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Fic: Life Sentence chapter 1
Let's see if I can remember how to do a header
Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Pairing: Armitage Hux & Poe Dameron (kind of pre-slash, kind of just emotional entanglement)
Rating: PG
Follows on from my From the Ashes
Poe visits Hux in prison to see how he's doing. He is doing almost exactly as you might expect.
~*~*~*~
Poe stiffened as the prisoner was brought out, forced into the seat opposite him and chained to the table. Hux looked as he had looked above Crait—sallow, skeletal, the blue of sleeplessness beneath his hollow eyes bleeding into the bruises that lined his face from brow to chin.
Poe had not meant for him to be captured, or sent to jail. When he had rescued the man from the wreck of the Finalizer, he had intended to bring Hux to Arkanis and allow him to take up a new life there, courtesy of hair dye and a change of name. But Poe had not reckoned with his own fame. Reporters had cornered them as soon as they landed, and Hux’s face was both well known and memorable.
There had been a trial. He had testified that Hux had saved his life, and more than that—that Hux had been a double agent for the Resistance for over a year, saving countless lives and ultimately preventing the entire galaxy from falling once more under the thumb of Palpatine. He had pulled out all the stops on persuasion, smiled brilliantly for the cameras, glittered with the gold braid and glory of a general of the victorious Resistance, Leia Organa’s heir. He had all but seduced the Togruta judge. And he had achieved this—lifetime imprisonment for Hux in a high security prison on Coruscant, and a pledge on his own behalf to check on him once a month, until death did them part, or he found a good enough excuse to stop.
“Kriff,” he said now, breathing in the stale, gym-sock air, and feeling Hux’s bruises like he’d put them there himself. “I’m sorry.”
Fragile, almost fawn-like, his slender arms encircled by the purple-green prints of squeezing fingers, Hux still bore himself like an emperor, and his eyes burned with a familiar light. He flicked Poe’s concerns aside with dismissive fingers. “Truly I was impressed by how passionately you argued my case. I almost believed you myself.”
A guard stood behind him, and another by the door, both of them with the slab-like, piggish faces of men who could not be trusted with weakness. But Poe didn’t have to concern himself with them. “But you’re hurt. They’ve been treating you badly. I’ll lodge a complaint. I’ll—”
Hux actually smiled, a private sideways quirk of the mouth like he was sharing a joke with a friend. “Don’t trouble yourself. It’s always like this at the beginning.”
His posture didn’t change—they were being monitored from a dozen cameras—but a flinty, terrifying look surfaced briefly in his expression, and was gone before Poe could do more than shiver. “It helps me decide how to thin the herd.”
Poe struggled against the urge to scrape his chair backward, out of range of… of this brutalized and beautiful young man, who had already murdered so many. It was so easy to forget who Hux was that sometimes he suspected the man of working hard to disguise it.
“Always like this?” he asked, because nothing else of what he wanted to say could be said in that bleak, wipe-down-plastic room. “When have you been in prison before?”
Hux actually laughed, a little huff of dismissive humour. “Always.”
~
“Surely he could have got out. Like you did,” Poe asked Finn later, when that cynical, resigned little word had disturbed his sleep for weeks. “They must have taught the officers to fly, at least?”
“No,” Finn said, sitting cross-legged in the air above one of the spilled blocks of stone mined from the Jedi temple. A dozen glow-globes hovered around him, tracing loops of careful thought. His serene face was gilded by the light of them. “No. Pilot training was for pilots only. And pilots were triple conditioned, provided with kill switches, and encouraged to die rather than aid an escape.”
He took a deep breath and opened his eyes, softer and less certain than they once had been. “I don’t think you realize what a miracle of the Force it was that you were there for me just when I needed you. Not everyone gets such chances.”
Finn breathed the in-taken breath back out, long and slow, his shoulders lowering, his hands opening. Even the faint lines of tension around his mouth smoothing out, as though he had shed something that was burdening him. “And Snoke was watching him, of course.”
Then he smiled, the shocking, joyful smile that Poe remembered from before this all got so complicated, before he was a Master Jedi, and Poe was a general. “I still think you should be aiming your pity in the opposite direction. I don’t think he needs it.”.
