In This Twilight || Closed

Toma understood why he had been named captain at such a young age. Despite her nerves, despite the fact that she’d never been on a single mission like this with the Resistance, his easy demeanor was setting her at ease. There was something about his smile that made her anxiousness settle down into something manageable. She was even able to relax back into the chair a little.

She followed his gaze to the controls. Kriff, she hadn’t shot those since the last time that she’d seen her parents. The thought made her stomach sour, but by some miracle, she was managing to keep her expression composed. “I’ve done it before,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. She pressed her lips together, turning her head so he wouldn’t see just how hard she was pressing, the skin turning pale she was pressing so hard.

The last thing that she wanted was for him to think that she couldn’t handle – or didn’t want to handle – the turrets. So she gave herself a second before looking over to him and forcing herself to smile a little. “I won’t feel obligated to do it. I’m fine with it.” Her fingers tapped against her thigh as she thought over what to say next. “I grew up on ships like this. I know my way around them fairly well.”

Her stomach shifted as they made it out of the hangar. She wanted to lean forward, to watch in awe as the sun set, but she kept herself back, choosing to admire it from where she was. It was the same one that she’d seen from the ground countless times, but it was different from the sky. It was breathtaking.

Toma let out a soft mhmm at his words. She wasn’t entirely surprised that they were left to make it up. It wasn’t the kind of mission that required already set or extensive covers. She thought it over for a moment before nodding her head. “Weapons are easier to have as cargo. More important, though, is how well you can pass as a smuggler.” She let a small, teasing smile pass over her lips. “How well do you know smuggler’s cant?”

She cocked a brow at him, the smile growing wide at his request. She scooted forward in the seat, eyes glancing over the layout of the controls. It had been awhile, but she reached out, the muscle memory taking over as she ran through the sequence. She entered in the coordinates, typing them in and making sure that everything else was good to go before she pulled the lever. She felt the gentle pull as the stars started to streak for a moment before they were propelled forward. She didn’t mean to, but she glanced over to him, a smug grin on her lips. “Did I pass the test?”

---

Kylo Ren was a little disappointed with her. There was an anxiety that was swirling around her. There was a part of him – a large part of him – that wanted to snap at her, his voice sharp enough to make her knock it off. It was distracting him, wrapping around his mind and trying to entice him to be just as twitchy. That, however, was easy enough to ignore. His own nerves, however, were proving harder to ignore.

He’d always been obsessed with his grandfather, even before he had made the choice to go down the path he was currently on. There had been something there, something that he had identified with so strongly that he couldn’t shake the obsession. Vader had been strong and imposing, but more importantly, he had been loyal to his cause. He had been on the path to make the galaxy what it needed to be. The Supreme Leader had told Ren that he – Kylo Ren himself – could go beyond that.

“You need to relax.” The words came out without him really thinking. He’d felt that little prick of anger, and despite his fascination with her emotions, it was getting to be annoying. He reached out, skimming her emotions just enough to parse out what was most likely going through her mind. He could take what he wanted with ease, but he needed her to be pliant enough with him, and she struck him as the type to be annoyed with such things.

“I’m not going to betray you,” he said. Granted, he might, but she didn’t need to know that. He assumed that that was what was going through her mind. A combination of fear and anger was usually due to the unknown, to being unsure as to what was going to happen. It was common enough. Any of the other Knights would have just taken the knowledge that they wanted. It was easier, sure, but it was messier. It could be painful if they were of a particularly strong mind.

He looked over to meet her gaze, raising a brow at her as his jaw set. Maybe he should have gotten someone a little less intelligent. He admired her rage and her fire, sure, but there was something there. Something that made him think that if pushed to her limits, there was a chance that she would break rank. He wouldn’t necessarily say that she would betray him, but there was a chance that something would happen. He turned his gaze back to the viewport, watching as they sped towards whatever their inevitable fate was going to be.

Poe managed to study the controls before him carefully while keeping fully aware of what Toma was doing in the seat next to him. It was a trait that was crucial to most pilots and he seemed to have a natural sort of knack for it. He just kept repeating to himself how this all had to run smoothly; if not for his sake, than for hers. To have her first mission be a royal fiasco was not an option for him. His dark eyes wandered over her features for a moment as he listened for her reply to his question. There was something very earnest about her, like there was nothing more that she wanted than to see the Resistance succeed. Not every recruit possessed that.

He nodded a bit as she answered him, the smile never leaving his features even though he wanted to ask her why. She seemed too young and too new to the Resistance to have had to encounter a situation where she’d have to utilize a turret. He held back in asking her anything though. Again, he didn’t want to bring the atmosphere down. Nar Shaddaa was going to be stressful enough and this was their calm before the storm. “Why don’t we have to as a gunner in one of our larger ships then?” He questioned. “I never got to ask, and I’m sorry if this sounds terrible, but what…exactly is your job within the Resistance?” He shot her a sheepish sort of look before turning his gaze forward once more.

Carding a hand through his hair, he kept the ship steady, settling in to just how it controlled and maneuvered. It wasn’t a terrible ship, if he was honest with himself. He might opt to fly these sorts of ships more often, when it was needed. It was relaxing in a way, or as relaxing as piloting could be. “Okay. That’s a start,” he told her, shooting her a grin as she said she’d be able to be a gunner if need be. “I’m going to try not to attract too much attention to ourselves, but…we better plan for the worse and hope for the best. And the best case scenario is one where we leave Nar Shaddaa without raising any eyebrows.”

Poe let his gaze wander the viewport for a few moments as she hummed in response, trying to wrack his brain for exactly a reason for them to be on Nar Shaddaa. As she spoke, his gaze flickered over to her brows raised expectantly. Though, what she had said next had a wide smile curling his features and a laugh leaving him before he could stop it. “Can I pass for a smuggler? Is that even a question?” He asked, continuing to laugh softly as he kept his gaze directly forward. “I mean…I look the part at least, I think.” He scratched at the back of his head, lifting a brow at her next question. “I uh…” He paused for the longest time, sheepishly grinning over at her. “You probably should give me some crash course in the basics of smuggler speak.”

As he ran his tongue over his bottom lip, he turned to watch her as she smiled, feeling something rising in his chest that was similar to a quick takeoff or a small victory. Poe’s eyes followed her movements as best as he could and keep an eye on where they were going, grinning to himself as she seemed to know exactly what to do. The seat cradled him a bit as the G-forces slightly kicked in, and he turned to offer her a bright smile as she spoke, liking the look of the grin she wore. “I sure hope so now. You’ve already got us into hyperdrive,” he quipped, grinning crookedly over at her. His gaze studied her features for a moment, allowing himself a few moments to really look at her before he turned to look out the viewport once more. “So…tell me about yourself,” he said, grin still pulling at his lips.

---

The longer Cirilla kept her gaze on the viewport, watching the stars and planets flash by, the more she felt herself winding up. The tension in her body was slowly growing tighter and tighter and she knew it needed some sort of outlet. She felt like some wampa that was backed into a corner and fighting for its life. She had never in her life done anything like this, not even before she joined the First Order. She had always followed the rules so closely. She questioned a lot of them in her own particular headstrong way. That was one of things that she figured made Hux dislike her so much, questioning his regulations and guidelines for their ships.

She had never blatantly broken rules until now—and she had gone off the deep end. Stealing the general’s ship and disarming the tracking device? She was in deep nerf-shit when she got back to the Finalizer. Her gaze shot over to Ren as he implored her to relax, anger gripping her once more but she kept her expression straight. A noncommittal sort of hum left her as she turned to focus in front of her, at the stars and planets once more. He wanted her to relax? Not only was that probably the worst thing to tell a woman to do, it was an impossible feat. She was on a ship. The general’s ship. With just Kylo Ren. One wrong move and she’d end up choking like Snake Eyes or personally getting to meet that lightsaber of his. It was all too much.

His next comment had her brows lifting slightly, rage forcing her to forget her place for the moment. Cirilla’s expression had gone awfully coy and she turned to look at him with an almost innocent-looking expression. “You aren’t?” She questioned softly, head tilting slightly to the side before her expression crumbled and she faced forward again. “My life has been one giant betrayal,” she ground out through gritted teeth. “And as far as the First Order is concerned, I’m the expendable one, not you.” She shook her head, a snarl twitching at her upper lip. “The general will be waiting for me with his whole army to kill me instantly or send me to endless reconditioning. He fears you. There’s only one way this ends,” she continued, her mouth moving faster than her mind again as her hands gripped the handles of the yoke tightly. “I know how this ends. Regardless of your orders,” she told him, shaking her head.

The pilot managed to bite back whatever she was going to say next, knowing that she had already probably said too much. A shaky breath of air left her, whether of anger or fear, she didn’t know. Maybe…maybe if she tried to explain herself, he’d be reasonable. He seemed like an intelligent person. Perhaps he valued a shrewd mind. Either it worked or she was dead; it was worth the shot. “I’m going to be frank with you, sir,” she told him, jaw setting for a moment as she thought through her words carefully. “I came with you because I see something…similar in us.”

Drawing in a deep breath of air as her gaze roamed the controls, trying to make sure their journey was going as smoothly as it ought to. “We dislike the general. We…tend to have a temper. We’re bloody good pilots,” she listed before pausing a moment. “But there’s this unsaid power that you exude. Whether it’s the Force or something else, I don’t know.” She turned to him slowly, eyes meeting his boldly. “It brings people to their knees without a word being spoken. And I envy that so much,” she told him honestly as her voice grew soft. She turned away from him, cheeks flushing slightly at how foolish she felt she was being. “I thought…perhaps, I could learn a bit of that from you.”

Toma shrugged her shoulders a little as she sat back in the copilot’s chair. “When I joined, they specifically mentioned that they were looking for someone to decode any transmissions that came in, so I volunteered for that.” The rest of the group had instantly jumped at any squadron positions that had been up, and the being that was doing the recruiting had looked like they were going to be sick if someone didn’t offer to decode. “It wasn’t really what I wanted to do, but the being that got me to join would’ve cried if no one had offered themselves up for the position.”

There was an air about Poe that was tempting her let her guard down and actually allow herself to feel a little attracted to him. It’d be easy. Just his profile, with his hand carding through his hair, was something that almost any being would admit was attractive. But she shoved those thoughts back. She wasn’t going to let herself be distracted by his dark hair and warm eyes on a mission a like this. “From what I’ve heard, it shouldn’t be too hard to sneak in and out without being noticed. There are enough beings around that we should be relatively okay.”

It was hard to keep her resolve when he was smiling and laughing and asking her if he could pass for a smuggler. “You, uh, you look like a smuggler,” she said, ducking her head. His smile was a little too warm for a smuggler, but she didn’t doubt his abilities for a minute. You didn’t get to be one of the best and well known Resistance soldiers for nothing. “It’s…” She trailed off, letting out a whistle as she shook her head. “It might be best to just let me speak if it comes up? It’s kind of extensive.”

Her father said something similar to her when she was little. The two of them had been sitting at the little table in their kitchen on Corellia. It had been a hole in the wall when they’d been there, more of a waystation for them than anything else. She’d asked him what it meant when a tig was making cake rounds to the beach and back. He’d just laughed and shook his head, and said something about dealing the cards. It took her four years to get the joke – and understand that he’d been speaking the code himself. She glanced down to her lap for a moment before looking back over to Poe. “I could teach you some key words, though? Just to be safe?”

She chuckled, her chest jolting a little as his tongue ran over his lip. She jerked her gaze away, fingers thrumming against her thigh. There was a beat of silence as she thought over his request. Shifting in her chair, she turned to face him, matching his grin with one of her own. “What exactly do you want to know?” She asked. “I grew up on Corellia and a couple of light freighters. Parents were… Merchants.” Her mother would have burst out laughing at that. “I’m not sure what else to say.”

---

Kylo Ren, for a split second, forgot that he was without his helmet, and raised his eyes, his lips parted as looked at him. His pupils dilated a little as he watched her. There was a look on her face that he hadn’t seen before, and it was one that he hadn’t expected to see from her. More importantly, though, there was a rising anger radiating off of her that was swirling and intoxicating. Her voice was soft as she started to speak, but it didn’t last long.

His face fell back into that composed expression as she continued on. He didn’t know enough about her life to understand just what she was talking about, but there was enough for him to drag together some comprehension. He had to make a decision. It wasn’t one that he’d ever contemplated before, and he didn’t necessarily need to mean it, but she wasn’t stupid. She was intelligent, possibly too intelligent for her own good.

“For someone so astute, you’re quite narrow minded,” he mused, his voice low as he sat back in his seat. It was just like with Hux, in a way. He’d quickly learned that there were few things to truly enjoy when he wasn’t on a mission for the Supreme Leader, but one of them was getting under the man’s skin, to provoke him so slightly until the man erupted. While he wasn’t looking to annoy Holt so much that she’d threaten to shoot him (she might have been the only being in the First Order that would go through with it), he wanted to see her eyes filled with rage, to see her cheeks flush and her snarl even more.

“You said it yourself. He fears me. You are under my command currently, which means that I am responsible for you. Do you really think that they would order your execution if I made it clear that you were to live?” He kept his eyes on the viewport, adopting an almost bored expression before he looked over to her. “You will not die by his hand. As long as you aid me with this, I’ll guarantee your safety once this is over.”

Ren’s lips pressed together as she continued on. He yearned for his helmet, to have the freedom to let his expressions slide from one to the other without worrying that they would be seen. Everything she was saying was spot on. They were similar, but the power that she wanted, that she desired, it was unachievable for her in the way that she desired. But there was something else, something that he’d already seen. “Why?” He asked, rather blunt. “I’ve seen the fear that is the other pilots’ eyes. I’ve seen how they look at you, felt the fear that rolls off of them when you admonish them. What exact power are you searching for?”

Poe kept his eyes forward, sweeping over the controls in front of them to make sure they were still on course before turning them back to Toma as she spoke. “Transmission decoding is important…to all facets of the Resistance,” he told her honestly. “You could save my squadron or any of our ground forces from walking into traps or help us maneuver around the enemy.” He offered her a bit a grin. “I know it might not be exciting as other jobs to assume within the Resistance…but what you do is really important.” He paused for a moment, eyes drifting over her features. “I’m guessing you were the one that intercepted the information that prompted General Organa to give us this mission,” he told her, a crooked grin on his lips as he looked ahead.

