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Fic: Life Sentence
Chapter 6
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 has his mind forcibly changed by drugs and hypnotic suggestion. Or is it the Force?
Hux had taken to combing his hair back from his face again. It made the hard angles of his cheekbones and nose stand out, gave him a bony hardness that said he was no longer trying to capitalize on his attractiveness. Poe assumed that was a sign of progress up the ladder of the prison pecking order, and tried to be happy for him, though he personally had loved the more angelic look.
“How are you liking the new governor?” he asked. Kren Biggly had been forcibly retired two weeks ago, and had departed in a cloud of self righteousness, apparently unaware how close he had come to being burned alive in his office.
“A person I can work with,” Hux replied, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction. “Indeed, I helped them to return the prison to order, and was made a trustee in return. Which means that we can begin to move forward with some more ambitious goals.” He pushed an ancient datapad across the table into Poe’s open hand.
The tolerant policy brought in by the newest governor meant they were once again in the same room, within physical touching distance. Poe ached to lean forward and bury his nose in Hux’s cinnamon hair, but he knew that Hux would probably shank him if he did. And the watching guards would snicker. And someone would release the video later, which would be worse than the comm thing. Maybe.
“Here,” Hux said, very businesslike, yet somehow still intimate, as though Poe was the one person in the galaxy to whom he could speak frankly—someone whose regard he did not have to dance around. ‘We triumphed together’ Poe thought and began to understand how the pact of mutual blackmail could feel like a friendship… even like a marriage. “I’ve designed something to help you with your depression.”
It looked, from the drawings, like a booth. A stick figure with an exaggerated downturned mouth entered it and sat down. Then there were details of drugs to administer. And a screen, set to certain oscillating light frequencies, that lowered itself around the stick man’s eyes and ears, holding him still. The Force alone knew what must be happening in that man’s head before he left with a fatuous smile.
It looked like torture. Like some kind of interrogation or brainwashing technique. Poe had to swallow and swallow the sudden rush of saliva, the need to vomit, as his unruly memory flashed back to the metal chair on the Finalizer, and Kylo Ren violating his mind with clumsy glee.
He shoved the datapad away. “You want to recondition me? Pfask no!”
He had almost risen to his feet before he remembered that was how he got shoved out the door last time. The prospect of another month of lonely nothingness was more awful than sitting back down and talking about torment with a guy who wanted to make another stormtrooper out of him.
“Wait!” Hux almost rose too, stretching out a hand to catch him. The guards took a pace away from the wall, reaching for truncheons, and Poe remembered that he wasn’t the one who ought to be scared right now. “Please. It’s… It’s a way for me to give back.”
There didn’t seem to be any hope left in Poe. His heart didn’t even try to lift at the thought that Hux might know on some level that he needed redemption, might be working toward it. And that was so unlike him that he slumped back into his chair and put his head in his hands, willing to be handed a miracle if only because he needed one. “Yeah? Because it sure looks like torture.”
“It’s merely half of the reconditioning process,” Hux explained, and wormed his long fingers forward on the table until they just brushed the edge of Poe’s sleeve. A wave of prickles ran up Poe’s arm at the contact and raised the hair on the back of his neck.
“The booth is designed to stimulate the same area of the brain—by means of light and psychoactive chemicals—which is activated during a religious experience. There are many cultures across the galaxy which use psilocybin compounds in a less safe, less controllable way to induce a similar mystical experience—there is nothing sinister about this.”
Legions of drugged up troopers, Poe thought, as always hugely admiring of Finn, who had found a way to freedom even from this. But honestly? It also sounded like something he wanted. To be opened up to the Force? To have all the dross of the last year swept away, and this unending black fog lifted from him? Yes please.
“If done with precision, this experience leaves the subject liberated, cleansed, and eager to make a positive difference,” Hux said, those words very comfortable in his mouth, though Poe would have bet good money that he didn’t know what any of them really meant.
The mass-murderer’s gaze was terrifyingly pure. “In the reconditioning process, this first part would then proceed into the loyalty reaffirmation. Once the subject was psychologically malleable, the second half of the conditioning would extol the virtues and aims of the Order, cementing the subject’s commitment.”
