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"I don't know how to explain it," Doctor Harter Kalonia told Poe with an exhausted-sounding sigh. "By all rights, he shouldn't be alive. He took a blaster bolt from that General Pryde right to the chest, or so I was told. And that would kill any regular person. He wasn't even wearing any armor. But..."
"But?" Poe asked.
His spy — ex-First Order General Armitage Hux — was still, amazingly, alive. Poe felt a fierce tide of possessive worry rising up in him at the thought that Pryde, that crusty old Imperial-era fossil, had dared to shoot his spy.
Hux was his spy. And without his spy, the good guys would never have known Palpatine was somehow returning.
Harter shrugged. "Well. There's no way to explain it — but he's fine. He's not only not dead — it's more than that. There's not a scratch on him. By all rights, it shouldn't be possible."
"Could it have been a trick? An illusion?" Poe said. "Maybe Pryde was in on it — doing a bit of theater, to make it look like he had it in for Hux."
"No. Hux's injuries were real. When they first dragged him to me, he was seriously injured; near death," Harter said. "I wasn't sure I could do much for him."
Poe clenched his hands. He'd always worried about his spy — his spy; the voice in the dark that was winning them the war, at the cost of his own safety. It was terrifying to hear that his worst fears had come true, earlier today, and Poe hadn't been there to save him.
Harter was still speaking. "But then, as we were getting him hooked up in the bacta suit — it started just vanishing. The wound. The big blaster bolt hole in his chest — it's just gone, now. And it sounds strange, but the reflections in his suit..."
She paused, looking as pained as scientists always look when they are forced to admit they don't know the answer to something.
"What about them?" Poe asked. "What about the reflections?"
Harter shook her head. "Nothing. I'm tired — it was probably just a trick of the light. But let me assure you: Hux's injuries were very real, and now they're simply gone. As little as I can explain how — physically, he's unharmed."
"And how about apart from physically?"
"I don't know," Harter said. She stared into the middle distance. "Whatever it is, I wish I could do the same for all my patients."
"So — what, he's free to go?" Poe asked.
Harter sighed. "Sure. Why not. I have no reason to keep him. Just — Poe," she said, reaching out and grasping his upper arm. "Be careful. Our instruments — when we hooked them up to him, they started going crazy. And the people in the beds near his — they started seeing things."
"What kinda things?"
"I don't know. They were too distressed to say. Raving. Practically frothing at the mouth. We had to move him to a private room to get him away from everyone else."
"Huh," Poe said, considering. He couldn't explain the wound healing, but all the rest of it sounded like people had just been seeing things. After severe shocks, people had a funny way of hallucinating things that never happened; not really. And today had been a shocking, stressful day.
He gave a decisive nod. "Well, thanks, Doc. Great job, and best of luck with — you know. All of this." He waved his hand around in a manner to indicate the entire medical facility. "I'll go fetch him and get him out of your hair."
Harter was staring at him with a pensive look on her face. "Be careful, Poe."
"I'm always careful!" Poe laughed.
Harter did not look convinced.
Poe gave her a jaunty farewell wave and set out down the hall to pick up a few things. He didn't want to show up to his spy's chambers without at least a little something to help him feel welcome in the New Republic.
"Heya, Hugs," Poe said softly, easing open the door to the hospital room with one hand while he balanced his gifts in the other. "You awake?"
The room was dark. A fan in the corner whirred fretfully, its tinny motor catching every few seconds, and the air smelled stale and off-putting.
Poe couldn't see much at the moment, but he knew the room was decorated in lumpy, beige and brown furniture that somewhat resembled clods of upturned earth. The decor here was a far cry from the polished, sterile black void that had apparently been the model for every First Order interior designer.
"It's me. It's Poe," Poe clarified, letting his eyes adjust to the low light. "I'm here to thank you. We did it — you did it. You won us the war."
He paused. There was still no sound except the fan in the corner.
The hairs on the back of Poe's neck stood up. Hux was either asleep — doubtful, knowing his paranoia — or he just wasn't talking. And that might be a bad sign.
Now that he was listening more closely, Poe could hear another sound, as well. It sounded like someone's breath hitching in his chest again, and again, and again, only to be swallowed back down savagely before it could emerge.
It was coming not from the hospital bed, but from behind the bed.
Poe carefully set down the things he had brought — some food, a flask of liquor and two small cups, and the world's sorriest bouquet of flowers. Technically, it wasn't a 'bouquet' so much as it was 'a handful of flowering weeds he had ripped out of a crack in the sidewalk on the way here,' but it was better than nothing.
He didn't know how Hux felt about flowers, but he wanted to find out.
"Hugs?"