He knew that most tended to look down on lose who did “smaller” tasks within the Resistance. Poe wasn’t one of them. He valued everyone from the people that held with sanitation around the bases to the General. Hell, he even valued some of the more sentient droids that worked around the bases too. Toma was no exception. Just judging from what he’d seen of her, she’d been pretty sharp. She’d have to be for General Organa to tap her for a mission like this as her first one. “If you could choose one thing to do within the Resistance, what would it be?” He questioned.

Nodding slowly as she mentioned Nar Shaddaa being an easy place to blend in, brow furrowing slightly in thought. “Yeah, our ship is pretty run of the mill too, so getting landing clearances shouldn’t be an issue either,” he murmured, lifting a hand from the yoke to rub at his chin in thought. His eyes darted over to her at how she’d said he’d looked like a smuggler and he let a few laughs. “Don’t lie, Toma,” he told her with a bright grin, “I know I don’t look like a smuggler. I could’ve let my beard grow in a little if we’d had time to prepare but…” He shrugged his shoulders a bit. A sigh left him as she mentioned smuggler slang being a lot; they had their work cut out for them, it appeared.

“Maybe my lack of smuggler know-how can play to our advantage, some how,” he murmured, tapping his chin slightly in thought as his dark eyes narrowed a bit. “Saying I’m new isn’t very believable…and saying I’m experienced is out of the question…” He was thinking out loud, trying to suss it all out in his head. Suddenly, an idea came upon him and he snapped his fingers, expression lighting up a bit. “I’ve got it. What if I pulled the short straw and ended up owing you a debt and you needed a pilot for something? That way, you don’t have to worry about me screwing things up if I can’t remember jargon.”

He glanced over to her for a moment, eyes tracing over her for a moment. He liked watching the way the stars looked in her eyes as the streaked by. Toma was a unique sort of pretty, he thought with a slight smirk as she looked away from him. Maybe under any other circumstances, if they weren’t following their paths within the Resistance, he could potentially see himself asking her out on a date or two. But being that they had a mission and relationships were something he hadn’t even entertained, he dashed those thoughts. “Just…whatever you want to tell me. Whatever you think might help us in the mission,” he told her with another shrug of his shoulders. “Do you have any hobbies or stuff you like to do outside of decoding transmissions?”

---

Cirilla knew that at any moment, she could let her mouth go too far and end up dead, but she was too angry…and she knew it. Her anxiety and fear toward this situation was recking havoc on her emotions, where she’d normally be able to contain them or at least consider what she was saying before she said it. Though, when she noted his expression, she felt her stomach give an uneasy sort of flip. Was that surprise? Intrigue? She didn’t know what it was, but seeing his expressions change brought her some sort of sick satisfaction.

Still, she managed to keep the victorious grin from her features as she stared out the viewport, lips pressed together tightly. She was still quite angry with him, perhaps just for him telling her to relax and that he wasn’t going to betray her was enough. It wasn’t just him she didn’t trust. She didn’t trust anyone. She knew that wasn’t necessarily what she’d been taught in conditioning, as absolute trust in the Supreme Leader was something that was drilled into their skulls, but it was far easier to loosely trust someone she’d never met than be blindsided by someone who she implicitly trusted.

Her head snapped over to him as he spoke, eyes alight and mouth dropping open slightly. “Narrow minded,” she repeated, shaking her head slowly as she turned to look back out the viewport. It was welling in her chest now, making her feel as though she was about to explode. He seemed so calm, too calm. It was only fueling her anger. She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, breathing out heavily through her nose as she shook her head. Her jaw clenched tightly on it's own, as if her body was trying to fight against the words that wanted to spill from her.

She turned to him for a moment as he spoke before turning to the controls and ensuring nothing was going on wrong with the ship. She was angry, but perishing while they were traveling in hyperspace wasn’t something she wished on either of them. “I understand that, sir,” she retorted, her voice sounding remarkably calm for how she wanted to just yell. “But even if you do claim responsibility for me and go against any execution order, do you think anyone will ever trust me again?” She kept her gaze on his. His expression was spurring her on, like she was getting angry for no reason. Cirilla looked away hurriedly, spots of angry color splashing the apples of her cheeks.

Drawing in a deep breath of air again, she checked how long it was going to take them to get to Nar Shaddaa. The sooner she left the plane, the sooner she could find someone that wasn’t Kylo Ren to tear into. The single question that left him had her gaze slipping over to him and she blinked a couple of times. “They fear me because they fear how easily I could end their piloting career. They don’t fear me,” she told him, shaking her head slowly. At his next question, she paused, feeling the anger slowly leeching away from her. “I…I hadn’t really given it much thought. I just know I want it. You remind me of someone my parents used to say visited them frequently. Treated them well and was as equally as feared.”

Toma let out a huff of laughter as he spoke. It was a nice change of pace, really. She’d seen the looks that some of the others in the Resistance had given her when she’d mentioned what her job was. It was crucial to the base, but a lot of beings looked down on stuff like that, as though if you weren’t risking your life for the cause, then you weren’t even really a part of it. “Thanks,” she said, offering him a warm smile. She could feel her cheeks warm a little at his words. “Actually, I wasn’t. One of the other beings, Jak, picked it up and decoded it. The general’s just, uh, taken a liking to me, I suppose?” She felt a little weird to say the words aloud, but it was the truth. She’d been one of the few recruits to stick around decoding messages for longer than a standard month. General Organa apparently respected that.

Her fingers drummed against the arm of the chair, humming softly as he tried to think of just what she’d want to do. “I don’t know, really. When I was younger, before all this started, I, uh –“ She ducked her head, a sheepish sort of smile sliding across her mouth. “I always wanted to be a spy, like the guy that helped get the Death Star plans just before Luke took it down. That still sounds kind of cool, if I’m being honest,” she said, giving an embarrassed laugh.

“I’m pretty sure they don’t give a shit about who’s coming in unless they look like they’re carrying something expensive.” She glanced around the ship to make a point, smirking as her gaze rested on some of the areas that had a little more wear and tear. “And this one doesn’t look that hot.” She opened her mouth to argue with him, but had to promptly close it. “You just look a bit too nice to be a smuggler, you know? Most smugglers just have that arrogant kind of confidence around them, that make you want to slap them,” she said, grinning a little. Her gaze slid over him, trying to imagine him with a beard. It was too hard to picture, really. When she’d seen him around, it was like this. She’d seen some of the posters with him on them, but he only had a little bit of stubble on those.

“That could work,” she mused, nodding her head slowly. “You’d be fine with me leading the discussions then, if anything came up? If I hired you as a pilot, that’d mean that I was in charge?” Toma phrased it as a question, unsure of just how okay he would be with all of this. She had faith in herself that she could handle all of this, but she wasn’t sure how Poe would feel about that. “I don’t think anyone would get too curious. Smugglers aren’t known for asking a lot of questions.” If only there was more time, then they’d actually have time to prepare.

Toma took in a deep breath of air, lips pressing together as she debated on elaborating on her past. There were things that could help, but a sharp pull in her chest was making her hesitate. “My parents were, uh, a special kind of merchant, if you will. There might be some contacts around Nar Shaddaa that could give us some information, if we need it.” Actually admitting to Poe that her parents had been actual smugglers was something that felt a lot like admitting it to the authorities. “Hobbies? In the Resistance?” She asked, laughing softly. “I’m assuming that a couple of us getting together and drinking occasionally doesn’t count as a hobby?”

---

Kylo Ren had thought that he would enjoy this more, that he would enjoy her anger and frustration. And to a point, he did. He enjoyed watching her lips pressed tight together, liked the way her mouth dropped open a little as she shook her head. He especially enjoyed the intoxicating way that her anger swirled around him. What he didn’t enjoy, though, was her doubting him. He didn’t appreciate the way that it was sounding to him, as though she somehow doubted his abilities. If Ren really thought about it, he would see that she wasn’t saying that at all. She was more concerned with how she would be received by the First Order, but he wasn’t seeing that at all.

“What does their trust matter?” He questioned, his voice even. “You say that you want power, that you want them to fear you, but you worry yourself over anyone trusting you after this?” He tried to understand her reasoning, but it was hard. From the second that he’d left that shithole he’d been stuck in with him, from that moment when he’d finally been freed, the Supreme Leader had made it clear to him that he was above the First Order. The First Order was a means to an end, not the be-all-and-end-all of their plans. So what if no one trusted him? They were bugs under his boot waiting to be squished.

“You’re angry,” he mused. The words slipped out of his mouth unbidden, but he didn’t regret them. If she wanted to witness power, he’d show her. But this? This wasn’t even power; it was mere parlour tricks. “You want power, to make people kneel before you…” He trailed off, sighing softly. His words had been low and dark as he’d spoke, filling up the quiet hum of the ship with those images. He could see it clearly enough, the image of her forcing those before her to kneel, the beings trembling with terror. “You want it, but you won’t get it. Not if you’re concerned with those below you.”

Ren thought it over for a moment, looking out across the viewport as she spoke. “They fear your position.” They feared what she could do, but they didn’t fear her. It made enough sense to him. When it came to him, they feared everything. His title, his position, but more importantly, him. They feared the fact that he could end them within seconds, snapping their necks with a flick of his wrist or halving them with his lightsaber. And that was what she desired.

“In what way?” He asked, turning a little in his seat to look at her. It was kind of interesting, in a way. He could picture her as royalty quite easily. Her profile was soft and dainty in a way, but the steel in her gaze and in her stance belied that when he looked at her for longer than a moment. She was fascinating, somehow soft lines and hard planes all at once.

Poe let his eyes drift over her for a moment. It wasn’t odd for him to look at those beings that the Resistance had put him in contact with and to wonder what their stories were, to wonder where they came from or where they wished to go. With Toma, it seemed to be a little bit different. There was something more he wanted to know, something he wasn’t too sure of exactly, but it was there. He offered her a nod as she thanked him, mirroring her smile. “Don’t let anyone make you feel like you’re smaller than them, ever. Not for what you do in the Resistance. Not for your past. Not for anything,” he told her, a quiet sort of strength in his tone. “Not everyone has to appreciate what you do, but we’re all in this fight together. Some others just have a harder time remembering that.” He turned to look at the controls for a brief moment and checking their travel time.

His brows lifted slightly as she said the general had taken a liking to her and a crooked grin curled his lips. “That’s not exactly easy to do with General Organa. She sees something special in you,” he said, turning his head to look at her and smile. It was becoming easy to forget they had a mission to accomplish, what with the fact they weren’t being followed by the First Order and with the easy conversation they were having. “I guess you’re sort of getting that now, if you think about it. We’re spying on the First Order…potentially even Kylo Ren. It may not be as big as the Death Star, but it’s bound to be important if General Organa has us trying to get information on it.”

A short laugh left him as she mentioned Nar Shaddaa not really caring about who landed on their turf. He supposed he was so used to Resistance protocols and having to always watch his back for the First Order. Nar Shaddaa was free, unclaimed space by either faction. “I don’t know about that, Toma,” he said softly, the joke evident in his tone before he even said it. “We’ve got a caf machine,” he finished, shooting her a poignant look and letting out another laugh. He stared forward once more, hands grasping at the yoke even though the hyperdrive system was doing most of the work for him on keeping the ship on course. “Well…I guess I can’t be too angry when you put it that way.” By now, that crooked grin was back, crinkling the corners of his eyes slightly. “I can be mean, when I have to. I really just don’t like to, if I’m honest.”

Dark eyes glanced over to her from the viewport, watching her as she spoke. “Of course. I’m fine with just about anything that doesn’t draw attention to us unnecessarily. I’m a pilot, so pretending I’m just a pilot will be the easiest. You obviously know what you’re talking about when it come to smuggling, so you should probably take the lead,” he said, nodding a bit afterwards. “Yes, we’ll go ahead and go with that—you being in charge.” When they reached Nar Shadda, there would be no more Resistance, no First Order. It would just be them trying to make sure they didn’t end up killed, getting the information they needed, and leaving whenever any communications stopped.

Poe bit at his bottom lip as he glanced over at her, expression dropping a bit when he noted her expression. When she spoke, he realized why she’d looked the way that she did. Instead of initially saying anything, he merely nodded his head slowly, eyes finding their way forward once more. “No one there would know you’ve joined the Resistance, right?” He questioned, brows furrowing slightly. He didn’t think a moon run by the Hutts would have any First Order supporters, but he didn’t doubt that they were everywhere. A soft laugh left him as she spoke. “Yeah, you can’t be on duty all of the time,” he told her, shooting her a brief look before his eyes found their way forward again. “I mean…I like to work on my X-wing…which I guess it could still be considered work, but I find enjoyment in it.”

---

If there was one thing Cirilla was certain of, it was that no one had probably had the nerve to question Kylo Ren, or even show the slightest amount of anger toward him, like she was right now. It was almost enough to cause her to remind herself that she could end up pushing too far and have him end her - almost. Part of her was wondering why he was allowing this. He didn’t seem the type to take a questioning mentality too lightly. Her eyes slipped over to him, studying his features for a moment. There was something that kept drawing her attention to his eyes, the splattering of freckles across his features that seemed to only mark one side of his face, or his lips. There was something she found attractive about how his features worked together. At that realization, she looked away sharply.

She drew in a breath of air through his nose as he questioned her, teeth sinking hard into the inside of her cheek. As much as his return questions annoyed her, at least he wasn’t outright as angry with her as she was with him and the entire situation she found herself in. “I’m not part of the High Command, sir,” she snapped, a slight quiver to her voice with how much she wanted to just yell. She turned to look him in the eye, lips a tight thin line before she spoke again. “If I lose the trust of the people I take orders from, I lose time I could be in my ship, killing every last Resistance pilot I come across.” Her voice had a sharp edge to it, the quiver in it only making her angrier. “The only true power I have comes from the weapons I’m given. Take them away and I’m just a spoiled, angry little princess.”

By now, her chest was heaving and her face felt flushed. Cirilla felt the explosive rage gnawing at her insides, urging her to let it out. Normally, when she was trapped in a ship and this angry, she could shoot Resistance ships until they exploded into oblivion or try some risky evasive maneuvering that held her blow off steam. She couldn’t exactly do either at the moment. When he spoke, she squeezed her eyes shut. His voice was too soft, too pleasing to listen to for what he was saying. “And you’re not helping,” she ground out, her dark gaze slipping over to him for a moment. A sharp exhale left her as he continued. “I’m just part of the elite forces. I’m just a pilot. It’s not that I don’t want power. To get it properly, I’d have to leave being a pilot behind and become an officer. I don’t want that either.”

