Kylo doesn't recognize him at first. He hasn't seen Poe Dameron in… seventeen years? He has died and remade himself in that time. Poe Dameron isn't even a blink of memory anymore.

Until he is kneeling before Kylo Ren, defiant as ever — only kneeling because his legs were kicked from under him — and B—Kylo squats to meet him at eye level before he's even considered what he's doing.

It's a habit that hails from another life. A habit he learned from this man, before. Before either of them were men. He ignores the memory, instead delving into Poe's head. Why is he here? Why is this ghost showing up on Kylo's boarding ramp after half a lifetime?

"So, who talks first — you talk first? I talk first?"

"The old man gave it to you." Just a hint of it in his thoughts, but it's enough.

Poe is talking — he still has that same mouth on him from when they were kids — but Kylo stands and looks to the trooper behind him. "Search him."

Nothing. So he had the map, but not any longer. They'll have to force it out of him. Kylo's gut roils with fury. "Put him on board," he says, his mask modulating a voice that might not contain his anger otherwise.

Why this man? Is Grandfather testing him? Poe factors into many of the only happy memories he still carries of his childhood. The only person he could ever really count as a friend. And now he's here, on the wrong side, protecting information Kylo needs to get to Skywalker.

He gives the order to wipe out the village. Too much fight in the lot of them. The First Order demands that weak links be purged to strengthen the whole, and a village that resists the simple questioning of an old wanderer cannot be tolerated.

Leaving the village to burn, he sweeps up into his command ship.

Kylo lets Poe's screams fade to background noise as he rakes through his mind for signs of the map. He's got a good defense for someone who isn't Force-sensitive. The memories Kylo rip loose are too often familiar and come like a punch to the gut.

Poe doesn't know him like this, not really, but he does know he killed Ben Solo. Memories of Ben are close to the surface, confronted by his killer. The memories splinter and fragment, seen half through Poe's eyes and half through his own. Sitting under the Force-sensitive tree Uncle L—Skywalker gifted to Poe's family, Poe's smiling face crowned by dark curls, ears Ben hasn't grown into peeking through his black hair. (Is that the source of Poe's strength under this kind of duress?)

Poe defending Ben from too-curious friends who pushed and pushed until Ben could do nothing but push back, only his push is backed by the Force and the boy goes stumbling. When the boy complains, ten-year-old Poe simply says, "Kind of asked for it, didn't you?" and it's the first time someone has defended Ben for using the Force to protect himself.

Well, except for the voice. Grandfather's voice. That one encouraged him to use the Force to protect himself, to make himself stronger.

Kylo rips through the memory, searching deeper, hunting for the image of Lor San Tekka, for the map, for what happened next.

Instead he's slammed with an unfamiliar memory:

Poe at eighteen, grieving the death of Ben Solo, killed by a padawan-gone-rogue. By Kylo Ren. (By himself.) He's already at the academy, training to be a pilot for the Republic. He doesn't even hear it from General Organa herself; it's an offhand comment, cadets whispering, "Did you hear General Organa lost her son?"

"Luke Skywalker was training a new generation of Jedi and one of them went rogue."

"No way, that's just myth. Luke Skywalker? Please."

"Where have you been living, under a rock? You've seen General Organa and you still think Skywalker's a myth?"

But Poe is stumbling away, back to his quarters, disbelief settling like fuzz in his head. He pulls up his holo immediately but then stops. What's he going to do? Demand the details of what happened from a grieving mother? Ask why he wasn't told? He hasn't seen Ben in almost four years.

Guilt sweeps in through his gut. If he'd known, would he have kept better contact?

Kylo seizes that thread to bring him back to himself. There is a melancholy to Poe's memories of Ben, an old, dusty, antique feeling. He remembers now, faced with Ben's killer, but he hasn't dredged up these memories in years. These memories are like gravity inside Kylo, but Poe was always more to him than he was to Poe.

The distance is a tool. He uses it. He cuts off the avenue to Ben, focusing instead on what Poe was doing on that miserable dustbowl of a planet. Lor San Tekka. That insufferable old man always did know more than was good for him.

He nearly misses it. Nearly skips over the thought of the orange-and-white BB unit. It's too tied up in those old memories, the time spent with his head close to Poe's working on customizing the droid. That Poe still flies with the droid is a cold ache. He is devoted to the machine, his feelings for a robot more intense than the old, cool memories of Ben.

And the droid has the map. Of course it does.

Kylo pulls free of Poe's mind and stands with his hands fisted as he fights to calm his breath. Poe's breath rasps as his head lolls against the side of the interrogation chair, torn apart by Kylo's brutal ransack of his mind.

This is done. It's done. Kylo turns his back on Poe and leaves the interrogation chamber. Confronted by General Hux in the hall, his voice is calm, would be even without the mask. "It's in a droid. A BB unit."

By the time the klaxons ring Poe Dameron's escape and the destruction of the control terminal above the main bay, Kylo has properly distanced himself. He's allowed Poe — a link to his past — to distract him until now. Maybe if he hadn't, FN-2187 wouldn't have gotten away with the prisoner.

There's a reason the Supreme Leader bans connections to Kylo's past.

But they're already dispatching squadrons to track down the pilot, the treacherous stormtrooper, and the droid. When Kylo Ren meets Poe Dameron again, he'll be ready.

I also write on AO3 under this same penname, some of it nsfw, so... yay? And my tumblr is sheikahtrainee. Thanks for reading!