Chapter Text
Poe Dameron hadn't been flying missions for the Resistance for more than a few years, but he'd known Leia Organa for much longer than that and could read her face as easily as the console of his X-Wing. Right now, she looked both irritated and weary, undeniably more human than she ever seemed when giving stirring speeches to the latest recruits or calling out sharp orders before the latest mission. As Poe stepped over the threshold of her room, the general straightened up in her chair and motioned to him with a hand.
"Lock the door, please."
Confused, Poe obeyed, sealing the room off from the rest of the base. That in itself was cause enough for concern; the Resistance had its procedures and ranks but beneath all of that pomp and protocol ran an undercurrent of mutual trust. Secrecy tended to be a soft rule: even if Poe's Black Squadron got sent on some covert scouting run, by the time they returned the entire base would have learned of it. But this kind of shuttering, without even a droid in the room to record the proceedings... Poe guessed it would either be very good or very bad news. He held his tongue as he took a seat across from Leia. A moment later, the general set an object gently on the table - a holocomm, Poe recognized, and he held his breath as she flicked it on.
A static cloud formed above the projector, transparent and blue, then slowly resolved itself into a figure: a man in a set of mismatched and battle-worn armor. It was difficult to tell by the tiny size of the hologram, but Poe thought the man looked anxious: the figure held himself like a coiled spring and kept glancing over his shoulder.
"This message is for General Leia Organa of the Resistance," the hologram barked. "I've got information regarding the location of the First Order's main supply and hangar base, and I want to pass it on to you." Only experience prevented Poe from grinning, and sure enough, he caught himself just in time for the figure to interrupt, "But, y'see, I'm a man on the run myself, and I'm not giving this info out for free when I know people like you will pay for it. So here's what you're going to do if you want the coordinates. You're gonna give this holocomm and one thousand credits to a single pilot and send them out of atmosphere, and then you're gonna cut all communication channels. I talk to the pilot and the pilot alone about where they can pick the info up. If at any time I think you're listening in, me and my info are dust in the wind. You've got seventy-two hours to make your decision." The recording cut out abruptly, and Poe raised his eyes to the general, waiting.
"That arrived for me this morning," she explained. "Apparently this gentleman found one of our informants on Coruscant last night and Wexley swung by to pick it up on the way back from his scouting trip. You and I are the only ones who've seen the contents.”
“Do you think he’s telling the truth?” Poe asked. Knowing the location of any First Order bases would have been useful, but their main location... that would give the Resistance a serious advantage. The entire movement had been forced to flee D'Qar after the destruction of Starkiller Base, and both sides of the conflict were once again trying to sniff out hints to the other side's locations. With the First Order reeling from the loss of their best weapon and a heavy portion of their forces, crippling their access to ships and supplies might kill their entire cause.
And Poe was eager to see the First Order die.
Leia, meanwhile, pursed her lips in a thoughtful frown, "To be honest, I don’t know. It could very well be a trap. But if that's the case, why ask for only one pilot?"
"You can get a lot of information out of just one pilot," Poe pointed out, before catching himself. Leia's face suddenly softened, and Poe wished he hadn't seen it.
"You can't keep blaming yourself for that, Poe. None of that was your fault." Poe fixed his eyes on the ground, feeling tension building at the base of his skull. Once, he would have felt guilty for succumbing to torture at the hands of the First Order. But since Rey's debriefing about Starkiller and the death of Han Solo and her confrontation in the snow with the man calling himself Kylo Ren, each time Poe's memories dragged him back to those restraints in that shadowy room, Poe could only feel anger. Maybe the torture had worn him down, sure. Maybe he hadn't had enough mental reserves to put up much of a fight. Or maybe, Kylo Ren had known exactly where to burn his mind to break Poe apart.