Poe inched around to the back of the bed and peered down cautiously.
Now that his eyes had adjusted to the low light of the room, he could see Hux, wearing a paper hospital gown, curled into himself, bunched up between the bed and the wall. His bare arms were around his bony knees, and his face was buried in in his hands.
"Hey there," Poe said, dropping down slowly into a crouch. "It's all right. We won. You're safe now."
Hux whipped his head around at Poe quickly. For a split second, something behind him seemed to flare out at Poe — tendrils, or rays, or some type of long, pale tentacles; but ghostly ones. They weren't visible, but Poe could sense them anyway — some sort of emanation.
It was the same weird feeling that he got in the cockpit sometimes, right before something horrible was going to happen.
Poe flinched back as though he'd been slapped in the face, gasping in shock.
But when he looked closer, there was nothing there but that painfully thin, vulnerable figure — only Hux's pale, agonized face, and his eyes that Poe knew were green, but that were black, bottomless pits in the shadows of the hospital bed.
"Go away," Hux hissed. His voice was like a set of needles worrying under Poe's nails.
Poe's heart was hammering. Maybe he was seeing things. It had been a long day, and some of the things he'd seen that day didn't really make much sense — like horses being ridden inside a Star Destroyer.
But he didn't have time to worry about things like why didn't the bad guys just cut the ship's gravity and let all those horses just float around inside, thrashing their legs?
He had more important things to think about, like how his spy was right here, clearly distressed, and needing comfort — comfort that Poe was both able and more than willing to give.
"Hmm, that might be an issue. What if I don't wanna go away?" Poe asked, settling himself down on the floor slightly less than an arm's reach from Hux.
Hux leaned his head back against the edge of the bed. His eyes were closed, but he was breathing rapidly, attempting to calm himself.
Finally, Hux had gathered himself enough to speak.
"Then you are a fool."
Poe twisted his eyebrows. "It's okay. Like I said — we won. I brought something to drink. We can make a toast and everything. To victory." He paused watching Hux's face for any signs of relief, or triumph, or simple happiness.
Nothing.
"Doc Kalonia said you were pretty banged up," Poe said, changing tacks. "But she said you got better."
Hux gave a dry, stuttered exhalation that could have been the corpse of a laugh. "That's one way of putting it."
Huh. It sounded like there was something there — something Hux maybe didn't want to talk about.
But if there was one thing Poe was good at, it was annoying people — or charming people — so much that they said more than they'd intended to.
Well — if there was one thing he was good at, it was flying; but if there were two things he was good at, then yeah. That other thing was thing number two.
Poe got up and fetched the flask of liquor and the two small cups, then settled himself back into the same spot on the floor. He uncorked the flask and poured a hefty shot into each cup, taking one in his own hand and setting the other on the floor between them.
"Here. Let's toast. I gotta warn you, it's not the good stuff. There's precious little of that left."
Hux didn't move. His eyes were still closed. Only the pulse rapidly beating in his pale throat betrayed that he hadn't fossilized into a corpse right there, with his back to his own hospital bed.
Poe lifted his cup a few inches into the air in front of him and put on his Brave Hero Voice.
"To the brave people of both the New Republic and the First Order, who gave their lives to prevent an undead Emperor Palpatine from showing up and owning us all," he said, and then paused. "Okay, Hux. Now it's your turn to say something."
Hux sighed, then peeled one eyelid open, glaring at Poe. "Are you determined to annoy me into compliance?"
"I call it being charming, Hugs. Here — have some," Poe urged him, nudging his cup towards him by another inch.
He glanced down to steady the cup, and caught sight of Hux's reflection in the liquid.
Two pale eyes blazed from the surface, seeming to distort not just the ripples on the surface, but the cup and everything in it.
Poe stared. In the reflection, he could make out Hux's dark head — and behind it, rays of unearthly light.
No — not light. They were visible, but just barely. They seemed to be rays of compressed — something; something Poe couldn't quite name.
It was like wrinkles in the surface of reality. And it was centered on his spy.
Poe blinked at the cup, trying to discern what was real and what was just his overheated imagination. But between one blink and the next, everything had gone back to normal. The surface was just a regular surface; the cup was just a cup.
Hux was watching him, looking even more miserable than before.
"The Doc said you healed up faster than she'd ever seen before," Poe said, holding his gaze. "You wouldn't happen to know anything about that. Would you?"
Hux scoffed, but it was such a pale imitation of his usual scoff that Poe grew sincerely worried. Armitage Hux never passed up the opportunity to sneer at those he deemed beneath him.
He must be feeling awful.
"You can tell me what's going on," Poe said in a quieter tone of voice. "I owe you, right? Since you saved my life and the lives of everyone else? I promise, I won't hold it against you. No matter what it is."
