Chapter Text
Kylo stares at the ceiling. It’s like it should be... until it isn’t.
The dull, clean metal gives way to dirty, grimy, battered. It’s familiar, too, but this is from memory and not from reality. Not... current reality.
“Did you have to take my old room?”
“I didn’t know it was your old room,” the voice not-next to him lies.
“You knew very well it was my old room.”
“I thought you weren’t ‘Ben’ any more... so?”
Kylo closes his eyes, so he doesn’t have to see the same thing that the blasted Poe Dameron is looking at. Years ago, it had been reversed: he’d been the one sleeping aboard the Millennium Falcon whilst Poe slept wherever Poe slept.
The circularity of this is not lost on him.
Kylo thinks about saying ‘I hate you’ to him, but it’s a tired line. Instead, he hears the hum of an engine he knows too well over the top of the one here. It’s slightly different (there’s some fine tuning needed, which he’s sure Poe will also know), but it’s still the same bird.
Poe is lying alongside him on the bed, whilst they also both lie on B—on Kylo’s old bed, from another life. Focussing when two lives overlap is not easy, but it’s his own fault for not dismissing their connection. But in his defence, neither has Poe.
He should have done it years ago, really. You can do that. You can decide to turn away your soul-mate. The one person who is supposed to ‘fit’ with you. Not necessarily agree with you, or be like you, but... supposed to ‘work’ for you. Be what you truly need and want.
You can ignore them, dismiss them. You can even find someone else, if you want to. Someone you think you know will work better for you than your soulmate...
...but, once you do, that’s it. Once you send them away, they’re gone. And you’re basically admitting to them, and to the world, that you aren’t able to take what’s right for you. That you can’t accept the one person who you should be with, for whatever reason. Either you hate your own happiness too much, or else you can’t let someone that close to you.
And Poe hasn’t given up, either.
“I think it’s the secondary—“
“Yes,” Kylo says, to stop him keep talking about it.
“Okay.”
“I’m not here to fix your ship.”
“No. You wanted to see where we are, so you can come blow us up some more?”
“The thought had occurred to me.”
“So?”
“You’re not blaming this on me.”
“I think that’s precisely what I’m doing.” Poe rolls over, the sound as if he’s really there, though Kylo knows there won’t be any sign of his presence touching the bed.
That sun-warm face looking at him, here on his bed. Kylo is undressed under the sheets, but Poe has seen much worse, over the years. He refuses to make eye-contact with him.
“Ky... you killed my friends. My squad. You killed—“
“Have you forgotten the part where I’m supposedly the villain?” Kylo retorts, sharply. “Your enemy.”
“I was vibrantly aware of that when you aimed cannons on us.”
“And when you destroyed our Dreadnaught?”
“You started it.”
And now Poe sounds like a child again. Kylo pinches the bridge of his nose, and exhales sharply. Back to the same old retorts as ever. Is he his soul mate because he’s—
“Ben,” Poe pleads. “Can we at least talk about this?”
“Why? Talking never does us any good. You blame me, I blame you, and all we do is argue.”
“You obviously want to talk or I wouldn’t be here.”
“Unless the Force fucked up when it thought we were supposed to be together.” Which. Maybe it did. Sometimes even soulmates weren’t meant to be together. Even those who were ‘ideal’ for one another... didn’t last.
“If that’s the case, you could always tell me to never come back again. And mean it.”
Kylo forces his eyes shut, and tries to focus only on the room at hand. Tries to forget the other ship, and the other person. Tries to tune in on the real, the physical, the visceral. He pushes his fingernails into his palms, and he breathes.
It is not like being a Jedi. It is not like Luke Skywalker’s old lessons. It is not like the Supreme Leader’s old lessons. It is like – it is like – being free.
“You could just ask me, you know,” Poe’s voice says, sadly, as he leaves.
And Kylo remains in this room, this ship, this life... alone.
***
He wonders how many people here know, or suspect, that the so-called love of his life is their mortal, sworn enemy. One person does, for sure: General Leia Organa.
She’s known for years, of course. And part of Poe has to suspect that all this keeping him out of the ‘loop’ has been because they fear he’s going to somehow spread the word to Kylo and the First Order. Wonders if they thought the ‘trace’ on them was his connection, wonders if his impulsive behaviour has somehow been tagged as a side-effect of his bond with Leia’s wayward son.
If so, they should go whole hog and just remove his clearance and rank and assistance entirely.
