Chapter Text
There were flowers growing beside her door.
The door itself was old and iron and had rusty hinges, but she’d planted the flowers alongside it anyway. An act of defiance… or resignation. This was her home… had been the Resistance’s home for the better part of a year. So why not put down roots?
Or, Armitage thought, the person who came before her had sown the seeds, or the person who came before that. It didn’t really matter who planted them, because forever after he’d associate Rose with those flowers, and the way their cloying perfume threatened to overpower all his other senses as he knocked.
She swung the door wide after just two raps of his knuckles. Sized him up, her eyes narrowing in suspicion, her nose wrinkling in disgust when she realized just who disturbed her at this late hour.
He’d been in the presence of supreme leaders and grand marshals — not to mention one petulant man-child who could toss him around like a rag doll with his mind — but Armitage had never been more intimidated than when caught in her sharp-eyed glare.
She was petite, even for a woman. Dwarfed by his tall, lean frame, she was not afraid of him. At all.
It was he who felt vulnerable in her presence, a worm caught in the gaze of a bonegnawer. It was a scenario he’d often envisioned when still the most formidable general in the First Order, but reversed. Him glaring down at the Resistance vermin...him the superior specimen.
He’d had this girl on her knees, at his mercy, and he’d been too arrogant to take care of her himself. Captain Phasma had rid him of other annoyances, after all.
Now Phasma was fragments of bone floating amidst the burned out husk of the Supremacy. Space dust.
And Rose Tico was standing before him, seething, whole. A living, breathing reminder of one of his many failures.
Him, superior? How wrong he’d been. The Resistance had proven that ten times over since they imprisoned him on this godforsaken jungle planet. Hours upon hours of interrogation… then, for weeks, nothing but twiddling his thumbs in the dank cell.
So when Dameron, smug as ever, slid the work release through the service hatch along with his dinner tray, Armitage hadn’t understood.
About time we put you to work. Go see Commander Tico, the newly minted General had said. They’ve always got too many projects and not enough hands in Engineering. With a resounding clunk, the cell lock had disengaged, but Dameron, duty done, had vanished. He hadn’t witnessed Armitage take the first few tentative steps outside the ten-by-ten duracrete box that had been his entire world for three months. Nor did anyone else observe their former enemy — an enemy, still, he was sure, for how could they think of him any other way? — turn his face to the sky and breathe deep. The air was humid, but it was fresh, and he gulped it greedily before reminding himself that this privilege came with a price.
And here he was, hovering on her doorstep next to the damned sweet-swelling flowers, sweating profusely in his woolen jacket and jodhpurs and avoiding her eyes, waiting for her approval.
The polite thing for Rose to do — were he a colleague or subordinate or anyone worth consideration — would be to step aside and motion him past the flowers and the door and into her home. But his manners, archaic like the blanching grey of his uniform, had no place where there was no order. The Resistance left everyone to their own devices regarding etiquette, and her particular brand of courtesy was reserved for people she liked. People she cared about. That wasn’t him, so she stood her ground, teeth clenched, fists at her sides.
“What the kriffing hell do you want? Why are you out of your cell?”
Of course he didn’t tell her I was coming. One of Dameron’s little jests. He’d experienced the brunt of one on the day the Fulminatrix had gone down. The day Paige Tico had sacrificed herself needlessly for a cause unworthy of her death, leaving behind a grieving sister who had never quite been the same.
He could tell Rose what he knew — who she was, what she had lost. I made it my business to know all of my adversaries — pilots, parents, even upjumped mechanics who try to corral chaos and lead where all their former officers failed. When he’d heard that she and the traitorous storm trooper had escaped, he’d dug up every last scrap of data on her.
But he cleared his throat and looked at his feet. Fidgeting was not something he did — ever — yet he found himself flipping the plastoid card he held over and over, front-back-front-back, until he forced his hands still and loosened the words that were caught in his throat. “I was told to report to you. For work.”
