital soon. He’ll make a full recovery.” She paused, head cocked to the side as Armitage avoided her gaze, though he could still feel the crawl of her eyes as she said, “He would be here, if he could, you should know.”

“I know.” But he wasn’t — couldn’t be. And it was very possible Armitage might never see him again.

“Armitage.” Maybe he wouldn’t describe her voice as hard, but there was a command buried in it. “Drink your tea. And stars above, eat something.”

The tray gave a dull groan of protest as she pushed it towards him, loud enough to hide the grumble of his stomach. And the steam from his tea, where it curled over his face, hopefully hid the wetness in his eyes.

This was no trick. There was no barter being made, here. This was a kindness, pure and simple, of the sort he had, against all odds, grown used to; something else he thought he’d left behind under Ajan Kloss’s heavy sun.

His hands shook as he arranged the tray before himself. The cheese was soft, tacky on his tongue, and the fruit burst with a flavorful juice the likes of which he had never tasted before, but was almost as decadent than the perfectly brewed tea. He ate slowly, savoring each bite and every sip, until his stomach grew full and the shadows grew longer, stretching over the tray as the sun crept across the sky.

Only once he pushed the tray away did Organa speak again, an easy, “These came from Naboo, have you ever tasted anything so delicious?” as she plucked a cracker from the spread and scooped up a generous amount cheese.

“Never,” a simple enough admission, though he couldn’t explain why it made him feel so foolish. His father had likely eaten from the finest tables in the galaxy, before the fall of the Empire. A native delicacy would have been served at his table every night, while Pryde and his like laughed over a bottle of the rarest casked whiskey known to Corellia. For that reason alone, Armitage would have never indulged in anything more rich than the occasional glass of aged wine, or the rare fine meal. “The Order didn’t often come by Core world goods. Some rare bottle of alcohol, here and there. Certainly nothing as exotic as what Naboo would trade.”

“Naboo is exotic to you?” Organa asked, her long, wizened fingers selecting a piece of fruit that Armitage now knew tasted like citrus, but had the texture of something soft and doughy. “Naboo is where I am from, well—” she caught his eye, smile softening, “—Alderaan is where I grew up, but Naboo is my mother’s legacy. It is a very traditional place, but I’ve never thought of it as exotic.”

“Is that where Ren—” Ben—

“Where he is spending his house arrest? Yes, in fact, it is,” spoken with a wry smile, her wrinkles spidering deeper as her grin grew. “For all the years I dreamt of having him home again, I never expected it to happen quite like this. He’s as stubborn and obtuse as he was when he was a boy. It also doesn’t help that I think I’ve grown used to my empty nest.”

Oh, did he know that feeling. “He was a menace on the Finalizer. A week wouldn’t go by without him destroying something on my ship. Consoles, droids, whole training rooms. The amount of reports I had to file against his whimsical destruction took up cycles of my life.”

Organa snorted, “I’m very familiar with his tantrums. It’s why we thought sending him to train with Luke was a good idea, besides his affinity for the Force. Han’s opinion of discipline was loose, to say the least, and my own was far too rigid for Ben to fit into it. In retrospect, we made our mistakes, and we could have been more aligned together as parents than we were, but he was always going to walk his own path. That said, it is good to finally have him home.”

“And now he doesn’t have the choice to run away.”

Organa’s grin turned wolfish, all white teeth and deeply crevassed wrinkled. “No, he most certainly does not. Rey will see to that, if not the Senate.”

Armitage had to turn away, then. As the noose swung out of the shadows, to cast its long silhouette across the light of the sun.

Organa gave him his moment; a chance to pull himself together without the buzz of her Force to reveal how much she already knew. Why else would she be here, if not to talk about his fate? The time had finally come, and somehow, he would have traded it all for just a few more weeks of this solitary confinement. At least here, hope had a chance to flourish, even if the cost was this impossible ache in his heart.

But when it became clear that he had no intention of addressing the proverbial Bantha in the room, Organa took it upon herself to say what Armitage could not.

“Goss’s report from your sessions was very thorough. But in the end, I believe it was Ofant’s holos that influenced the Senate’s decision the most. That plan of his to besmear the entirety of our operation has made it impossible for them to put together an unbiased jury. You are going to trial, Armitage, but the Senate has agreed to a military tribunal. It will be a complicated affair, three judges to convince, and our argument will be a difficult one to make, but I believe in the justice I want to see served, and I am willing to fight for it.

“I told you before there was a chance,” Organa said as she took his hand. Her grip was strong, holding fast as he jerked against the unexpected touch. But even as his hand shook, he could not help but think, please don’t let go, as she continued almost without pause, an excitement in her voice that felt out of place in the conversation they were having, “I meant it, Armitage. And I can feel its truth now. We’re on the cusp of something, you and I. Something better for the galaxy. And I think if we work together, we can see it through to the future we’ve both fought for.”

As he met her eyes, he saw someone else staring back. Not the general of an opposing army, but an unlikely ally. A person who cared, when no one else seemed to; when she had no reason to. He’d been here before, a long time ago. When he was just a child, scared of a future whose brightness had been dimmed to the point of desolation, and another woman had offered him her aid, her guidance, her protection. He had not expected it then, and now, as Leia Organa held his gaze, he found himself just as completely taken aback by what she was offering.

“We?” He asked, proud that his voice, while soft, did not break.

“Yes, we,” her smile was well-worn, the webs around her eyes spun long, long ago — maybe decades, maybe generations. And when her Force buzzed against his mind, a soothing balm over his frayed nerves, he couldn’t help but feel he finally understood why Poe had followed this woman across the galaxy and into a war they should have, by all odds, lost, but had instead won. “I’d like to represent your defense, Armitage. If you’ll have me, of course.”

Across the table, the shadows stretched. Outside, the day was bright, sunny, broken only by a scattering of cumulus cloud cover that meandered by the window in big rolling coifs. They must be near the very top of the tower; high enough that only the tallest of skyscrapers broke through the horizon of the window. There was nothing to be seen of the city below. No sounds drifting through the transparisteel, no honking horns or whirring atmo engines. Just those clouds, coiling by on the gist of a gentle breeze, free to wander wherever the wind might take them.

Wherever fate might take them.

“Yes,” he breathed, squeezing the hand the held his own. “Yes, I’ll have you, General.”

“Please,” Organa smiled, the widest she had yet. “You’re going to have to start calling me Leia.”

 

 

 

Notes:

I am so sorry this took so long ♥ This chapter may turn out to be the most difficult to write (though, I say that about every chapter lately). Of all my notes for this portion of the story, most are for the trial itself, so chapter 17 won't take me nearly as long ♥

Thank you so much for your feedback, any comments and kudos really mean the world to me. If you've gotten this far and have enjoyed yourself, would you check you left a kudos? Otherwise, please come scream at me on twitter or tumblr, I adore y'all to pieces ♥