Chapter Text
"I can’t believe it’s going according to plan,” Pava says as they disconnect from the destroyer main comp. “We’ve got everything!”
“Yeah!” Finn says, low but unable to keep the excitement out of his voice. “Cadet training locations, size of teaching and fighting staff, personal files! We’ve got their families in there. Families!”
“We’ll get them out, Finn,” Pava says fervently. “We can do it. Oh, I can’t believe it!”
Poe wonders why he’s not feeling as thrilled as the other two. They got what they went looking for, their figuring of the destroyers patrols was on point, they’re beginning to retrace their steps to the airlocks to which they managed, to his vague surprise, to hook their ships. That was the weak link in the plan, but it worked, so why is he feeling so uneasy?
“Poe?” says Finn. “Is there a problem?”
“No, it’s okay. I’m just – ah, I guess the last year made me a little paranoid, is all. You’re right, you guys. Everything’s going g- shit.”
Finn has been looking at Poe and can’t see the hull wall as he reacts, crouching down with his blaster at the ready.
“Fuck,” says Pava, who saw and understood. “Fuck. Poe, you take my Y-wing.”
“What’s the matter?” Finn asks, still watching the corridors but slowly easing from his battle stance. Then he finally turns and registers the pattern of the code lights around the lock. Poe can see his shoulders slump and his head go down before he takes in a large gulp of air and looks Poe in the eyes.
“Your ship unhooked?” he asks Poe, eyes searching. Obviously hoping he’s wrong.
“Probably. Always was the tricky point in that plan, eh? Using these old clunkers and try to fasten to an enemy ship? Anyway there’s no way I can pass that airlock now.”
“But – there are only – can the Y-wing hold three people?”
“It can’t,” Pava says. “No way.”
“Not enough oxygen for three, Finn,” Poe says, trying to smile.
“You take my ship,” Pava says again.
The smile comes easily this time. “No way, girl. I messed up, I pay.”
“Fucking hell, Dameron! You’re much more valuable, don’t you realise, you laserbrained flyboy? You. Take. My. Ship.”
“I’m also your Commander, Pava. I care for my pilots and my pilots fucking obey my orders. Now, Lieutenant, you take Finn with you and you get the fuck away before the next Stormtrooper patrol finds us all and we botch the mission. I was the one to study the destroyer plans and I can find my way around here. You can’t.”
“What?” Finn’s not yelling but it’s close. “Dammit, Poe, you can find your way around here? What about me, uh? I’m staying with you. I’m fucking staying with you, and you won’t order me otherwise. I’m the one who resists orders, don’t you remember? Or, or better. You just go with Jess. I’m the expendable one, not a pilot, not an officer. Leave me here.”
This is going to end badly. They’re all going to get caught and Finn’s plan, Finn’s wonderful plan that has nearly been going perfectly will go down the drain. They’ll catch Finn and Poe can’t bear the idea of what they’re going to do to their wayward Stormtrooper and he can’t, he won’t let it happen.
“Finn,” he says, “listen. I can manage. I’ll steal a TIE. You can’t do that all by yourself, can you? And these cadets, these children, you have to be there for them. It was your plan, Finn, and you can still get it done. Steal these children back, bring them to the Resistance or to their families. They’ll need you, they’ll need someone who understands what they went through.” He sees Finn’s gaze waver, knows he’s won. “Won’t they?” he asks, his voice soft.
But Finn’s jaw is clenching and there’s this line on his brow Poe knows from all the times Finn managed to resist higher ups against all his conditioning and his fears. Finn takes Poe’s arm and pulls him a few steps away from Pava. “Poe,” he mutters furiously. “There are four decks between us and the TIE docks. Four decks, dozens of regular doors on each one, each door with a code that’s going to change from the ones we memorised, and four seals with reinforced security. You can’t do this. I bet you know.”
“Well,” says Poe, not really able to lie under Finn’s accusing gaze. “I’ll try. I’ll take that chance. And you won’t help by staying here.”
“If you get caught, the mission’s fucked.”
“Same for each of us, ain’t it? I won’t get –”
“Hell, Poe!”
“Yeah. Sorry. Just don’t wait too long to retrieve those kids, uh? I’ll – give me your emergency rations. I think I can hold long enough.”
Finn clenches his jaw, then sighs angrily, nods and motions to his pockets. Poe’s won and he’s never felt so overwhelmingly sad about anything else. Finn’s eyes are glinting when he finally looks up, ration bars in hand.
“Don’t –” rasps Finn, then he has to stop. “Just don’t kill yourself, Poe. No suicide run. Promise me you’ll try to get to these TIEs?”
It’s easy to fall back into the reckless hero persona. Poe smiles a dazzling smile and slaps Finn’s biceps. “You know me,” he says. “I’d do anything to fly another TIE.”
Finn traps Poe’s hand on his arm, snorts and shakes his head.
“Here are my ration bars,” says Pava who crept closer. “Finn, we’ve got to go. Try to bring back the TIE in one piece this time, Dameron.”
Finn only grips Poe’s hand tighter. “Poe…” he says.
Poe probably won’t have another chance and would hate to go without having tried. So he does. Well, clears his voice and tries. “Finn,” he says. “I know you don’t – well, never could be sure that – ah, even if you don’t really feel like that, since I might – shit. Finn, please, kiss me?”