Becoming an officer never appealed to her; too much barking out orders and not enough action for her. She preferred flying and the feel of the control column of her TIE fighter recoiling with every blast of the turrets on her ship. It wasn’t that she couldn’t have left her position in the elite forces—she just didn’t want to. She didn’t reply to the next thing he said, eyes slipping shut and nostrils flaring as she sunk her teeth into the inside of her cheek. Cirilla clamped down on it until she felt the tissue tear and metallic blood trickling into her mouth. She lifted a shaking hand from the steering column of the ship, resting it at her thigh as she clenched her hand into a fist so hard her knuckles popped.

Blinking her eyes open as he spoke, she glanced over at him once more. Again, he seemed a bit more intrigued in what she was saying instead of bored like he’d been before. “He wore a mask, like you,” she said simply, knowing that was not the only reason. “My parents said he had limitless power. Enough to cause even the bravest man question his courage. As a child, it saddened me that I would never get to meet him, to witness this being for myself.”

There was something about Poe that confused her. She wasn’t sure what it was, but whatever it was, it was rearing its head as he spoke. He struck her as genuine, which was a thing that was hard pressed to find throughout the galaxy nowadays. But there was more to it. He was earnest in a way that she’d never seen in a being his age. She couldn’t remember the last time that someone had told her that what she was doing was important, that she shouldn't’ let anyone make her feel like that. Whatever words she was supposed to say in response got stuck in her throat. Toma looked over to him, lips parted just a little as she gave a slow nod of her head. “Thanks,” was all she managed to get out.

“She’s different than I imagined when I was younger,” she mused. She thought back to the various holovids that she would watch, obsessed with the Rebellion and all that had gone on. Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan had been the first female being that Toma had ever seen to be so strong. “I think I like the real her better than I would’ve how I pictured her.” General Organa was strong in so many ways, but there was a softness to her that Toma had never picked up when she was a kid. “It feels different now, though, than when I was a kid. It feels a little more serious now,” she murmured. She took in a deep breath, trying to ignore the prickle of fear at the mention of Kylo Ren.

She let out a laugh at the mention of the caf machine and grinned. “At least we’ve got a caf machine.” Reaching up to scratch at the back of her neck, she huffed out a laugh. If she tried hard enough, she could imagine the two of them being old friends, flying off to do something that wasn’t risking their life. Toma had always assumed that going on a mission with the Resistance would feel as though you were always running. This wasn’t anywhere like that, though. No one knew they were going. No one knew what they were doing. The First Order wasn’t after them. It was an odd feeling. “I have a hard time imagining you being mean,” she said, her hand dropping back to her lap as she looked over to him. “You’ve got a nice air about you.”

So it was final, then. She’d be in charge of their little fake smuggling job. That wouldn’t be too hard. Her formative years had been spent lingering at the top of the gangplank, watching her father negotiate with various beings across the galaxy. She still remembered how it went. “I could teach you a couple of words, though, just to be safe? If you’re a pilot that owes a debt to a smuggler, you’d probably have been around enough to pick up a couple of words.” She tried to rack her brain for some, which ones were most used, would be the easiest for him to remember.

Toma hadn’t even realized that she’d been holding tension in her shoulders. But the second he spoke, her shoulders sagged in relief. When she’d been younger - and dumber - she’d been relatively forthcoming with the information. It turned out, though, that a lot of beings equated smuggler with thief, and it hadn’t turned out well for her. “Kriff, no. I haven’t spoken to any of them in ages. But if they are there, they’d give me information.” Her eyes met his, and something calmed down inside her. “I mean, I’ve started reading a lot more, but I’m not sure if I’d called that a hobby.” She paused for a moment, thinking. “That little BB unit of yours - did you build it? I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a droid with an AI system that runs like that.”

---

“So you align yourself with a member of the High Command that will aid you,” Ren said. His words sounded almost bored. Her anger was picking up, though, and his thoughts were diverging from their careful patterns earlier to one that wanted to see how far she would go. He tried to remind himself that this was not a path that was necessarily smart. Mere minutes ago he’d been treading carefully. But the longer her anger swirled around him, the more it grew, the less he really cared. “You are currently under my command. I can guarantee that you will not lose time in your ship, and you can rip apart as many Resistance pilots as you chose.” He looked over to her, noting the way that her anger was picking up even more so.

He wasn’t sure if she was trained in the ways of resisting mental guidance. Few officers truly were. Skywalker’s pathetic attempt at raising the Jedi had failed, and most beings would never come across a Force user that was strong enough to do such things. So he skimmed the top of her mind, just light enough that she would notice him doing it if she could. He’d wait to guide her anger into something better, something focused and deadly. “You’re acting like a spoiled, angry little princess.” He wondered if he should have said the words softer, or even at all. But they came out, even and bored as though he’d commented on the weather.

Her anger was intoxicating, but her words were taking him around in circles. He sighed. “You want power? You take it. If we’re so similar, you and I, then you should be able to take it.” For a brief erratic moment, he could picture her in power, standing by his side. The thought made his stomach dip in a way that hadn’t happened in a long time. It was such a long time that it took him a moment to understand what it was - attraction. He was attracted to that image, of her in power alongside him. “There are other, more effective ways of destroying the Resistance than just shooting their pilots down.”

Kylo Ren wished that he had given himself a little more time instead of just charging into this blindly. He should have looked up her records on his datapad, to understand just what it was that drove her. There was a hatred towards the Resistance, that much was clear. But something had happened that made her despite that title of princess, that made her spit the word out as though it were poison. “Causing yourself pain isn’t going to help you manage your anger unless you know what you’re doing,” he said. There was a quiet part of his brain that was telling him that he was goading her into a fight, taunting her like he was a youngling. “If you choose to do that, you might as well do it right.”

His gaze flickered over her, hot and intense as he tried to parse out what she was saying. “Was it Vader?” He asked, forcing himself to keep his voice calm. The only way to get any useful information was to appear as though he really didn’t care. Once she had something over him, something that he wanted, then she could try and use it as leverage for something. He watched her, his pulse rising as he waited for her answer.

Poe knew he might’ve gotten a little bit preachy with what he’d been saying to Toma, but it was what he thought all parts of the Resistance should hear about. The mindset that only officers, soldiers, or pilots were the only important members of the Resistance was one that needed to be broken. He’d met quite a few cocky pilots who liked to imagine they carried the whole survival of their faction on their backs…and were all too eager to let everyone know it. They were the few that Poe was incredibly happy to put in their place in a way that only he could. He wasn’t rude or mean, just blunt and truthful about it. He smiled over at her as she replied to him. “You’re welcome,” he said, offering her a small nod in return.

His eyes wandered the controls in front of him, tweaking a few of the controls, though he could rely on the hyperdrive to get them to the right place for the most part. “Really?” He asked, turning to look over at her with a crooked grin. A crooked grin that quickly turned into a fully blown smile at what she said next. “Most beings that join the Rebellion always seem to think the holovids don’t really capture how witty and blunt she can be at times. I appreciate it, but not everyone else really does,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “I think she’s the best leader for the Resistance.” He shot her another sidelong look as she spoke again. “As serious as this is, it should be fairly easy if we just keep our heads down and keep a low profile,” he told her honestly, watching her for a moment or two.

A laugh left him at the one that she let out, glad that he managed to produce such a reaction out of her. He grinned triumphantly over at her before turning ahead once more. He drew in a deep breath of air, checking how much flight time they had left until they reached Nar Shaddaa. Thankfully, D’Qar wasn’t too far—at least in terms of the known galaxy—from Nal Hutta and Nar Shaddaa. He grinned crookedly at what she’d said about him being mean. “Thanks,” he said, eyes flickering back over to her as she spoke, “but trust me. I can definitely be mean if someone messes with things I care about.” He drew in a deep breath of air before adding, “It’s a side I hope I don’t have to show whenever we get to where we’re going, but have I feeling I’m going to have to.”

Carding a hand through his hair, he knew that this was far too randomized of a situation for him to try and strategize anything like he did with the normal missions he went on. Poe couldn’t recall the last time he’d stepped foot onto a planet that didn’t have ties to either side of the war. Nal Hutta wouldn’t exactly be his first pick for one of his first surface-side missions in a while, but he didn’t exactly have a choice. “That’d probably be our best bet,” he told her, brow furrowed slightly before he turned to her. “Think I’ve got brains enough to remember?” He questioned jokingly.

Poe would’ve had to been blind not to see how tense she’d been until he spoke. Of course, he wanted to question about her past, but he knew that was probably a testy subject with her that would no doubt upset her. Abating his curiosity seemed to be his best bet. “Good. There’s a potential they could come in handy should we need help getting leads,” he said, rubbing at his jaw for a moment. He held her gaze as she looked over to him, lips tilting upward at one corner. “That’s a hobby. Maker knows last time I picked up a book that wasn’t a manual or something like that,” he said with a short laugh. He looked forward once more, hands loosely gripping the yoke in front of him. “No. It’s all factory,” he told her honestly. “I swear, the one I got is special though. He’s got way more personality than a droid should.”

---

Cirilla so desperately wanted to roll her eyes, but she had to remind herself that she wasn’t wearing her helmet. For as juvenile as she was being, rolling her eyes would be taking it a bit too far. Instead, she turned to face him, eyes alight and jaw set. “Really? Who out of the two members of the High Council shall I align with?” She asked sharply. “Once you get what you want out of this, are you just going to change your mind once we return?” A heavy sigh left her as she turned away, feeling her cheeks burning angrily as she felt a few stray strands of hair fell from the bun at the base of her skull. “Words are just words. Actions are all that matter,” she snapped, icy blue gaze focused ahead.

Her chest felt tight and her breathing had picked up slightly in an attempt to keep herself as calm as possible. It wasn’t working. Then, she felt it. The slightest bit of pressure in her mind. It felt like icy tendrils brushing against the inside of her skill, threatening to delve into her thoughts and memories. It caused her to gasp sharply, spine straightening abruptly before she turned and stared wide-eyed over at Kylo Ren. Her mouth had fallen open slightly and her cheeks were burning brighter than ever. Was that him? Was he trying to enter her mind? For a moment, she forgot about how angry she was, ignoring what he’d said next in her shock before it came crashing over her like a wave. She was seething, the normally ice cold shuttle feeling remarkably warm around her. “Get out of my head,” she growled lowly through clenched teeth, lips pulling back slightly to form a snarl.

She was forgetting that she was supposed to be piloting the ship, keeping it on route to Nar Shaddaa. Kylo Ren didn’t seem to be too concerned by it. He didn’t need her to pilot the ship. “Easy enough for a Force-user like you to say,” she murmured, nostrils flaring slightly as she glanced over the controls in disgust. “I can’t take it in every situation,” she said before glancing over to him. “I can’t take it from you.” Her gaze narrowed slightly as she studied him. He seemed so placid, so void of emotion. It was the complete opposite of how she was feeling and it was infuriating. She grit her teeth as he mentioned there being other ways of destroying the Resistance. “Again, maybe for you,” she told him bluntly. “Shooting them down is far more satisfying for me.”

Letting out a shaky breath of air, she swiped her tongue over the inside of her cheek, tasting the blood that had slowly filled her mouth. Part of her was beginning to think that Kylo Ren actually liked her angry. She’d barked back at him more than she’d ever imagine he would allow. Cirilla has put the fact that he could so easily snap her spine or choke the life from her with just a thought. She lifted a brow at what he said next. Did he want her angry with him? Because it certainly seemed like it. And how did he know she’d bitten at the inside of her cheek? “And I suppose you know the ‘right’ way?” She asked, risking a dark glance over to him.

She caught his eyes glancing over her and the look her bore brought a new sort of flush to her cheeks, something far different than anger—or perhaps not that different at all. Cirilla contemplated holding out on information for a moment out of immaturity, but thought against it. “If I don’t give you an answer, you’ll get it from me someway or another,” she told him, making sure her voice has a certain amount of steel to it. She looked away from the viewport to glance over at him, leaving the cockpit of the shuttle silent for a moment or two. “Yes. It was Darth Vader.” Cirilla looked away from him, setting her jaw and drawing in a deep breath of air. “Why Nar Shaddaa? What’s our mission once we arrive?”

Kriff, if most people were like Poe when it came to their views on the many beings in the Resistance, they’d be filled up. There was a decent number of beings that she’d come across that were just fine with any position, any way that they could help. But there was also a decent number of beings that she’d met that were the exact opposite. It took a lot for her to let her confidence drop, and while it hadn’t really bothered her, she’d still caught sight of the ways their mouths would tick downward when they heard that she was decoding messages, and not a pilot or a spy or whatever else it was that they thought were the important roles.

Toma felt her cheeks warming up the second she caught sight of his grin. It was almost hard to look at, really. The way his lips shifted into a smoother smile, the warmth and kindness emanating off of him in waves. It was a bit too much in some ways. “Yeah, really,” she murmured. “I always thought she was more blunt than what she sounded like in the holovids, but I had no idea, not really. I like it, though.” Few beings were as blunt as General Organa, and Toma appreciated the older woman’s honesty. It stung occasionally when it was directed at her, but it also meant that whatever praise that came from the general was earned. “I know she is,” she said, shifting a little in her chair. “I know. Odds are we won’t even come into contact with Ren.” The thought still made the nerves twist inside her, whispering of just what could happen if they did come face to face with the man.

She stole a glance towards him as he turned forward. He had a nice profile. Her eyes slid over him nice and slow, trying to evaluate what she was looking at. Her skin was practically vibrating with nerves, constantly reminding her that they were going to Nar Shaddaa on a semi-dangerous mission. He looked as though they were going to a diplomatic meeting on Nabboo or somewhere that wasn’t the hub of the most degenerate beings in the galaxy. She glanced down to her lap when she noticed his gaze shifting back to her. “I don’t doubt you. It’s just hard to imagine you being mean.” She looked back up to him and sighed. “I’ve got that feeling too.”

