Smoldering ash, rubble, and bodies. Standing at the center of it, maskless, shoulders shaking with barely-controlled anger. Mouth open in a roar that wracked his whole form, raw and pained.
Then, in Snoke's throne room. Numb and cold. Staring at the reflective floor. Remembering the smell of her hair.
"Unacceptable," Snoke's voice cut through the cold. "Utter failure."
"The Wrea outpost was a decoy." Hux. Meek. Worried. "I've reached out to my contacts, we will find their true location—"
"The girl." The girl, the girl, the girl. "What of her?"
"She…" Hux swallowed. Kylo shook. "She was not on Wrea."
Rage. Something akin to fear. Pushing it down, don't show Snoke how much effect this had that she was still gone—
"She must be retrieved."
Brief nod. "Yes, Supreme Leader."
The hall. Hux's furious steps. His usual demeanor decimated in his frustration. "We must find her quickly—"
"It's your fault she was taken in the first place."
Hux rounded, hissing, "My fault?"
"She was your responsibility." So angry. He should have her back by now. She should be at his side.
"She wouldn't have been my responsibility if you weren't such a toddler! She wouldn't have been on the base at all!"
"If you had just told me where she was—if you hadn't let her out of your sight—"
"Where were you when they made off with her, huh? Halfway across the rubble looking for the scavenger; if you hadn't heard me yelling her name, how long until you actually noticed Ana was gone?"
Hands on the front of Hux's shirt, lifting him off the floor, slamming him into the wall. "The fact remains, you lost her." The last shreds of his control, fading. "I will have her back, Hux."
"Where do you propose we look?" Hux snapped, nearly spitting in his face.
"I don't know but when we find them we destroy them all in a hail of fire—"
"And what, pull her from the wreckage? Rather have her dead than in Organa's hands? We rain gunfire and Ana is dead, Ren. We blow them to smithereens and Ana is buried with the rebel scum. Try to have some care, for fuck's sake. You think I don't want to simply rush in and snatch her away from them?"
Hux's eyes, searching his face for common ground. "I want her back. I want her back intact, all limbs and sardonic wit whole and untouched. Surely you can see where a brazen, bullheaded attack could put her at risk—surely, we want the same thing for once."
"I don't trust you." Lowered him. Fists clenched at his sides. "I don't trust that you can get her back."
"You'll have to. I have a plan."
Ana awoke with a start and a gasp. How could she have been so careless? So sloppy. Next time she'd be sure to kill the flyboy; he'd come back to consciousness much too quickly. Just a few more seconds and the scavenger would be dead, she would be on a shuttle—she could've held a pilot hostage and forced them to fly her to Ossus, that would've been a smart thing to do—she tucked that idea away for later. Kylo knew, he knew she wasn't on Wrea, they'd already destroyed Wrea, so where the fuck was she? She should've bought herself more time, she should've paid more attention to her surroundings, maybe she could call for him—with a groan, she reached to rub her eyes. There was a metallic clink at the motion. She cracked her eyes open to see the chains around both her wrists, confining her to the floor.
"Seriously?" she asked dryly, lifting her hands.
Standing outside the bars of her cell, the pilot stood scowling at her, a bacta patch over the split on his temple and his nose swollen, crooked, and purple. Her side ached from the blaster wound sustained on Corellia, her head pounding—
"Don't look at me like that," she said, rolling her eyes. "It was your fault for having your gun that close to the bars."
"Name." Flyboy winced in pain when he stepped closer to her cell, his thigh thickly bandaged.
"Back to that shit again," she muttered. "Anavexi Tam, nice to fucking meet you." She stuck out her hand pointedly, the metal jingling.
"Poe, I think you've had enough time with her, don't you think?"
Flyboy grimaced at Ana one last time and left, and in his vacated chair the aging general sat, holding a cane close to her side.
"Here to chastise me for hurting your pilot?"
The general, for some reason, smiled and settled more comfortably into the chair, moving the cane between her knees. "The broken nose was a nice touch."
"Self defense," Ana shrugged. She frowned, realized she didn't feel the incessant badgering of the sand girl. "Where's your Jedi bitch?"
A shadow passed over the general's face. "Rey is off world."
Ana fought to keep the elation off her face, mildly curious as to where the girl would go.
"How long have you been with the First Order?" Unlike the pilot, Organa's voice was firm but not accusatory.
Ana blinked. Had she ever stopped to quantify it? How long had it been? Time had seemed to sort of...blur."
"Months," she said eventually. "I didn't have a calendar."
"Rey tells me you defended Kylo Ren." Her expression was unreadable.
"So what?" Ana's face hardened. "I already told your pilot, I don't have any information."
"Your loyalty is...surprising. Given the kind of man Kylo Ren is." Organa pursed her lips. "Before we locked you back in there, we had our medics look you over." I thought I felt bacta. Ana touched her side, felt the thin gauze they'd put on her blaster burn. "Those are some nasty scars. Your shoulder." Organa nodded her head at it.
Ana's anger flooded to the surface, fresh and raw, from the woman's insinuation. "They aren't from him," she hissed. "And this isn't loyalty. I don't care about the First Order. I don't care about you either. I feel like I've said this a thousand times. Why can't everyone just leave me alone?"
"You don't care for the First Order's cause?" Organa looked confused. "Then why remain? We could help you defect—"
"I'm not a soldier," Ana spat. "And not everyone has the privilege of being a part of something because they believe in it. Some of us are just trying to get by. I don't have time for causes, not for your shallow 'noble' Resistance or for the short-minded, power-mad First Order—"
"You were his prisoner, then," said Organa, a look of understanding on her aging face, but Ana wasn't listening.