Something like a sob escapes Finn’s lips. “Finally,” he breathes, then hooks his hands around Poe’s neck and torso and locks their lips together. The kiss is long and tender and soon turns to passionate and Poe never imagined Finn could kiss like that, with just the right amount of tongue and that hint of teeth he didn’t know he craved. At some time Poe realises they’re flush against each other and even grinding their hips a little. Finn’s probably at least half hard even if it’s not easy to say with all the sturdy layers of clothes between them. At least Poe is. He’s absolutely, dizzyingly hard and he moans and tries to deepen the kiss even more. There’s moisture on his cheeks and he doesn’t know if it comes from Finn’s tears or his own.
Pava puts a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry,” she says.
Then he’s standing all by himself in the corridor while the lights around the second airlock blink in a completely standard sequence and Finn and Pava are gone.
/
Finn can’t bring himself to look at Jess. He hates that he agreed to leave Poe there in the hands of the enemy. Hates himself even more because he can’t think of anything else to ask than some question about Poe’s chances. When he knows they amount to none. Or nearly none. Or maybe he doesn’t know.
Jess chuckles. “Now that was some kiss,” she says, which makes Finn feel so thankful, because it’s not a conversation about Poe’s chances. “Do you always make out so passionately at home? I might want to watch!”
“Believe it or not, that was our first kiss,” Finn mumbles.
“What? But everyone thought – why, Finn, why? Fucking hell, you, it’s been nearly one year, you bunk together! You share clothes! You, you keep looking at each other, like, like, oh I don’t know, like the two greatest fucking idiots ever!”
Finn takes his head in his hands. “I know,” he says, “I know. It’s – shit, do you think it’s easy, trying to figure out everything in that fucking base? Dammit, Jess, among Stormtroopers, it wasn’t, we never did it –”
“What, you mean you didn’t –”
“I mean we never did it like that! When we were in the mood, we made it known! And clearly! Not by being, I don’t know, fucking nice and overly friendly and sort of privately shy and awkward! Someone higher ranking, he’d just tell you he wanted to fuck and if you didn’t feel like it you just damn tried to edge away! And if you wanted it you said yes sir and went at it! Shit.”
“Oh, Finn. But it’s been one year! You must have figured it’s not the same here?”
“Force, Jess, you think I’m dumb? ‘Course I figured. He’s still a commander, huh.”
“Hm. Old habits die hard and all that?”
“How could I ever ask out a commander, Jess?”
“Oh shit. I’m – I’m sorry if I can’t help laughing, Finn. It’s – it’s just so ridiculous! You realise one of the reasons that Poe didn’t make his move is that he’s higher ranking? Being all noble and shit and not wanting to impose himself, Stars!”
“Jess?”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think this kiss is going to be our last?”
“Shit. I hope not, Finn, I sure hope not.”
She’s patting his back in the cramped space of the Y-wing and he hates the pity in her voice.
/
Poe nearly does it.
Of course he’s never believed he would, which is why he lay low for as long as his rations held – water’s surprisingly easy to find in a destroyer when nobody’s looking for you. He found corners and unused storerooms and spent his time wondering whether he wouldn’t be better off ending it nice and clean. A suicide run, as Finn called it. No risk of spilling out the beans that way.
But there were too many promises in that kiss. And a promise of his own made to Finn, too, to hold on, to live, to fly away. So he held long enough, nearly two weeks according to his watch, and then he made his way down the decks. Crawling along air ducts, watching doors from hidden corners with his heart in his throat, waiting for enough people to type in the code that he has the sequence figured out. Door by door, deck by deck, making it to the docks, even managing to knock out some poor guy and steal his uniform.
Of course that’s when he finally dares to hope that they spot him. Stormtroopers aren’t pilots, they don’t climb unaccompanied into Starfighters. The white armour probably stands out like a sore thumb and someone shoots at him. Misses, of course, the average Stormtrooper’s aim being what it is. But the blast shatters something close and a large fragment hits him in the face. He stays stunned for one moment too long, feeling the blood run between his probing fingers, trying to figure whether his eye was hurt.
They catch him. Of course they do, as if he had a chance.
His old acquaintance the torture chair hasn’t changed. Neither has Poe’s need to goad his captors. But they don’t even react, don’t even seriously try to beat some answers out of him. His head wound hurts more than their blows and their tasers and after a while they leave him alone.
Which means someone Force-sensitive is coming. Who is he kidding? It means Kylo Ren is coming, because there’s no way in hell he’d leave Poe to anyone else.
He tries to console himself by telling himself the mission’s probably done. Stormtrooper kids freed and flooding every Resistance home. But that’s not such a comfort. Poe knows too much, could still do so much harm. He tries to tell himself he might hope to hold somewhat better against Ren than the first time. He’s trained with Skywalker, after all, they both did, Finn and himself. But while it’s been established that they have some smattering of Force-sensitivity, what Poe has is only what he’s been feeling around him and using all his life when he flies, nothing more, nothing less. No way he could withstand the onslaught of someone so powerful as Kylo Ren.
There’s one thing he’s been thinking all along. One last, desperate thing he believes he can do. So when he feels the searing cold of Ren’s mind entering his own, he makes himself do it.
/
Leia Organa, General Leia Organa pulls Finn close and holds him tight when he feels the madness is too much. It’s overwhelming and unbelievable and exactly what he needs to go on for another day.
“It was the right thing to do,” she says, believing it.
“Yes,” he says as he watches the children. “He probably gave his life for them. We should honour that. It was worth it.”
But he’s not sure. Was it right, exchanging Poe Dameron for a bunch of broken kids? It’s easy to say so when looking at the rare ones who tossed their conditioning out of the window right away. Who began laughing and learning and hugging and went back to their families or jumped into the arms of whoever welcomed them. ‘The Finns’, the Resistance assigned personnel call them. Maybe it’s enough. But it makes Finn hurt even more inside because there are so many times during his more than twenty years as a Stormtrooper when he’s been the other ones. The kids who were taught that depending on someone outside of the chain of command is a weakness. Those who will bite at a proffered hand. Those, also, who when told that they’re free will go wild and restless and harm themselves.