Nodding as she thought it over, she hummed. “I’m sure you do,” she teased, grinning at him a little. “Alright, so first thing’s first - anybody calls you an alecake? You gotta be instantly offended. An alecake is an inexperienced smuggler - which you are, but still.” She shifted a little in her seat, scooting forward to glance at a screen. She hummed softly, satisfied with what it said before looking back to Poe. “A joker is a hotshot pilot. A keeper is a fence. A death stick is a Sith. A mynock is a bounty hunter. A shark is a smuggler…” She trailed off, realizing that she was rattling the phrases off a little too fast. “The ones you’ll really have to remember are these: the Queen is Snoke, the neighbors are essentially the First Order, and the old lady is the Resistance.”

A sigh left her as he spoke. “You can ask about them, if you’d like. My parents, I mean,” Toma clarified. She knew that trust was important on missions, especially like these. And with his reaction, she trusted him enough to talk to him. Divulging everything wasn’t going to happen, but she could give him the bare bones. She shook her head, smiling faintly. “There’s no doubt in my mind that your unit’s a special one. I don’t think I’ve ever met a droid with as much personality as it does.”

---

“Do not doubt me.” Those four words were the first time that Kylo Ren had snapped at her. They were low and dark, so tight that it was as though they could somehow physically break apart. He would put up with a lot, but his patience was starting to wear a little thin. “I said that if you aid me in this, I would guarantee your safety. You want to fly? You’ll fly.” The corners of his mouth pulled down into a scowl as he watched her. “Don’t push me.” His eyes raked over her face, watching as a few strands of hair fell down. It framed her prettily enough, but it was her gaze that made him pause. It was filled with ice, angry and frustrated and a backbone unlike any being he’d seen before.

Ren couldn’t help himself. The barest of smirks tugged upwards at his lips, all annoyance fading away when he realized that she was, in fact, aware of it. He pulled away from her in an instant. There was a part of him that was disappointed that she had been able to recognize his presence. It would have been easier if she hadn’t. Although, it was impressive that she could. “Who trained you to recognize that?” He asked, ignoring the bright anger that was coming off of her. He tamed his expression back into one of boredom. Control was needed in this situation. He couldn’t let his thoughts drift despite their tempting pull. He needed to focus.

“As I said earlier, narrow minded. There are other ways to take power than just using the Force.” She needed to learn how to control her anger, how to focus it like he’d been taught. Granted, there were still a plethora of times where he needed to exercise control and didn’t, but he had a better grip on it than Holt did. “You could take it from me if you really tried,” he said, ever-so slightly raising a brow at her. There was always a way to get power from a being, it just depended on what buttons to push. “If you really want to bring them to their knees, you would have to set aside what’s briefly satisfying to you and look at the longer game.” Surely shooting down Resistance fighters was only a fleeting jolt of satisfaction. Watching them burn underneath his heel would be much more pleasant.

He blinked at her. “I do.” He said those two words, left them hanging in the air as he leaned forward to look over the controls, as though he were checking her work. He wasn’t even paying attention to what he was looking at, just skimming his eyes from the right to the left, hmmming softly to himself. He wanted her to ask for it, to ask for his help. He admired the pride that she had within her, but he needed her to lay it aside for him, to ask him for help. The thought of her doing that sent warmth flaring through his body, bright and white and hot. His right hand clenched into a fist by his side, out of sight from her. His nails dug through the glove and into his palm, pushing that warmth down.

Kylo Ren didn’t even blink at her first remark. They both knew it was true, so there was no reason to argue with her. Just because she knew how to detect him didn’t mean that she was able to deflect away from it, that her mind was so powerful she could resist him. He pressed his lips together, trying to parse out what she was getting at. Was she trying to flatter him, saying that he reminded her of Vader? It was hard for him to tell. “We’re looking into an item,” he said, taking care to keep his voice flat. “An item that the FIrst Order-” That was technically a lie, but he didn’t care. “-has been looking for for a long time.”

Poe tilted his head to the side as a soft ‘ding’ resounded from one of the controls in front of him. They were nearing their destination, only a few standard minutes left of their trip before they’d exit hyperspace and be requesting landing clearances for the moon run by an underground syndicate. He contemplated whether or not they’d even need clearances to land in the first place. “She’s very…straightforward,” Poe said, wanting to be sure he chose his words correctly. “A lot of beings don’t know how to take it at first, to be honest,” he added, shooting her a sidelong glance. “While I admire honesty, if I know it’s going to hurt someone’s feelings, it makes it a little harder to say it.” He shrugged his shoulders a bit. “General Organa seems to have never had that problem.” A quiet laugh left him as he glanced over at Toma for a moment. “I doubt Ren will be able to walk around Nar Shaddaa with his helmet on and not cause some sort of fuss,” he reassured her, eyes slipping forward once more. “We’ll be fine.”

He could have called her out on the fact that she seemed to be staring at him for longer than what would typically be deemed appropriate, in a light-hearted way, of course. Poe could feel her gaze on him, though he couldn’t really tell what she was looking at. Maybe she was merely looking for a break in the brave face that he put forward. On the inside, he was as unsure as ever and knew that this was not only an important mission, but one that he typically didn’t get sent on. Another grin curled his lips despite himself at what she told him as he studied a display off to his left for a moment. “Thanks,” he said softly before adding, “for as short a time as I’ve known you, I’m getting the same feeling.”

A laugh flew from him before he could stop it as she commented on his brains and he turned his body a little more to face her. “I guess I can’t let you down then, can I?” His gaze darted down to the grin she wore, finding the expression quite becoming on her. Poe provided her his undivided attention as she spoke, head nodding a bit in understanding once she’d finished describing an alecake. His brow lifted slightly as she took it upon herself to check one of the screens closest to her, taking the time to study her for a moment when she wasn’t watching. She was a special kind of beautiful, he thought to himself, taking in the soft lines of her face and full lips. He vaguely wondered if he’d have to make sure no one tried to make any unwanted advances toward her on Nar Shaddaa.

He shook himself from his thoughts as she continued to speak, nodding a few times in understanding. Once she finished listing of words, he took a few moments to let it sink in. “Okay, so I’m a probably what you would consider a joker,” he said with a crooked grin. “We should watch out for mynock and…is the old lady supposed to be an insult toward General Organa? Because if it is, I don’t know if we should tell her about it.” He paused before looking ahead once more, a grin twisting the corner of his mouth. “I can’t guarantee I’ll remember all of that…but that’s why you’ll be doing most of the talking,” he said, turning to her for a moment and hoping that he wasn’t putting too much pressure on her.

His grin fell slowly at the mention of her parents. Poe felt a bit conflicted about it all. Here she was telling him it was okay to ask, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to make her upset or bring their conversation down. Instead, he drew in a deep breath of air, turning to look at her fully with a small smile. “As much as I’m curious, if it’s…not the most pleasant thing to talk about, don’t feel obligated to. Most beings that join the Resistance…” He paused to sigh heavily, looking ahead. “Most beings have lost their parents and that’s their reason for joining.” He tapped his thumbs a bit on the steering of the yoke, teeth pulling at his bottom lip for a moment. “He’s like a teenager. He talks back like no other droid I’ve met,” he murmured, shaking his head a bit and grinning to himself at the thought of the unit waiting for him to get back.

---

Something about the way that Ren sounded when he snapped at her had her hair raising on the back of her neck. Cirilla slowly turned her eyes to him, managing to keep her expression neutral. However, all she wanted to do was smirk over at him. Maybe she understood why she was getting the inclination that Kylo wanted to get her angry. It was quite satisfying to watch someone’s emotions change, hear the anger in their voice. Instead, she steeled herself, putting on her best passive expression as he challenged her not to continue on with that part of their conversation at least. “Fine,” she said simply, turning her head forward once more.

Cirilla could see it, the smirk at the corner of his lips for a moment before she felt the icy, heavy feeling that had just brushed her mind leave abruptly. A shaky breath of air left her, a mixture of livid and relieved at the fact he hadn’t gone any further. Or, at least she hoped it was him. It hadn’t been painful, but she could easily see how it could have evolved into something excruciating. “No one did,” she told him, her tone cool and sharp. She sat up a bit straighter in her seat, blinking a few times. “I’ve never felt anything like that before in my life, so I just assumed that you were the cause.”

Her lips pursed slightly at his use of the term “narrow minded” to refer to her. Biting back anything she could say to him, she paused for a moment, drawing in a deep breath of air through her nose. “Perhaps, but one would assume the Force just makes it an easier feat,” she said, keeping her gaze in front of her. She was beginning to feel like she was finally reeling her anger back in, bottling it back up to detonate at some other time. Her brow furrowed slightly at what he said next. “I’m sure you’d see it coming,” she told him, shaking her head a bit. One would have to be stupid to try and usurp power from a Force-user, especially one with Ren’s reputation. She set her jaw at what he said next, a jolt in the pit of her stomach at the thought of bringing the Resistance down. Still, being a pilot was the only semblance of control she had in her life and becoming an officer was out. Cirilla was tempted to ask what he’d suggest for a “longer game” solution, but was too proud to.

A short hum left her at what he said next, nearly rolling her eyes at his answer. She’d expected him to get mad, maybe scoff at her, but not such an infuriatingly simple, two-word reply. Drawing in a deep breath of air until her lungs ached, she held it for a moment. Part of her wanted to snap back at him, asking him if he was so learned in the ways of channeling pain and anger, why had so many things around the ships he’d visited been destroyed by his hand? Instead, she remained quiet, lapsing into her own thoughts. Her gaze remained at the controls or at the stars speeding past them as he spoke of their mission, nodding her head a bit as she took in all in. She would not fail the First Order or Ren in this mission.

The more she thought about it, the more she wondered on what he’d meant by saying she may as well use her pain to abate her anger. Those two words echoed in her head again, lips pursing together again as she trying to make sense of it all. Not once had anyone told her to use her pain to control her anger. It was always ’a temper does not suit ladies, Cirilla’ or ’anger like yours will only get you into trouble’. Ren seemed to be speaking of channeling her anger through way of pain, to use it when it was merited. Her hand seemed to move on it’s own to the button that controlled the auto-pilot before she knew it. Jamming her fist down on it, she paused for a moment before swiveling her chair to face Kylo Ren fully. She kept her expression even, eyes flickering between his as her tongue dug into the inside of her cheek, tasting the remnant of blood there. “Show me the right way, then,” she implored, her Corustcani accent quiet against the hum of hyperdrive. “Show me the right way to manage my anger.”

Toma’s chest tightened as the sound came from one of the controls. She knew that sound, knew that they were only a few minutes away from starting their attempt to land. There was a chance that somehow the authorities would identify them and they’d be shot down immediately. Granted, that was a very small chance, but for a split second she found it hard to rein in her thoughts. She took in a deep breath, blinking hard before looking over to Poe, focusing on his words. “I admire that in her,” she said, smiling faintly. Straightforward was a word to describe General Organa. It was a polite word, but maybe not the most accurate. “I guess being in a position like hers, you’ve got to get used to hurting some feelings.” The thought made her scrunch up her nose. She wasn’t sure if she would ever be able to do that. “I know, I know. It’s just… Nerve-wracking.”

She ducked her head, his soft words catching her off guard a little. Something flipped in her stomach, something pleasant. It would have been nice to get to know him another way, when they weren’t on a mission. She could imagine him fitting right in with her small group of friends, drinking with them late into the night while they joked around and regaled each other with ridiculous stories that had happened during their time with the Resistance. She could imagine it quite easily.

“I have a hard time imagining you letting me down,” she said, shaking her head at him. Even if she hadn’t heard all those tales of Poe Dameron and his grand adventures, she would still know. There was just something about him, something that told her that he would do anything and everything to make sure that this mission would go smoothly, and that she’d get out without being hurt. In that moment, she decided that she would do the same thing for him. She’d make sure that he made it back to base alive, and with as little injuries as she could manage.

“You’d be a hammer too,” she mumbled, cheeks warming when she realized what she’d said. At least she hadn’t told him what that meant. That would’ve been embarrassing. “It’s what they used to call the Rebellion back in the day, so the name just transferred. And it’s not always the old lady. Sometimes it’s the wife, or the husband, or the spouse. Old lady is just the usual one.” She liked the way that that particular grin looked on him. “I’ll be fine, Poe. I promise.” She was a little nervous, but she could handle this. It was just like when she was younger and old enough to help her parents out.

She heaved in a breath and let it out as a slow sigh. “My parents aren’t dead, Poe. I didn’t join the Resistance because they died.” Her stomach twisted at the onslaught of memories. There had been a handful of times after she’d turned eighteen and ventured out on her own that she’d thought that they’d died. Things hadn’t ended on the best terms with them, but she’d always kept her feelers out, just in case. And sometimes, she got bad news, the kind where the truth had been twisted up so much that they ended up perfectly okay on some backwater planet while she freaked out. “He’s a good little droid. Kind of makes me wish I’d learned how to understand what droids like that say. I never could get the hang of it,” she said, smiling faintly.

---

Ren wasn’t an idiot. Not like Hux. Hux would have taken that fine and assumed that that was that, that that was the end of it. But Kylo Ren knew that it wasn’t. He knew that despite her single word, she didn’t trust him to follow through. The petty part of him that sounded suspiciously like his teenage self howled at the thought, wanted to leave her on Nar Shaddaa to die just to prove her right. But he took in a deep breath and forced himself to relax. It was a childish reaction to have. She was allowed to not trust him. If worse came to worse, he would use her and then dispose of her quietly. But she seemed useful. She seemed like a good ally to have in the future, when commands were being disrupted and someone needed to be placed into a position of power. She would be a good leader in that aspect.

“Few notice it without training.” It was all he could manage to get out. Had he messed up somehow, lost his edge? Had he pushed too far too fast? His Master had said that it was with a gentle hand, to go slow and soft enough so as not to raise awareness to what they were doing. Strong minds found it easier to resist mind compulsion, but a small caress against one’s consciousness? That was different. Maybe he had overestimated his touch. That was it. That could be it. The ache in his chest was telling him that deep down, he knew that it was wrong. He’d just barely skimmed the surface, something he’d done to a thousand other beings a thousand other times, and none had reacted like that. None.

