#darkpilot

Ben expanded his senses after that plan failed. He sought out Han, mostly. If he could make contact with his father, if they could make an escape plan—

Hopelessness, however, overwhelmed him, and he was thrust back into the interrogation room. If he and Han did make contact, Ren would surely sense it. There was no point…

Ben took a moment to recenter himself. He assessed his physical body—cold table against his skin, joints stiff, left eye swollen, back of head bruised and tender, heartbeat steady, breathing steady and centered in his stomach—and he expanded his focus once more.

Beyond the dark, oppressive interrogation room. Beyond the two shielded Troopers at his door. Beyond the mess hall, where Troopers’ idle minds mixed, indistinguishable from one another, past officers logging shipments, down, down, searching for the detention center on level one—

Ben’s mind brushed against his father’s. A knot of anxiety unwound itself. Han was alive.

Took you long enough, kid. Now I’ve been working on a plan—

The door slid open and though Ben’s eyes were closed in meditation, the light persisted. The distraction yanked his mind away from Han’s as surely as if Ren herself had dragged him away, but when Ben opened his eyes it was not Ren who had come to question him. It was Poe.

This time, Ben did not try to overwhelm Poe with memories. He took in the stark, grey uniform and the marks on the cuffs that indicated a rank of General, just as Ren had said. He wondered if, beneath that tight cap, Poe’s hair would be short and clean, the way the First Order demanded, or if there was still a bit of the old Poe left, a collection of thick, dark curls hidden away beneath the sharp facade.

Tentatively, Ben sought out Poe’s feelings. He was cautious, and did not force his way into Poe’s thoughts. Instead he listened, and felt Poe’s anxiety. It wasn’t just fear of Ben, though, or fear of how Ben might overwhelm him with memories of their past—that was there, certainly—but more than that, Poe was afraid of something, of someone, far larger, far more terrifying than their past.

“Are you afraid of what Ren will do to you if you don’t give her what she wants?” Ben asked.

Poe snorted. “I’m not afraid of Ren. She’s not half as powerful as you are.”

Ben struggled to hide his surprise. Not only that Poe thought so little of the woman who had overpowered Ben, but that Poe sounded so much like himself.

“Then who are you afraid of?”

Poe did not answer. He tugged on the sleeve of his uniform, and when Ben tried to press, tried to see what was at the center of Poe’s anxiety, Poe asked, “Do you really think you made the right choice?”

Ben paused his assault of Poe’s memories. “What?”

“Staying with Skywalker. Instead of your mother.”

Ben was grateful that Poe was not trained in the Force, and could not feel the simultaneous swell of guilt and hurt as he mentioned Luke. “I didn’t have much of a choice. I couldn’t abandon my training—”

“Why not?”

Ben did not need to dig into Poe’s mind to know that Poe was not really asking about leaving Coruscant and the New Republic. Poe was asking why Ben had left him.

And Ben found it an unfair question. Poe was the one who had abandoned him first. Poe was the one who had started flying missions for the New Republic, who was around less often than even Han was, who had come back one day and suggested that the New Republic didn’t even know what it was doing, that Leia didn’t know what she was doing—

“What was I supposed to do?” Ben asked. “Keep meditating in that garden, waiting for you to come back for me? Should I have tried harder to talk you out of the First Order? To convince you to fight for the New Republic instead?”

“You and I both know the New Republic was a failure. It’s crumbled into dust, gone. There’s nothing left of it—”

“The Resistance—”

“—Is hardly that. A Resistance.” Poe laughed, but it was cold and stilted, nothing like the boy had once been. “The First Order is in control. We’ve stabilized the galaxy, done what Leia couldn’t—what she refused to do. Why can’t you see that?”

Ben closed his eyes and dove into Poe’s mind. It was a selfish choice, fueled entirely by his desire to understand why Poe had changed so much, why Poe had abandoned him so completely before either of them had truly left Coruscant.

