Chapter Text
40ABY.
5 years after the Fall of Exegol.
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M-FALC: i think you’re gonna like this one hugs
M-CONQUEST: That’s what your spunky optimism said the past billion trips, and where did that get us? Absolutely nowhere.
M-FALC: come on i know what i said before!! but i think this is the real deal. something about it is different
M-CONQUEST: Different? Do elaborate.
M-FALC: ok um don’t freak out but uh
M-CONQUEST: Dameron, it’s been two minutes. Spit it out.
M-FALC: PROMISE ME YOU WONT FREAK OUT
M-FALC: PROMISE ME YOU WONT LEAVE THE CONQUEST TO LOOK FOR ME
M-CONQUEST: I’m banned from Coruscant, Dameron. I legally can’t, even if I wanted to.
M-FALC: ok well
M-FALC: our source was uh
M-FALC: murdered
M-CONQUEST: What? How?
M-FALC: poisoned dart to the neck. he managed to give me the file but the assassin got a clean shot and took off. i checked details from the file and there’s nothing in it but the phrase “kai'yam cuyan ke'pare par gar” which is mando’a for
M-CONQUEST: “ The survivor of the kitchen awaits you.” Poe, this is it. It’s her.
M-FALC: see? i told you we’re onto something. its the biggest lead we have so far.
M-CONQUEST: No, this means she knows we’re after her. She knows I’m alive. My mother knew, all this time.
M-CONQUEST: She just never bothered to come for me.
M-FALC: no dont give up yet hugs theres more behind this i swear
M-CONQUEST: How can you be so sure?
M-CONQUEST: Dameron?
M-CONQUEST: Hang on. Did you get a good look at the assassin?
M-FALC: uh
M-CONQUEST: Dameron. Answer me.
M-FALC: i’ll get back to u on that
M-CONQUEST: POE DAMERON. THEY JUST MURDERED A MAN AND YOU’RE GOING AFTER THEM?
M-CONQUEST: GET TO THE RENDEZVOUS POINT RIGHT NOW. YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU’RE UP AGAINST.
M-CONQUEST: DAMERON
M-CONQUEST: DAMERON YOU MOOF MILKER DON’T YOU DARE IGNORE ME
M-FALC: im sory
---
Hux is ready to tear his own beard out. Yes, he’d grown out a beard, as well as hair long enough to be twisted into a short bun at the back of his head, in the 5 years since the First Order fell. Purely for disguise, of course, like whenever he needed to be on a planet he wasn’t allowed to be on. Like Coruscant.
The effect had been astonishing. It’d worked for two other planets in the past, when he and Poe had searched the Outer Rim. But then again, this is a Core World. There could be security sensors, beware posters and holos of him scattered around the city.
Hux leans back in his seat behind the Mother Conquest’s built-in computer. He looks out the viewport, his eyes reflected wide among the stars where the ship is in orbit over the planet. Then he looks back to the computer screen, where the cursor under M-FALC is blinking rapidly, tauntingly at him. It doesn’t move forward with any new messages and Hux highly doubts Poe is about to say anything else anytime soon.
Not when he’s too busy about getting himself killed.
Kriff it. Kriff the rendezvous point.
Hux activates the navicomputer, and the red dot that is M-FALC ’s tracking beacon comes alight on a holomap of Galactic City. M-FALC is the same computer system that had been inside the Millennium Falcon, except Poe had Tico remove it from the rusty old ship and install it into a holowatch along with a tracking feature, linked with the navicomputer of the Mother Conquest. (Poe had also decided to keep its name out of sentiment to their first conversations as TR and M-FALC , which Hux had balked at, but who could stop him?)
He shoves himself up from his chair and races into the cockpit. He turns the autopilot function off and carefully maneuvers the Conquest out of orbit and down to where Galactic City glows like a sea of jewels on the surface of the planet. He’s not the best pilot, but all the basics and cheeky little tricks Poe had taught him is enough to get past the atmosphere and land in a desolate landing dock in an alley.
From where he’d landed, he can hear the faint drone of the Coruscant theatre in the distance, the lights of the buildings reflecting off the side of each other, the buzzing streams of speeder traffic above, intersecting at various junctions that stretch to the busy horizons.
Hux checks the navicomputer again and his blood begins pounding in his ears. Poe is on the move, around three blocks away.