“The Force is a tool, just like anything else. Just because one knows how to wield it doesn’t mean that you’re out of luck,” he countered. “It can make it an easier feat, but there are ways to make it just as easy for someone that can’t use the Force.” He was struggling to keep his expression bland, but he thought he was doing an alright job. He looked over to her and gave a a bored look. “Or you’re just not being creative enough.” He wondered when she would realize what he was thinking. Supreme Leader Snoke had taught him the ways of gaining the upper hand with a being, and occasionally, the Force wasn’t the most effective tool. He could feel it, the desire to eliminate the Resistance radiating off her like a beacon. It was heady to him, clouding his thoughts for the moments that he allowed them.

Patience was key. He took in a deep breath, clearing his mind as he waited for her to give in. She was impatient, headstrong, her anger a raging fire within her. All terms that had been used to describe Ren when he had been training, both with Skywalker and when his true training had started. He looked over to her, raising a brow as she spoke. She’d even put on the autopilot for him. Impressive. “How bad do you want to know?” He questioned, swiveling his chair to face her, just like she’d done with hers.

“I will show you, but you must trust me.” He took off his glove and held out his hand to her, palm up to her. Skin-on-skin contact was something that aided in this. “You need to trust me and not fight me on what I’m about to do.” It was different for her. With Ren, he had been told to use the Force to guide him, to center that anger and force it tenfold into something so powerful it could tear down cities. But with her, it was different. He recalled the teachings from Emperor Palpatine’s texts, the ones he had studied when learning with the other Knights. “It is imperative that you don’t fight me.”

There was a part of Poe that wished their flight had taken a bit longer. It was easy—just sitting on the ship and having a nice conversation. The moment they landed down in Nar Shaddaa, things would become difficult and the pleasantries would be pushed aside for the sake of their mission. He found himself watching her for a few moments, to try and see if her expression would break now or if he would be able to see if she was as nervous for this as he was. Despite himself, a crooked grin curled his lips as she spoke and he nodded in agreement. “I do too,” he admitted quietly. All this talk of General Organa was reminding him that she thought they were skilled and capable enough to handle this mission; it renewed a bit of his bravery at the thought. “Yeah. She’s not exactly doing it from a mean-spirited place or anything like that. She’s got a lot to oversee and take care of. One wrong move or sparing someone’s feelings could bring an end to all of it.”

His eyes darted from the monitor that read out all the information on their hyperdrive to glance over at her. Poe wouldn’t admit it out loud, but he was a bit relieved that she was vocalizing some of her inner turmoil. He felt like he had a herd of tauntauns stomping around his insides and every time he thought they’d settle down, some thought would pass or they’d say something and it’d start all over again. “It is,” he told her. “And it’s a good thing you’re worried. Kriff, I’m worried. We know there’s a threat there—multiple threats—which means there’s less of a chance of us being caught unprepared or blindsided completely.” He offered her a small grin before looking ahead once more.


Poe felt something akin to pride swell within him at her words. No, not pride. It was definitely something that he hadn’t felt in the longest time…or hadn’t allowed himself to feel. “Thanks,” he said softly, turning to glance over at her with his naturally dark eyes. “I’ll try my hardest to not let anyone down, but especially not you, not on your first mission.” He offered her a resolute nod, a curl of hair slipping down his temple before he turned back to the viewport.

“A hammer?” He questioned, brow furrowing as a slightly reluctant expression curled his features. “That sounds bad,” he commented quickly, glancing between her and the viewport a few times. “Is it bad?” A short laugh left him, as he shook his head. This smuggler’s cant stuff was way over his head, it seemed. He could only hope that he didn’t screw it all up and end up putting them in a bad spot. A look of understanding crossed his features as she described the origins of the term ‘old lady’ for the Resistance and a soft hum left him. “And I would think the First Order being called the neighbors has just carried over from the Empire, right?” He sighed softly as she reassured him and he grinned over at her. “I know you will be, Toma.”

If Poe could have absorbed himself into the pilot’s chair he said in, he would have. It wasn’t often he put his foot in his mouth, but when he did, it typically wasn’t pretty. A wince curled his features as he turned to her. “I shouldn’t have assumed anything,” he started quietly, eyes darting between hers. “I’m sorry. I overgeneralized. But it still stands, if you don’t want to tell me about them, you don’t have to.” He eyed her for a few moments longer, as if he were making sure she wasn’t angry with him before he turned back to the controls in front of him. “It’s not to late to try and learn. Trust me, you’ll want to understand what he’s saying sometimes,” he said with a soft laugh.

---

Cirilla shot Ren a glance as he spoke of her noticing his intrusion into her mind, lips pulling down at the corners slightly as she tried to suss out the reasoning behind it. Even as a child, before her life had changed so drastically, she had always been so in tune with her mind and would often become overwhelmed by her thoughts and imagination. She could only assume that this, coupled with the events that had pushed her to join the First Order, were the reasoning behind why she’d realized so soon. “I’ve been left alone with just my mind too often not to realize it,” she supplied quietly, almost robotically as she stared off at nothing in particular. Anger rose up within her the more she thought about it, but she managed to keep it abated.

The more Kylo Ren tried to explain away how she knew the Force was superior to her lack of knowing much about it, the more she wondered why he was doing such a thing. He could have easily agreed with her and stated that the Force made him superior than all because, in her eyes, it did. Her brow furrowed slightly as a thought struck her, but she said nothing for a while. At what he said next, she turned to him drawing in a deep breath of air before speak. “If I may, it almost sounds like you want me to try and think of ways to overpower you…or anyone else,” she told him, eyes slipping over his features.

She once had power that was hers by birthright. Cirilla had only but a taste of it before it had been ripped violently away from her and given to a lesser being. The thought had her turning abruptly away from him, sighing sharply through her nose. She shouldn’t have to have to think creatively to get power, but things had happened the way they did and she now found herself where she was. Wrath raged within her at the thought of all that could have been and she let her eyes slip shut. Cirilla knew that when her anger wasn’t directed at Kylo Ren, she wouldn’t be able to contain herself.

The woman had expected Kylo Ren to laugh at her, to outright deny her any sort of reprieve from her nearly constant state of anger. When he turned to face her, she found herself momentarily distracted by him, eyes drifting over his features as he spoke. Instead of answering, she merely stared at him, doing remarkably well at hiding the emotions other than anger that were rising up within her. While it took her a lot to ask, or request in this case, someone help her, she was not about to pour herself out to him on just how long anger had driven her every move, day and night.

Her gaze followed his hands for a moment as he pulled off one of his gloves, studying his hand for a moment before her gaze found his. Kylo kept speaking of trust and Cirilla hadn’t trusted anyone wholly in a long time. Still, whatever he had in mind may have been worth it if she could learn to control her anger, to suppress it until the time was right. Following his lead, she pulled off her glove a finger at a time, setting it down in her lap. Her gaze found his hand once more, the air feeling cool against her skin. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt someone else’s skin against hers; probably prior to her joining the First Order. Swallowing hard, she slowly reached out and tentatively placed her hand in his. Her heart flew up to her throat at how warm his skin felt against hers. Steeling herself, she lifted her eyes to his, swallowing hard before saying, “I trust you.”

Toma tried to keep her stomach in check. It was tying itself into knots, but she was having a hard time figuring out whether it was because of her nerves due to the mission, or how Poe looked whenever he grinned. She could handle an attractive being - she had before many times. But Poe wasn’t just attractive. He was smart, kind, quick-witted, and good in a dangerous situation. He was the type of being that she would have loved to ask for drinks if this was any other time. “I don’t know how she’s done it this long,” she murmured. “Especially with her brother being gone and Han… being Han.” She’d never met the man herself, but there had been a few occasions where the general had mentioned him. That combined with the talk from the other soldiers, she’d been able to get a decent idea of what the man from the legends was like.

She let out a huff of laughter. “Well when you you look at it like that, we’ll be fine,” she said, shooting him a faint grin. Multiple threats. That was the understatement of the century. They were going to a planet filled with the vilest beings in the galaxy, not to mention trying to intercept codes meant for one of the most fearsome men in the galaxy. Her teeth raked across her lower lip, biting down gently. “And it’s not like we’ll be going out of our way to find Ren. We’re just mentoring messages going in and out. It’ll be fine.” Her words wavered a little, but they were strong enough. They’d be fine. They would be. Probably.

“I know that you won’t.” It might have been naive of her to just blindly know that he wouldn’t let her down, but that didn’t matter. Even if something happened and she got hurt, she knew that Poe would’ve tried his hardest to make sure that that didn’t happen. Stuff happened on missions, but the fact that he’d try and ensure that nothing did happen meant a lot to her. She watched as some hair fell down across his forehead, and found herself wanting to brush it out of the way. She made a point to keep her hands in her lap.

Toma shook her head, ignoring the way her cheeks were burning as she pressed her lips together. “Uh, no, it’s not bad.” Her mother had called her father a hammer anytime they’d been flirting, but it had still taken her years to figure out that it meant someone attractive. She shifted around in her seat a little, ignoring the pleasant twisting in her chest. She was fine. She was allowed to recognize that he was handsome. That was okay. “Yeah, exactly. A lot of this stuff is old, but it’s well known enough that you really can’t change anything, so it can be a little difficult to figure out what a being is talking about sometimes.” The hardest part for her was remembering the various planets and their names in the cant, but it wasn’t the worst thing in the galaxy to remember. She glanced over to him and grinned, relaxing a little. If Poe knew that she’d be alright, then she definitely would be.

“It’s fine, Poe.” She felt a little bad at the wince. It wasn’t as though her voice had been sharp, and it wasn’t the most offensive thing that she’d ever been told. It wasn’t horrible. “My father’s currently on Tentator, while my mother is somewhere in the Outer Rim.” She wondered if she would have to elaborate. Most - but not all - beings knew that Tentator was a prison planet, and when she’d been younger and more open about her past, she’d had to explain what it was a couple of times. That had been the most painful part, trying to describe in detail just where her father was and why he was there. “Maybe if we’ve ever got some free time on base when we’re both there, you’ll have to teach me,” she said, offering him a warm smile to let him know that she wasn’t angry.

---

A pang shot through him. Kylo Ren wondered just how often she’d been left alone with her thoughts. It reminded him of himself before he’d understood the truth. He focused on that overwhelming loneliness at times when he needed to remind himself of what he had gained. Being there on that island, feeling that ache in his chest that no one would be there for him, it had grown and festered into something ugly. They were more alike than he had realized. He wasn’t sure if the thought pleased him. There was a voice, quiet in the back of his mind, that made him feel sorry for her. “To realize it is a gift,” he said, watching her carefully.

He watched her, eyes flickering over her face briefly. It was only for a moment, but his mouth flickered up into a barely-there smirk. It dropped almost as soon as it appeared, but it had been there. “You have potential,” he said, regarding her carefully. “I want to know if you’re capable of using it.” He could remember when he’d learned that there were other techniques to getting what was necessary than using only the Force. That had been the Jedi’s downfall. They relied on the Force and negotiations, whereas the Sith relied on anything and everything that would aid them. Sometimes a soft hand and a press against someone was infinitely more effective than sitting in negotiations with them for hours, or downing them in seconds.

It was dangerous, where his thoughts were leading him. He should have been focused on the mission at hand. He should have been focused on what was going to happen when they obtained the helmet and were headed back to the First Order. He should have been focused on the punishment that his Master would potentially bestow upon him. Instead, though, he was focused on Holt and why he was pushing her in such a way. Any other pilot would have been a tool, nothing else. But here he was, wanting to see her anger focused in such a way that would make her cheeks a fiery red and her eyes burn. Images floated through his mind, distracting ones of her pressed against him, of her winning the upper hand. He needed to focus. He needed to -

Her skin was warm. That was the only thought that was drifting through his mind when she placed her palm against his. For a split second, he hadn’t expected her to truly do this. She was so headstrong, so easy to anger that he would have thought her to just ignore him and go back to piloting the ship. But she didn’t. She laid her hand in his and said those three words that he’d been wanting her to say. “Don’t fight what’s about to happen,” he murmured, looking into her eyes. He thought back to his Master, and how he had shown him. It had been harsh and painful, ending with Ren writhing on the ground more times than not until he’d figured out how to do it. The technique itself hadn’t hurt, but Supreme Leader Snoke was adamant about punishment for every failure.

His gaze softened as he watched her, wanting her to be comfortable with him. It’d be so much easier that way. “Just relax,” he said, his voice quiet before his eyes slipped shut. He felt the Force swirling around him and he called it to him, letting it grow until he plunged forward into her mind. It was a hurricane of emotion, but he found the anger and pain almost immediately. It was prominent and angry and heady. “You feel me, don’t you?” He mumbled, more of a statement than a question. “Palpatine spoke of centering yourself, of pushing that anger and pain through the vital gate, funneling it into a rage.” He pushed and prodded at the anger, needing it to grow in size. It was like using the force to compel someone’s mind, but more abstract. This wasn’t a specific thought, but a whirlwind of emotions. “You need to let it grow, to feel it swirling around you, and push it through.”

[so i’m using the whole anger focusing technique described in the book of anger, if that helps to see where i’m going with this? ]

Poe dragged his tongue over his lips for a brief moment, for some reason unknown to him having to remind himself that he was still on a mission. Maybe it was the fact that, despite the abundance of women in the Resistance, it had been a while since he’d been teamed up with one. Though, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that it was something that was particular to Toma. Any other woman wouldn’t have proved such a distraction for him or caused his mind to wander to seeking out ways to somehow extend their time spent alone. He hadn’t felt this way about anyone in the longest time, and it scared him a bit. Now wasn’t exactly the best time for him to find himself distracted by a beautiful woman. Instead of thinking on it much longer, he focused on what Toma had said about General Organa. “I think that General Organa has always been able to stand on her own two feet, without the help from anyone else,” he told her, a grin working its way onto her features. “She’s very independent when she needs to be. It’s something I’ve always admired about her.”

Pulling his bottom lip between this teeth using his tongue, shooting her a sidelong glance as she spoke. A smile curled his lips as she spoke. “Yeah,” he said, nodding his head a bit, “we’ll be just fine. I’ve got your back and you’ve got mine.” He placed both hands on the yoke, eyes turning back toward the display to monitor how long they had until they reached Nar Shaddaa. He tilted his head slightly before glancing back over at her. “Exactly. This a just a recon mission. We don’t even really have to talk to anyone, if we don’t want to,” he told her with a small shrug of his shoulders. “We could find some room to hole ourselves up in until we can be sure that no messages are going in or out.”