Fandom: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Pairing: Armitage Hux & Poe Dameron (kind of pre-slash, kind of just emotional entanglement)
Rating: PG
Follows on from my From the Ashes
Poe visits Hux in prison to see how he's doing. He is doing almost exactly as you might expect.
~*~*~*~
Poe stiffened as the prisoner was brought out, forced into the seat opposite him and chained to the table. Hux looked as he had looked above Crait—sallow, skeletal, the blue of sleeplessness beneath his hollow eyes bleeding into the bruises that lined his face from brow to chin.
Poe had not meant for him to be captured, or sent to jail. When he had rescued the man from the wreck of the Finalizer, he had intended to bring Hux to Arkanis and allow him to take up a new life there, courtesy of hair dye and a change of name. But Poe had not reckoned with his own fame. Reporters had cornered them as soon as they landed, and Hux’s face was both well known and memorable.
There had been a trial. He had testified that Hux had saved his life, and more than that—that Hux had been a double agent for the Resistance for over a year, saving countless lives and ultimately preventing the entire galaxy from falling once more under the thumb of Palpatine. He had pulled out all the stops on persuasion, smiled brilliantly for the cameras, glittered with the gold braid and glory of a general of the victorious Resistance, Leia Organa’s heir. He had all but seduced the Togruta judge. And he had achieved this—lifetime imprisonment for Hux in a high security prison on Coruscant, and a pledge on his own behalf to check on him once a month, until death did them part, or he found a good enough excuse to stop.
“Kriff,” he said now, breathing in the stale, gym-sock air, and feeling Hux’s bruises like he’d put them there himself. “I’m sorry.”
Fragile, almost fawn-like, his slender arms encircled by the purple-green prints of squeezing fingers, Hux still bore himself like an emperor, and his eyes burned with a familiar light. He flicked Poe’s concerns aside with dismissive fingers. “Truly I was impressed by how passionately you argued my case. I almost believed you myself.”
A guard stood behind him, and another by the door, both of them with the slab-like, piggish faces of men who could not be trusted with weakness. But Poe didn’t have to concern himself with them. “But you’re hurt. They’ve been treating you badly. I’ll lodge a complaint. I’ll—”
Hux actually smiled, a private sideways quirk of the mouth like he was sharing a joke with a friend. “Don’t trouble yourself. It’s always like this at the beginning.”
His posture didn’t change—they were being monitored from a dozen cameras—but a flinty, terrifying look surfaced briefly in his expression, and was gone before Poe could do more than shiver. “It helps me decide how to thin the herd.”
Poe struggled against the urge to scrape his chair backward, out of range of… of this brutalized and beautiful young man, who had already murdered so many. It was so easy to forget who Hux was that sometimes he suspected the man of working hard to disguise it.
“Always like this?” he asked, because nothing else of what he wanted to say could be said in that bleak, wipe-down-plastic room. “When have you been in prison before?”
Hux actually laughed, a little huff of dismissive humour. “Always.”
~
“Surely he could have got out. Like you did,” Poe asked Finn later, when that cynical, resigned little word had disturbed his sleep for weeks. “They must have taught the officers to fly, at least?”
“No,” Finn said, sitting cross-legged in the air above one of the spilled blocks of stone mined from the Jedi temple. A dozen glow-globes hovered around him, tracing loops of careful thought. His serene face was gilded by the light of them. “No. Pilot training was for pilots only. And pilots were triple conditioned, provided with kill switches, and encouraged to die rather than aid an escape.”
He took a deep breath and opened his eyes, softer and less certain than they once had been. “I don’t think you realize what a miracle of the Force it was that you were there for me just when I needed you. Not everyone gets such chances.”
Finn breathed the in-taken breath back out, long and slow, his shoulders lowering, his hands opening. Even the faint lines of tension around his mouth smoothing out, as though he had shed something that was burdening him. “And Snoke was watching him, of course.”
Then he smiled, the shocking, joyful smile that Poe remembered from before this all got so complicated, before he was a Master Jedi, and Poe was a general. “I still think you should be aiming your pity in the opposite direction. I don’t think he needs it.”.