It had taken three days for him to speak to Leia again after witnessing that debriefing. He would have demanded answers, but by then Poe had dissected the matter himself and had the pieces lined up in an organized row. Learning simply that a creature named Kylo Ren had killed his closest childhood friend - that was simple. Ben Solo had merely been a victim. And over the years, Poe's raw grief had dulled to something he could cope with through memories. He would think of climbing the Force-sensitive tree in front of his parents' home on Yavin IV with Ben. Or he'd think of the night Leia had brought him and Ben along on a trip to Coruscant: they'd stayed in a ridiculously fancy hotel and had fallen asleep in front of a window after spending all evening trying to identify the different ships settling onto the landing pads below. Ben using the Force to make a model X-Wing zoom around Poe's room, after a promise that Poe wouldn't tell anyone. The hug he'd received from a five-year-old Ben at his mother's funeral. The hug he'd given an older Ben the last time he'd seen him in person, before Ben had reluctantly departed to begin his Jedi training.
Ben's loss had been a painful crash to the earth, but Poe had dragged himself out of the wreckage of his grief and patched himself back together and eventually moved on, albeit with a few new scars. But to learn from Rey that Ben had died only in name, that he'd rejected himself and become a killer for the First Order...
Poe could barely process the information now. Had he been younger, he wouldn't have believed it - or his reaction would have been far more rash. Wishful thinking allowed that he'd have stormed off in his mother's old A-wing to confront Ben. Reality reminded him that Ben - Kylo Ren - had killed his own father and ordered the massacre at Tuanul and had broken into his former best friend's mind just to get some information.
It had taken weeks of practice with Rey to learn how to build up mental walls to block those kinds of intrusions, and Poe still felt like Rey had gone easy on him, despite her insistence otherwise. But shutting out Rey's careful attempts to slip into his mind didn't sting. Poe adored Rey, and her quiet strength and curiosity were always welcome - he may have even casually adopted her as the tenacious little sister he'd never had. But Rey wasn't Ben. Poe and Rey had no history of shared secrets or fights or dreams, they hadn't come orbiting back to each other like binary stars each time life put too great a distance between them.
Poe shook his head. He was getting lost in his own recollections, and here in front of him on the general's desk was a possible key to crippling the First Order, their enemy.
"I think it'd be a good idea to look into this," he spoke up, carefully changing the subject. "I could go."
Leia took a deep breath, and Poe could hear the lead-up to a familiar weary sigh, so he cut it off and plunged ahead.
"This isn't about guilt or anything like that. You said you didn't know if it was a trap or not, but the message said I'll get coordinates. I can bring BB-8 along - nothing in the message said anything about droids. BB'll run the info and if it looks too fishy to be worth the risk, I won't even bother. If it's legit, though, we could get some really useful intel. And honestly, if it does end up being a trap somehow, there's no better person to fly out of it. The only reason I got in trouble on Jakku was because I had both feet on the ground."
That drew a short laugh from the general, and she spun the holocom around a few times, letting it rattle on her desk as she considered Poe's offer. Finally, she pushed the device across the desk to him.
"I'm only agreeing to this because I know you're capable. If there's a chance - even the smallest possible chance - that it's a trap, I want you out of there. Got it?" She raised her eyebrows at him, waiting.
"Yes, general."
"And I mean the smallest possible chance. No unnecessary risks."
"Understood, general."
Leia held his gaze for a half-second too long, but then she nodded, satisfied, "Good. I'll meet you in the hangar with the credits in ten minutes. You'd better go find your droid."
"That's the planet?" Poe squinted through the windshield of the borrowed X-wing. When BB-8 trilled an affirmative over the comm, he shook his head, "What a gloomy place."
<It looks like the dustballs under Poe's bed,> BB-8 observed, and Poe sighed. As he swooped in towards his destination, his commlink crackled to life, sounding as filthy as the planet's atmosphere looked.
“You’re- early, Mi- Resistance-”
Poe frowned and checked the instrument panel, “BB, see if you can clean up the connection a little.” The droid beeped and got to work, but the man on the other end of the line laughed, which turned halting and hacking in the static.
“No use- it’s -e atmosphere- bad f- communications. You’ll nee- follow me d-”
“Roger that,” Poe shrugged, and pivoted the craft in space. Below, he could see the faint glow of engines in the planet's upper atmosphere, along with the silhouette of an old YT-class light freighter, familiar and disc-like.