He glanced over to her as she spoke, a small smile curling his lips. Every mission couldn’t be a success. He knew this. General Organa knew this. He was sure that Toma knew this too. But he’d be damned if he didn’t try to ensure this mission was successful. If it wasn’t Toma putting her faith in him, it was the way she would smile at him. The way her eyes would light up and her full lips would pull back from her teeth made him feel like he was someone important, at least in her eyes. It was something that felt more important than the title of ‘Captain’ or what he did for the Resistance. A soft hum left him as he looked away, the smile still tugging at his lips.

“Oh,” he said simply, glancing over at her and looking back out the viewport. He did a double take when he noticed the slight color to her cheeks after she spoke. So the word hammer wasn’t bad, but it was something that had her blushing. Interesting. “So, if I called you a hammer, you wouldn’t get offended?” He asked, brows lifting slightly as he looked her directly in the eyes. He eyed her for a few moments before turning his gaze back to the monitors in front of him. “I can see that. Especially with cant regarding factions of a war,” he said, nodding his head in slow understanding. A short sigh escaped him and he turned his gaze to Toma once more. “I’m almost positive I’m going to be absolutely clueless most of the time, but as long as you’re there, I should be alright.”

A heavy sigh left him as he pursed his lips a bit. Even if she told him it was fine, he still was feeling terrible about just assuming that her parents were dead. Instead of looking over at her, he stared out of the viewport, lips set in a thin line for a moment before he turned to her as she spoke. His expression relaxed, maybe even dropped a bit more when she explained what exactly happened with her parents. He knew of Tentator, what kind of planet it was, so he wouldn’t dare ask her any questions. Instead, he would tell her about his parents. “My mother died when I eight and I haven’t spoken with my father in…so long, I can barely remember what his voice sounds like,” he said quietly. He turned to look over at Toma, expression somber and lacking the normal light-hearted grin he wore. “He’s part of the Pathfinders. I kind of…can’t know where he is for security reasons.” He drew in a deep breath of air, chewing at his bottom lip before exhaling slowly. Poe kept quiet for a bit before glancing over at her, finding that lopsided grin once more. “You’ve got a deal,” he told her quietly before the ship came out of hyperspace and the sprawling ecumenopolis of Nar Shaddaa floated before them.

---

Vulnerability was not something Cirilla liked to show very often. It made her feel weak and powerless, when she knew that she was anything but. She drew in a deep breath of air through her nose, eyes slipping shut for a moment as she pushed down the unwanted feelings that had bubbled up within her, adding to the cacophony of emotions that were roiling within her. She opened her eyes as Kylo spoke, turned to him and eyeing him for a moment. Did he know what she’d gone through to know what normal felt like, to be able to realize mental intrusion without training? “Is it?” She questioned softly.

She kept a close watch on him, noticing his eyes slipping over her features and the slight twitch of an expression at the corner of his mouth. What he said next surprised her a bit. She was confident in her own capabilities, but she’d be lying if the fact that the Master of the Knights of Ren saw some sort of potential in her. Her brows lifted slightly and she kept her gaze on him, leveling her chin to the floor proudly. “Perhaps I can prove my potential won’t be wasted once we reach Nar Shaddaa,” she told him, a quiet sort of strength in her tone. Never in her lifetime would she have imagined that she’d find herself piloting a ship for potentially the most powerful Force-user she would ever encounter, but him actually seeing something in her in return. She knew that she had no Force abilities, so for him to see something in her mere human body meant something to her. She couldn’t remember the last time that someone had seemed to take interest in her or the last time she had cared so much what someone else thought of her. Was it because of who he was or was it something else?

Cirilla couldn’t recall the last time that her heart had beat as hard in her chest or the last time that she’d had such a rush of adrenaline and fear of the unknown coursing through her. She didn’t know what he had planned for her, but his reassuring her only had her wondering what he meant. She wasn’t afraid of pain—it was how they’d gotten to this point, wasn’t it? She was more afraid of him finding out about her past, if he didn’t already know, and looking at her differently for it. Instead of commenting on what he said, she fearlessly kept her gaze on his, palm resting against his. She nodded once at what he said next, trying her hardest to draw in a deep breath of air and let it out slowly.

When he closed his eyes, she studied his features for a few moments, taking him in slowly and finding her stomach flipping awkwardly as her gaze focused on his lips for a moment. Cirilla closed her eyes and willed all thoughts and wondering about how soft they must have been to the back of her mind. Her entire body jumped at his sudden intrusion, hand twitching slightly atop his. The feeling of him in her mind was different this time, less icy and more just like she was moving through her thoughts on her own. “Yes,” she replied to his questions with a whisper. She listened to him speak about Palpatine and his teachings, about how she needed to force her anger to some sort of gate. It was then she could feel it, wrath bubbling within her.

Then, the memories that fueled her anger surfaced, white-hot and relentless in their assault. She saw the faces of the guards who had turned on her parents, heard the declaration that their deaths would mark a victory for the Resistance, and, most of all, she could vividly feel what it was like to have her sense of belonging and the love her parents had for her ripped away in mere moments. Her hand twisted and clamped tightly around his, thumb pressing into the palm of his hand and fingers wrapped around the back of it. Something was happening and it was causing her to focus only on the anger that was causing a tremor to vibrate through her whole body. There was something primal scratching at her insides; screaming at her to find something to rend in two, to cut into and bleed dry, or to find some dark, violent act to participate in. Gritting her teeth, she could feel her hand trembling against Kylo’s. “Either you help me find this gate, tell me where it is, or I’m going to skrogging break your wrist,” she hissed through tightly clenched teeth. Her words were less of a threat and more of a warning.

“To be honest, sometimes I feel as though she could take down the entire First Order with just her willpower and a blaster,” she said, shooting him a faint grin. The woman had a spine of durasteel, she was positive. Toma had never met someone that was quite like the general. She could remember finding it hard to believe that a young girl - barely nineteen - had lost her entire family and planet within an instant, and still found it within herself to not only continue on, but to rise up and lead the effort to destroy the Empire. That would have been difficult as it was, but to find the strength to do it once more with the First Order? It was hard to wrap her mind around it. “If I had a fraction of her independence, I’d be happy,” she said, chuckling softly.

“A room would be nice,” she said, tapping her finger against her leg as she thought it over. It’d look less suspicious if they found a room as opposed to holing up in the ship for however long they were there. “It’d probably be nice to not be cooped up in here as well.” They’d have to be a little more on guard with everything, but she didn’t have a problem with that. Her chest was starting to fill with nerves once more (which wasn’t a surprise). The odds of her letting her guard down with her nerves running like that were slim to none. “What names are we using?” She asked, the thought coming to her. She had her own scandocs on her, but she wasn’t a big name in the Resistance. Poe, though, she wasn’t sure. He was a big name within the Resistance and the First Order, but it was difficult to tell if beings that didn’t have a stake in the war would still know who he was.

She bobbed her head in a nod as he said “oh,” trying to keep her gaze on anything but him. She wondered if he’d ever learn the meaning of the word. It wasn’t as though it would come up very often, but there was always a chance. The thought made her cheeks continue to warm, so much so that she was afraid she’d be a bright red despite her skin tone. She looked to him, eyes locking with his as she stilled. “Uh, no. I wouldn’t get offended.” It was a miracle that she didn’t stutter the words out. He doesn’t know what it means, she reminded herself. He was probably just seeing the way she reacted and trying to suss out its meaning. He still didn’t know. She was okay.

“I suppose it’s easier that way,” she said, thankful that her voice was strong. Despite the fact that her mind wanted to drift backwards and focus on the way he’d said, ‘if I called you a hammer…’ she managed to focus on the task at hand. “It’ll be fine. A clueless pilot is probably going to come in handy. They’ll talk more freely in front of you in the cant, and you can just tell me what they say.” It’d be easier that way. Maker knew what had been said in front of her has a child, when she hadn’t understood what they were saying at all. As far as she’d been concerned, the adults had been talking nonsense about keeping the kids quiet to play Pazaak, or how they’d slammed into the apron twice last week.

Toma watched Poe carefully. While she didn’t personally appreciate it when beings would apologize for her father being imprisoned, or her mother being off somewhere, she could objectively appreciate the sentiment. But he didn’t give her that. He didn’t give her any of that. Instead, he began to speak of his own parents. Her heart twisted when he mentioned his mother, her lips tugging downwards as he spoke of his father. She’d heard the legends of the Damerons, alongside the rest of the legends about the Rebellion and all that had gone on. She hadn’t realized that his father was still apart of it all. She pressed her lips together, her head falling back against the headrest. “It’s a bit bantha-shit, all of it,” she mused, glancing over to him. She didn’t know what else to say. She mustered up a small sirk when he grinned. “That sounds like a -” She cut herself off as they exited hyperspace, her words dying somewhere in her throat as she looked upon the planet. “Well kriff,” she murmured, swallowing.

---

Kylo watched her, wondered what was running through her mind. It would have been easier if she were a lesser being. He could flip through their thoughts with ease, sifting through them while they were unaware of it. Those that were that unintelligent bothered him in a way that he could not describe, but they were infinitely easier to deal with and manipulate. Holt was not like that. Holt was fire and ice and someone that could have rivaled him in anger. It would be a feat in itself to gain control of her mind, to compel her to do his bidding, but the bigger feat would be to gain her loyalty - not to the First Order, but to him. The thought was almost too much. “It is,” he said, his voice soft in the quiet of the ship.

“Perhaps.” He did not doubt that she would more than prove her potential to him on Nar Shaddaa, but he did not need to say that. He was getting too comfortable as it was with her. It was difficult to remember that she was his subordinate. On the surface level, he could remember that it was a fact. But she had an air to her that made him want to pause, to have to remind himself that she was not his equal, or even higher than him. He wondered if it was her upbringing, whatever it was. She was royalty of some sort - he could figure that much. But where she had lived, and what had happened, that eluded him. Although, those facts weren’t relevant then. He could learn those later, after she’d proven her potential to him.

Ren could remember the moment everything had clicked within him. He’d been lost in that sea of anger, the waves of it almost drowning him over and over again. He had felt lost and alone, the emotions so strong that they threatened to crush his chest and kill him in an instant. Once he’d truly started to focus on the hatred, that wrath that filled him, it had been too much. Images had flickered through his head. His father abandoning him time and time again to go jetting off across the galaxy because Be- because Kylo had never been enough for him. The ache in his chest when he’d heard his parents rip into one another, or when Han would accuse Leia of being more concerned with the politics of the galaxy than she was with her own family. The longing that he’d felt when they’d dumped him on that shithole of a planet, how he’d missed them. His Master hadn’t prodded him along like he was doing with Holt. He’d just been told to do it. It had been too much, and he’d felt that wall slipping away, threatening to leave him weak and empty and alone when something just clicked in him, the Force prodding him in the right direction.

It was lick a switch had been flicked and suddenly everything was white hot rage and a focus so sharp, so deathly that he’d almost been aroused by it. He had been able to physically feel it, the part of his chest where it was all coming from. And that’s what he wanted with her, that level of rage. “Good,” he breathed out, his lips twitching a little as her thumb pressed against his palm. He needed her rage, her anger. The Force trembled around her, shaking and vibrating in a way that he’d never felt with someone that wasn’t Force sensitive. She might not have been able to use the Force, but she was powerful in a way that he hadn’t expected. “You have to be the one to move it,” he began, his breaths getting a little shorter. He used the Force to guide him, letting it lead him to where it was. “Center yourself, feel where it needs to go.

“Focus, Cirilla. Focus.” The emotions that were radiating off of her were making it a little hard to focus. It was making him warm, tempting him in ways that he hadn’t been tempted in years. He had physical needs like any other male human, but those were taken care of when need be. He dealt with them as anything else. But this, this raw power, was almost too much for him. Biting down on the inside of his cheek, he used that pain to cut through his thoughts, making them halt and shift direction. Focus - he needed to focus. The Force guided him along, swirling around where her anger needed to shift to. “Do you feel it?” He asked, his gaze centered solely on her. “Use your instincts. Let them guide you.”

A soft laugh left Poe as she mentioned just how resilient General Organa was. “Does she even really need a blaster? I’ve seen looks from her that could potentially make beings vanish into a cloud of dust,” he jested with a wry grin. The woman let it clearly be known when someone had done something she disagreed with or said something she didn’t like. And while he was over exaggerating just a bit, he’d seen the toughest Lieutenants and Admirals shrink in their seats over one of her looks. Poe’d only been on the receiving end of those once and it was enough to make him mind what he said around her. His gaze stared out the viewport as she spoke of independence and a small hum left him, a pleasant little smile curling his lips. “I think you have it in you. You may just have to find it first,” he said, his eyes rounding to meet hers for a moment before he looked ahead once more.

He nodded as she agreed with him, pulling his lips between his teeth as a furrow formed between his brows as he thought through it all. “We’ll have to pick someplace where the walls aren’t paper thin,” he said. “We can’t have anyone inadvertently listening in to us.” He glanced over at her once more. “Yeah. Even if it does have a caf machine, I’d imagine you’d get pretty sick of me if we locked ourselves in here. Not to mention how suspicious it’d be for us to land on Nar Shaddaa and not do a damn thing but stay on the ship.” Her next question had him pausing a bit. They couldn’t possibly use their own names, even it no one knew who they were. It’d be too risky for someone to just follow them back. “I guess we’ll have to choose something inconspicuous,” he said, wracking his mind for a good name for himself to go by. “Do I look like a ‘Link’ to you? A guy who was stationed with me on another base was named Link and I thought it was the coolest name.”

Carding a hand through his tousled, dark hair, Poe shot her a sidelong glance, noting the way she wasn’t looking at him and the way her cheeks burned a soft pink color. It fit her. Now all he had to do was to figure out what the word ‘hammer’ meant. Maybe he’d be able to ask someone once they got to Nar Shaddaa when Toma wasn’t paying attention. His brows lifted slightly at her reply and he nodded slowly, eyes leaving her to glance over the controls for the ship. So, it must’ve been something either good or something that she wasn’t concerned with. That didn’t narrow it down at all and Poe was the type of guy to hunt an answer down until he found it.