Poe stood on the deck of the Star Destroyer, with the orange-tinted sands of Jakku below. Officers worked around him, monitoring the controls for the ship, and at the end of the bridge, eyes on the stars out the wide viewports, stood Ren. Starlight glinted off of Ben’s silver saber hilt, still fastened to her hip. Beside her was a blue hologram of a pale man in a First Order uniform, who stared at Poe in that half-vacant way holograms did, not quite making eye contact but rather an approximation of it.

“General Dameron,” the hologram said, “is it true that you have a personal history with our special prisoner?”

Poe remained at attention, but discomfort churned in his stomach. “It’s no secret, sir, that I was close with the Organa family in the days of the New Republic.”

“Excellent. We shall leverage that to lure Organa into the open. It’s time for the Princess to give up on her play at rebellion, on her quest for her former glory. You are to earn our prisoner’s trust, and convince him to divulge the location of the Resistance.”

“Have you given up on Han Solo already?”

The general quirked an eyebrow. “Pardon?” Even through the holo, his displeasure was clear.

“Sorry, General Hux, sir. I was just under the impression that we were using Han Solo to gain the location of the Resistance. I thought Ren had taken charge of interrogating Organa.”

General Hux frowned. “Are you refusing an order?”

“No, sir.”

Ren stirred, and turned away from the viewport. “The Supreme Leader has said that Organa is mine, to determine the location of Luke Skywalker.”

The General scoffed. “This is a real war we are fighting. Not some fairytale—”

“Ben Organa is mine,” Ren said. Her cold eyes fixed on General Hux’s hologram, but she stretched a hand out to Poe.

All the air left Poe’s lungs. He struggled to take in a breath, but it was like grasping at water. His hands flew to his throat, as if he could somehow fight the Force with his bare hands. The bridge faded, slowly, as white began to obscure the edges of Poe’s vision, and then all of it—

A punch to the stomach knocked all the air out of Ben’s lungs. He spluttered, gasping for breath.

“I warned you about getting in my head,” Poe said sharply.

Ben gasped. “Why are you here?”

“Did you want her to come down here, to break your mind or whatever the hell it is she does? I’m trying to get you to tell me what we need to know before she breaks you. Ben, I’m trying to protect you.”

Ben closed his eyes and tried to center his breathing, though it was a challenge with the wind knocked out of him. He did not think Poe was capable of truly lying. He felt genuine concern coming off of Poe in waves. He had always loved how open Poe was with his feelings, and it felt like a warm rush of relief to feel Poe’s emotions freely once more. He had been so closed off in those last few months on Coruscant, as if he, too, had fallen victim to the Darkness that had washed across the planet and forced Leia to move the New Republic’s headquarters to the Hosnian System.

“I thought,” Ben took in a slow breath and looked at Poe, “that you weren’t afraid of her.”

Poe was quiet for a long moment. “You can’t let Ren break you,” he said.

Ben snorted. “I didn’t know you cared about Luke so much.”

“Not because of Skywalker—because as soon as Ren has what she wants, she won’t need you anymore. And the general…”

“Are his interrogation methods worse than Ren’s?”

“He doesn’t want to interrogate you, Ben, he wants to use you as bait to lure Leia Organa out of hiding. He wants her to trade the Resistance for you, or he’ll kill you.”

It would never work, and Poe and Ben both knew that. Ben was surprised that General Hux thought it had a chance, even. He must be a young general, because any other would understand her history with the loss of Alderaan. Leia Organa had learned the danger of making deals and sacrifices at a young age, and it would be nothing to her to lose a son when she had already lost an entire culture.

“That’s the thing we never agreed on,” Ben said. “You and I.”

“What?”

“You think my mother would be right to choose me over the Resistance, but how can she? She’s responsible for so much more than just me.”

“So she sent you off to a special Jedi planet hidden from the world?”

“The New Republic was full of people’s petty ambitions, desire for money and power, full of ghosts of a war over nothing. The little things—” Ben swallowed and opened his eyes. He finally understood. “Ren’s not the Darkness on this ship, is she? It’s bigger than her. What is it that I’m really feeling?”