Finn’s never been like the ones who try to hurt others as much as they’ve been hurt but he sees their wounds, and remembers, and understands.
He finds himself in Poe’s quarters – well, his own, only his own now, but Poe’s half of the room is still exactly as he left it. It’s someone like Poe the kids would need, Finn thinks – again. Someone who would laugh and smile because of who they are, not because of who they need to be. Someone who would give them names and tell stories and maybe sing a ridiculous song. Poe’s tri-harp case is propped up in a corner and Finn kneels next to it, brushes off most of the dust with a hand.
“You feel something?” asks Rey from the door.
Again.
“Why,” he yells, surprised at his own irrepressible anger. “Why should I? Why do you and Skywalker keep asking that? I’m nothing special! Why don’t you go looking for Poe with the Force, if you think it’s worth more than a bantha’s fart?”
Rey’s features go soft and calm and carefully blank, as if she were dealing with some frightened kid – well, she is, she might be, Finn is fucking scared shitless of what the First Order did, no, might still be doing to Poe. “Because I don’t share a Force bond with Poe,” she answers.
“Fucking banthashit! Poe and I just trained together. We were nothing special! Dammit, Rey. You’re the strong one.”
“It’s not a question of being strong. The Force links all beings together, some more strongly than others. Leia and Han. Master Luke and Leia. Him and his father, too. Even you and I. We’re friends, so it makes the Force flow more freely between us. And Luke says he never saw two people more strongly connected than you and Poe. Really, don’t you feel something? Anything?”
Her mask of serenity has cracked. She looks hopeful. Pleading, maybe. And he can’t ignore the feeling of grief anymore. Because if he should feel anything through the Force then –
“I can’t feel a thing,” he whispers. “If what I felt before was more than – than normal, regular, well, love, it was love, for my part – fucking hell, Rey, it’s hard enough as it is, don’t, just don’t make that face! Force, if we shared something it’s not there anymore. I – it’s blank. Like what made Poe isn’t there anymore.”
“But, but Master Luke said – and Leia, too. Did you feel him die?”
“Shit, Rey! Couldn’t you – I didn’t. And don’t look so hopeful! It’s not as if I’d have known what to look for. Maybe he died, he probably died and I didn’t even know enough to feel it and, and try to be there for him in the end, uh?”
“No,” says Rey, thoughtfully. “From what Leia says you’d have definitely known.”
“Then help me!” howls Finn, his control shattering. “Rey! If he’s not dead, and I can’t feel him, just help me!”
“Yes,” answers Rey, sitting down on the ground behind Finn and hugging him. “Why not. Let’s look for Poe together.”
He lets her. Tries blindly to project himself out to Poe, feels Rey’s strength pushing him further and harnessing him, making him more focused. Then she sees the place where Poe used to dwell inside Finn, sees the blankness. “Oh Finn. Force, Finn,” she croaks, her voice breaking.
She draws a shuddering breath and he can feel her centre herself before she pushes Finn further. And she laughs. “There’s something inside the nothingness,” she says. And there is. Something small, so small, like a will-o-the-wisp inside a fog, or like a single ember. Tiny, and red, and burning. Finn extends all his being towards the pinprick of light and suddenly here it is. Maybe Poe, maybe not, but pain. Pain making his brain pound against his skull and twisting his insides and burning his eyes and pain pulsating around until his whole body is but that red hot pulse and Finn can’t, can’t stand it and shuts himself off and away from it, and the man behind the pain with it.
He’s crying.
Rey’s laughing.
“He’s alive,” she says. “He’s alive!”
BB-8’s rolling in circles around them and beeping excitedly and maybe today Finn will finally find the energy to begin to learn binary and try to understand a bit of the droid’s own grief – and hopes.
/
There’s a question being asked in his mind and it hurts, cold and searing hot at the same time. He can’t remember the answer. The thing in his mind pushes deeper, makes him look for it. He can’t even remember the question.
Someone curses. It’s not in his mind but in his ears, the sound of a voice. He tries to look although one of his eyes, where his face hurts the most, doesn’t open. Maybe the eye is damaged, maybe it’s just caked with blood from the slash going from his eyebrow to his jaw. He can’t remember how that wound came to be.
It’s a blessing that he can’t remember. That, at least, he knows because of the intense relief he feels at the thought. Before, he’d known why. He knows, too, that the masked man – human, he thinks, yes, definitely human – towering above him is to be feared. Even if he can’t answer the questions the man’s not even voicing. Especially if he can’t. Again, he’d known why before. But before what?
His head and torso are half pulled up, straining against his restraints and he realises that it’s the man’s hand, not even touching him, that is making him do so. Then the hand moves away in a violent jerk and his head slams back against the metal chair.
“Useless,” says the man. “Doesn’t even remember his own name. You!”
The vicious rage and hate in the voice make him jump against the chair. Thankfully, the masked man is moving his gloved hand towards a white armoured soldier.
“You fired that blaster in the dock, trooper? Is that you?”
The trooper appears unable to talk, seemingly choked by an invisible force. “What did you do!” howls the masked man. “Damn those Stormtroopers and their blasted aim! You hit his head! He doesn’t know who he is! Who I am!”
Nothing touches the trooper but his feet leave the ground and his head hits the walls and his body dangles and rolls and rushes around, the armour clanging as it hits the ceiling then the edge of the chair then some hidden control panel – sparks all around – and the walls again. After a while the trooper’s arms and feet bend at impossible angles and the body finally slumps in a pile on the ground. It doesn’t move.