Inside, he was coming up with weirder and weirder explanations. Maybe this Hux was a clone, infused with First Order-grown midichlorians. Maybe this was a life-sized droid decoy built by the Order to look like Hux. Or maybe — some sort of Force mysticism, or an elaborate hologram?
Whatever it was, Poe was determined to figure it out and make it right, if that was possible. It was the least he owed his spy.
Hux looked at him searchingly, then turned his head and stared straight ahead at the wall.
"I'm a — weird."
Then he swallowed, as though that was the full explanation.
Poe felt pretty lost. "A what, exactly?"
"A weird. A Starweird, to be specific."
Several quips immediately rose to the top of Poe's mind. To his credit, he said none of them.
"I suppose that accuracy requires me to disclose that, in fact, I am only part weird," Hux said after a few too-long moments of silence. "From what my research has uncovered, my father Brendol was — involved in — a mass casualty in Wild Space before I was born."
"Involved in," Poe repeated dubiously.
Hux slanted him a look. "Quite."
Hux picked up the cup that had been nudged towards him and brought it to his nose. He sniffed it, made a face, and then took a sip anyway.
"Records show that after Brendol returned from the — incident — he was never the same. And later, when I was born, well." Hux shrugged. "Apparently the curse of the father is truly passed on to the son."
Poe was thinking as fast as he could — which, admittedly, didn't feel like it was fast enough when he was being confronted with something like this.
"So, what, what does that mean? What is a Starweird, anyway?"
Hux pressed his lips together. "The Starweird is a spectral, parasitic creature found in deep space, often appearing as a ghostly humanoid with a twisted, floating form and wild hair. It is known for haunting deep-space travelers. It can survive unaided in open space, appearing suddenly to lone travelers. Its haunting wails can penetrate spacecraft hulls and comm systems, causing panic and disorientation before it strikes telekinetically or with intangible claws. Starweirds vanish instantly upon death, leaving no physical remains."
Poe took another, somewhat larger, sip of his drink. When it was down, he asked, "Didja memorize all that?"
Hux looked annoyed. "Obivously. Once I determined that I was in the inheritor of this — weird — I made it my business to learn all about it that I could."
"And it keeps you alive," Poe mused. "It heals you."
Hux took another sip. "Indeed. Even when I would vastly prefer to die — the weird that rides me refuses to grant me the release of death. I can only assume that it would rather puppet a pathetic failure, such as I, than let me die and take its chances jumping to someone new."
At that, Poe frowned harder and turned so he was facing Hux more fully.
"Hey, now. Don't go talking about my friend that way."
Hux froze with his cup halfway to his lips again, looking utterly confused. "I beg your pardon?"
"My friend. Armitage Hux. The spy who saved our asses in the war. Don't go trash-talking him, saying he's a failure, or, or a puppet of some sort of Spaceweird."
"Starweird," Hux corrected.
"Whatever."
Hux was staring at him. "Dameron, those are all objectively true facts. I am merely the puppet of this alien monstrosity from beyond the stars. Doomed to be its unwilling host for the rest of my life."
"I refuse to believe that's true."
A flash of anger tore across Hux's face. "Do you think I never attempted to rid myself of it? I devoted years of research — routed First Order resources to program upon program to banish it back to Wild Space. None of the Order's scientists succeeded. It cannot be done."
Poe poured himself more alcohol, then tossed it all off. Maybe it was the burn of the liquor, but he was feeling brave enough to go up against this — Starweird, or whatever it was called.
It had already been a pretty weird day. It couldn't really get much weirder, if Poe was being honest.
"I don't believe any of that," Poe said firmly. "But you know what is true?"
He reached out and took Hux's free hand, enclosing it in his broader one and resting them both comfortingly on Hux's knee.
"You saved my life today. You've saved my life more times than I can count, by passing us all that intel — and doing it right under the nose of Kylo Ren. And now, I find out that this whole time, you also had this strange thing in your head, making your life even more miserable?"
Hux looked down at their intertwined hands, then up at Poe. "I —"
"You're not weak. You're strong," Poe told him. "You're so strong. When my superior officers ordered me to do stuff I thought was stupid, I disobeyed them and got a bunch of people killed. But when your superior officers —"
"They were hardly superior," Hux muttered.
Poe gave his hand a squeeze. "When your higher-ups in the chain of command told you to do evil stuff, you didn't disobey them directly — 'cuz they would have killed you."
"I did plenty of 'evil stuff,' as you term it," Hux objected. Did he sound offended?
Poe decided to just ignore that part and keep on flying.