The information broker refused to give Poe his name, but he did provide him with coordinates that led to a star system so tiny and forgettable, a system that - according to the broker - didn't have a name either. Poe’s agreement with the broker prevented him from opening any communication lines to search for information, but if he had to guess, the star would be designated something like "GT342", and the dusty-looking world he was descending towards would be "GT342-A". If Poe had been forced to give the place a proper name himself, it wouldn't have been a kind one.
“It’s not a nice place to live,” the broker had informed him in the initial transmission, "but it's a good place to meet for a deal like this. You’ll see what I mean when you arrive - oh, and bring a sealed helmet and breathing system with filters.”
The broker’s craft hovered just above the foggy atmosphere, and as Poe drew closer, it swerved slowly and began to dive. Poe had to stay close on the other pilot’s tail; the atmosphere proved to be unusually thick and he lost visual on the other ship several times. BB-8 took a few readings of the dirty clouds and whirred intrigue, but Poe focused on flying and soon enough the dense layer of particulates and fog gave way to a slightly clearer layer of atmosphere, just in time for him to pull his X-wing horizontal and put it gently down. Poe checked the breathing tube's connection to his helmet, armed the blaster at his side, and hopped out.
The planet's surface was hot and dim, and could have passed for tropical save for the complete absence of anything resembling life. The bright rays of the nearby star filtered just enough through the atmosphere to illuminate everything in a gray and washed-out light. Here and there, deep fissures rent the flat earth, and tendrils of steam wafted up from them before merging into the all-consuming fog. Poe carefully dodged these as he headed towards his contact, BB-8 rolling behind at his heels.
Behind where the broker had landed his ship, a series of steep cliffs jutted irregularly up from the barren ground. In one of the fissures gouged into the side of the jagged face, Poe spied a glimmer of metal, and as he walked closer, the glimmer resolved itself into a sturdy door, sunk deep into the rock itself and set a step up from the planet's dusty surface. The broker, in his own protective helmet, walked up to meet Poe just outside the shadow cast by the crooked cliffs. Poe disliked that he couldn't see the man's face, but shrugged his discomfort off. Any man who had information on the First Order had good reason to protect his identity.
“Nice place,” Poe remarked.
“It’s out of the way, if that’s what you mean,” the other man replied. “And the atmosphere blocks communications, among other things. Have you got the credits?”
“I do,” Poe confirmed, “but I’m not handing anything over until I get this information you spoke about.”
“Of course, of course.” The broker nodded, beckoning Poe towards the high rock outcroppings, “Let’s discuss this somewhere with a proper atmosphere.”
“There?” Poe gestured towards the metal door, and his contact gave a nod.
“Suffice it to say it’s safe from this," the broker gestured towards the surrounding planet. “I told you this place wasn’t nice, so let’s leave it at that. I’d rather not have a discussion about fees through respirators.”
“Fees?” Poe questioned, and from the rise and fall of the broker's shoulders, he could tell he was getting on his nerves; it was a gesture he'd become intimately familiar with for a variety of reasons. But he decided to press his luck regardless, “I thought we agreed on one thousand credits.”
“We did,” the broker confirmed, "but for information as valuable as this, I think I can get a lot more.”
To say that Poe felt frightened wasn’t correct. In fact, Leia had even expected this: she’d arrived as he was configuring his borrowed X-wing with a total of five thousand credits in tow, announcing that she’d been involved in deals like this before, but what Poe was getting was the extent of the finances the Resistance could spare. Poe had hoped, however, that he’d been dealing with a straightforward person from the get-go. Served him right for being an optimist, he supposed.
“Are you coming or not?” the broker snapped. “I don’t want to be here when nightfall hits-“
Poe’s X-wing exploded in a vivid orange fireball and a millisecond later the shockwave reached the cliffs, staggering Poe and the broker backwards. Stunned, Poe spun around fully and watched as the fireball rose from his ship and continued to grow, as the flames shimmered from orange to a brilliant poisonous blue and hung in the air, a glowing nebula. The atmosphere, Poe remembered faintly, there's something wrong with the atmosphere-
“No! No, kriffing hell-“ The broker found his voice first, “It’s too damn early-“
“Early?” Poe echoed, staring at the smoking remains of his ship as the blue inferno flickered out, dying flame by flame. Leia’s words of warning echoed in his ears.