Poe found a crooked grin curling his lips as she spoke next, knowing that he’d only make a mess of things if he were expected to remember smuggler’s cant like he’d been speaking it all his life. “It’s safer that way. I’m pretty sharp, but I’m definitely not sharp enough for that,” he said with a soft laugh. He glanced over at her, eyes lighting up a bit. “Clueless pilot isn’t too different from how I feel most days, if I’m honest,” he said with a chuckle. “Maybe me not knowing the language will make it easier for me to remember what was said. I probably could keep a datapad in my jacket or something to record it, too.”

It wasn’t easy, talking about the mother he barely knew and the father he never really got to know. Sometimes, he’d wondered why they even bothered having a kid in the first place. Kriff, he didn’t even know if they were married or not. With how secretive his father’s work was at times, he wouldn’t have been surprised if they weren’t. Not that it really mattered in the end. Things were what they were and he couldn’t change it. Poe’d learned from an early age to make the best of bad situations, and his lack of parents was one of them. “It is,” he said simply, looking over at her and shrugging a bit, “but we deal with it.” He found himself at a loss for words at the near circuitry of lights and buildings that patterned the moon. From afar, it didn’t look too bad, but there was a haziness to it that made him question just how bad the air quality must’ve been on the surface. “Yeah,” he shot back to her distractedly, nodding in agreement. “I…guess this is where the fun starts then.” He grasped the yoke in his hands firmly and began to guide the ship toward the moon’s atmosphere. Poe could see a flurry of action buzzing around the planet, ships landing and taking off more frequent than he could have imagined. Nar Shaddaa seemed to be a busy place, which could both work in their favor, but could also prove to make this mission even more dangerous.

---

Cirilla tucked her hair behind her ears once more as she tried to keep her expression as even as possible. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps the time she’d spent alone, both before the First Order and now, was not spent in vain. She’d had time to not only sharpen her body into a weapon through training, but her mind as well. Most of the Elite Forces were intelligent, sure, but she knew there was a cunning and shrewdness to her that had her lightyears further than the rest. Though, there was part of her that despised the fact that she was alone—that these abilities had been a result of being alone. Or that she did not have her subjects to rule over or a planet, no system, to govern. All she had was her title of being a squadron leader in the Elite Forces and the term princess thrown around about her.She did not answer him, merely keeping her gaze forward as she lapsed into her own thoughts once more.

All she knew was that the pain that she felt, the direct source of what had turned her into such a wrathful being in the first place, only seemed to incite the anger even more within her. Cirilla thoroughly hoped that Ren knew what he was doing, saying that this was going to help her in some way. What if it didn’t work on those who couldn’t wield the Force like him? It was so sharp, so unyielding, the rage that was within her. She could scarcely remember a time when she wasn’t angry, when she didn’t wake up wanting to end the lives of the Resistance and those who’d stolen away her future. A shaky breath of air left her, her muscles tightening up on their own accord, coiling as if waiting to strike. The air around her felt too warm to be normal and she felt a flush of anger spotting the apples of her cheeks. She kept her eyes closed, her head bowed slightly as she tried to keep her thoughts linear, to keep them controlled. The longer she focused on them, however, the harder it was proving to be. Her brow furrowed slightly as he spoke, features pinching slightly as she tried to make sense of what he was saying. She could feel her pulse in her temples, heart rate rising due to whatever he was putting her through.

The flashes of memories kept going; the ones that made her the angriest, even the ones that she’d sworn to forget. Moving this feeling, this immense wrath bubbling in her veins, would prove impossible, she just knew. “I don’t know if I can move it,” she breathed. She vaguely took note of his use of her first name, the sound of it causing the hairs to stand up on the back of her neck. Her chest was beginning to heave, perspiration forming along her forehead as she tried to heed his words. She was trying to focus, trying to do what he was saying, but all she kept seeing were the lifeless eyes of her parents, their vacated thrones, and a barrel of a blaster leveled on them. Everything was beginning to blur together, teeth gritting together and lips pulling back into a snarl. She could almost feel it: a place nestled deep behind her stomach where this anger could lie, if she could tame it.

A deep rumbling was blocking out her hearing, slowly rising to a crescendo so that she could barely hear what he was telling her to do. Focus. Focus. Focus. She chanted to herself. Her hand kept gripping his tighter and tighter and short, shallow breaths of air left her. Then, it was like the thin ice that had been keeping her afloat had broken, cracked suddenly, and her body was moving on its own accord—that dark thing calling to her from within her own body, to maim and to destroy and to kill them all. Cirilla was out of her seat in a flash, gloved hand wrapping around Ren’s throat and clamping down. She closed the distance between them quickly, one of her knees coming up to press against his hip and force him down into the chair. Tugging their joined hands behind her, she locked him in place physically, at least. Her eyes had flown open, the pupils blown wide as she found herself face-to-face with Ren. Then, her expression eased suddenly as a clarity unlike anything washed over her, chest heaving in air. Her anger was there, waiting, but caged. Cirilla’s mouth fell open slightly with shock, eyes darting over his features as she eased up on him slightly, frozen in place and fearful of what his reaction might be.

Toma let out a snort of laughter and shook her head. “That is true. So all the Resistance has to do is shove her in a room with Snoke, and she’ll decimate him and the entire First Order in seconds.” She sat back in her seat, chuckling softly at the thought of that. General Organa was one of the most intimidating beings that she’s ever met, and a part of her believed what Poe had said to be true. Under the right circumstances, Leia Organa would rip the First Order to absolute shreds. She glanced over to Poe, her gaze tracing down from his nose to his chin, drinking it in as he looked out of the viewport. The little smile that spread across his lips made her stomach twist pleasantly. “Thank you for the faith in me,” she murmured, able to hold his gaze for only a moment before looking away.

“I’m sure there are plenty of places to crash. It’d be bad for business to have thin walls in a place like Nar Shaddaa.” She swallowed at the thought. They’d have to check the room for bugs as well. While they wouldn’t necessarily be First Order listening devices, she’d been in enough shady places to know that some beings made money off of secrets, even if they didn’t know what those secrets even meant. “I’m sure that enough beings land on the planet and don’t get out, but you’re right, it’d look suspicious.” The only way that would really make them look not suspicious would be if they were having a sex worker come on board. She’d seen it in enough ports. While she knew that that was a horrible idea, there was a part of her that wanted to mention it, just to see what he’d say. “Link?” She questioned, chuckling under her breath when he went on to explain his reasoning. “You look like a Link,” she mused. “What about Myri for me?”

Kriff, he seemed like the type to hound after this until he figured it out. She should’ve just played it off like it was nothing, like she called plenty of beings attractive (which she didn’t). In reality, she shouldn’t have said anything and just let it ride through her mind, keeping it to herself. SHe pressed her lips together, only risking a glance towards him when she was positive that his gaze was on the controls. She was an idiot. A giant, blithering idiot. She deserved whatever he found out. Silence would have been so much better.

“You’ve never struck me as a clueless pilot, so you’re hiding that feeling pretty well,” she said, offering him a small smile. It was a relief to hear him say that. As they’d talked, he seemed more and more like a normal being than the legend that the Resistance was portraying on the recruiting posters. But that in particular made her chest warm with something that she could really only describe as fondness. “You’d just have to be careful about that. I’m sure that most of the beings on planet are pretty paranoid about this kind of stuff.” It was a smart idea, but there was still a decent amount of risk involved. What if a being saw the outline of it in his jacket and thought it was something else? Poe was used to this sort of thing, she reasoned. If anyone could handle it, would be him.

Toma hummed in agreement. We deal with it. That’s all there was to do, really. There was no real answer as to how, you just did. Her fingers tapped against the arm of her chair as she wondered what her parents would think of her now. Pretending to be a smuggler to help out the Resistance. It was laughable, to be sure. Her parents had been supporters of the cause, but they hadn’t actually joined in. That would have been going a little too far for them. “You’ve got a weird definition of fun,” she said, shooting him a faint grin as she pushed aside all thoughts of her family. “So what exactly are we shipping again, in case we’re asked?” They probably wouldn’t need scandocs for the ship or themselves since the planet was known for keeping secrets, but they’d still need to get down the basic story. “And did you wanna find a place to stay first?”

---

Emperor Palpatine had said that it takes great intelligence to keep that wrath in check once it had been funneled through the gate. It was so powerful and raw that it needed someone to be rational enough to use it. While it had made sense for him on how to control that - with the Force - he was starting to think that maybe it would be different for someone who wasn’t Force sensitive. Being able to detect his presence within her mind was one thing, but it didn’t mean that she was inherently capable of accomplishing the same things that he had done. What if it meant that she wasn’t capable of controlling herself? He didn’t doubt that he could handle her, whether it be compelling her mind or halving her with his lightsaber. But she was a rare mind, and one that he wouldn’t mind having around him for awhile longer.

He pulled back a little, allowing her to take the lead. He watched her, gaze flickering over her as his chest heaved along with hers. He was at the surface of her mind, vaguely aware of the memories that were racing through her. He paid attention to those, knowing that they would come in handy later on. And, he figured, the rage was distracting enough that she probably wouldn’t pay attention to what he was doing. He grimaced at her words. Of course she could move it, she just needed to figure it out. She must have been a fast learner, though. Kylo Ren had been told that he’d mastered the technique in one of the shortest amounts of time, but it had still taken him nine or ten tries. Granted, Master Snoke had punished him with each failure, which had weakened him significantly. And Kylo Ren was younger when he’d learned it, was more of a volatile being. Holt seemed to have such a lock on her emotions that it shouldn’t have been a surprise at all that she had let that rage bubble up so fast within her.

The Force was shaking all around her. It was almost a visible thing, the way it rippled through the stagnant air of the ship. The beeps of the nav started to fade into the background as he watched her in rapt attention. His hand was stinging now, aching with her ironclad grip on his hand. There was something that was happening, something that was welling up within her so much that it made his heart race. He leaned forward a little, watching her as his lips fell open in awe. There was something dark lingering around her. It was suddenly filling the entire cockpit and wrapping him up in it, cloaking him with its pressure. It was so distracting and enticing that he almost missed the way she was shooting forward. He could feel the energy swirling around her, his own connection with the Force making him notice how she was projecting her movements.

He allowed her to shove him back into the chair. His heart gave a sharp jolt against his chest, noting the way that he desired this. He raised a brow at her, taking care to breathe in shallow enough so it wouldn’t make her instinctively tighten her grip against his throat. He wanted to see what she would do - within reason. Her eyes were pools of rage, so dark that they were almost black. He preferred them that way, liking how it made her look regal and terrifying, all at once.

“You feel it, don’t you? All that power, that rage,” he murmured, using his gloved hand to wrap his fingers around her wrist. It was a loose grip, just enough to pull against her hand, letting her know that she needed to loosen her grip. His voice was rough, throat aching at just how tight she’d been gripping it. “With practice, you’ll be able to do it on your own without my aid.”

Poe was quickly realizing that this banter with Toma was probably the most exciting thing he’d done in a while, outside of flying his X-wing, of course. A lot of people on base didn’t really appreciate his sense of humor or his knack for trying to find the light-hearted side of things. It was also refreshing to find someone who seemed to genuinely laugh at his jokes instead of those who’d force it just because of who he was. “Did you want to tell General Organa when we get back that you’ve found out how to defeat Snoke then?” He asked, grinned lopsidedly over at her with an impish sort of twinkle in his dark eyes. The grin turned more into a smile as she spoke next, holding her gaze for as long as she’d allow before looking away. “Don’t mention it,” he replied quietly.

He looked away from her after a few moments, figuring she may not appreciate catching him studying her profile. Poe noted his stomach jump a bit at the realization that he’d potentially be bunkered down in a room with this beautiful woman for an indefinite amount of time. His brow furrowed slightly as he reminded himself this was all for a mission, regardless of how this feeling in his chest swelled when she smiled at him or laughed with him. “That’s true. We’ll just have to thoroughly scope the room before we can speak freely, but I’m sure you already knew this,” he said with a nod of his head, eyeing a few ships that were flying off in the opposite direction of them. “What?” He asked when he noticed her laughing a bit. “It’s the first name I could think of,” he defended softly. He hummed softly at the name she picked for herself.

“It’s a pretty name,” he said, eyes slipping over her features before nodding a bit. “It suits you,” he added before looking ahead once more, guiding their ship expertly past a couple of larger cargo ships that were leaving the planet. “How did Link and Myri meet?” He was trying to think of everything that people might ask, though he figured that if anything came up that they hadn’t discussed, he’d be able to pick up on cues enough from her to know if she were going to answer or not.

A quiet laugh left him at what she said next and he shot her a sidelong look, dimples pitting his cheeks as he smiled. “Oh, I feel clueless too many times to count. I just…don’t want to worry people by letting it show,” he said with a small shrug. He pulled his lips between his teeth as the control panel in front of him let out a couple of dings. He supposed a planet like Nar Shadda didn’t really require any landing clearances, so he just zeroed in on the nearing landing facility. He wondered if landing would be different on such a populated planet. “You’re right. I’m sure I can find a place to hide it well enough,” he told her. He wasn’t one to typically go on covert missions like this, but he’d been trained well enough to know how to approach them.

“You have no idea,” he retorted with a wily sort of grin, shooting her a glance before he turned his gaze forward. Their ship entered the atmosphere without a hitch, though he could feel the thick haze whipping against the outside of the ship. His brow furrowed as he thought of what they could possibly be smuggling, trying to think of something that sounded plausible, but fit the two of them. “Well…weapons seem like they’re common enough. Unless you know something that I don’t know,” he stated, gripping the yoke tightly as he noted the sprawl of buildings that covered the surface of the planet for as far as the eye could see. “Yeah, finding a place to stay first is a good idea. It’ll be a good way for us to get a feel for the area, at least.” He paused for a moment, surveying the planet and noting just how much of a difference it was from D’Qar. Poe immediately missed the sight of green; the planet was all lights and beige and grey tones. “Is there any smuggler’s cant about taverns or rooms that I should know about? Anything that should be obvious to someone who has dealings with smugglers?”