His cuffs click open with another motion of the masked man’s hand. He doesn’t feel relief at that. Only terror. His body raises in the air and he knows he’s going to die.
There’s a small part of him that whispers dying is the best thing that could happen. And a bigger part that doesn’t want to.
/
His head hurts.
“I can’t believe that didn’t kill him,” says a voice.
His head hurts too much to open his eyes and try to figure out who talked.
“He’s got strong bones, General. What shall we do with him? Airlock?” asks a second voice.
He knows what airlocks are. Airlocks are on ships and he used to know about ships. Before. Airlocks, in relation to his present situation, are bad.
He tries to open his eyes.
His head hurts so bad that opening his eyes doesn’t change one thing. What he sees are flashing lights and dark spots. His ears ring.
“Or do we wait for Lord Ren?” Second voice, again.
Yes, he thinks. You wait. No airlock.
“I have a better idea,” says First Voice. “Slave market. And then we leak out a holo. Carefully chosen, no clues as to where or what, except for Dameron being sold as a slave. I have a feeling it will take a few people off our back while they scour the whole of the Outer Rim looking for him. The girl Rey and that defective Stormtrooper at least. Maybe Organa, too. Who knows, if they don’t bother us anmore maybe it will even stop the Lord Kylo Ren from obsessing so much about them?”
There are names in there. Names he should be trying to figure out. Clues to before.
But his head hurts.
/
Finn spends months waiting for the pang of bottomless grief that will tell him Poe is dead. Nobody in so much pain can live that long.
Then one day he realises he’s built a protective shell around the blankness that is Poe. It doesn’t make it or the terror inside less present. It just makes it easier to live around it. To look at BB-8 following Rey around because Finn is too much of a coward to be able to befriend him. To smile and care for the kids. Maybe even to sing them one of Poe’s songs.
Rey rushes in as he’s singing one of those songs to a bunch of kids who obviously wish they’d be somewhere else. But Finn has learned the hard way that a lot of them still need to be ordered around, so he ordered them to listen.
“Finn,” Rey gasps, completely out of breath. “You come with me. Right now.”
“Wh–”
“Poe,” she says and Finn runs out with her.
Poe’s not there. It’s a holo, blown up as large as possible on the command centre projector. Bluish, taken without much light and obviously from a distance. An uneven line of people, all species, all looking down. Walking. Shackled.
“Slave market,” mutters Finn, who remembers seeing a few in his days as a Stormtrooper.
General Organa dims parts of the scene until a lonely human stays in focus. Poe, obviously Poe, though even in the few seconds of holorecording Finn can feel that dreaded blankness emanate from him. It’s something in his eyes, he thinks. Or maybe just the way he’s so beaten up. His hair is matted with blood and there’s a deep gash going across the left side of his face from eyebrow to jaw. He’s got a rudimentary splint on one of his arm and doesn’t seem to notice, isn’t even trying to hold the arm in a position that would alleviate the pain.
“Is there any clue as to when that was taken? Or where it is?” Captain Kun asks from a corner.
“We’ll run a statistical analysis on the proportion of different species and the details of their equipment,” an aide says. “Maybe it will help narrow down locations. That’s all we can hope for.”
“Who brought this? Anything they can tell?” Finn dares to ask, feeling frantic.
“They died taking it in,” General Organa says. “Finn, I swear, we’ll scour the whole Galaxy if we need, but we’ll find him.”
“We’ll go looking for him,” Kun says. “Stiletto. And Dagger with us.”
All the pilots are here, Finn realises with a pang of affection and pride. And now they’re standing up one by one. “And Blue,” some of them say. “And Red,” say the others.
“For one man?” Admiral Statura asks. “Leia, I know this is Poe Dameron, but the Resistance can’t afford to let go of everything we’re holding together just for him.”
General Organa straightens up and looks at him from the bottom of her grief. He sighs.
“Just another impossible task the Resistance will be doing on top of so many others, then.”
/
Jess Pava finds the next clue.
She’s back from a scouting mission and knows she shouldn’t have made that additional stop on another backward market in another backward planet. But they sell slaves there. Finn tells them Poe is still alive and even if he obviously doesn’t tell everything that still makes something to fight for.
The slave market is there and is as depressing as the hundreds, or so it feels, of others she already inspected. Poe’s not here but could have transited through it. Or not. Who knows.
Her antiquity of a T-70 choses this place of all places to burst a lateral bracketing insulator. They don’t keep such parts anywhere in the whole planet, of course. It has to be made from scratch and Jess is very close to having to sell a kidney to make it happen. As it is, she probably engages more credits than she’s allowed to have it assembled, and it’s still going to take no less than three days. Certainly more, since she really doesn’t have a kidney to sell and they’ll want to milk everything they can from her.
The sleeping arrangements are bad, the ale is even worse and the company is abysmal, inebriated and leering. She leaves in search of a way to pass the time and finally stumbles on a simulator that’s not as antique as the rest of the town. Something that might offer entertainment for a while, since it seems to be set for Starfighters as well as most shuttles and freighters. There’s even a destroyer run but if it’s accurate then she’s the queen of Naboo. She’ll show them, then. What a Resistance pilot can score if she’s got her mind to it.
She scores, yes. But someone went there before and the X-Wing record isn’t that easy to touch. Actually, she can’t reach it although she comes close. She figures someone had a stroke of luck and sets her views on the TIE run. The Resistance sims run a good, if slightly overly standardised protocol and she bets she can do well.
