He'd heard stories, years ago, about pilots getting lost flying through anomalies in space. One minute they were there, the next they'd cease to exist. On the rare occasion a conspiracy theorist ran out of material, someone drudged up an old ship that happened to look similar or held an identifying object in its cockpit and claimed the craft to belong to the lost pilot. A pilot lost in the past, they'd exclaim as crowds of people walked past, trying to go about their day. It happens more than you know!

Poe had always thought those people needed help. They'd been pushed to their limits and were trying to find an outlet – wannabe pilots were the perfect targets for such tales.

But Poe was now witness to a current and functioning KX security droid in pristine condition, give or take a slight alteration in its paint job. And its travelling companion claimed to be a Fulcrum agent.

He'd heard stories about these guys his entire life but had never actually met them. The KX series were discontinued by the Empire before the war had even ended (likely something to do with their suspiciously easy-to-find off switch), and Fulcrum hadn't officially been used by any Resistance agent. It was more commonly found in the Rebellion. It was weird that he found representatives of both parties in a pair.

BB-8 understood their situation even less than Poe did. The small droid couldn't track Kazuda – it downright cried upon reporting the lack of any indication the Fireball was even in the area. The lightning storm had fried the X-wing's scanners, the data logs conveniently corrupted. BB-8 could only make assumptions about where Fulcrum and the KX droid had crash-landed them. For all they knew, they were dozens of planetary systems away from where they'd last seen Kaz. But BB-8 was certain they hadn't gone back toward where they'd come – the droid was unable to raise any Resistance com.

Dusk began to infect the planet's skyline as shadows cast on the two ships. The surface temperature began to ease a little. The shock of the crash-landing was subsiding. Before introductions could be properly made, the KX droid downright dragged Fulcrum back to their ship. Not that Fulcrum could protest – he might have been able to chase Poe back to the X-wing, but by the time they'd 'finished' their conversation, the man was all out of energy. Wispy brown hair stuck to his forehead sweat, and his legs were little more than jello by the time he was ushered back for treatment.

The way Poe's knee stung, he'd have to get out from under this X-wing flap and crack out a medkit, too.

"Alright Beebee-Ate, run the diagnostic again," he called out, pulling the adjustor tool away from the brake flap. The droid whizzed, and after a few seconds of relative silence, it reported back… with some admittedly sour news.

This wasn't as easy a fix Poe hoped it would be.

"Y'know, for a brand new X-wing, this thing really can't pull any emergency planetary manoeuvres."

BB-8 whistled about the weight of their 'captor's' vessel placing undue pressure on the starfighter's deceleration systems – and that Poe had deliberately chosen to remotely deploy flaps, blind to the combined condition of both ships. Realistically speaking, the math had been against the starfighter.

"Black One would have taken that weight," Poe admonished, shining a torch to cut through the darkness hiding the brake flap assembly. "I'm sorry I have realistic expectations of X-wings. It's like this thing was built in the last hour before the work-shift knocked off for the weekend…"

What weekend? the droid asked, a hint of sarcasm lacing its binary language.

"Fair point."

"We do not recognise this starfighter's configuration."

The shock of hearing a new voice was enough to send Poe head-first into the flap assembly – and he was lucky he narrowly missed his forehead hitting the flap's edge. He dropped the torch, rubbing the top of his head as he crawled out from under the right-hand engine. Standing a few feet taller than he was the black KX droid, beady white eyes staring at him.

"You snuck up on me there," Poe huffed, scooping up the torch as he got to his feet.

The black hulk of a droid continued to gaze at him. "That was my intention."

"Oh." Poe blinked. "Well… good job!"

"I am Kay Tuesso."

"I'm Poe," the pilot nodded up to the droid compartment of the X-wing. "Up there is Beebee-Ate."

"So I've been told."

"Fulcrum said you rescued us from our drift. Thank you."

"If we hadn't rescued, it is highly probable Rogue Star would be little more than scattered debris," K-2SO said. "It's a good thing Cassian's cuffs are easily broken."

His name is Cassian. Poe gave a small huff, his hands resting on his hips. Evidently, K-2SO was a little more lenient about the 'secret identity' thing than Fulcrum was. Poe wasn't sure if that meant K-2SO trusted him, or if he was just sticking it to his partner. "I'm sorry about that. I needed to check on my droid."

"I don't care," K-2 stated. "I've come to take your medical kit."

Dark eyebrows pulled together in concern. Poe passed K-2 to lean into the X-wing's cockpit. He reached for the medkit tucked away next to the pilot's seat. "Everything okay?"

"Ours was lost when our cargo hold caught fire."

"No, I mean- is Fulcrum okay?"

"Cassian could do with some bacta," K-2SO drawled, snatching the medkit from Poe's hands and beginning his stalk away from the X-wing. "He also says there's a spare bunk available."

Poe shut the canopy down as BB-8 ejected from the X-wing's droid compartment, and performed a limp-jog after K-2.

Fulcrum (or, as K-2SO had referred to him, Cassian) was slumped back in the co-pilot's chair of his ship's wreckage. The tanned long-sleeve shirt was pulled open, revealing a myriad of fancy blue and purpling bruises across his sternum – mostly from the chair's harness. It wasn't as bad as Poe had expected; the man was hardly at death's door. He was just exhausted.