"Instead, you found a way to pass us the intel we needed," Poe said. "As far as I'm concerned, if you got a deep space parasite keeping you alive through all of that, well, that's all right by me."
Hux was still staring at him, and now he had two fine lines between his eyebrows. "You mean it," he said, slowly. "You really mean it."
"Course I mean it!" Poe said, in a mock-affronted manner. "Have I ever lied to you?"
"You said 'I knew it' when you most certainly did not," Hux pointed out.
Poe laughed, giving his hand a squeeze. He was heartened to feel Hux's fingers twitch in his own, as though he wanted to squeeze back, but was resisting.
"Okay, so maybe I didn't know it at the time," Poe admitted. "But as soon as you said it — well, yeah. I was on board."
Hux was still frowning. "You know nothing about Starweirds."
"I know you got one twined around your brain like a ysalamiri," Poe said. "I know it healed you — saved your life. I know it made the Doc's sensors go wonky. And maybe makes reflections a little bit — strange."
Hux gave a delicate shudder. "I avoid mirrors for more reasons than just the obvious."
Poe left that alone — at least for now. "Well — like I said before. If that weird in you kept you alive through all of that — then that's all right with me."
Hux breathed out carefully and turned his face away. "Then — you would not be averse to..."
He trailed off, staring at the wall again, and it made Poe's heart ache and soar to think that someone so brave would still be nervous about this one thing.
"Not be averse to, what, dating you?" Poe hazarded. He clutched the cup in his hand. Hard.
Hux whipped his face around, and he flung Poe's hand off his knee. "To what??"
"Oh — we're not there yet? That's okay," Poe said, retrieving his hand. "I can wait."
"I thought — I thought you wished to become my friend!" Hux sputtered.
Poe gave him an aggrieved look. "Hugs. We're already friends. We've already been friends."
Hux blinked several times, very rapidly. "I — No, that is — But you —"
"Yeah," Poe agreed, staring into his eyes.
For just a second, he could see the flicker of something else — something alien. Something far older than Poe, and far colder.
Something that had kept Hugs alive; something that was, perhaps, a little bit scary — okay, maybe more than a little bit — but something that had kept him in one piece, despite crazed Sith cultists, and reincarnated evil emperors, and horses that were unaccountably inside spaceships, and who knew what else.
Poe leaned forward very slowly, holding his breath. He waited for Hux to move away.
Hux wasn't moving away.
I hope this weird doesn't kill me for getting frisky with its man, Poe thought.
When their lips touched, Hux swallowed down a tiny, broken sob.
Poe brought one hand up to cup Hux's cheek and thumb away the moisture that was gathering there. "Is this okay?" he murmured against Hux's mouth.
"Yes," Hux breathed. "But, Dameron — only consider —"
"Nope," Poe said cheerfully, laying another kiss on his cool lips after that word.
He continued, "No way." And followed it with another kiss.
"I refuse." And another.
"To let." Kiss.
"The weird Spaceweird win." More kisses, scattered over Hux's cheekbones like stars in an uncharted galaxy — a galaxy that Poe was determined to discover.
"Starweird," Hux corrected him again.
"That's what I said, babe."
"Do not call me that," Hux complained.
"Oh, so you're saying you'd prefer 'Hugs?'"
Hux shot him a look of mingled frustration, anger, and fear. "Dameron — truly — are you not worried that it will harm you? That it might jump to you? I'm — I'm tainted by it; I'm set apart. I'm alone."
"No, you're not," Poe said, very seriously. He set his cup aside and moved closer still, pulling Hux into one arm and letting his other hand play with Hux's hair as he tucked him down and into his chest. Hux's cup of liquor spilled on him, but Poe didn't care — the brief patch of cold was thrilling, especially in contrast to all the heat that was building between them.
"I am," Hux repeated from somewhere near Poe's pectoral muscles.
"You're not alone anymore," Poe repeated, raising his voice and infusing it with all the authority he could command. "Hear that, Starweird? Go and bug someone else. This one is mine."
A shudder — a shimmer — a silent scream.
Poe was probably imagining how the spilled alcohol burning down his side flared to life with a spectral chill, only to immediately sizzle out. He was probably letting his imagination get the best of him when he fancied that the failing motor in the corner of the room whirred to a sudden overdrive, only to resume its steady-unsteady shake.
But he was definitely not imagining how Hux's shoulders were finally starting to soften, where they were nestled into him.
Poe tipped Hux's chin up. "To victory," he said.
He kissed Hux, and slowly, hesitantly, as though not daring to believe he could really have this, Hux kissed him back.
And this time, when Poe tasted the cold, clear burn of liquor on Hux's tongue, it was sweeter than any victory he had ever imagined.