He turned the code pad and gestured to a page of coding so dense that Poe could barely read, let alone understand it.
“But as you can see, I have excised this second half and altered the drug mixture so that the patient is susceptible to nothing but the positive impulses of their own mind. I offer you the chance to deal with your demons in a one-step process that will leave you renewed. Then you need not be ill any more.”
He fixed Poe with a look of earnestness so intense it made Poe embarrassed for him. Not a shred of irony or cynicism. Boy, when these people believe in something, they really believe in it, he thought, and shivered at the realization that perhaps that was because everything they believed was chemically induced.
“Consider it selfishness on my part if you wish. I hate to see you moping around.”
Was Poe willing to have Armitage Hux rearrange the inside of his psyche? Was he as thoroughly gone as that?
His first reaction was ‘kriff yes.’ If he could spend half an hour looking at some lights and come out like his old self again, it would be… It would be...it almost made him cry with how much he wanted it.
But after losing the Resistance fleet because his heart could not resist a high-risk, kill or cure gambit, he had acquired a negative, cautious voice that continually put the breaks on him.
He hated the voice. It got under his skin and criticised his every decision, from what he chose to eat for breakfast to the fact that he was here at all. It had taken his fire, and his warmth with it. It had put out the sunshine in his heart and given him nothing in return but cowardice and guilt.
And yet, it had a point. Was he really at a stage where he yearned to be brainwashed by the author of the greatest war crime in history?
Force help him, he was.
“I don’t have one of these booths, and every First Order ship that isn’t destroyed is impounded. I’m not--”
“At the end of the document is a list of my contacts in Kuat, any one of whom would be happy to built a prototype for you.” Hux’s face had relaxed a little, as though he knew a yes when he heard one.
Poe didn’t know when they had begun to understand one another so clearly. He wished he could feel happier about it, and maybe the machine would give happiness back to him, give him back the taste of food, and anything that wasn’t weariness.
“A prototype?” he asked, rather than admitting to this. He could almost feel his brain creak as it tried to take the strain of a new idea. “You’re suggesting I make more than one?”
Blue eyes glimmered at him like clear water when Hux smiled. It wasn’t fair that the man had come all the way back from his own post-war collapse, including ruthlessly cementing his place on top of prison hierarchy, while Poe was still foundering. But if it meant he was there to offer help when Poe needed it, he would take the hand that was offered gladly.
“Yes. I said I would make amends, didn’t I? Prison walls will not stop me. I will make the shade of Palpatine choke on how much good I can do in this universe. You wanted to give the galaxy hope. Well, with this you can. We can put a booth in every street, wipe away despair, post-combat trauma, learned helplessness, addiction…”
”I’ve been hearing,” Kes’s words echoed in Poe’s memory, “that there’s an epidemic of mental health problems on most all the civilized worlds.” Perhaps Hux had been hearing it too. What progress might come from curing it? What changes might arise from a billion billion people suddenly finding their strength and using it to do good? It could be amazing.
Except—the voice of Poe’s failure noted—for the part where it was probably just an excuse to brainwash the entire Republic and conquer it from within.
“So you can turn us all into troopers?”
“That would not be such a bad thing,” Hux said, his expression somewhere between puzzled and hurt. “My troopers were exemplary young people, strong, healthy, idealistic--”
“Slaves!” Poe slapped the table with his flat hand. Even the sound of it made Hux flinch. But he did not back down.
“Soldiers. Children rescued from the streets and given a new purpose.”
“Kidnapped. Brainwashed!” It felt good, righteous to be able to say these things. How had Poe forgotten them? How had he overlooked the terror he remembered seeing in Finn’s eyes every time he spoke of the Order? How had he let that fall to the back of his mind and learned to find Hux’s rabid views on the world anything but abhorrent? “Abused.”
Hux flinched again, his face turned away and his mouth pulled down to disguise the fact that it was trembling. It seemed Poe had landed a more devastating blow than he had been intending. Instead of victorious, he felt like a cad.
“Yes, well,” Hux admitted slowly, still looking away. “We can only give from what we have.”