---

Cirilla could feel something buzzing through her veins, vibrating in her chest, and filling her with a feeling that felt so foreign to her. She felt…powerful, like it didn’t matter if she was Force-sensitive or not. It was making her feel a bit inebriated, like she was braver and stronger than she actually was. And with her hand around Ren’s throat and the way she had him pinned against the chair, she felt unstoppable. There was this feeling she had, looking down into his eyes the way she was, that if she felt so inclined to, she could crush his windpipe beneath her grasp and watched as the life slowly left him. The rational part of her won her over, reminding her that he was not her enemy and he would be of no use to her dead. Though, with this revelation, she realized that he’d be a great ally to have.

Her eyes flickered over his features as he spoke, chest rising and falling quickly as she fought to catch her breath. As his hand met her wrist, her grip loosened to where her gloved fingers were just barely resting against his neck, lodged up beneath his chin. “I do, “ she confirmed quietly. She wondered if this was what being so aware of the Force was like, this feeling of energy thrumming throughout her body. At what he said next, she merely hummed softly in response, eyes sliding down to study his mouth. Something whispered inside of her and told her that she probably wouldn’t like it as much, finding this gate on her own. She realized that it was probably because, for a moment, she was feeling what it was like to be him and could share this anger with someone else instead of bottling it up until she exploded. “Will the Supreme Leader be cross with you for showing me this—to someone who’s just…an inconsequential sf pilot?” She questioned, her voice soft against the hum of the hyperdrive.

She was leaning forward slightly before she realized she was doing it, as if she were in some sort of trancelike state. And for a moment, all she wanted to do was to seal her mouth against his or find some way to tear him into tiny little pieces with her bare hands…or at least tear into his clothing to feel the warm skin beneath. “This feeling’s not permanent, I presume,” she murmured, lips turning slightly downwards for a moment, eyes managing to find his once more as her knee left his hip and her hand left his throat, sliding her wrist gently from his grasp. As she righted herself to stand, she stared down at their joined hands, her grip relaxing, but still locked around his hand.

Slowly, she unfurled her fingers from his hand a bit, noting the way her fingertips left angry red impressions in their wake. Some dark part of her liked the color against his otherwise pale skin and wondered where else she could bring color to his skin and in what ways. Pressing her lips together, she drew in a sharp breath of air through her nose as she dropped his hand altogether, finding that some part of her was screaming at the lack of contact. Cirilla brushed her hands over her hair, turning to face the viewport as she fought to reel herself back in. Running her tongue over her lips, she clenched her trembling hands into fists at her side. Focus, she told herself, forcing herself to remember the reason why she was here, this mission is more important than whatever you’re feeling.

Lowering herself back down into the pilot’ seat, she checked the flight time briefly before turning to glance over at Kylo. “Will this mission require me to leave the ship?” She questioned, figuring that carrying on like she wasn’t on some sort of power high was the best way to handle how she was feeling. She paused for a moment, drawing in a breath of air. “I don’t have any clothing that’s not regulation. It’d be too obvious that I’m of the First Order,” she added. There was another pause where she realized something, gaze narrowing with thought. “May I make a request, sir?”

It was hard for her to resist the smile that was tugging at her lips. Toma could feel it, a light sort of weight settling in her chest as she looked over to Poe, the corners of her mouth curling upwards. “Oh absolutely. I’ll tell the general that it was all your idea, and you should get full credit for it,” she said, laughing as she shook her head. It was odd to be like this with him. They’d been on the ship for a short amount of time, but he had a way about him that set her at ease and made her feel as though she’d known him for a good portion of her life. Her smile softened as she watched him, her heart beating extra hard as he held her gaze. She could only hold it for a few seconds before ducking her head, her chest too full for her to come up with something else to say.

“It’s always good to have a reminder, though.” She’d been in the Resistance long enough that she felt like she was getting a little sloppy in that regard. She knew without a shadow of a doubt that her quarters weren’t bugged back on D’Quar, so there was no use to even think about something like that. She’d grown a little soft while being on base, but she didn’t mind. It was nice to not have to think like a smuggler, to have to constantly look over your shoulder every second of every day. She’d grown up with that, and while she appreciated the skill set that she had because of it, it was nice to be free from it as well. “What? It’s a good name,” she said, shooting him a grin.

She ducked her head, smiling. “Thank you,” she murmured. She wanted to add that it was her mother’s name, but she felt like that would be giving him a little too much personal information. Poe was trustworthy enough, but that felt too far, like she was risking too much somehow. “Hmmmm,” she hummed, fingers tapping against her thigh as she thought it over. “We met on some Outer Rim planet. I needed a pilot, you needed a job?” She suggested. It was simple enough, easy to remember, and could be embellished as needed. And they could shift the story a little, if need be.

“You manage to hide it well,” she said, offering him a small smile. “That means you’re a good leader.” Her words had a warmth to them that she hadn’t really expected to offer up. She meant them, though. The fact that he was able to hide that meant that he was a good leader, one deserving of that position. “I’ve got faith in you,” she said, her smile turning into more of a grin. Hell, if worse came to worse, he could just try to remember as much of the conversation as possible and they’d be able to parse out what was being said.

Toma didn’t want to think too far into why her stomach was flipping. Odds were probably in favor of the ship entering the atmosphere. That’d make more sense despite the fact that her gaze was lingering on the curve of his grin, tracing it slowly while her nails dug into the arm of the chair. She heaved in a deep breath, blinking and shaking her head before turning her gaze to the view in front of her. “Weapons are good. We probably won’t even have to go into details.” Her eyes flitted over the various buildings, wondering just where they were going to end up landing. “I can’t think of anything that you’d have to know. But if we’re still going with you being new to smuggling, you could just blame it on that,” she suggested, pressing her lips together into a thin line. She felt like there was too much to think over, to remember. It made her stomach churn.

---

His mouth parted a little, breath coming out shallow until she loosened her grip against his threat. Ren took in a deeper breath, but his lips remained parted. He watched as her gaze fell to his mouth, and in a bold move - bold for him, at least - his tongue slid across his bottom lip, wetting it slightly. An energy was humming through his veins, pounding louder and louder in his head. He wanted her. He wanted her in a way that he’d never wanted another being. Physical desires were one thing, and he’d been able to tamper them in the past. But this, this was something else entirely. “Probably,” he said, his gaze flickering up to hers as his mouth shifted into a little smirk. A small voice at the back of his mind told him that he’d look like his father doing that. He shoved it away. “He doesn’t need to be aware of this, though.”

The last thing he needed was for the Supreme Leader or Hux to find out about this. Learning to use such a technique was supposed to be limited to those that were Fore sensitive. It was looked down upon to teach just any being how to do it. But Cirilla wasn’t just any being, he knew that now. No mere being could have access to such rage, and to be able to control it so perfectly. No, she was something else; something that he hadn’t expected at all. He had to blink a time or two for his thoughts to return to the present.

When his thoughts did return to the present, it was to realize that she was leaning forward a little, making his find scream into a wholly different direction than earlier, one where all he could see were her hands on him, her mouth against his as she pressed into him. Focus. He needed to focus. “With practice, you’ll be able to maintain it for extended periods of time. But no, it’s not permanent.” Kylo Ren wanted to add that he would help her, guide her into that place over and over and over again if she wanted him to. But he needed to shift away from that line of thought. He wasn’t needy or clingy. He was patient. He would wait for her to approach him, to ask him for his help once more. Once she knew that he could be trusted - truly trusted - then things would be able to change.

He was fucked. He was done. He was in deep bantha shit. A Knight of Ren was supposed to have complete control over their body and their thoughts. He was supposed to be in control. But instead, he was barely keeping quiet as she pulled away from him. He was just stuck in that chair, watching dumbly as she unfurled her fingers from his and wishing that he were in a position to tell her to stay. Something had shifted in his chest. Or maybe it had awoken within him. Either way, he was needing her touch. Instead of doing anything about it, he set his jaw and stared ahead, heaving in a deep breath.

“Yes, you’ll be accompanying me,” he said. His voice was rough, as though he’d just woken up. He longed to blame it on the fact that her fingers had been wrapped around his throat, but he feared that it was more due to the fact that he’d wanted her so terribly earlier. He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose when she said that. “We’ll get you clothing, then.” He glanced to her, wanting to snap a little. He’d told her to pack the necessary items. She should have known… Despite him not giving her any information. He cursed himself silently for that and nodded at her, not bothering to actually speak.

A light laugh escaped Poe at what Toma had shot back at him, acting like she’d say the plan was all his idea. “You’re a sharp one, Toma. I like it,” he said with a smile, shooting her a look for a moment. Maybe his stomach kept feeling like there were a bunch of Nikto beetles flying around his stomach because it’d been a while since a woman had shown what appeared to be genuine interest in what he was saying. And he wasn’t referring to when General Organa spoke with him or when some other officer would talk to him. This was something different. He could almost feel something there. A spark between them. Perhaps, he thought, he was just being silly and imagining it. That had to have been it.

Though, Poe did realize she was ducking away from his gaze frequently, despite the fact she seemed to be at ease around him. Most of the time he’d attribute it to someone being sheepish or intimidated around him, because of who he was. He didn’t feel like this was the case when it came to Toma. “I’m sure I’m not the only one who has faith in you,” he reassured her, gaze slipping over the controls for a moment. “I mean, General Organa gave you a mission that seems…fairly personal,” he said, eyes sliding over to her for a moment. He grinned crookedly to himself the more he thought about the name. “Link sounds a hell of a lot like a hot-shot pilot. Way more than Poe does,” he murmured.

Poe made sure to glance over at Toma as she ducked her head, a pleased little smile curling his lips. He was quick to look away, not wanting to make her feel uncomfortable.His dark gaze narrowed in thought as he listened to the story behind Myri and Link and how they met. “Fair enough. And if we’ve only just met, it’ll help us out if anyone tries to butt in and ask invasive questions. I’ll just be your pilot and you’ll be in charge of the cargo,” he reasoned out, nodding a bit to himself. It seemed simple enough: easy enough that if they got into a pinch, they’d still be able to remember it.

“Nah, I wouldn’t say I’m a good leader,” he said with a shake of his head. “I’m just a good pilot who can talk themselves through pretty tight conditions.” He turned to her, offering her one of those crooked grins of his. “But thank you. It’s nice to hear all the same.” The grin slipped into a smile as she spoke, eyes flickering over to her. “I won’t let you down, Toma.” His stomach gave another one of those anxious flips and he turned to look out the viewport, grinning to himself as the ship coasted over the buildings as he kept his eyes open for the landing strip.

The ship dinged a few times just as he spotted it, the only clear piece of area—meaning it didn’t have some sort of side street or building on it—that he’d spotted since they entered the atmosphere of the moon. “I mean, I could always pretend I never knew what you were asking me to smuggle. I’m just a pilot, after all,” he said with a shrug of his shoulder. His gaze was out of the viewport as he pulled back on the yoke and the ship noticeably slowed as Poe spotted a clear spot for them to land. “Acting oblivious is definitely something I can think I can pull off,” he murmured with a laugh. He reached out and engaged the landing gear, listening to the mechanical whirr before the sound of them locking out.

Slowly, he lowered the ship down until it hit the ground with a soft ‘thud’ and the ship shifted around them. Pulling his hands away from the yoke, he let out a soft sigh as he noticed the hustle and bustle of beings just outside of the ship. He let out a short hum as he took it in for a moment before turning to look over at Toma. “You ready for this?” He questioned quietly.

---

Cirilla didn’t know what was happening to her or why she was feeling all these…things…so suddenly. She didn’t know why the sight of Kylo sliding his tongue sliding across his bottom lip had sent such a jolt of adrenaline through her. Or why his smirk had her feeling remarkably warm or like her skin had sudden shrunk dramatically in size. Her heart was lodged in her throat and there was this feeling rising within her that nearly overtook that wrath she had stored away. She wanted him. She wanted to feel his skin against her, more than just the touch of their hands.

“I won’t tell anyone if you don’t,” she said, eyes locking onto his. Her voice was quiet, slightly raspy around the edges. Drawing in a deep breath of air, she swallowed hard, completely unsure of what had come over her, but not exactly disliking it. The First Order had always stated that relations of any sort between two personnel were strictly forbidden. But here she was, on a…commandeered ship, breaking enough rules with Kylo Ren, that she found herself not exactly wanting to do the “right” thing. It wasn’t like it seemed he was too concerned with it. She was reminded that he could potentially be leading her on, to report back all of these infractions, but something in her gut was suddenly telling her otherwise. He could have taken advantage of her when he’d helped her find that “vital gate”, delving into the terrible parts of her mind or ruining her altogether, but he didn’t.

A heavy sigh left Cirilla at the mention that this powerful feeling that was humming through her veins, and probably was contributing to how hazy her mind was at the moment, wouldn’t be permanent. It wasn’t exactly unfortunate that it wouldn’t last, but she just didn’t know how often Ren would be willing to help her funnel her anger through that gate. Though, she couldn’t help but feel a stab at her pride—this feeling like she needed someone else to make her feel this way. “I have a feeling I’ll need you to practice,” she said, eyes slipping between his. She wanted to hear him say it, to verify that she wouldn’t be able to do this on her own. Cirilla would swallow her pride to feel as powerful as she did now.

She stared out of the viewport, pulling the glove off of her other hand and setting it to the side. The air around her still felt remarkably warm, despite the fact her uniform was slightly temperature regulated, and she couldn’t necessarily start pulling off pieces of her armor. Her eyes slipped shut for a moment, willing away the images she had flashing through her mind of burying her fingertips into Ren’s hair, pressing her mouth against his skin, clamping down onto the pale skin with her teeth, fingertips gripping onto flesh, skin-to-skin contact. Until this moment, no one had ever tempted her like this and part of her was seriously considering leaving her seat to settle into his lap instead.

The way his voice sounded wasn’t helping her waning self control, but watching him pinch the bridge of his nose and speak to her in an almost tone had her train of thought changing suddenly. “I’m sorry. Next time I’m given permission to land on a planet and purchase non-regulation clothing with credits I don’t have, I’ll be sure to acquire some,” she shot back, a sarcastic edge to her tone, keeping her gaze forward as she brought the ship out of autopilot and placed her hands on the yoke. Cirilla noted him nodding out of the corner of her eye and she steeled herself, jaw clenching for a moment before she drew in a deep breath of air. “I ask that you never use my name outside of the safety of the First Order,” she told him, tone cool and unfaltering. “I don't know what you saw in my head, but my past is more than a little complicated. There are people in the galaxy that believe me to be dead. I’d rather keep it that way.”