“I told him the atmosphere here was volatile, no kriffing blasters or-“
“Told who?” Poe demanded, rounding on the broker, who took a defensive step back, palms out.
“Look, just get inside the shelter for now, passcode’s 4-6-1-1, just wait-“
A dark shape was descending through the fog, and as it drew closer to the planet’s surface it resolved into the sharp lines of an old Lambda-class shuttle, which folded its wings up and settled down some distance from charred remains of Poe’s ship, sending up a puff of dust. The entry ramp lowered and now it was Poe who took a step back, raising a hand to his helmet and clinging to a breathing tube because his lungs had abruptly failed him.
Kylo Ren strode out of the ship, raising a hand in one smooth motion, and the broker careened towards him, dragged by an invisible hook in his throat. Struggling and spitting, he nearly fell to his knees before managing to compose himself.
“You... you’re not supposed to be here yet...ten hours...” the broker choked out.
Poe found his breath and forced himself to look away from the two figures in front of him. He hadn't come prepared for this and he no longer had a ship and the only weapon on his person had proven ineffective the last time he'd used it against Kylo Ren. He forced himself to take a deep breath as BB-8 jostled up against his legs, hiding.
“On the contrary, I think I came here at just the right time,” Kylo Ren replied, his voice a mechanical growl as he lowered his hand. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have witnessed your little grift in action.”
“Grift?” The broker’s voice went a pitch too high. He'd been nothing but calm when Poe had spoken to him, but Poe couldn't blame the other man. Kylo Ren had that effect on people, and with that understanding, Poe felt his fear begin to subside, replaced instead by anger. In his mind, Rey's tutelage kicked in and he began to build his walls.
“Yes. You’re playing the role of a double agent," Kylo Ren explained. "You can sell information to both sides of a conflict and make double the profit. It might not even matter if what you're selling is valid. As long as neither side figures the ploy out, you can get all the credits you need and be long gone before anyone figures out they’ve been tricked.”
“That- that wasn’t-“ the broker protested.
“Don’t bother,” Poe heard himself interrupt. “He knows a lot of smuggling tricks. Learned from the best, right?”
Kylo Ren spun around and Poe had his blaster drawn so quickly he swore he’d heard the harness rip.
“Dameron. I didn’t recognize you under that helmet.”
“Likewise,” Poe said through teeth clenched in a mockery of a smile. You just had to open your mouth, Poe. You had to pour fuel on the fire. “Then again,” he went on, “I had it on good authority that you’d been killed over a decade ago.”
That seemed to give Kylo Ren pause, and in that silence, the broker found his spine.
“Put your blaster away!” he hissed at Poe. “The atmosphere isn’t stable, you’re gonna get us all killed! You saw what happened to your ship!”
Poe ignored the order and kept his arm raised, “Buddy, the atmosphere is the least of your problems right now.” Behind the visor of his helmet, behind the fury currently turning the corners of his vision red, Poe’s thoughts were racing. He needed a way to get off the planet. He needed a way to get away from Kylo Ren. Just being nearby felt like slowly drowning; he had to react or he felt certain the man who had been his oldest friend might just kill him. Half-formed plans and dangerous ideas spun in a maelstrom with nightmares of someone tearing through his memories and leaving a trail of agony behind.
Kylo Ren, meanwhile, turned his faceless gaze from Poe back to the broker.
“You.”
The broker stood his ground.
“The First Order is prepared to pay 10,000 credits for information regarding the Resistance’s main base - if the information you have is in fact correct.”
Poe tried to read the broker’s body language, but the armor-clad man gave little away.