Chapter 6
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 has his mind forcibly changed by drugs and hypnotic suggestion. Or is it the Force?
Hux had taken to combing his hair back from his face again. It made the hard angles of his cheekbones and nose stand out, gave him a bony hardness that said he was no longer trying to capitalize on his attractiveness. Poe assumed that was a sign of progress up the ladder of the prison pecking order, and tried to be happy for him, though he personally had loved the more angelic look.
“How are you liking the new governor?” he asked. Kren Biggly had been forcibly retired two weeks ago, and had departed in a cloud of self righteousness, apparently unaware how close he had come to being burned alive in his office.
“A person I can work with,” Hux replied, his eyes gleaming with satisfaction. “Indeed, I helped them to return the prison to order, and was made a trustee in return. Which means that we can begin to move forward with some more ambitious goals.” He pushed an ancient datapad across the table into Poe’s open hand.
The tolerant policy brought in by the newest governor meant they were once again in the same room, within physical touching distance. Poe ached to lean forward and bury his nose in Hux’s cinnamon hair, but he knew that Hux would probably shank him if he did. And the watching guards would snicker. And someone would release the video later, which would be worse than the comm thing. Maybe.
“Here,” Hux said, very businesslike, yet somehow still intimate, as though Poe was the one person in the galaxy to whom he could speak frankly—someone whose regard he did not have to dance around. ‘We triumphed together’ Poe thought and began to understand how the pact of mutual blackmail could feel like a friendship… even like a marriage. “I’ve designed something to help you with your depression.”
It looked, from the drawings, like a booth. A stick figure with an exaggerated downturned mouth entered it and sat down. Then there were details of drugs to administer. And a screen, set to certain oscillating light frequencies, that lowered itself around the stick man’s eyes and ears, holding him still. The Force alone knew what must be happening in that man’s head before he left with a fatuous smile.
It looked like torture. Like some kind of interrogation or brainwashing technique. Poe had to swallow and swallow the sudden rush of saliva, the need to vomit, as his unruly memory flashed back to the metal chair on the Finalizer, and Kylo Ren violating his mind with clumsy glee.
He shoved the datapad away. “You want to recondition me? Pfask no!”
He had almost risen to his feet before he remembered that was how he got shoved out the door last time. The prospect of another month of lonely nothingness was more awful than sitting back down and talking about torment with a guy who wanted to make another stormtrooper out of him.
“Wait!” Hux almost rose too, stretching out a hand to catch him. The guards took a pace away from the wall, reaching for truncheons, and Poe remembered that he wasn’t the one who ought to be scared right now. “Please. It’s… It’s a way for me to give back.”
There didn’t seem to be any hope left in Poe. His heart didn’t even try to lift at the thought that Hux might know on some level that he needed redemption, might be working toward it. And that was so unlike him that he slumped back into his chair and put his head in his hands, willing to be handed a miracle if only because he needed one. “Yeah? Because it sure looks like torture.”
“It’s merely half of the reconditioning process,” Hux explained, and wormed his long fingers forward on the table until they just brushed the edge of Poe’s sleeve. A wave of prickles ran up Poe’s arm at the contact and raised the hair on the back of his neck.
“The booth is designed to stimulate the same area of the brain—by means of light and psychoactive chemicals—which is activated during a religious experience. There are many cultures across the galaxy which use psilocybin compounds in a less safe, less controllable way to induce a similar mystical experience—there is nothing sinister about this.”
Legions of drugged up troopers, Poe thought, as always hugely admiring of Finn, who had found a way to freedom even from this. But honestly? It also sounded like something he wanted. To be opened up to the Force? To have all the dross of the last year swept away, and this unending black fog lifted from him? Yes please.
“If done with precision, this experience leaves the subject liberated, cleansed, and eager to make a positive difference,” Hux said, those words very comfortable in his mouth, though Poe would have bet good money that he didn’t know what any of them really meant.
The mass-murderer’s gaze was terrifyingly pure. “In the reconditioning process, this first part would then proceed into the loyalty reaffirmation. Once the subject was psychologically malleable, the second half of the conditioning would extol the virtues and aims of the Order, cementing the subject’s commitment.”