Oh wait, they can’t. He’s the best and most daring pilot they have.
(Not saying much, there’s so few of them now that they have only as many people to climb in the cockpit as most species have limbs. And even less ships than that.)
Maybe they also want him for what intel he can get on the First Order, but no one ever explicitly asks him for it. It’s all sideways glances and furtive foot-shuffles. If they trusted him then maybe they wouldn’t have—
It’s banthashit. It is. Poe hates that he’s in this position, stuck between two things, pulled constantly at his seams. He’d thought... he’d thought, once, how wonderful it was to be bound to someone as vibrant, strong, and important as Ben Organa-Solo.
Back when he’d been Ben.
Does it still count as the same person when you’re—
“Poe.”
She only calls him that when it’s not official, not work, not...
“General.”
She doesn’t correct him. Either she likes the title, she respects his choice, or... who knows. He’s still smarting from earlier, and he’s not feeling all that much like calling her almost-mom.
The very slightest of headtilts summons him, and he considers resisting for a moment, before he goes over. Like he could ever disobey her for long.
Poe sits behind the Dejarik table. He’s been on the Falcon only a little in his life, and now... now they’ve moved into it.
Which would be cool if not for the fact that they’re living on it because it is the very last ship the Resistance owns. That part sours it, even if a tiny voice speaks up that once it was only three Humans, a Wookie, and two droids with this ship, and they brought down the Empire.
But back then, the Rebellion was somewhere to fly to, and now they are it.
“You know I... don’t like to speak to you about... your connection.”
No, she doesn’t. It’s also kind of considered poor taste, but then how many times does someone’s distant soulmate happen to be a mortal enemy who is regularly trying to kill you and everyone you love? That kind of gives her a ‘get out of jail free’ card.
“And I appreciate that,” he says, waiting for the ‘but’ that is sure to follow.
“I need... I need my son back, Poe.”
“Don’t you think I’ve spent the last decade or so trying just that?”
What, like he hasn’t tried before? Like he’s just... given up and only visits him to sneer? Poe sucks on his teeth in frustration.
“I know you have. Believe it or not, so have I.”
Oh, yeah. Force-thing. The Force chooses to connect those who are supposed to be together, but also the more sensitive amongst sentient races get to use it for other reasons, too.
Not that he’s angry or possessive or jealous that Kylo gets to talk to others, or others get to talk to him. No.
“So what is it you’re asking me, exactly?”
Because if she can talk to Kylo herself, why bother approaching him?
“I don’t know. Poe, I... I just lost my husband, and my brother. I lost almost every friend I ever had...”
“You lost Alderaan, and you kept fighting.”
He meant that to sound reassuring, but he realises from the pained lines around her eyes... it isn’t. Reminding her of her adoptive parents’ death? Her whole culture and way of life?
“I’ve lost too much.”
“You don’t want to lose him.” It’s obvious, but she needs to know he understands. “I’m... trying, General. But he locks me out.”
“Not all the time.”
“No.”
“Then... there’s still hope.”
She says it as a statement, but he knows it is a question. She needs the reassurance, right now. Needs to know... so he reaches over, and lays his hand on the back of hers. “There’s still hope. I haven’t given up on him just yet.”
“I didn’t give up on Han, either,” she replies with a wry smirk.
“But you didn’t see him... before?”
“I did. But it was in passing. I realised I’d seen his face in crowds, but he wasn’t ready to look for me, properly.”
Which is unusual in and of itself. Normally soul-bonds were so vibrant as to be impossible to ignore, but then... she’d been married to the cause, and he’d been married to his freedom. Poe had watched as Han Solo left Leia’s life, and it had crushed him to know that two people who loved one another so desperately could bear to be apart.
But they had.
And he’d... broken inside, just a little, at the thought that Kylo might never come back.
How long do I wait? He wants to ask, but it’s rude. A life spent waiting, wondering if death would take one of them before it came to any resolution. Poe sometimes thinks his recklessness is in part due to a subconscious desire to shock Kylo into coming ‘home’, but... that would be to deny just how much he also loves the danger, the risk.
On Jakku, he’d thought at last, at long last...
...but Kylo had acted like they didn’t know one another at all.
What is he supposed to do if the man he’s supposed to love hates him?
What does it say about Poe, too?
“I’ll keep fighting,” he promises.
A hand on his cheek, squeezing where last it slapped. “I know you will.”