[Poe]

"We had a vision," Rey explained after she burst into the tactical room. She was almost breathless in excitement. "Sidious is back and he intends to take over the First Order."

"Sidious? Who's that?" Poe asked. The others in the room comprised two groups: Rose, Finn, and a couple techs were installing the holotable, and Leia and Lando were discussing what fixtures she'd need to run the Resistance from here. Both groups fell silent and listened.

"Darth Sidious." Kylo followed her in, looking peeved rather than excited. "You would know him as Emperor Palpatine."

"Emperor …?" Poe asked. "You mean the Empire Emperor Palpatine? Guy who died before I was even born?"

"Yes," Kylo said solemnly.

"Did you miss the part about him being dead?" Poe asked.

"Did you miss the part about him being back?" Kylo shot back.

"How do people just come back from the dead?" Poe asked, tossing down the datapad he'd been intending to review with Leia. He threw his hands up and scoffed at how preposterous the idea was. Palpatine was a figure from the history books, the big bad his parents had fought against and defeated. He wasn't just 'still around' or 'back'.

"They do," Rey said. "In the Force."

"Oh?" Poe said, but she looked dead serious. His brows drew together in concern. She seemed to believe it, whatever it was. And, well, she knew things he didn't. "If you say so." He wasn't being sarcastic, but he was still having trouble wrapping his mind around it.

Leia said, "Luke often spoke of seeing or hearing the spirits of past Jedi, Obi-Wan Kenobi in particular."

"I know about the spirits," Poe said, because of course he did. The religion he'd been raised in, the Church of the Force, spoke of them. But evil Sith guys didn't get to come back. Or at least, that's what he'd been taught. "I didn't know about this 'coming back' thing. They can do that? Why doesn't everyone, then?"

Kylo said, "Ghosts can't interact with the world without a lot of effort. They can only appear in locations that are strong in the Force or to people already sensitive to the Force who knew them."

"But this guy manages to take over the First Order?" Poe asked, deciding to give Kylo a pass on not answering the 'why not everyone' question. It wasn't as important as 'why this particular asshole.' "If he's tied to a location, then why don't they just walk away from him? Fly, maybe, if they're in space. Everyone who knew him has to be dead, right?"

Rey said, "In the vision, we see him possess General Hux. That's his tie to the world of the living."

"He knew General Hux?" Poe asked. The ages didn't match. He didn't have Hux's file memorized, but it was easy to remember the guy would have been a little kid at the time. "Also, wait, is he Force sensitive?"

"I don't know," Rey said, shaking her head.

"Yeah doesn't matter," he conceded. Kylo's explanation had a lot of holes in it, but there was an obvious solution regardless. Decisively, he said, "So we kill General Hux."

Kylo rolled his eyes. "We saw it happen. It can't be prevented."

"Well, you saw him take over the galaxy, too," Poe said. "If that can't be prevented, then what are we even talking about?"

"We saw his plan," Rey said. "Visions are unreliable. Even though what they show you is true, it's only true from a certain point of view. There may be a way to get rid of him after."

"Okay," Poe amended, "then we kill General Hux after he gets possessed."

Rey said, "We talked about that, but Kylo is concerned he might be too powerful after he has a physical form." She gestured at him.

"Too powerful? For you two?"

Kylo gave an acknowledging tilt of his head.

"Okay," Poe said, thinking. "Then-"

Rose, Finn, and the techs had stopped working as soon as Rey came in. Up to now, they'd been listening quietly. Rose spoke up to ask, "Is Sidious worse than Hux?"

"Yes," Kylo said immediately.

"You're sure?" she asked.

Kylo nodded. "Yes. Hux is … rational. Disciplined. Orderly." Rose looked unconvinced. Kylo went on, "He is mortal. Sidious is not and he wasn't even when he was emperor. My grandfather died to end him and his rule." He shook his head. "Hux is just a man. I left the First Order in his control. I will not leave it in that of Darth Sidious."

"We need to know more about how he's going to do this," Rey said.

"I thought you knew his plan," Poe said. "Don't you guys know anything for sure?"

Rey gave him a glower (which he totally did not deserve in his opinion), then shook her head. "We know what he's planning. We don't know how he does it. And also, knowing more about possession would help us understand other things."

"Like what?" Poe asked, but Rey took a leaf from Kylo's book and didn't answer.

Kylo did, sort of. He said, "Snoke had an extensive library of Sith holocrons and holy items. General Hux knows their value, but he can't use them. He wouldn't have thrown them away. We're going to infiltrate the Finalizer and steal them. I didn't have a chance to study them while I was supreme leader. But I can do that now and perhaps we'll find a way to stop him."