“If not,” Kylo Ren continued, “you will die, and we will get the information we need from the pilot-”
“The pilot disagrees,” Poe cut in, blaster still raised. His heart was throwing itself desperately against his ribs, but he’d come too far to back down at this point. “The Resistance is prepared to to offer 20,000 credits for information pertaining to the First Order’s main supply route.” Kylo Ren lowered his head, angry, snake-like. Poe wondered if he was glowering under that mask.
“You’re bluffing.”
“Are you sure?” Poe tapped the side of his head with his free hand, “I know you’re not digging around in my head right now, and there are a lot of generous, wealthy individuals who are pretty happy about this huge weapon we destroyed not so long ago-“
That was when the earthquake began. Startled, Poe took a knee, blaster still trained on Kylo Ren as above them all, the gray sky began to fade to an ugly purple, the color of a bruise.
“No, no, no-“ The broker took a step back, and out of the corner of his eyes Poe saw him glance at the metal door. "Kriff the both of you," he snapped, and broke into a run. He got three paces away before Kylo snared him with the Force, flinging him away from his destination with such violence that he slammed against one of the upraised wings of the First Order shuttle. As Kylo turned to observe the unfortunate man, Poe heard BB-8 chirp a rapid warning in binary. He managed to parse <nightfall> and <temperature> from the violent beeping before he chanced a look over his shoulder. His eyes went wide.
Massive jagged spires, inverted frozen lightning, edged up into the sky through the distant fog, and a creeping carpet of frost was inching closer to them, pooling out across the ground as the air and atmosphere began to chill. The steam drifting up from the fissures in the surface faded and disappeared and water came surging up instead, bubbling and spitting up in geysers before the darkening air overtook it and froze the water solid. The ice fractured and broke and refroze to other shards as it pushed further up into the air, and Poe realized that as the planet continued to rotate away from the sun, the creeping edge of darkness drew closer, bringing with it this quickly growing snarl of ice. The broker's urgency to be out of here by nightfall became rapidly clearer.
"C'mon, BB," Poe muttered, standing back up. "We need to get out of here-"
"Where do you think you're going?" Kylo Ren stood his ground some distance away, ignoring the broker slowly climbing back to his feet behind him.
"If you haven't noticed, the planet's freezing over," Poe snapped, pointing at the slowly advancing forest of ice with his free hand. "I'm leaving."
"In what?"
"I'm working on that part," Poe muttered.
"And I still haven't gotten the information I was promised," Kylo Ren warned, raising a hand.
The mental onslaught hit him like a punch but this time Poe was prepared: his barricades had been raised and reinforced throughout by cold anger at what his former best friend had become, what his former best friend had done. Before Kylo Ren had a chance to tear any of those walls down, Poe had to get away, and he aimed his blaster and fired as Kylo Ren's hand shot to the lightsaber hilt on his belt.
The bolt hit the burning red blade and angled, deflecting straight into the landing gear of Kylo Ren's shuttle, and Poe saw sparks spitting from a severed cable a moment before the air rent with a crack and he got knocked off his feet, slamming into the frost-covered ground with a groan. The shuttle had gone up like kindling and the fireball now rose lazily into the air, but Poe had remembered seeing red light, not orange-
A dark shockwave slammed into his mind and Poe grabbed his head; his senses had gone dead and he couldn't see or feel anything but fear, anger, shock, a horrible parasitic darkness scrabbling in the void with skeletal hands and empty eyes to take hold of something, somewhere-
And then, as suddenly as it had hit, the feeling vanished, replaced by the blue glow of leftover flames hanging in the air, the cracking of heavy ice, and someone's muffled screaming.
BB-8 bumped urgently against Poe's side, chirping <Poe is hurt, Poe is hurt> over and over, and Poe waved the droid off.
"It's fine, BB, I'm fine, let's... let's get..."
Poe pushed his aching self up onto his elbows, but he stilled when he found the source of the screaming.
Kylo Ren had been knocked to the ground by the force of the explosion as well. His burning lightsaber had gone missing - as had his right hand. His arm ended in a smoking ruin of charred fabric and flesh just below his right elbow, and despite all the pain the other man had put him through, Poe still felt horror drain the blood from his face. Slowly, he pulled himself to his feet. The shuttle had been reduced to blackened scraps. There was no sign of the broker. The sky grew ceaselessly darker and the massive icy knives grew closer. When Poe glanced back to the wreckage spread out before him, Kylo Ren had fallen silent.