“They’re actually doing it,” she breathed, finally tearing her flint-filled gaze away from him to survey the rest of the camp, shading her eyes against the setting sun. Looking, it seemed, for someone to blame for this awful decision, or perhaps the perpetrator of this deeply unfunny joke. Because she hoped it was a joke, he sensed. “They’re trying to rehabilitate you.”
His eyes wandered to the flowers, and he wondered if they were the species she was named for.
They can try all they want, he yearned to say. They will fail.
Instead he sighed, holding out the permit Dameron had scribbled across. If she could decipher the handwriting, he’d be impressed.
But she didn’t take the plastoid from him, or attempt to read what was on it.
“What do they expect me to do with you? Are you an engineer? A mechanic? No, you’re a karking bureaucrat who ordered people around, brainwashed children and blew up entire star systems for kicks. Even,” she hissed, “Assassinated your own father.”
So she knows things about me, too. Not everything, but more than the general population of the Ajan Kloss camp, he presumed.
She thought she had dirt on him, shameful secrets that would make him shrink further in her presence. Instead, he felt some of the steel sliding back into his spine, and he stood a little taller, looked down at her over his long nose.
Think again, little rebel.
“In my defense, Miss Tico, he deserved it.”
For a moment, his retort tripped her up — she tightened her grip on the doorjamb, her knuckles flashing white before she reined in her emotions. Her next words were stiff, clipped, like she was holding back. But he would have been lying to say they didn’t sting a bit.
“We don’t harbor murderers here. We certainly don’t employ them.”
“Don’t you?” He wondered if Dameron’s conscience ever kicked in late at night, made his skin crawl at the thought of all the stormtroopers and pilots he’d blasted to oblivion. Doubtful. “I have no delusions about this arrangement. Still a prisoner…no compensation.”
“None of us get paid to be here, you asshat,” she growled. “We’re here because we care about this world we live in. We care about freedom of the entire galaxy — the freedom to live without the First Order’s yoke around our necks. We—”
He laughed then, a sharp bark that clearly unsettled her further by the way her eyes snapped back to him. But instead of backing into her quarters and slamming the iron door, she took a step forward into his space.
The scent of the flowers couldn’t hide the smell of her — sweat mingled with engine grease and motor oil. Caf and smoke from a soldering iron…and maybe a hint of the soap she used to wash her hands, that didn’t quite disguise the rest. They were all the odors the Order tried to pretend didn’t exist on the dreadnought, where personal hygiene regulations were stringent, and the mouse droids ran day and night to clear away the detritus of human existence.
It’s not an unpleasant smell, he thought, especially cutting through the perfume provided by the blooms beside her. Then he whisked that notion away before it could lodge there in his brain, to taunt him later when he was back in the cell.
“Ballsy of you to laugh at our ideals when you’re the one who came to us .” She had one hand on her hip and he half expected her to lift the other and wag her finger at him in reproach.
Instead, he let his lips quirk into a ghost of a smile — there and then gone again. “Ballsy of you , Commander, to preach the virtues of freedom to a captive.”
Rose scoffed. Her eyes rolled heavenward.
For a long moment, neither spoke, and the silence stretching between them made him want to start fidgeting again.
“Look,” he began, “This wasn’t my idea, but I’m not going to turn down a chance to do something besides stare at a duracrete wall all day. I’m good with numbers, I’m—” Rose blew a raspberry, a dismissive sound if there ever was one, but he continued, his gesticulations becoming grander as he spoke. “I wasn’t always a General. I can be useful… do calculations, calibrations—”
“Ha,” she snorted. “As if I’d let you anywhere near the X-wings or any of the ships.”