"Infiltrate a star destroyer?" Finn said, stepping forward and looking interested. "That's old hat. So who's going?"

"Just the two of us," Kylo said with a scowl and a negating wave of his hand.

"No," Leia said. "I'm not sending the only two Force users we have into the field without backup." Poe thought the more relevant objection was going off half-cocked on virtually no solid information, but he kept his mouth shut. It seemed kind of … hypocritical to point that out.

"More would complicate things," Kylo said.

"And while simple is good," Leia said, "it's also easy to disrupt. I'm sending you with assistance. As long as you're there, there is information we need on the First Order. Things like number of ships, deployments, resources. We need the most detailed picture possible if we're to continue to recruit allies and show them what they can do to contribute. If that's disrupting supply lines or hitting them when they're not looking – we need that information. While you're there, get that information."

Kylo continued to scowl.

"How?" Rose asked.

Finn said, "All that will be in their central computers. That's how their leadership makes decisions."

Rose nodded. "Then we can download it while we're there."

"'We'?" Finn said. "You're going?"

"We are going," she said. "You know the layout of a star destroyer better than any of us except maybe Kylo, and it sounds like he has his own mission while he's there."

"If I go with the other team," Rey said, "then I can use the Force to minimize how much resistance we encounter. We might be able to just walk in, get what we want, and walk out."

"You can't mind-trick everyone," Leia said. "Let's put you in First Order uniforms and get you a ship that will pass at least a surface inspection."

Lando piped up. "I happen to have both, back on Cloud City."

Poe was really getting tired of these rough landings. It made him look incompetent when the truth was just about any other pilot in the galaxy would have been paste against the star destroyer's hull. In their case … well, after a turbo laser clipped the engines and literally exploded the back quarter of the ship, he still managed to get them inside the hangar with a last ditch burst from the maneuvering jets. No one was paste.

What was left of their ship skidded across said hangar and crashed into the far side. No one on the Finalizer appeared to care, probably because they were in the middle of a losing fight against six other ships, two of which were same class. Poe and party bailed out of their flaming ship and retreated out of the hangar as it finished exploding.

Poe said, "So much for that."

"Next time," Kylo growled, "I'm piloting."

"Next time you're co-pilot," Poe said. "We're alive. That's what counts."

Finn asked, "Sure, but how are we getting back out of here? Continuing on with the mission in the middle of this firefight is craziness."

Poe said, "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Let's get what we came for first. Chewie, C'ai, go with Rose's group. I'll go with Kylo." Chewbacca and Threnalli had both volunteered with the original role of staying on the ship and effectively keeping the engines hot, ready for their departure. There wasn't anything left of the engines to keep hot, which introduced a host of problems since the First Order was overwhelmingly human.

Rey complained, "They'll stand out."

Poe said, "They're going to stand out anywhere. Where else are they going to go? Should they wait here?" That was sarcasm. Probably not called for, but he was feeling a bit stressed by the situation.

"That wouldn't work," Rose said. "They can come with us. There's a battle raging. Maybe people have better things to do."

Finn said, "I doubt that, but they're safer with us than anywhere else."

Chewie had some things to say. Rey nodded. "Alright. You're with us."

Kylo turned to Poe. "I don't want you along."

Poe sighed. "Listen, you heard General Organa. You heard the Wookiee: no one goes alone, especially either of you two. Do you want to go with one of them instead?" He gestured at Rose's team.

"Fine," Kylo said in a sulky tone. "I pilot next time."

"No," Poe said back, refusing to give a centimeter. "You co-pilot."

Finn said, "Why are you two arguing over something that stupid? We don't even have a ship." He looked between the two of them. Kylo was impassive. Poe shrugged. Finn asked him, "Where do we go after we do the download?"

Poe said, "Converge on my signal. We'll find a ship. Don't worry about it. Looks like it will be easy to get out of here in the confusion."

Poe and Kylo went to Kylo's quarters, with Kylo mind tricking the few challengers they had to their progress. The room was empty. Kylo cursed. "He probably moved everything of value to his quarters. It's down here."

"'He'?" He said as he followed Kylo a short distance down the hall.

"General Hux," Kylo said, stopping outside a door.

Poe waved around at the place. "This huge ship, and you guys lived right next to each other? Like two doors down?"

Kylo said, "We were co-commanders for years, same rank, serving on the same ship. That puts your quarters in the same area." He used his powers to force the door to Hux's quarters.

Kylo scanned the room and moved immediately to a set of crates at the far end, under a projection of a star scape. Unless Poe wanted to knock elbows with him (which he distinctly did not), he was left to examine the rest of the room. It was a suite of two rooms next to one another. He left Kylo sorting through the crates and wandered into the bedroom.