"You look how I feel," Poe commented, approaching K-2SO cautiously while the other man smirked and glanced away. Poe's arm reached up to hold the top of the doorway, peering into the damaged control area. The viewport had a long crack from top to bottom, the controls the pair had used to fly the ship had blackened. "My X-wing got away unscathed compared to this."

"We haven't determined the damage," the man muttered. "Kaytoo won't let me."

"It's not my fault you started complaining," the ex-Imperial droid grumbled as he cracked open Poe's medkit, pulling out small bundles of supplies. He had to raise one of his long arms up out of the way of BB-8 as the small droid rolled past and took up a spot in the corner.

Cassian rolled his eyes, turning them back to Poe. "I think my pain unsettles him."

Poe's chest rose, and he gave a slight shrug of his shoulders. "Just looking at you is unsettling me."

"It's just bruising from the harness."

"I doubt that very much," said K-2SO. His round white eyes slid between Cassian and Poe. "I don't think I can diagnose his injury. You humanoids are far too fragile. You should look into getting carbon fibre exo-skeletons."

BB-8 gave a droid-version of a frown and chastised K-2. In his seat, Cassian sucked in a sharp breath, his attention solely on BB-8 as if he were trying to decipher what the little droid was saying.

"Enough," snapped K-2SO. "Speak slowly. Do your communication protocols lack common logic? Your phrasing is appalling. It's a wonder you can get any message across."

The ball-like droid flipped out his lighter – though the intention probably wasn't a 'thumbs up' as it often was for Finn. Poe sighed.

The 'time travel' theory was becoming less and less like a theory. If Poe was exactly when he'd originally been, the droids wouldn't have had any difficulty understanding each other. It would have been a readily available communications data packet. But here K-2 was, only slowly translating what BB-8 was saying. At least he could understand him. Cassian's eyebrows appeared permanently pinched together whenever he so much as glanced at the orange and white ball.

"I can patch him up," Poe offered.

"Oh yes," K-2 drawled. "Let the strange man in the strange X-wing with the strange droid treat a potentially fatal injury-"

"Kay," Cassian interrupted. "I'll be fine. Go see if we can get this ship flying again."

K-2SO snapped up straight, staring at Cassian for a moment. "Fine," he stomped out of the control area. "But don't call for me if he breaks your neck!"

Poe gaped after the droid. He'd met some characters over his years with the Resistance, but K-2SO was almost the antithesis of all of them.

"He means well," Cassian sighed, closing his eyes for a moment. "He tends to say whatever comes to him." BB-8 chirped in agreement. Cassian frowned again. "I'm usually quite adept understanding binary, but… I can't seem to make heads or tails of how your droid speaks."

"Yup, seems to be going around." Poe took hold of the supplies K-2SO had removed from the medkit. "We'll figure that out later. Tell me: what hurts? Aside from the copious amounts of bruises your harness gave you."

"My neck," he admitted. "It's… gotten harder to move in the last few hours."

Last time Poe had spoken to him had been about two, maybe three hours ago – the pilot had been busy evaluating the X-wing and running all the diagnostics he could think of. Guilt grazed his chest. While he'd been busy trying to get off this planetoid, Cassian's health had deteriorated. This was (at least partially) Poe's fault, no thanks to the risky brake-flap manoeuvre.

Poe raised his hands, gesturing to Cassian's neck. "Can I feel?"

The man's eyebrows rose and fell, his nose sucking in a sharp breath. His eyes narrowed for a moment – probably assessing Poe's intentions – but he made no objection. Poe took that as permission. Ever so carefully, the pilot tilted Cassian's head left and right, and a little forward. Cassian's hand clenched on the chair's armrest, his eyes and jaw tightening.

"Okay," Poe breathed, removing his hands from the man's neck. Cassian relaxed his head back. "Your neck is pretty stiff. Any other pain?"

"Just my neck."

"Makes sense,"Poe pulled out an instant-icer and a pain killer. "Looks like your headrest is pretty well cushioned. Combine that with your harness, and you were pretty well protected from any head injuries. You feel dizzy?"

"No."

"Tired?"

"I've been awake for twenty-seven hours. I believe I've the right to feel tired."

"Twenty-seven hours? What the hell have you been doing that's required you be awake for twenty-seven hours?"

Cassian's eyes narrowed, again staring at Poe. "We'd just completed reconnaissance on Coruscant among the Mon Calamari riots. We were re-routed to Ryloth, but the plan changed. Then… we ran into that storm – and you."

Poe's hands stilled. Mon Calamari riots – the Empire having forcefully moved Coruscant's Mon Calamari population had resulted in the events. Everything Poe knew about it was second-hand – it was before his time, just one of the many crimes the Empire had committed before the First Order (and the Final Order) had shown up. He swallowed, cracking the instant-icer, the cool temperature rushing into his hands.

"What's your prognosis?" Cassian asked, breaking the silence. Poe was thankful.

