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Entry tags:
Fic: Life Sentence
Fic: Life Sentence
Chapter 2
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
In which Poe fails to appreciate the progress Hux has been making...
~*~*~*~
Next month, when Poe was ushered into the plexiglass room there was a palpable difference in both Hux and his guards. This time, Hux looked healthy, rested. He’d done something to his hair and it flopped engagingly over his forehead as he smiled at Poe as if they were old friends.
Poe would have taken this for good news if he hadn’t remembered that this was how Hux looked at the end, when he was under suspicion for treason, and being ground under the boot-heels of two superior officers at once.
He placed the allowed gifts on the table—cigarras and chocolate—and caught the contemptuous sniff of the guard behind Hux. Both guards seemed oddly relaxed, in comparison to last visit, as though they had forgotten their prisoner had the highest kill-count of any war criminal in history.
“You’re looking better,” Poe observed, all the surplus anxiety on his own part, because a Hux who seemed innocent, his lips pink and his eyes clear and eager to please, was a Hux he trusted even less than normal.
Hux smiled and leaned forward confidingly. “These things take time,” he said, low voiced and a little smug. “The climb from victim to bitch is a useful step.”
This time Poe did rear back, scraping his chair across the floor and feeling the guards’ gazes snap to him like an automated targeting system. He... there had been jokes. Of course there had. There were always prison jokes—dropping soap in the showers, that sort of thing. And Hux was young and slender and pretty. And the galaxy hated him enough to wish for terrible things. But to know? To just come out and say it? Was there something he could do to stop it? A rescue he could make?
“Oh, tell me you’re not shocked!” Hux laughed, and there was nothing in his face or voice that indicated distress.
He’s always been in prison, Poe thought, with a well of horror opening in his chest so far down it reached the underdwellers who lived in Coruscant’s core. He has a different idea of normal from yours.
Which didn’t honestly make it better.
“Can I… can I do anything to help you?” he asked. Like reform the entire prison system? Scrap it maybe. Poe didn’t have the power for that. But he thought he would try, if not for this prisoner then for others.
The saccharine smile did not reach the hard calculation in Hux’s eyes, blue as the flame of a laser cutter. “I don’t like to ask, but perhaps your com? So I could call you, in an emergency?”
Poe didn’t see how the wafer of metal and crystals could be used to do harm. He pushed it into the cigarra packet between the cardboard and the silver paper, where he had sometimes hidden messages in his days undercover with the smugglers.
A sliver of genuine vulnerability was visible for a moment amongst Hux’s creepy charm as he tucked the gifts into his shirt. “Thank you. You don’t have to come, you know, if it distresses you. I don’t blame you for a failure that was outside your control. And you saved my life too. We’re even, in that regard.”
Poe had figured he was visiting because he was a good guy, because—having rescued Hux from his broken huddle in the wreck of the Finalizer—he had a responsibility. But the prospect of being dismissed as unnecessary, of being let off, made him realize that he was here because he wanted to be. He wouldn’t have felt hurt at being dismissed, otherwise. “No, it’s not that. I want to help you. You need a—”
“A protector?” Hux’s sneer was bitter as three day caf. “Oh, but I’m on my second already. The first,” he shrugged one shoulder, dismissively, “was… unsatisfactory. Remarkably short lived.”
The double meaning hit Poe in two separate waves. He began to understand what Finn had meant. “What happened?”
“He tripped,” Hux said, with a resurgence of his puppyish innocence. “On the second floor landing. Just where the guard-rail was weak. It was a terrible accident.” A smile. “Fortunately, he was a killer of children, whose faction was ruled merely by fear. Rather a happy day for many people, when his brains splashed the wall.”
“Um,” Poe said, and again found himself scrambling to leave before his hour was up. He couldn’t understand why he wanted to keep coming back. What was he hoping for here? “Why are you telling me these things? Aren’t you afraid that--”
“What are they going to do to me?” Hux laughed again. “Add another life sentence? I am as free here as I have ever been, Poe. And there is still so much to do.”