Hux picks a blaster, secures his monomolecular knife to the inside of his coat sleeve, and disembarks with a mental count of the number of times Poe owes him for saving his pathetic arse.
Hux had been wrong about one thing, Poe thinks, as he dodges another bout of blasterfire.
He’s not going after the assassin. The assassin is going after him.
And turns out there’s two of them. Both dressed in black armour, both masked.
Poe pushes his way through the crowd, holding the hood of his coat over his head, his pursuers leaping nimbly from ledge to ledge, balcony to balcony, roof to roof over him. All he can hear is the screams of everyone around him, the deafening blasterfire patterning the ground and occasionally hitting the street lamps lining the district. It’s suffocating work, with so many people smothered against him as he runs despite trying to draw the fire away from them so none of them would get hit.
Poe scrambles round a corner and slips himself behind a wall of concrete to catch a breath. He’s about to check his holowatch again, to tell (lie to) Hux that he’s got this covered. But there’s a shift in the air - the blasterfire has stopped abruptly, yet something tells Poe he’s being watched…
A flash of silver comes spinning towards him, right at his face. Poe doesn’t even look up fast enough to see what it is. He brings his arms up with a yelp.
The pain never comes. There’s a wind of movement, then Hux is suddenly poised in front of him, expression livid, flinging his monomolecular blade out and gracefully deflecting the flying object. With a sharp, piercing noise, it buries itself in the concrete wall beside Poe.
On closer inspection, Poe would have noticed it’s a small blade, shaped almost like an axe of sorts, but he’s too occupied with more pressing concerns.
Like how Hux is very illegally walking the surface of a Core World right now, before his eyes. But before he knows it, Hux grabs his wrist and they’re both running just as the assassins start firing at them again. Hux is ahead by a step, leading him somewhere, probably to wherever he landed the Conquest. But at one point Hux curses (they must have taken a wrong turn) and they find themselves in the middle of some marketplace, blaster shots pinging off the lights strung around canvas shelters, shattering windows and sending people shrieking in every direction. They duck behind a barricade of crates, and immediately, all fire is drawn to them, the sound of splintering wood and the feeling of blasterfire vibrating against their backs. Poe’s worry crests into something almost hysterical, as he presses himself against Hux’s side, watching the frantic crowd in case any Coruscant guards are in the area.
“What the hell, Hugs?” Poe nudges him in the ribs.
“Why don’t you ask yourself that, when you went after a kriffing assassin and almost got yourself killed if I hadn’t shown up in time?” Hux grits out. “A ‘thank you’ would be nice.”
“Thank you,” Poe relents, brushing a quick, apologetic kiss to the back of Hux’s hand. “And there’s actually two of them.”
Hux wrenches his hand out of Poe’s grip. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Listen,” Poe holds up the datachip their source had given him. “I was thinking, if we get this back to the Conquest, we can trace its location.”
Hux takes the chip from his fingers. “Is it possible?”
Poe nods. “As long as we get out of this mess unharmed, we got a chance. We can find her.”
Hux looks away, uncertainty fogging over his eyes. Poe almost can’t believe what he’s seeing. “Should we really?”
“When we’re this close, after five years? When your mother is one data scan away? She said she’s waiting for you,” Poe gapes at him. “Hugs —”
Poe is suddenly yanked backwards, smashing right through the crates, by some unseen force. The blasterfire had stopped once more, and instead Hux’s shout of “Poe!” ricochets through the air after him.
Poe flies into the grip of one of the assassins, gloved fingers wrapping around his neck and lifting him off the ground. Poe gets just enough air in his brain to realise that it wasn’t just any force that had brought him to the mercy of the masked assailant in front of him.
They’re Force sensitive.
“Kuruk Ren!” Hux’s voice, frantic and furious. “Let him go.”
“We don’t answer to you anymore, General,” says the other assassin next to him. “Even if we did, we’d have no respect for you. You’ve gone soft.” There’s the sound of a blade being flicked out and then Poe feels the cool metal against his cheek.
“Let. Him. Go.” Hux hisses. “If it’s me you want, Vicrul, don’t be a coward and say it.”