“Then I’ll fetch your tools, fetch your caf— Give me a kriffing mop or a broom, Commander.” He hadn’t stifled the bite in his voice, and the slap of his palm on the iron door punctuated the end of the sentence, and sent something like fear flashing across her deep brown eyes. He let his arm drop to his side. The last thing he needed was her running to her superiors and telling them he’d threatened her. It’d be back to the box, and no more fresh air or heady scents or pretty engineers until the Resistance either lost or won the war. Either way, it was probably curtains for him. But Armitage tried not to think too far into the future… or the inevitable lack thereof. This ridiculous experiment could only last so long before the facade came crashing down. “Look, Miss Tico,” he said, smoothing his voice into the placating tone he’d always employed with the Supreme Leader. “They told me to report to you.”
Rose sighed. “You said that. Twice now. You want to work?”
He nodded. “Yes. I want to work. They want me to work.”
But he knew without having to be told that she wasn’t the sort to leave it at that. She opened her mouth, closed it again. Finally spat out, “I don’t...I don’t understand why. ”
How someone so intelligent could be so obtuse was beyond him. And she was intelligent...he’d deduced as much from his research. So she was just being difficult, which also fit the picture he’d sketched of her in his head, comprised of facts and anecdotes and the memory of her gnashing her teeth, even with her hands tied behind her back. “Because you’re not listening. It’s this or the cell all day, and I’m tired of letting my brain rot from the inside out while I wait for my next tasteless meal.”
“I meant — I don’t understand why you’re here . In this camp.” Her voice hitched. A momentary display of weakness she brushed off by clearing her throat, and when she spoke again, her tone had gone cold. “Finn shot you. He told me he shot you and almost left you there, to—” She huffed, bit off the rest of her sentence while biting her lip. “I don’t understand why you’re still alive. ”
He felt a pang of empathy towards this spitfire of a woman.
To tell the truth, I don’t understand it either. He’d been fully prepared to remain a mole in the First Order, to feed them information piecemeal until either faction actually accomplished something. Maybe it had been his confession that he cared little if the Resistance won or lost, if only they took out his arch nemesis. Maybe it had been the traitor’s damnable bleeding heart that made him drag Armitage to the rust bucket they called a ship and stash him aboard as the sorcerer and the scavenger faced off.
Perhaps they’d shown him a singular kindness because they had other, more sinister plans waiting in the wings. Maybe they’d brought him to this muggy jungle planet so they could one day exact their revenge… torture him until he gave up the ghost. Bury him in an unmarked grave where the aggressive flora of Ajan Kloss would reclaim his flesh like it reclaimed everything else.
Just because the punishment and execution hadn’t transpired yet didn’t mean it wouldn’t, someday.
“Neither do I, Miss Tico.” He replied, his voice low. “You’d have to ask your friends that question.”
After what seemed like another excruciatingly long pause — even though it couldn’t have been more than thirty seconds, he mused afterwards — she held out her hand to accept the plastoid permit.
Her nose wrinkled again as she squinted and tried to decipher Dameron’s blubberbird scratch. Armitage found himself grateful — amused, even — when she directed her ire at someone else.
“Mop or a broom, huh?”
“Yes.”
Rose frowned, but she handed the card back to him, and didn’t flinch when her small fingers grazed his in the exchange.
If anything, the contact set his heart beating faster.
Embarrassing, really.
He stole a glance at her all the same, but she was already turning inward, away from him.
“All right. Tomorrow. 0700. Meet me on the north side of base, near the Falcon . Don’t be late.”
“Very well.” He wanted to say more. Thank you, maybe, for giving me this chance. Even though she’d been rather rude to him, there was no reason he couldn’t maintain the decorum of a proper society. “Miss Tico, I—”
But Rose shook her head, uttered a single word. “Dismissed.” Then she shut the door in his face.
He lingered there a minute longer, staring at the rusting iron, before he turned his attention once more to the flowers.
Reaching out to touch a slender bloom, he smirked. No, these weren’t the woman’s namesake. They were frothy, delicate things, pale and arranged in clusters, two by two.
Real roses had thorns, he knew… and she hadn’t disappointed.