She realises with glee that the sim run was copied line for line and option for option from the Resistance program and sets herself to burst the numbers – to no avail. Someone had a perfect run, no three perfect runs with that sim. Unbreakable.
Someone, probably the same someone, also played with the shuttle settings and let them in a surprisingly aggressive configuration. They broke the record there as well, some incredibly high score again. Which means they attacked Starfighters and won in their sim run.
She knows these settings. Took the place on the sim seat after someone who played exactly like that, all fancy trajectories and showy moves until you realise they’re not fancy or showy, they’re just very exactly timed and perfectly accurate.
The sim’s got a routine that records the best run for each settings and she frantically plays the TIE one, searching, looking for the quirks, the small moves, anything. And it’s there. That manoeuver Poe was the first to deem doable – and that Poe was the only one able to achieve.
She jumps on the sim manager and shakes them for as long as it takes for them to spill that the records were set by a human slave who came in with a trader and his aides three, or was it five? Or nine, they can’t remember, months ago. Then she manages to secure a copy of all recorded runs. It costs her her other kidney – well, it costs a metaphorical kidney from the Resistance accounts, the sum so high it probably means they’ll be on synthetic rations for the rest of the year. Then she calls the base and sure enough, only hours later three ships materialise out of hyperspace. Nondescript old fighters because the Resistance likes to keep believing their pilots are not instantly recognisable, one Karé’s, another Wexley’s, the last Iolo’s with Finn hitching a ride.
Jess never saw Finn so frantic nor so aggressive. It’s him who manages to get the name of the slave dealer out of the manager – just with the sheer strength of his will, no money asked nor offered. When they finally set their hands on the dealer, a shabby, smallish Makurth whose two lower horns are badly chipped and split, Finn reveals a side that Jess hopes never to see again. She’s known abstractly that he spent most of his life in the First Order and only a meagre year and a half among the Resistance, but it didn’t prepare her for the way Finn holds himself, not as a mindless Stormtrooper but as someone more dangerous and cunning. There’s a deep rage she can only dimly see under his frozen exterior, a way he stands poised and deadly, clipped tones around a clenched jaw that talk of well-bred, cruel officers who give nothing but could take everything from their prey.
The Makurth flares his nostrils and snorts at Finn’s display but doesn’t go into full combat stance. He’s seen First Order officers before, obviously. Learned to fear them, learned to deal with them. He’s not as easily impressed as the sim manager.
“Won’t take your credits,” he says to Pava when she offers everything she can for details on Poe. “You begin talking of your clients, money becomes scarce afterwards. And won’t take your blaster either, Sir,” he adds to Finn who got his weapon out. “You shoot me, you lose your lead.”
Finn appears ready to kill nonetheless, just to extract his revenge. “You’ve got flimsies, I bet,” he growls. “Flimsies or files from your transactions. I could shoot you here and now and get a good look at your desk, huh? Scare a few of your underlings into giving me what I need.”
“Shoot me, friend. A slave dealer who rats out his clients is dead anyway.”
The next second Finn has a chokehold on the Makurth’s neck and is yelling in his ear. “You motherfucker! It’s my friend you sold! Looked like shit, like he was nearly dying, and you sold him anyway!”
It’s impressive, Jess thinks. Makurths are a predator species, they’re fast and strong and their fangs aren’t things to toy with, and Finn still manages to hold that one down and the guy is actually beginning to look like he’s hurting. She can’t summon any sympathy.
“I don’t sell damaged goods,” groans the dealer, teeth bared in an effort to breathe – or to impress.
“Yeah?” yells Snap, quiet, calm, usually composed Snap who’s finally losing it. “Sure looks like you did! We have holo proof! He had fucking head wounds, Poe had! Blood in his hair and an open gash on his face, a, a broken arm, and he definitely was in your slave line!”
The Makurth coughs as Finn’s hold tightens but maybe he’s laughing too. “Oh,” he rasps. “That one. Got me a nice little pile of gemstones. Yeah, was a bit banged up. We had some cosmetic expenses, know what I mean? But it’s rare to get such a perfect match between a slave’s abilities and a client’s wishes. And the best thing?”
The Makurth stops and sort of grins which makes Finn growl in frustration. Finn’s attention wavers and the dealer twists and gets himself free, a hand going up to catch Finn’s neck.
“Best thing,” he says, “is that it was an anonymous transaction. No idea of who bought your friend.”
Finn’s hand flashes out but it’s a feint as he twists and his opposite elbow connects with some part of the other’s torso. It seems it was the right move because the guy howls and collapses on his knees, panting. Some bit of Stormtrooper combat knowledge, Jess thinks, admiring. Never say they don’t know about non-human species when it’s all about harming them.
“Now,” says Finn, voice low and controlled and deadly. “Tell us what you know or I can not kill you in very inventive ways.” He goes to kick the fallen Makurth in the same spot but Iolo, who Jess knows had some first-hand knowledge of First Order beatings, intervenes.
“Finn,” he urges, looking a little scared. “Stop it. There are other ways of getting the guy to help. We’re not like that.”
“Yeah?” says Finn, teeth bared. “You don’t remember where I’m coming from, Iolo? Who says I’m not like that?”
But he’s breathing deeper, trying to control himself. He still looks deadly, though, and it seems it finally convinces the dealer to yield.
“Okay,” says the Makurth. “Don’t have much to give you but no harm done anyway. I’ve only got the slave specs flimsies, together with a few things about who brought him in. But I guess you won’t be surprised they were First Order guys, will you? Also, you were mentioning payment?”
“Payment,” growls Finn, “is me being with the good guys and not giving you a nice deep slash on your face to match Poe’s.”