The space here was disturbingly impersonal. At least the main room had shown some character in odd furniture. In here, the bed was made regulation-neat, the walls were bare, and there was another generic star scape projected on the far wall. The refresher was equally barren, as though the more private the space, the less of an impression Hux had made on it. It reminded him of a hotel. As he started to leave, he noticed something on the bed stand next to a datapad.

It was a stone a little smaller than his palm, black like the walls and some of the furniture, so it had blended in on first glance. It had a chip missing from one corner. Poe rolled it around in his hand, wondering why someone on a space ship had a rock next to their bed. Everything else in here looked ready for inspection. Was it that this guy had nothing private in his life? Or was it that he'd never been allowed to have anything private? The things Finn had told Poe about the Order implied the latter. Poe slipped the stone into his pocket to think about later.

He walked back to the other room. "You know this guy," he said to Kylo. "Do you think he's on-board with the idea of giving himself over to Sidious?"

"He doesn't even know his father was one of Palpatine's clones," Kylo said, still sorting through Snoke's things. Some of them he floated out of the crates using the Force, making Poe wonder if they weren't safe to touch.

"He's what? Brendol Hux was a clone? And you just decided to tell us that now, in the middle of this?"

Kylo paused to give him an unimpressed glare. "Yes. Of Palpatine."

Poe turned in a half circle, hands on his hips, before swiveling back. He'd read the files on all the First Order leadership some time back, along with the history of the organization as Leia knew it. It was required reading for everyone in her inner circle. "Brendol Hux could use the Force? Why didn't the First Order-"

But Kylo was shaking his head. "He was Force-neuter. Clones usually are. But being his biological equal must have been useful for Sidious somehow. Maybe it was a body he planned to inhabit and didn't have a chance to, there at the end over Endor. That the vision showed him possessing Armitage is too much of a coincidence for it to be meaningless. The family tie has to matter."

"How do you know they're related? Are you sure of this?"

"Snoke knew. He told me when we were discussing the power of bloodlines. I'm sure."

"But he never told Hux? Armitage, that is."

"No."

"And you didn't either?"

"No."

"Why? I mean, why didn't you tell him?"

Kylo shrugged. Poe blinked at him, thinking back to how he'd gotten so many killed over Crait by not knowing the plan, not knowing the truth, and making bad assumptions as a result. "Did it ever occur to you that he might need to know that about himself?"

Kylo shrugged again, looking guilty this time, as though it had possibly never occurred to him to share. Poe moved closer and said, "No, I'm serious. Okay, maybe not back then, but what about now? What if he gets told that at the last minute by Palpatine and it makes a difference? What if that's why he lets it happen, because it's the only family tie he has?"

"It's going to happen anyway," Kylo said defensively.

"You're not even going to give him a chance? You're just going to let him get possessed, is that it?"

Kylo glowered down at him. "He's a Palpatine."

"And you are …?" Poe demanded. "Listen, I know who Leia's related to. I know you're her son. And you know what? I don't judge either one of you based on that. But you're going to judge Hux based on someone he doesn't even know he's related to?"

"Why do you care at all?"

"Because you've told me the fate of the galaxy hinges on it! We can't do anything about Sidious being back. Fine, he's back, whatever. He's going to take over the First Order and you've said he's going to do it through Hux." Kylo made a vaguely disagreeing expression. "That's basically what you said, right?"

"Yes."

"Okay, then. The way to stop it is right there!" He gestured emphatically in the direction Poe assumed the bridge lay. When Kylo looked undecided, Poe continued, "You lived next to this guy and worked with him for years. Tell me he's a lost cause. Tell me he's so eaten up by darkness that he should be condemned to having his body used as an instrument for the forces of evil. Tell me you would make that decision about him without ever letting him know why. Because that's the decision you're making."

Kylo straightened and sighed. He looked pained, but he said with resignation, "It's going to happen anyway."

"Rey said visions were unreliable. Maybe he fights him off afterward. Maybe Palpatine possesses him twenty years from now. Maybe he helps us find another way. The future is not written in stone. His future is not written in stone. If we're about anything, it's about freedom, but freedom doesn't matter much when you don't have the right information to make a decision."

"You were talking about killing him two days ago."

"Yeah, and that's not off the table. It would wrap all this up fairly neat and simple. But what I'm not about is walking off and leaving him with Palps and him not knowing what's at stake. Let's go find him." Poe gestured at the stuff Kylo had piled on the blue couch. "You've got your stuff, right?"

"Not all of it. There are a few things missing. They're not here."

"You know who'd know where they were?" Poe asked. "Hux."