Poe is only vaguely aware now, that people in the buildings and hidden in the shadows are hanging around to watch the commotion, and his first instinct is that he needs to get Hux out of here before anything worse happens, before anyone recognises him and before the authorities arrive. He squirms against Kuruk's grip, but it only tightens around his neck so he starts to choke. The Knight called Vicrul lets out a soft sound that might be a laugh, and his knife slips away from Poe’s cheek. There’s a small pinch of pain, and then something warm and liquid is running down the side of his face.
He hears Hux’s sharp intake of breath.
“I’m not the one who wants you,” says Vicrul. “It’s your mother who sends her regards. And, perhaps, her disappointment...” Poe feels Vicrul turning his emotionless, helmeted head towards him slightly. “She thinks you’re smarter than this.”
“What do you know about my mother?” Hux asks raggedly.
Vicrul remains silent for another moment. And then, as though he’s smug, “What do you?”
The Knight raises a hand and Kuruk Ren has produced yet another small axe blade, aiming it against Poe’s stomach —
Hux’s scream mingles with another, one that sounds more like a battle cry, and before the blade can sink into Poe’s flesh, something impacts Kuruk Ren hard enough for him to loosen his grip.
“Pick on someone your own size, you traitorous scumbucket!”
Poe drops to the ground, gasping for air, his vision spinning. Two hands that he barely registers are Hux’s grab his upper arms and start hauling him backwards. He looks up, weakly, his neck aching hard, and through his blurry vision he sees two more figures, clad in black and grey this time, battling the two Knights. One of them is helmeted, with two blades swishing so fast they’re silver blurs in the air. The other is more controlled, more elaborate with his double-ended pike.
“Wha’ jus’ happened?” Poe slurs, as Hux leans him against another pile of crates, away from the ongoing fight.
“The Knights are fighting each other.”
“I thought they died on Exegol.”
“So did I.”
“Huh,” Poe blinks himself back together. “Well, we gotta get out of here—”
“Wait.” Hux is looking straight at the Knights, who are slashing and slicing at each other with a ferocity he’s never known.
“Hugs,” Poe says, grabbing his arm. “We’re gonna get caught.”
But Hux doesn’t move.
At that moment, Vicrul Ren lands a last clanging blow on one of the figure’s twin blades, and then shoves them backwards with the Force.
“Tai, Voe. We don’t have time for this.”
“Neither do we,” the Knight Hux recognises as Ap’lek Ren aims another swipe at him. Vicrul avoids it easily, and both him and Kuruk leap onto the roof of the nearest building.
“Let’s take this reunion somewhere else.” Vicrul sheaths his own blade. “Farewell.”
They vanish into the bustling night. Ap’lek sheaths her own blades and removes their helmet, throwing it to the ground, revealing snowy white hair strung into a lumpy braid. Hux starts. He’d never actually seen the Knights without their helmets before.
“We were so kriffing close, Tai! This kriffing close!” Ap’lek pinches her fingers together. “I’m so sick of those idiots running around causing chaos!”
“To be fair, that’s what we all used to do,” Ushar says calmly.
Ap’lek sticks a finger in his face. “I’m not in the mood to be fair.”
Before he knows what he’s doing, Hux is marching back out towards them, ignoring Poe’s cry of “Hugs, wait!”
“Ap’lek and Ushar,” Hux greets, doing his best to adopt his old general demeanor. He can guess, from their expressions, it might be a little off-putting with the beard and long hair. “I see you’re going by different names now.”
Ap’lek - no, Voe’s - eyes narrow. He doesn’t miss the way her fingers twitch back towards her blades. “We thought you died on Exegol.”
Hux gives them a false smile. “Likewise.”
“Nice beard.”
“Thank you.”
Poe coughs from behind him.
“What we do is no longer any of your business, General,” Tai says.
“It’s not,” says Hux. “So I’ll get straight to the point, and then you’ll never have to see me again.”
Voe scoffs. “Sounds good to me.”
Hux takes a breath. “Are you working with my mother or not?”
The two of them exchange a look.
“Your mother?” Voe says, one eyebrow skeptically raised. “Maratelle Hux?”
Hux clenches his fists. “She’s not my mother and you know it.”
“We actually don’t.” Tai sheaths his weapon and adjusts his gear. He shoots Hux a cold, withering look. “But if she has anything to do with the Forcebringer, that would make her our enemy.”