The dealer nods and produces several flimsies that Finn snatches from his hands. Iolo catches Finn’s arm on time before his fist lands into the Makurth’s face.
/
Finn’s reading the flimsies aloud and increasingly wishes he’d done it privately. It begins neutral enough, though, with things he can deal with. Poe’s flying abilities come first, described in detail.
“They seem to think they’re dealing with a former First Order TIE pilot?” says Finn. “Perfect TIE scores, excellent X-wing runs but not without flaws, very strong bend towards aggressive flying, compatible with a First Order pilot mindset?” He feels his chest constrict as he adds. “And if it was a false lead? If we were dealing with some other pilot here?”
“Don’t know what happened with the X-Wing run,” answers Wexley, “except that it seems to have been the last one they made him do. But his TIE runs are perfect for the sim, Finn. I remember him telling us after that Jakku debacle that our sim had a flaw, that you could make the sim TIE turn sharper in the three-sides attack than a real fighter could. The recorded run here, it shows someone playing it by rote, doing all the sharp turns. No real TIE pilot would, they’d know, well, feel it’s impossible. Believe me, Finn. That’s Poe. Nobody else can play it that well.”
Finn goes on. Poe’s flying abilities seem to have been his main, ha, selling point. They insist on his qualifications for civilian flying, showcasing his defensive moves and his abilities with shuttles and freighters. And then they come to physical specs and Finn wants to let the flimsy in someone else’s hands and just disappear. Or hit something. Or someone.
The others pilots begin to make fun of it. It’s obvious that it’s laughing or breaking down but Finn can’t. He just can’t.
Score for facial features, facial wound notwithstanding, 9.2 out of ten, human standard geometric scale, he reads. Someone wolf whistles, probably Jess. Slight teeth irregularities and chipped eyetooth contribute to the lowered score. Poe didn’t have any chipped tooth when they said goodbye, Finn knows – he remembers very well exploring said slightly irregular teeth with his tongue. Shit. “Someone scribbled something in the margin here,” he adds. “About irregularities being a factor of attraction for a large subset of human-liking slave owners. It also says the face wound could be used in the same way if left to heal with, it says, with skill.”
Age, estimated 36, plus minus two.
“Ha,” laughs Karé, “they made him older. Didn’t tell them his age, our Poe, didn’t make it easier for them, eh?”
Finn thinks of the blankness that is Poe and thinks maybe he couldn’t tell them. Maybe he didn’t know. And he probably looked older with the marks from the pain and the wounds.
Reflexes, outstanding.
“You can say that!” yells Jess, looking proud as if she had a hand in that somehow.
“They made another note here,” says Finn, voice flat. “About making sure the slave is properly shackled before approaching for standard care. And something about him having to learn.”
Other physical abilities, in no condition to test.
“Shit,” says Pava, who doesn’t laugh for a change.
Score for general body shape, wounds notwithstanding, 7.4 out of ten, human scale, Giddeons-Paulson 23 features test. Positive scores notably include shoulder width, shape of hands and feet, upper leg and pectoral muscles. Negative scores lack of height and size of backside, the rest average.
“Hey, Finn, don’t make that face!” Pava’s smiling again. “It’s true that, hum, that Poe’s ass was always a bit on the wide side for a man, not that anyone’s complaining, uh?”
“Yeah,” laughs Iolo, a little strained. “He told me some people weren’t complaining at all!”
“And same for, uh, the lack of height!” adds Wexley. “Saw him use that to his advantage to pick up boys on a bar rampage, ah, sorry, Finn. Not since he met you, I should add.”
“Yeah,” says Finn. “Some guy here seems to have had the same opinion. About his butt and his height. Scribbled in that the scale measures according to Coruscant aesthetics which aren’t to everyone’s taste.”
Wexley grabs his arm, not unkindly. “Hey, Finn. We mean no harm, uh? Poe would be the first to have fun with that flimsy. Actually, we should keep it to show him when he’s out of danger, might make a nice keepsake.”
“No,” says Finn. “Not if you read further down, won’t make anything nice.”
Now Wexley’s looking concerned. “Then stop reading. Don’t hurt yourself, Finn, that won’t help Poe.”
“There might be something,” objects Finn. “Some clue. I have to. Read that.”
He goes on, wading through increasingly invasive physical assertions and opinions on Poe’s usability. Like something non-sentient, he thinks. Some base droid or some pet.
Nobody’s laughing anymore.
Obvious and probably extended previous experience of male on male sex, he reads on silently. “Performed well as the passive partner”, he repeats aloud and feels the blood drain from his face. “Testing inconclusive with a female. Conclusion, might provide adequate sexual relief as an aside to an interested master. Placement as a sex slave not recommended because of slightly advanced age and possible violent reactions.”
“Shit,” groans Pava.
“What did we expect?” says Finn, voice finally breaking. “Pretty Poe with his pretty face, sold as a slave. Fucking hell of a place!” he yells and once again Iolo catches his arm just in time to stop him slamming his fist into the duracrete wall.
/
“You can stand up,” says one of the white armoured troopers. It’s a statement, not a question, and the second trooper pulls him up. They strip him off his bloodied, filthy flightsuit and throw civilian clothes at him. He knows what a flightsuit is, he notes distantly. Civilian clothes, too.
They shove their blasters into his ribs and order him to walk. No suicide run, goes a voice in his head, faceless and nameless, someone from before. He could probably manage a suicide sitting, he thinks, and feels tempted. But the voice inside insists and he promised, so he stumbles on even if lying down would perhaps help his head.
/
“What should I do with that?” asks the four-horned befanged being in front of him.