“Thank you, General Dameron,” Ren’s voice cut through coldly. She held out a hand and Poe flew backwards. The security recorder fizzed as he crashed into it and he fell to the ground, twitching from the electricity that surged through his body. The white light of the corridor disappeared as the door closed behind Ren.

“No—” Ben pulled uselessly against his restraints. “What did you do—”

Ren held up a hand and the restraints around his wrists and ankles snapped apart.

Ben moved slowly, warily. His body ached and his joints were stiff. If he pulled his lightsaber from her waist and tried to fight, he would surely lose. “What are you doing?”

“You’re going to take me to Luke Skywalker.”

“No.”

Ren pressed her lips together. “I told you, I don’t care about politics. I don’t care about the First Order.”

Something in her had changed. Ben felt her mind open, vulnerable. He reached a hand out, and she did not move. She let him place his hand on her forehead, and he practically fell into her memories.

She allowed him to move rapidly, through the lonely deserts of Jakku, until a scarred man in a gilded robe found her, and she was taken into the stars. Her training had been here, on star destroyers, in dark corridors, in fluorescent lights. She had learned to manipulate the energy within Troopers and officers, had dueled her master and practiced defending against blasters, and it was all she knew.

The desert and the stars. Hot and cold, empty and dead.

Ben blinked and pulled his hand away. Ren, in turn, pressed her hand to his head. He allowed her to move freely, as she had let him.

He felt her focus on key memories—the gardens, meditating with Luke in the grass, the descent into the cave below—and she pulled away.

“The green,” she said, “and the water. I want to see it.”

Ben stared at her. “How do I know this isn’t a trick?”

“Do you not trust yourself to know my true intentions? You have seen what I want more than anything, and you said it yourself: those with power always want more. I want to know the Force as you do.”

Ben rubbed his eyes with his hands, then flinched as he pressed against the bruise Poe had left.

“My Trooper FN-2187 is already getting Han Solo from his cell. We need only kill Dameron then meet them at the Millenium Falcon.”

“What—no! You can’t kill Poe—”

Ren frowned at his outrage and tilted her head slightly. “He is a liability. He will tell the Supreme Leader what we have done. We will not survive, and neither will your father.”

“We bring him.” Ben said. He was already limping to check on Poe. There was an electrical burn in his back, and several bruises from hitting the wall and the floor, including a swelling lump on the back of his head, but he was going to be fine. Ben would make sure of it.

Ren watched him lift Poe onto one shoulder. She tapped the silver hilt on her belt. “In that case,” she said, “I will hold onto this, since your hands are full.”

“If I’m walking out with Ren,” Ben said, “will I need it?”

She shrugged, but there was a small smile at the corner of her lips. “One more thing. My name is Rey.”

“Rey?”

“Just Rey.”

✦✧✦✧

Ben would have preferred to have his lightsaber in his hand, rather than be burdened by a half-conscious Poe. Rey, however, defended blaster fire with two sabers as if she had always wielded them. Her Trooper, FN-2187, returned fire easily enough as Han hastily started the Falcon’s engines.

“We won’t get far without fuel!” Han shouted down the ramp.

Rey continued to guard their retreat as she backed towards the ship. “I took care of it. Go!”

Ben set Poe down in the small inset in the wall that served as a bed and reached into an overhead compartment for a medical kit.

“Treat him later,” Han said quickly. “They’ll be coming after us with fighters any minute. I need you on the gunner.”

Reluctantly, Ben slid down the ladder and took the controls. From his position, he could see Rey, still defending the ramp, and her Trooper at her side. Hastily, Ben reached out through the Force, urging her into the ship. She waited until the Falcon had already begun its ascent before leaping backwards, onto the ramp, and closing it behind her.

Ben fired a barrage against the Troopers, now that he had a clear shot, and aimed directly for the control center. He hoped his earlier theory about the tractor beam was right. Through the intercom, he heard Han shouting. He gritted his teeth, prepared for the criticism, but then realized, as they pulled away from the dock, Han wasn’t shouting at him. Rey was replying in cool, confident tones, and though he couldn’t make out her side of the argument, he could hear Han’s shouts in his head as clear as day.