Hux bristles, fists clenched so tightly his nails dig into the flesh of his palm. “Forcebringer?”
“Do not get in our way again,” Voe warns, and then she smirks at something in the distance behind them. “Although, I don’t think that’ll be much of a problem.”
Sirens erupt the same time Poe yells “Hugs! We gotta go! Now!”
Hux turns towards the flashing searchlights and voices of the Coruscant Guard growing closer. He lets Poe grab his hand and lead him sprinting through the dense crowds once again.
When he casts one last glimpse back, Tai and Voe have already vanished.
Almost immediately after they’re back on board the Conquest, the hull of the ship tremors with a massive impact. Blasterfire and the wailing of sirens engulf them. Poe propels himself into the cockpit and initiates the takeoff sequence. Hux raises the ramp and then slips into the co-pilot’s seat beside him.
Soon enough, they’re back in the air. But with one of the engines down, their balance is off-centre, and the Conquest smashes straight into one of the spires on top of the Coruscant theatre.
Poe winces. “Why the hell did you land in here?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, was I expected to land in the open street?” Hux scowls.
“Are the shields up?”
“What do you take me for?”
The Conquest makes its rocky way towards the night sky, engines clunking in their full speed, ducking around each blaster bolt whizzing past as the Coruscant Guard pursue them in sleek hybrid starships.
Poe twists the controls, so they go careening round a skyscraper and into the traffic of speeders criss crossing the air.
“We need to lose them,” Hux says, watching the guards cling stubbornly on their tail.
Poe shakes his head, a fine sheen of sweat on his brow as he concentrates. “We can’t do it here, we’re way too obvious.”
The smoke from their broken engine keeps billowing behind them, leaving a clear path for the guards to track no matter which way they turn or how fast they are.
“Get out of the atmosphere,” Hux says, angling the shields again. “They won’t be able to track us.”
“I was thinking the exact same thing,” Poe says, with a small grin.
He makes a steep, sudden dive that has Hux clinging tight to the dashboard. For a few seconds it’s as if they’re in free fall, and it puts a decent amount of distance between them and the guards, who are clearly taken by surprise. The ground comes closer and closer into view, as they hurtle towards it at breakneck speed.
“Pull up,” Hux huffs out. “Dameron, you idiot, pull up!”
Poe casts another glance through the rear viewport. The guards are slowing down, just as they begin closing the distance with the Conquest once more…
He pulls up. The people on the street scatter, their screams audible even through the cockpit as they shoot past, their passing wind sending canvas shelters and crates flying in all directions. The lights of the city become nothing but blurs, blinking, multicoloured flecks racing past them as they make their ascent straight upwards into the sky at full speed. The sudden diversion works enough to leave the guards as far behind as the city limits by the time they’re breaking the atmosphere.
Yet Poe doesn’t prep for lightspeed.
Hux casts an incredulous glance at him. “What are you doing?”
“They’ll be checking every nearby system for us,” Poe says, his jaw set, flipping switches and pushing buttons. Then he drives the Conquest into a graceful curve back around to the shadowed side of the planet, far away from where the shining heart of Galactic City is. “This is the last place they’ll think of.”
They land in a field of skycorn, where the grass and crops grow obscenely tall, tall enough to hide the Conquest in its broken entirety, and where the lights from Galactic City are only faintly visible as polluted reflections in the clouds on the horizon. Directly above them are the stars, clear as day, as if there is no barrier between them and open space, even though gravity tethers them again.
For a moment, Hux and Poe sit there in the cockpit, hair dishevelled from the chase, feeling the engines die down, simply breathing in their temporary peace.
Then Hux unbuckles himself and stands. He takes the medkit from a rack in the main quarters, pops open the top hatch of the ship and then turns back to Poe, where he’s watching from the pilot’s seat with a million questions in his eyes.
“Come on,” Hux says. “You need air.”
He leads Poe to the roof of the Conquest and sits him down. The stars above them shimmer and wink down at them, like a celebration of sorts, the skycorn crops swaying and rustling in joyful applause. But something tells Hux they’ve reached a point in their journey they can’t turn back from. A shift in the winds, the weight of what they’d just done, the way Poe slumps himself against the door of the hatch with a fatigue he’s never seen before, the datachip in his pocket making him painfully aware. Hux crouches down and opens the medkit.
