(This story, like most of my other stories, is backed up on AO3 in case the sexual content gets too much towards the end).
On the first day, Poe Dameron awakes in darkness.
His body is an empty vessel, slowly filling up with pain. It coagulates at the base of his spine, in his knee and elbow joints and in his belly - the Stormtroopers' favourite places to throw kicks and punches. His brain floats languidly in a jar of boiling oil. He cannot remember the details of his imprisonment, but he can imagine how it must have happened - the guards with their tasers and truncheons; different versions of the phrase Resistance scum fluttering about the cell like a flock of birds; himself rolling in his own blood, weeping and laughing and screaming by turns.
It's become something of a game for Poe. The thing about games, he thinks, is that they become boring.
Gradually, other sensations diffuse out of the pain. Poe can feel steel against his back and around his wrists and ankles. By the slow numbing of the nerves in his feet, he can tell that he is fixed in a semi-upright position. And then white lights explode into his vision, and he curses as his thoughts are once more thrown into disarray.
A shadow detaches itself from the white depths, flowing into a human figure. It is swathed in black, a mask of metal scales and a dark hood covering its features. Steel-tipped boots ring as it crosses the floor, sharp and clear like an illustration of evil in some children's book.
My death? Poe thinks. The thought is so ridiculous, he has to swallow a laugh.
The figure stops in front of Poe, who stares down at his feet and the contraption of twisted steel that holds them in place. It sinks down onto one knee, and then the other, the motions of its body suddenly awkward as if the skin it wears is somehow new and ill-fitting. This observation gives Poe the courage to move his gaze to where the figure's eyes would have been.
"Do I talk first, or you talk first?" he asks, his voice bubbling hysterically in his throat. The past days have not been kind to his nerves, after all. "I talk first?"
The mask twitches to the side; Poe is reminded of a creature cocking its head and sniffing.
"Can you talk? Are you alive under there?"
"Where is the map?"
Apart from it most likely being male, Poe cannot hope to imagine the face behind that distorted voice.
"What map?" he asks. "I had a few maps in my X-Wing. If you wanted one, you should've left it in a better condition."
"You know which map." This is what a flat line on a heart monitor must sound like, Poe decides.
"And if I don't? What will you do then, I wonder? Is 'take off your mask and join me for a beer' too optimistic?"
"Do you not know who I am? What I could do to you?"
"Someone from the Dark Side, I presume." Poe decides to play stupid. This is a new game at least, and there are certainly worse ones to play. "And you could, uh, kill me I suppose?"
Heat licks Poe's feet; sweat drips stinging into his eyes. He stares in wonder as the man kneeling before him burns with invisible flames, his darkness growing brighter and brighter until it seems to drag every last photon of light into itself. He rises, reaching a slender gloved hand towards his captive's face.
"Foolish little pilot. I am the Dark Side."
A flick of his wrist smears Poe's reply like chalk across a blackboard.