“Why,” answers one of the troopers. “Buy him, then sell him again for a higher price? Isn’t that what you do for a living?”
“I don’t deal in damaged goods,” growls the slaver. “I’m a respectable trader. That piece of shit looks like he’s going to die on your hands. Uh, that’s a he, ain’t it?”
“Sure. Come on, Algr’o, even so you can see he’s got a pretty face. Give him a chance!”
“Yeah, a ruined pretty face and lines around his eyes that tell he’s too old for this shit, trooper. What’s your age, slave?”
Slave, he thinks. Some name. Maybe that’s who he was. Some slave who rebelled so badly against his master that he got punished too far.
Algr’o hits him in the face, not even hard. He hisses.
“Your age, slave!”
“I don’t know,” he says.
“Ha! Got a name?”
He thinks. “Slave.” He echoes. “I don’t know.”
“Dammit,” says Algr’o, “stop trying to sell me your garbage and go tell your general he can erase his mistakes in some other way, uh?”
“He’s not garbage,” one of the trooper insists again. “Amnesia can be useful in a slave. And head wounds are always spectacular but you see he’s already beginning to heal.”
“Ha. As if. Assess yourself, slave.”
He doesn’t understand. So he just stands there and gets another blow for it.
“Come on,” says the other trooper. “Your life’s at stake. He’s asking you to give a detailed statement of your health.”
“Uh,” he says. Then tries to think. To, as they say, assess himself. “My head hurts,” he says finally. Because that’s all there is. His head hurts and it makes dancing lights appear in his vision and makes his muscles weak and makes his brain feel like mud.
Algr’o lifts his shirt with his taser staff and uncovers his stomach. It’s bruised black and blue. Algr’o prods at it with the staff and jabs once at his arm. There’s probably a great deal of pain there, he thinks. But it’s got nothing on the pain in his head.
“My head hurts,” he repeats.
“Come on, Pi,” says one trooper to the other. “He’s broken, really broken. Maybe Big Dealer here will agree to just let him stand in the slave line, then we can take a damn holo to give Hux before shooting the poor guy. ‘t would be a mercy anyway.”
“What?” says the other. “And lose the transaction money? Hey, you, tell our friend there why you’d make a good slave, go on, do it.”
Suicide run, he thinks again. No suicide run. He doesn’t want to die.
“Hell,” says the second trooper. “Maybe he’s really too far gone.”
“I know about ships,” he blurts. “Starships. I was a pilot before.”
“Oh?” says Algr’o. “Got some fight in you, slave? Ships, eh. What kind? Shuttles? Freighters?”
“I don’t know,” he says.
“You’re not a Starfighter pilot, are you?”
“I don’t know.”
Maybe if his head didn’t hurt that much he’d know. He’d manage to remember. His hands do, he’s sure of it.
“It was – small,” he says. “The cockpit.” He motions with his hands. “Joystick was like that. That far. Just here.”
Algr’o seems – interested.
“That’s true,” says trooper number two. “He was a pilot.”
“What are you doing, Pi?” hisses trooper one. “That’s not something we were supposed to leak!”
“Well, it’s leaked anyway, huh?” says Two. “Algr’o, I can see you like that.”
“Maybe I do,” says Algr’o. “Tell you what, gonna try him. I can give fifty credits, paper money only. And I get to keep his cuffs.”
“What?” exclaims Two. “For a pilot? That’s ridiculous!”
“That’s more than anyone else will pay for a badly beaten Human with a probable cracked skull. And since your General seems to want him here very much I don’t think you’ll bargain.”
“If you sell him you’ll get a hundred time more!”
“Yes. And if he dies tomorrow I’ll be down fifty bucks. Here.”
Algr’o counts the credits, leaves them in Two’s hand and turns back to him, not bothering to watch the two troopers leave. “Come on,” he says, pushing him towards other shackled slaves. “If you can deal with a round of simulator in the shape you are, you can live.”
/
The inside of the sim is so familiar he thinks he could name the tiny differences. Even in the pain haze he can say the smell’s not the same, rank leather instead of textile soap coming from the seat. There should be a light breath of air going through a hairline crack in the back panel but the back panel is tight and intact.
He shakes his head and winces. Nothing more of the Before comes back. He moves the com headset again to find a position where it doesn’t put pressure on the worse of his wounds.
The dashboard buzzes and sprouts a joystick together with lines upon lines of switches and contacts. TIE commands, he thinks, surprised that he knows the name. His hands, at least, know the drill even if it’s not the configuration he thinks they’re yearning for.
Sims are a poor substitute for flying. They shake but don’t move, their imitation of the accelerations and sweeps of a chase are laughably poor. The barrel roll still goes fast enough that he blacks out but he presses the right button and gets the two Starfighters down nonetheless, turns sharp and readies himself for the asteroid jump and the two destroyers hiding behind. Easy.
The two destroyers can’t be shot but the heavy blasters on their bellies need to be incapacitated. He avoids the double tractor beams and loses himself in the shadows of the turrets and crooks on the back of the biggest one, riding that way for a long leg of the sim, getting out only when the X-Wings around are neatly disposed in a row in front of him, ready to re-enter dock. Then it’s fire and sweep away and loop back and fire again, a dance he knows so well he’d do it in his sleep. Maybe he does. His head hurts.
He has to compensate for his right arm which isn’t responding as it should. He looks down and sees the splint and the swelling underneath.
Broken arm, and his head hurts. He’s tired. His vision’s narrowing and darkening, chequered patterns appearing on the edges.
No suicide run. Don’t get yourself killed.