“You’re bleeding.”
“Oh,” says Poe, bringing a hand up to touch his cheek, and it comes away stained with semi-dried blood. “Right.”
Hux opens a small bacta wipe and takes Poe by the jaw, angling him so his cheek is in the light of the distant moon. His blood is illuminated crimson, and even though Hux isn’t the one with the injury, he winces.
“Take better bloody care of yourself,” Hux grumbles, half to himself, as he disinfects the wound and presses a small bandage against it. “I can’t always be here to be your nurse.”
“Why not?” The shadow of Poe’s eyelashes is cast down against his face as he smirks at Hux. He leans into his touch, pressing his face against the backs of Hux’s retreating fingers. “You’re good at it.”
Hux can only find it in him to let out a soft, slow breath, and he indulges Poe for a minute. It’s almost a miracle that they’d lasted five years like this. There had been countless moments in which one or both of them had completely blown up at each other, arguments as petty as who had to cook for the night (they’re both dreadful at it). But their bigger fights occurred after particularly life-threatening trips, and Hux is convinced they’d only lasted this long because those fights were always about each other’s safety.
He isn’t complaining though. At least neither of them are yelling at each other now.
Something’s definitely changed.
Hux lets his fingers wander, his thumb brushing against Poe’s bandage and then trailing down the line of his jaw.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
Poe raises an eyebrow in surprise. “What for?”
“I got caught. I remember before you came with me, you said we wouldn’t get caught.” Hux lowers his gaze and folds his hands together tightly in his lap. “So now that we- I have, I understand if you do not wish to continue with me…”
“Hey, hey, no,” Poe picks up where Hux’s sentence has faded away. “Don’t do that. Don’t push me away and assume things like that, you promised. I’m not going anywhere.”
“The search for my mother has tethered us to this life. Maybe it’s time to… let go.”
“But it’s been this long.”
“Exactly.”
“We have nothing to worry about, she’s clearly on our side.”
“Is she?”
“She encrypted the datachip.”
“This datachip is supposed to store every last piece of information about Arkanis and its people in the history of the galaxy.” Hux stands up, starts pacing back and forth on the roof of the Conquest. His footsteps make dull hollow echoes. “I could have known her name, what her life had been like. But it’s all gone, there’s nothing left. My mother, whoever she is, erased it all. And now she’s allegedly working with someone called Forcebringer, which sounds like some kind of pathetic made-up bogeyman… it’s all a game to her. She’s playing with us.”
Poe shakes his head. “Hugs, she’s your mother. She wouldn’t do that to you.”
“I wouldn’t know, would I?” Hux snaps.
“There’s one thing we do know,” Poe says patiently. He lies down, pillowing his head in one hand and gesturing to the inky black sky. “She’s waiting for you. She wants you to find her.”
“What if it’s a trap? What if this clue just leads to another and another and another, and we’ll be stuck in her little game forever.”
Poe looks at him now, directly into his eyes, and Hux can almost see his own reflection in them, deep and dark, silhouetted against a background of stars. His voice is ever so gentle as he asks, “What is it you want, Armie?”
Hux hesitates. “I don’t know.”
“Then we’ll figure it out. We got time.” Poe opens his arms. “C’mere.”
Hux feels all the tension in his body slowly drain out. He sighs, slowly lying on his back next to Poe, and Poe pulls him in by the shoulders so that Hux’s head rests right over his heart. They lie there together for a bit, breathing in tandem, as the night sky drifts peacefully over them. Poe’s fingers are skimming idly up and down the side of Hux’s arm.
“What about you?” Hux murmurs into Poe’s shirt. “What do you want?”
Poe laughs, and it vibrates through his chest. “Do you really want me to say it again?”
“I want to hear it.”
The grip Poe has on Hux’s shoulder tightens. Hux feels him whisper into his hair, “I want anything. As long as it doesn’t involve me losing you.”
Hux shifts in his arms, satisfied. “You’re awfully corny.”
“Hey! You’re the one who wanted to hear it!”
There’s another long, comfortable silence, punctuated only by the rustling sway of the skycorn surrounding them. And then, “What do you say we take a vacation sometime?”
Hux looks up at him. “Where?”
Poe grins, twirling the datachip between his fingers. “Mustafar.”