He turned the code pad and gestured to a page of coding so dense that Poe could barely read, let alone understand it.
“But as you can see, I have excised this second half and altered the drug mixture so that the patient is susceptible to nothing but the positive impulses of their own mind. I offer you the chance to deal with your demons in a one-step process that will leave you renewed. Then you need not be ill any more.”
He fixed Poe with a look of earnestness so intense it made Poe embarrassed for him. Not a shred of irony or cynicism. Boy, when these people believe in something, they really believe in it, he thought, and shivered at the realization that perhaps that was because everything they believed was chemically induced.
“Consider it selfishness on my part if you wish. I hate to see you moping around.”
Was Poe willing to have Armitage Hux rearrange the inside of his psyche? Was he as thoroughly gone as that?
His first reaction was ‘kriff yes.’ If he could spend half an hour looking at some lights and come out like his old self again, it would be… It would be...it almost made him cry with how much he wanted it.
But after losing the Resistance fleet because his heart could not resist a high-risk, kill or cure gambit, he had acquired a negative, cautious voice that continually put the breaks on him.
He hated the voice. It got under his skin and criticised his every decision, from what he chose to eat for breakfast to the fact that he was here at all. It had taken his fire, and his warmth with it. It had put out the sunshine in his heart and given him nothing in return but cowardice and guilt.
And yet, it had a point. Was he really at a stage where he yearned to be brainwashed by the author of the greatest war crime in history?
Force help him, he was.
“I don’t have one of these booths, and every First Order ship that isn’t destroyed is impounded. I’m not--”
“At the end of the document is a list of my contacts in Kuat, any one of whom would be happy to built a prototype for you.” Hux’s face had relaxed a little, as though he knew a yes when he heard one.
Poe didn’t know when they had begun to understand one another so clearly. He wished he could feel happier about it, and maybe the machine would give happiness back to him, give him back the taste of food, and anything that wasn’t weariness.
“A prototype?” he asked, rather than admitting to this. He could almost feel his brain creak as it tried to take the strain of a new idea. “You’re suggesting I make more than one?”
Blue eyes glimmered at him like clear water when Hux smiled. It wasn’t fair that the man had come all the way back from his own post-war collapse, including ruthlessly cementing his place on top of prison hierarchy, while Poe was still foundering. But if it meant he was there to offer help when Poe needed it, he would take the hand that was offered gladly.
“Yes. I said I would make amends, didn’t I? Prison walls will not stop me. I will make the shade of Palpatine choke on how much good I can do in this universe. You wanted to give the galaxy hope. Well, with this you can. We can put a booth in every street, wipe away despair, post-combat trauma, learned helplessness, addiction…”
”I’ve been hearing,” Kes’s words echoed in Poe’s memory, “that there’s an epidemic of mental health problems on most all the civilized worlds.” Perhaps Hux had been hearing it too. What progress might come from curing it? What changes might arise from a billion billion people suddenly finding their strength and using it to do good? It could be amazing.
Except—the voice of Poe’s failure noted—for the part where it was probably just an excuse to brainwash the entire Republic and conquer it from within.
“So you can turn us all into troopers?”
“That would not be such a bad thing,” Hux said, his expression somewhere between puzzled and hurt. “My troopers were exemplary young people, strong, healthy, idealistic--”
“Slaves!” Poe slapped the table with his flat hand. Even the sound of it made Hux flinch. But he did not back down.
“Soldiers. Children rescued from the streets and given a new purpose.”
“Kidnapped. Brainwashed!” It felt good, righteous to be able to say these things. How had Poe forgotten them? How had he overlooked the terror he remembered seeing in Finn’s eyes every time he spoke of the Order? How had he let that fall to the back of his mind and learned to find Hux’s rabid views on the world anything but abhorrent? “Abused.”
Hux flinched again, his face turned away and his mouth pulled down to disguise the fact that it was trembling. It seemed Poe had landed a more devastating blow than he had been intending. Instead of victorious, he felt like a cad.
“Yes, well,” Hux admitted slowly, still looking away. “We can only give from what we have.”