"Pretty standard case of pilot's whiplash, I think. I know it sucks, but I'm gonna ask that you stay awake for one more hour, just to make sure nothing nasty creeps up on us." He placed the instant-icer to rest on the back of the man's neck. He held up the pain killer. "Did you want this?"

"I've had worse. I'll manage," he breathed.

"You don't have to manage, Cassian."

Dark, liquid brown eyes burned a hole through Poe's skull, shifting the feel of the conversation from nostalgic to uh-oh. "You know my name?"

Poe blinked. "Kay Tuesso mentioned it when he came for the medkit."

Cassian hissed, looking through the viewport. Off to the right were two tiny lights – it took Poe a few seconds to realise they were actually K-2SO's optical units, staring at them. He awkwardly meandered out of view, hiding from Cassian's sour look.

"Kaytoo is good at many things," Cassian said. "Keeping secrets is not one of them."

"I think he was just worried about you. He was in a bit of a hurry."

"I don't doubt it. But as you can see, I'm – mostly – fine."

Poe closed the medkit and dropped into the co-pilot's chair. The emergency lights overhead flickered, in danger of losing their rudimentary power. Part of him wondered if Cassian had actually been serious about getting this ship to fly again. But Poe glanced over to his new companion. "Does… this mean we can introduce ourselves properly?"

Cassian's nose crinkled ever so slightly, and he drew his gaze away from the darkened landscape. "I am Captain Cassian Andor. I serve Rebel Alliance Intelligence."

"Rebel Alliance Intelligence," Poe repeated, leaning back in the chair. He rubbed at the scruff growing at his cheeks, and considered his words carefully. "Captain… what if I told you that the Rebel Alliance Intelligence was dissolved roughly thirty years ago?"

Silence permeated the cockpit. Poe couldn't meet Cassian's eyes, but he could feel the man's deep gaze.

"I would ask if you'd taken spice recently."

"Yeah," Poe huffed an awkwardly laugh, shaking his head. "I have a… small conundrum."

Cassian's lips tightened. "We don't have any spice aboard."

"And I'm glad, but that's not my conundrum. I don't think I'm supposed to be here."

"Poe… we crashed. None of us are meant to be here."

"No, I mean- I think that lightning storm… sent me back in time."

Cassian stared at him, silent. A hiccup of laughter breached his lips, and he failed to contain it. He just laughed, amusement relaxing the crow's feet at his eyes. Truly, the man was handsome when he wasn't all-serious… but Poe needed him to be all-serious.

Finally, the laughter subsided, and Cassian realised Poe hadn't joined him – or was even smiling at all. "…you can't be serious?"

"Think about it. You've already asked me about my X-wing. Even Kay Tuesso doesn't recognise it. And Beebee-Ate?" Poe gestured to the droid, still quietly sitting in the corner observing the two men. "You don't understand his binary? That's because he uses twenty-seventh generation droid-speak. It's a compressed binary."

"Poor phrasing…" Cassian muttered, repeating what K-2SO had mentioned earlier to the BB unit.

"Exactly. You mentioned the Mon Calamari riots? That's history to me. And Ryloth? That's under the purview of General Syndulla, right? I'd bet credits you were told to stay away because of Grand Admiral Thrawn."

The captain's eyes had lost the touch of amusement entirely now, his face almost blank as Poe dropped his bombshells.

His voice was quiet, uncertain of what Poe was trying to tell him. "…you are serious?"

"Yeah," Poe nodded. "…do you believe me?"

Silence, again, as Cassian considered. He spoke ever so slowly, "That… would explain why we never encountered your 'wing-man'. If… he was never in this time, of course there would be no trace of his vessel."

"Well, yeah. Neither of us have yet to be born." Yikes. He just admitted he was old – to himself, not so much to Cassian. Given the events the captain had already mentioned, they hadn't yet hit the battle of Yavin. So he hadn't been born just yet. And Kazuda wouldn't even be a twinkle in his father's eye.

What a weird, weird sensation.

"It's too crazy a story not to believe," Cassian finally said, squaring his shoulders. "But even if you are temporally displaced, I'm not sure how you intend to return to your time."

"I gotta get back through that lightning storm."

"Possibly. But that could just send you back further. No. We need more information before you proceed." Cassian rubbed his fingers together. "But if you truly are from… the future…"

"I can't tell you what happens," Poe mumbled. "I've probably wrecked our timeline enough as it is."

What if Cassian and K-2SO weren't meant to make it through the crash landing? A sick feeling bubbled in his stomach as Poe thought about the implications. Did he just ruin the course of the Galactic War? By inadvertently saving these two Rebellion members? Or was it just small enough of a change not to matter?

Was there even actually a science to time travel? The crazy people in the streets said absolutely nothing about how to not wreck the timeline, just that it happened. That had to count for something, right? Surely temporal mechanics would take it easy on him, especially on his first go?

"Alright," Cassian stood, carefully stretching his limbs and taking the instant-icer off the back of his neck. He held a hand out to Poe – and the pilot took it, standing with him. "Tonight we rest. Tomorrow we plan our next move. Getting you back should be our first priority."

"Thank you for trusting me. I know it sounds insane, but thank you."

"That it sounds insane is probably the only reason I believe you."