"—you've brought this on yourselves for taking me, Snoke won't have it, and between Hux and Kylo you're all going to die, and you can blame it all on your scavenger for sticking her nose where it didn't belong—and you tell her to stay out of my fucking head or I'll rip her head off by those fucking ponytails—" Ana inhaled sharply, locking eyes with the general. "Fuck your Jedi girl and fuck your war."
Organa said nothing, her fingers clenching and unclenching around the handle of her cane. Ana's chest was heaving and she wanted the other woman to just leave her the fuck alone—
"You can continue being uncooperative if you like. But you won't be given another chance to escape, so it would behoove you to answer our questions. Even if you were a prisoner of Kylo Ren and not a fully willing participant, there are things you could know that would benefit us. And, if you were indeed unwilling, we can offer you an escape from the First Order." Her eyes dropped to Ana's wrists. "Those chains don't have to be permanent."
Ana settled her back against the wall. "Sorry, lady, your son kept me in a fucking electric collar at first. You're going to have to sweeten the incentives a bit."
The woman froze. "What did you just say?"
"They don't know, do they? Your little misfit band." Ana flashed another smile. "Wonder how that'd be received. I heard it didn't go over well for you when the Senate found out who your father was."
She was trying to get a rise out of her, and to the older woman's credit, she didn't give one. She simply left Ana alone in her cell, and Ana laughed to herself. An escape, Organa claimed. The general presumed to know her circumstances, presumed to offer to save her—they all thought they were so noble. She dragged the metal chains across the floor in a rhythmic motion, trying to calm and lull herself into meditation. The girl was gone, for how long? She may not have much time. He was reaching out for her, that much was clear from the vision she experienced; did he know she'd seen it?
She lowered her mental barrier until she was open, wholly vulnerable, and waited. There had never been a time since meeting Kylo that she had removed her wall so fully, left herself so unprotected, and it made her skin crawl.
I don't have to keep this up for long, she rationalized. Just until they find me.
But there was nothing. For agonizing hours, there was nothing but the quiet of her own mind. She cursed the limitations of herself, knowing if he were closer she could broadcast something, anything. But with this distance, without him and his connection to the Force to initiate contact, there was nothing she could do.
"Did he tell you?" The general's voice cut through her meditation once more and Ana wanted to throttle her. "Did he tell you who he used to be?"
"Not quite," Ana said through clenched teeth. She kept her eyes steadfastly closed.
"But you know, don't you?"
"Yes. I know."
There was silence for a while. "What are you to my son?"
Ana opened her eyes with a roll. "Would it relieve you of your burden if I lied and said I was his lover?" she mocked. "That's what you want, isn't it? To know your son is capable of love? If he can love someone like me, doesn't that mean there's hope he still cares for his mother?" Ana's lips twisted in a scowl. "You and the scavenger are just the same. Wanting to turn back the clock and forget none of this ever happened. He wouldn't...he wouldn't be him."
"You talk as though you know him quite intimately. You're angry on his behalf."
"Of course I'm angry, he's angry, why can't you see that you are partially to blame for this, all he ever wanted was praise and acceptance. Kylo Ren didn't materialize from nothing, it was you and Luke pigeonholing him to be just like Vader—until that was all he wanted, all he strived for, because that was all he thought he could be."
The general looked sad. "I see. You're in—"
"Don't," Ana growled, interrupting. "Don't say it. Don't you dare."
"There is a lot you don't know," Organa said instead. "Though I suppose you are right about one thing; it does relieve me a bit as a mother to see there is still something in him worthy of love."
The discomfort settled hard in Ana's chest. That wasn't—she didn't—
"Do you want to know what he was like? As a boy?"
"Do you want to know what he's like as a man?" Ana jeered, her embarrassment aiding her snarky tone. "It doesn't matter. And this won't work, I still have nothing to tell you."
"A different topic, then," Organa pressed on. What was she hoping to gain? Why did she keep talking? "Why do you hate Rey so much?"
"The same reason I hate any of you. You all think you can save people. Kylo, me. She assumes to know me, to understand me, to understand him—who is she to be a moral crusader, who is she to condemn my character and claim that I need to be rescued? Who is she, a fucking scavenger from a backwater planet, to look down on me just because she's got magic fucking powers?" Ana jerked forward, the chains yanking her back. "You have no idea what I've endured to survive. You have no idea what I've done. That little girl couldn't fathom what I've suffered." She pulled again on the chains. "Now will you stop asking me these fucking questions."
The general tapped her cane once on the floor. "Alright. No questions, then. Just listen. You may not be a First Order soldier, or a willing participant in your plans, but the fact remains that you've killed several of our people and that makes you a threat. My top advisors want to kill you if you can't provide us with anything useful. Rey thinks you can be coerced to leave the First Order, but it seems it's about Kylo Ren, not the Order."
"And what do you think?"
"General Hux has taken prisoner a few of my officers. Major Taslin Brance, General Caluan Ematt, and most recently on Garel, Admiral Statura. If the First Order views you as an asset, they will be willing to trade you for my officers."
"A hostage exchange." That won't work. Hux won't do it. Those officers are too important, they've been providing the First Order information for weeks. Hux won't, not even for me. "Good idea."
A/N: Sorry this took so long, I hit a bit of a snag and ended up rewriting this section several times. She and Leia aren't done talking, to Ana's inevitable annoyance, but I thought this would serve to tide you all over for a while! I've also accidentally distracted myself by starting a Loki fanfiction as well which I hope to get uploaded soon.
Thanks in advance for reading and reviewing! Your support is why I keep writing!