“What did your Order do to my ship?!”

Ben took down a TIE fighter that was in close pursuit.

“Yeah, I can see that! Now why would you—”

Ben hated TIEs. They swooped too readily and were too difficult to keep stable, which made them much harder to hit. And for the ones Ben did hit, there seemed to be four ready to replace it.

“Han?” Ben interrupted whatever argument Han and Rey were having. Surely there were more pressing matters, like getting out of here alive. “How are we looking for hyperdrive? I don’t know how much more we can take.”

“Ask your new Sith girlfriend and her First Order engineers who apparently thought it appropriate to—”

The rest of Han’s statement was lost in something Rey said.

“Well, whatever the hell you are, we didn’t ask to be rescued. I had a plan!”

“Han!” Ben shouted, as the computer closed on a target. “Hyperdrive?” He fired, and the TIE burst into a hot white explosion before fizzling out into nothing.

“It’s coming—you what with the compressor?”

The ship shuddered, and Ben was certain that the shields had failed and this was the end for all of them, but then the blue glow of hyperspace surrounded him, and he leaned back against the chair. His respite was brief. There was no time to waste when Poe still needed him.

Ben hurried back into the main hold, where he had left Poe.

Poe was fully conscious, but still seated in the alcove, face tight with pain. He looked up at Ben, a strange sort of tired in his eyes, and quickly looked away.

Ben reached out tentatively with the Force, not probing deeply, but just enough to gauge Poe’s mood.

Exhaustion and pain Ben had expected. There was anger and resentment there too, and even that was warranted. But through all of it, there was so much fear.

Ben approached slowly, like Poe was a Loth-cat that might spook if he moved too suddenly. He sat down on the edge of the alcove and opened up the box of emergency medical supplies.

As Ben uncapped the bacta spray, Poe asked, “Which of us is supposed to talk first?” Though the question was an attempt at humor, his voice was dull, little more than an echo of who Poe used to be.

“You should probably be lying down. Rey gave you a good thrashing.”

“Rey?” Poe repeated in a hollow tone.

Ben explained their escape and Rey’s reconsidered name.

Poe shook his head. He winced as the motion aggravated his concussion, and held still as Ben spritzed the bacta into it. There was hardly any hair to get in the way, curls chopped off by First Order regulation.

“You should have left me behind.”

“I wasn’t going to abandon you.” Ben left off the “again,” because it did not need to be said—and he also did not think he was the one who had abandoned Poe.

Poe kept his eyes on a distant point, somewhere near the door into the corridor. He refused to look at Ben, and Ben wondered if Poe was ever going to forgive him for this.

With a trembling voice, Poe whispered, “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

Carefully, Ben placed his hand on Poe’s head. “Do you want me to know?”

Han’s voice and footsteps carried down the corridor, and Ben hastily pulled his hand away. He felt Poe shrink deeper into the alcove as Han, Rey, and the Trooper left the cockpit and joined them in the hold.

Rey was still sharp-eyed and cold as she examined Ben and Poe, but something inside her seemed to have softened since they had left the Star Destroyer. Ben could feel it not just in her, but in the Force at large. He recalled the omnipresence of the Darkness that he had felt in that cell, and wondered if it had been bearing down on her just as it had on him.

Her Trooper had not yet taken off his helmet, and that unnerved Ben, just as much as the fact that he could still see his saber on Rey’s hip, swinging next to her dark hilt.

But before Ben could ask for his saber back, Han took an apprehensive look at Poe and grunted, “You’re awake,” as if it was a statement that needed to be made.

Poe nodded.

“Did you give Ben that shiner?”

Poe nodded again. “Yes, sir.”

“Oh, ‘sir!’ So we’re feeling sorry now, are we?”

“Han, not right now—” Ben tried, but Han cut him off.