He breathes in – ribs. His ribs are broken, too – and concentrates. They’re sending him into a second TIE run.
And a third. He doesn’t know if he sees the fake dogfight around. But he feels it in the sim commands and follows the lead of his body and his hands until the seat finally settles still, the commands retracting inside the dashboard.
He slumps back in the seat and lets the headache take over. It comes with an overwhelming wave of nausea that has him twisting on the side and vomiting all over the right hand panel, something liquid and foul-smelling and a dark brown that means it’s probably blood.
“Bloody hell of a rampaging Rathar!” his headset suddenly shouts. “Perfect! Three damn perfect TIE runs! That’s a treasure we have here, Lyell. What’s the flaw? Why did the First Order feel they needed to get rid of their best pilot?”
“Flaw’s internal bleeding and a broken skull, boss. He’s death on legs, that one.”
“Dunno. Got a feeling he wants to live. Hey, slave? Want to live?”
He coughs. Clears his voice, tries to sound steady enough. “I do.”
“First lesson. I do, Master.”
“Master.”
“Boss, we should test him on civilian crafts. Starfighter pilots are useless. Hey, pilot, how are you with a freighter?”
“I don’t know,” he says. Pilot. He likes it better than Slave. “Let’s try?”
The dashboard sprouts another command set, a heavy, unwieldy yoke in the middle. That’s not what his hands are used to but they manage. As it is, the freighter sim is set to fly like a lamb going to slaughter. Heavy unwieldy shields impairing speed and manoeuvrability, additional light guns that would get into each other’s line of fire. If he lets his hindbrain do it without thinking he can switch the settings to something faster and sleeker and keep the firing power to its intended decent, operating level.
“Hell, slave, that’s a fucking unstable setting you’ve chosen, you know that?”
“I know,” he says, and it feels good.
The run is uneventful, the obstacles laughably predictable, the moves less taxing than the shaking and accelerations of a Starfighter sim.
“Now get us through hyperspace,” says his master. “Say, to Coruscant?”
His fingers find the right switch in the blink of an eye, hyperdrive ready and nav comp waiting for – for a code his mind should provide but can’t remember. Cold sweat floods his back.
“I’m waiting, slave.”
“I don’t – I don’t remember how,” he says, then remembers something else. “Master.”
What his master says next saturates the com but what he catches doesn’t make sense. Another language. Cursing, obviously.
“You just lost half of your value, you know that?” yells his master.
He doesn’t answer.
Turns out the yoke doubles as a remote operated taser. He yelps.
“You know that, slave?”
“Yes, master,” he says.
“That’s not so bad, boss,” says the other voice. “Most slave pilots operate shuttles anyway. Or they could pair him with an astromech if they really want him to fly the high routes. After all, it means he’s unable to leave by himself, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah. Let’s try the shuttle settings.”
He can’t do it anymore. His head hurts even more after the electric shock. Nausea’s building up again. He wants to sleep.
They make him fly a shuttle run anyway. He manages, probably piloting it more like a Starfighter than like a real shuttle. It’s easier.
At the end of the run he’s shaking and he finds he can’t move. Not even when he throws up again, half on himself and half on the floor.
His captors are talking between themselves, com still open.
“What do you think, fifteen thousand?”
“More. Even more. There’s a kind of middleman, doesn’t say who he’s working for, but he’s been pressuring me into finding him a pilot for a while now. A human, male pilot. Easy on the eye a plus.”
“Well, there’s the face wound, then. Gonna scar bad.”
“Seems okay to me? But I’m not human.”
“Not Human either, boss. Keshian. He’ll need some careful stitching, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Human, Keshian. Same thing.”
“And we’d have to run some other tests.”
“Sure, Lyell. I know I can count on you, eh?”
“Boss, what if we’re wrong? What if he’s got friends looking for him? That could make a royal mess.”
“Come on, a discarded First Order pilot, friends?”
“That’s my point, what if he’s Resistance? Not First Order?”
“Lyell, Lyell, one of these days your paranoia will get the best of you. You’ve seen his TIE runs?”
“Yeah, and I’d like to see an X-Wing one right now.”
He moans. No more runs. He can’t. “My head hurts,” he croaks into the com.
“Remember what I said? You manage a full round of sim, you can live.”
Don’t get yourself killed.
His left hand moulds itself around the new joystick. His vision is too blurry to really make out the shapes he’s shooting at and time flows around him in a strange jerky manner, slow as molasses then too swift for him to follow. He can’t seem to anticipate, always has to straighten himself at the last possible second. His X-Wing is acting strange, missing an astromech, the acceleration not exactly there when it should and the sensations not quite right in the loops. He should call his squadron but he doesn’t remember who they are.
Don’t get yourself killed, but by the end of the run there’s a Destroyer he didn’t account for and he’s down.
“That’s still the sim record,” he hears distantly in the com which is a peculiar thing to say to someone who’s spinning towards the sun in a cracked starship. And why does his head still hurt so much if he’s dead?
Hands are tearing off the headset where it got stuck to his scalp. “Shit,” says a rough voice. “What a mess. You managed those out of the world runs in that state? Dammit, who the hell are you? Hey. Hey, you’re still alive?” The hands unfasten his harness and pull him up but he can’t stand, collapses against whoever is holding him. He hears an exclamation of disgust, then a groan as he’s carried down and laid on the ground. He feels fingers on his throat pulse, then something around his biceps and a short sharp jab in the crook of his elbow. He senses more than sees a human shape crouching above him, narrows his good eye and manages to focus for a few seconds. He’s known someone with such strange coloured eyes before, he thinks.
“You did good, pilot,” says the rough voice. “Did fucking great.”