Chapter 2
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
In which Poe fails to appreciate the progress Hux has been making...
~*~*~*~
Next month, when Poe was ushered into the plexiglass room there was a palpable difference in both Hux and his guards. This time, Hux looked healthy, rested. He’d done something to his hair and it flopped engagingly over his forehead as he smiled at Poe as if they were old friends.
Poe would have taken this for good news if he hadn’t remembered that this was how Hux looked at the end, when he was under suspicion for treason, and being ground under the boot-heels of two superior officers at once.
He placed the allowed gifts on the table—cigarras and chocolate—and caught the contemptuous sniff of the guard behind Hux. Both guards seemed oddly relaxed, in comparison to last visit, as though they had forgotten their prisoner had the highest kill-count of any war criminal in history.
“You’re looking better,” Poe observed, all the surplus anxiety on his own part, because a Hux who seemed innocent, his lips pink and his eyes clear and eager to please, was a Hux he trusted even less than normal.
Hux smiled and leaned forward confidingly. “These things take time,” he said, low voiced and a little smug. “The climb from victim to bitch is a useful step.”
This time Poe did rear back, scraping his chair across the floor and feeling the guards’ gazes snap to him like an automated targeting system. He... there had been jokes. Of course there had. There were always prison jokes—dropping soap in the showers, that sort of thing. And Hux was young and slender and pretty. And the galaxy hated him enough to wish for terrible things. But to know? To just come out and say it? Was there something he could do to stop it? A rescue he could make?
“Oh, tell me you’re not shocked!” Hux laughed, and there was nothing in his face or voice that indicated distress.
He’s always been in prison, Poe thought, with a well of horror opening in his chest so far down it reached the underdwellers who lived in Coruscant’s core. He has a different idea of normal from yours.
Which didn’t honestly make it better.
“Can I… can I do anything to help you?” he asked. Like reform the entire prison system? Scrap it maybe. Poe didn’t have the power for that. But he thought he would try, if not for this prisoner then for others.
The saccharine smile did not reach the hard calculation in Hux’s eyes, blue as the flame of a laser cutter. “I don’t like to ask, but perhaps your com? So I could call you, in an emergency?”
Poe didn’t see how the wafer of metal and crystals could be used to do harm. He pushed it into the cigarra packet between the cardboard and the silver paper, where he had sometimes hidden messages in his days undercover with the smugglers.
A sliver of genuine vulnerability was visible for a moment amongst Hux’s creepy charm as he tucked the gifts into his shirt. “Thank you. You don’t have to come, you know, if it distresses you. I don’t blame you for a failure that was outside your control. And you saved my life too. We’re even, in that regard.”
Poe had figured he was visiting because he was a good guy, because—having rescued Hux from his broken huddle in the wreck of the Finalizer—he had a responsibility. But the prospect of being dismissed as unnecessary, of being let off, made him realize that he was here because he wanted to be. He wouldn’t have felt hurt at being dismissed, otherwise. “No, it’s not that. I want to help you. You need a—”
“A protector?” Hux’s sneer was bitter as three day caf. “Oh, but I’m on my second already. The first,” he shrugged one shoulder, dismissively, “was… unsatisfactory. Remarkably short lived.”
The double meaning hit Poe in two separate waves. He began to understand what Finn had meant. “What happened?”
“He tripped,” Hux said, with a resurgence of his puppyish innocence. “On the second floor landing. Just where the guard-rail was weak. It was a terrible accident.” A smile. “Fortunately, he was a killer of children, whose faction was ruled merely by fear. Rather a happy day for many people, when his brains splashed the wall.”
“Um,” Poe said, and again found himself scrambling to leave before his hour was up. He couldn’t understand why he wanted to keep coming back. What was he hoping for here? “Why are you telling me these things? Aren’t you afraid that--”
“What are they going to do to me?” Hux laughed again. “Add another life sentence? I am as free here as I have ever been, Poe. And there is still so much to do.”