“You can’t coddle him, Ben. He’ll have to face what he’s done eventually. I’m no Jedi, but here’s a free lesson from a smuggler: No one gets to hide from their past.” He pointed at Rey and the Trooper. “You deal with it, you live with it, and you keep living with it. That’s the way it goes.” Han stared at their somber faces and sighed. “That’ll be the only free thing from me. This ain’t a charity ferry. You’re working for this ride—all of you.” He leveled his gaze at Poe again.

“Yes, sir,” Poe said.

“Yes, sir,” Rey and FN-2187 echoed.

Han nodded, as if he had just concluded an important task. “Right. You,” he pointed at Rey, “I want you in the cockpit, monitoring the ship’s status.”

“You trust Rey with that?” Ben asked.

Han shrugged. “She got us out of there. Don’t see why she would take us right back. Hell, it’s not like we’re going to any Resistance base or anything. That’ll be another conversation. And you, FN-24… 5… 67—What’s your name again?”

“FN-2187, sir.”

Han waved his arms irritably. “Enough of that ‘sir’ crap. I’m not your commanding officer.” Then he pointed a finger at Poe. “You, however, still call me sir.”

Poe did not look at Han, but seemed to accept the admonishment.

“FN-whatever-you-are, I want you running a systems check. Can you do that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What the hell did I just say? Can you follow orders or not?”

“Er—Yes. I can follow orders just fine.”

“Good. And get that bucket off your head. Makes me want to put a blaster in you.”

“Yes, sir—I mean. Yes.” The Trooper took his helmet off, and Ben was surprised to see how young the Trooper was. He certainly wasn’t any older than Poe, maybe a bit older than Rey, but his dark skin was smooth and his eyes were bright. He had the close-cut hair of a soldier, but none of the hardness.

Han, too, seemed shocked, but said nothing as the Trooper headed down the corridor to complete the systems check.

“Ben, put something on that eye, would you?” Han said. “I’m going to see what cargo they left us with.”

“What did you want me to do, sir?” Poe asked dully.

“I don’t know,” Han shrugged. “Disappear in an escape pod? Maybe jump out an airlock?”

“Han,” Ben snapped, but Han was already through the door and lost in one of the cargo holds.

Poe snorted softly. “Didn’t know he cared about you so much.”

Ben didn’t bother to correct Poe. Han’s indignation wasn’t over Ben. How could it be? Ben had been with Luke for those years on Coruscant, and Han had been… somewhere else. Wandering the stars, as he did. As Poe had once done.

No, Han’s indignation was for Leia, who had been devastated when Poe had rejected her offer to join the Resistance. Leia, who had been more of a mother to Poe in some ways than she had been to Ben.

“Take off your uniform,” Ben said, as he dug through the medical kit. “You got a nasty burn.”

Poe was already undoing his collar. “I know. Hell, I can feel it.” He winced as he struggled to extend his arms and remove the coat. Without asking, Ben helped him undress.

It was strange to perform such a familiar and intimate act without question and without invitation, like brushing against a ghost. A chill ran down Ben’s spine as he pulled the undershirt over Poe’s head, and another chill of an entirely different sort ran through him when he saw the burns seared across Poe’s back. Tight, jagged spirals of red and pink crawled over his spine and along the edges of his ribs.

Ben opened the cannister of salve and spread a thick layer over the red, irritated skin along Poe’s spine. The wounds were probably worse underneath the skin, but Ben was no medical droid. He didn’t have a way to treat that. The best he could do was try to ease some of Poe’s pain.

“You can’t save me, Ben,” Poe said softly.

“It’s just an electrical burn and a small concussion. You need water and rest—”

“You heard Han. There’s no changing what I’ve done.”

“There’s no running from it either.”

Poe’s hands tightened into fists. “So where does that leave me? In a cell on a Resistance base? Or is Leia supposed to welcome me back with open arms? I’m an AWOL officer now. Either side should put me in front of a firing squad. Maybe Han was right and I should just walk out of an airlock.”

Ben abandoned the medical kit and wrapped his hands around Poe’s. “Don’t.”

Poe still kept his face turned away, dull eyes on the floor.