"...c-c'mon, BB." Poe set off at a limping jog towards the metal door. He couldn't think; his mind had slammed itself into survival mode. He'd experienced something similar in dogfights before, where you moved on muscle memory and instinct, not on any rational plan. All Poe could understand was this: if he intended to get off the planet, he had to first survive the night. Punching the broker's code into the panel on the door, he let out a harsh sigh of relief as it slid open, revealing a dusty hallway leading back into what looked like a small room. Poe took the time to haul BB-8 up over the rocky stair before slamming the door closed behind him and engaging the security lock.
Safe at last for now, Poe sank against the wall of the hallway. He reached a hand out and BB-8 rolled over, bumping gently against his shins.
"Think I can take my helmet off yet?"
The droid murmured quietly, testing the air, then beeped out a <Yes.>
"This place must have an air scrubber," Poe rationalized, tugging off the heavy gear with another sigh. "Hopefully things don't explode as easily here either."
<Exploding air is outside,> BB-8 confirmed, twisting his head around.
Poe gave the droid a pat, "Why don't you go have a look around. I'm just going to rest for a moment." BB-8 chirped and rolled off down the entryway to disappear around a corner, and Poe set his helmet on the ground and buried his face in his hands. He focused on taking slow, deep breaths. Now that the adrenaline in his system had started to fade, he felt exhausted. He needed to... he needed to...
Poe's heart jumped into his throat as a frantic pounding erupted from behind the sealed door. He sat bolt upright and slid his helmet away, his hand once again going to his blaster.
“Let me inside!” The low metallic growl caused by his voice modulator did nothing to hide the anxiety in Kylo Ren's orders. “Open the door!”
“No,” Poe answered, instantly disappointed by how shaky his own voice sounded. He’d activated the door lock and flung up his mental walls but despite being safe from the fast freezing planet, he couldn’t help feeling trapped. But the lock held, and no cold fingers came scratching at his thoughts: the danger remained on the other side of what Poe was hoping was a very solid door.
“You’ll never get off this planet alive!” Kylo Ren shouted back.
“Seems I’ve got a better shot at that than you do right now,” Poe retaliated, his hands curling into fists. He can’t reach you in here, he told himself. He’s hurt. He’s trapped outside. All you have to do is wait.
He isn't Ben.
“Is that so?” the other man asked, and there it was again, that hint of breathless fear in his voice. “Going to build a beacon?" The atmosphere blocked communications, Poe remembered. He couldn't put out a call for help or rescue.
"You need to fly back above the atmosphere. Have you got a working ship?” Kylo Ren gasped his words out without pausing for breath, but Poe mentally arrived at the conclusion at the same time. His X-wing and the shuttle had been destroyed. But there had been a third ship.
"The broker's ship is working," Poe thought aloud, and Kylo Ren laughed, harsh and mocking, the edges of his voice colored by pain.
"I can see it from here," he said. "There's ice cutting up through it."
That caused Poe's stomach to drop, and he mentally punched himself. If he'd run for the ship instead of the door, he might have been able to get off world before the ice had overtaken the ship. Instead, he'd trapped himself. But the cause wasn't totally lost, not yet.
"Seams can be welded together," he shot back. "Parts can be fixed, I can-"
“No, you can’t,” Kylo Ren finished. “How are you going to weld in this atmosphere? Will you seal the ship away in... what?"
Inwardly, Poe swore. The ship couldn't be repaired by normal means, not in this atmosphere with the little resources he had. The hope that had been struggling to stay lit in his chest began to flicker and die.
To Poe’s surprise, the pounding cut off, and a moment later he heard instead the soft metal whisper of Kylo Ren sliding to the ground against the other side of the door.
“I can help you.”
“I don’t want your help,” Poe heard himself reply automatically. It's a trick. It's a trap.
“You need my help,” Kylo Ren rasped. Behind his words, Poe heard the quiet crunch of rocks and sand, slowly and ceaselessly growing louder. Nightfall was creeping closer to the door, and the ice came with it, breaking the ground apart.
“There are pieces hanging off by threads," Kylo Ren added. "You and your droid can’t put something that big back together without a proper hangar. But I can help. I can hold them up. I can shut out the dangerous air.”
He was right, Poe realized in horror, his heartbeat rushing in his ears. Without winches or further help from droids, there’d be no fixing the ship back together to any sort of usefulness. Alone, he and BB-8 couldn't accomplish it: they could both lift and hammer and cut, but if the ship had truly been broken up as badly as Kylo Ren claimed, they would need someone to hold things in place. They would need someone to create temporary shields to block out the volatile atmosphere - something, Poe realized, that a strong Jedi could do. And back on Jakku, Poe had witnessed Kylo Ren stop a blaster bolt in midair. That had to have taken an absurd amount of strength and control.
"Why don't you just fix the ship yourself, then?" Poe challenged, still wary. "What's in it for you?"
Kylo Ren didn't answer immediately.
"What's stopping you from just breaking apart this ice with your mind and putting the kriffing thing back together yourself?" Poe demanded again.
"I need a pilot."
Poe had to stop himself from flinging his blaster at the wall.
"You never learned how to fly?! That's your excuse?!"
"That's your guarantee that I'm not going to kill you," Kylo Ren replied, "so let me in!"
Outside, the rumble of the approaching ice grew steadily louder. Poe stared at the door, breathing harshly. He had trusted Ben once. He didn't trust Kylo Ren. Maybe he could fix the broker's ship alone. Maybe the damage wasn't as bad as Kylo Ren claimed. But if he let the other man die, if he ended up genuinely needing his help...
“Please.” Kylo Ren’s voice was almost a whisper now, drowned out by the approaching thunder of the ice tearing up through the planet’s surface.
Poe took a deep breath, a thundercloud of tension building in his skull. The lingering embers of the interrogation flickered up, searing the edges of his memories, and he forced them aside. After his time on the Finalizer he’d mentally vowed that the next time he found himself in a room together with Kylo Ren, he’d put a blaster bolt through him properly. But that had been before he'd learned Kylo Ren's real name, before he found himself trapped on this hell of a planet facing down a variety of deaths, most of them certain.
The door lock beeped a warning as he disabled it, and when the door slid open Poe could see the ice twenty paces away, stabbing up through the ground, massive and crooked frozen daggers. He seized Kylo Ren by the back of his robes and flung him inside before slamming the door shut. The lock activated and a few seconds later Poe heard the crack and scream of ice fighting against the metal. Poe flung a hand up to cover an ear and used his other hand to draw his blaster and aim it at Kylo Ren. The other man had brought both hands to his ears without recalling he only had one hand left and had hit himself in the helmet with his maimed right arm. He now sat hunched over in obvious agony. Poe glanced aside and saw BB-8 fiddling with a port in what looked like a control console; a low-energy forcefield sprang up in front of the door and the room began to warm up.
Once the screeching and crackling of the ice outside had faded, Poe spoke.
“You stay the hell out of my way unless I ask for your help, and you stay the hell out of my head regardless. You don’t touch BB-8.”
Kylo Ren nodded wordlessly; his injured arm trembled, curled tightly against his chest. Poe thought he looked pitiful. Not so frightening anymore, are you? he wanted to ask.
“I’ll bandage your arm,” Poe went on, “and make sure you stay alive and in return, you help me fix the ship. We can talk about what to do once we get off this dung-heap later. Have we got a deal?”
“Deal,” Kylo Ren replied through gritted teeth. The trembling had spread from his arm to overtake the rest of his body.
“The second you try anything funny, you can spend the night outside.” Poe swallowed back the venom in his voice before speaking up again, “Understood?”
“Understood,” Kylo Ren managed, before passing out and slumping to the floor.
Poe stared down at the crumpled form for a moment before stowing his blaster. "Okay," he spoke to himself, "okay. Let's see if this place has a medkit or something."