“Are you welcoming me back with open arms?” Poe whispered.

Ben hesitated. He wanted, more than anything, to say yes, to pretend that nothing had changed. He wanted to disappear into the cockpit with Poe, spend hours there, bathed in nothing but warm breath and the cold light of hyperspace. He wanted to fall asleep to the scent of grease and plasma fuel.

But he also didn’t want to wake up cold and empty, knowing Poe was somewhere out among the stars and he was stuck within the walls of an old Jedi Temple, alone with ghosts.

“I can’t pretend nothing’s changed,” Ben whispered. “I don’t know where I want to go, but I know I want you there too.”

Poe did not say anything. He kept his eyes down and his body still.

“What do you want?” Ben squeezed Poe’s hands gently.

Poe quickly pulled away and buried his head in his hands. His voice was broken, distant. “Ben, you don’t understand…”

“You’re afraid. I think I know fear better than most people do.”

When Poe didn’t answer, Ben dug through the medical kit for a patch for Poe’s wound. Poe winced as Ben pressed the patch into the wound, with a sharp, hissing intake of air.

All Ben wanted was to take Poe’s pain from him. Not just the pain of this wound, but the pain that was keeping Poe from him now, and the pain that had driven Poe away in the first place. He knew fear far better than Poe did, and if he could take that fear from Poe, maybe it could bring some of the old Poe back. If he could just ease Poe’s pain…

Dizziness, suddenly, swept over Ben, and he very carefully leaned back on his hands, trying to regain his balance. He wondered if the Falcon had come out of hyperdrive early, but he hadn’t heard the shift in the engines. Distantly, he heard Poe’s voice.

“—Ben? Kriff, Ben are you okay?”

Ben tried to say he was alright, but his lips felt numb and his tongue leaden. The edges of his vision were beginning to blacken. He tried to at least ground himself in the Force, but even that felt like it was overwhelming him, dragging him down.

“Ben—your face. What’s happening?”

“What the hell?” Han’s voice cut through the sound of rushing water that was slowly filling his ears. The last thing that Ben heard was Poe, desperately shouting his name before there was nothing but water and darkness.

✦✧✦✧

When Ben came to, he could still hear water, but it wasn’t the rushing current that had pulled him under on the Falcon. This was the sound of waves crashing against cliffs, and there was bright sunlight against his eyes but only for a moment. As Ben opened his eyes, a cloud passed over the sun, casting the world around him into dim shadow.

He knew without looking around him that he was on Ach-To. He could feel it in the grass and the familiar birdcalls. He could feel the Force weaving life and death all around him, growth and decay, changing forms and shapes.

“You’re an idiot,” Rey said. “You’ll live, but you’re an idiot.”

Ben blinked and turned to see her next to him, sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed as if she had been meditating.

“What happened?”

“You gave yourself over to the Force. It was incredibly foolish.”

“I don’t remember…” Ben sat up and his head throbbed with the motion, specifically his black eye. It felt swollen, worse than it had on the Falcon. Had he fallen and struck it again?

“You healed Dameron.”

“I… what?”

Rey opened her eyes and looked at him. Her cold brown eyes pierced through him. “He and Solo went to get Skywalker, in case I couldn’t bring you back. You almost killed yourself.”

Ben glanced around the cliffside. Rey’s Trooper was nearby, standing at attention, hand on his blaster. He had stripped out of his armor, at least, and was wearing just his black suit. Ben didn’t seen any sign of Poe, Han, or Luke, and he was afraid to reach out for Luke in the Force.

Luke, however, found him.

Ben—

There was so much worry and concern in it that Ben winced. I’m alright. I don’t know what happened.

Luke’s relief flooded through Ben, and that alone was comforting, to know that Luke was no longer concerned.

I’m glad you’re okay. The way Luke said it sounded like an apology. I was worried.

I’m fine. Ben did his best to make his response sound like forgiveness. He was not sure that Luke deserved it after their last night on this island together, but Ben was in the sort of mood to forgive mistakes today.

Poe was worried, too.

Oh.