Chapter Text
Late, late, late.
Kylo bit the inside of his cheek, shifting his focus away from his tardiness to settle his nerves. He’d reach Jakku soon, and finally be able to meet up with (and subsequently ravage) one Poe Dameron.
The two of them had planned for months, sending short coded messages back and forth under ever-changing aliases until they’d solidified the details for yet another one of their secret rendezvous — frantically impatient, passionate “meetings” well-hidden from both factions.
Instead, it seemed that the force had other plans for Kylo.
A weathered ship landed in the middle of seemingly endless dunes of sand. Jakku wasn’t the most accommodating planet, its daytime heatwaves and unbearable midnight chill making it difficult for travelers to find any reprieve, unless they knew where to look. A small settlement was located a few miles east from where he’d arrived, reasonably close enough to walk to and yet distant enough to hide the generic TIE Kylo had “borrowed.”
Kylo leaned back in his seat, sparing himself a moment to daydream. He thought of his last encounter with Poe — hidden away in a small suite, basking in the afterglow of their (fourth? fifth? sixth?) round as the pilot laid on his chest and hummed a tune, softly carding his fingers through Kylo’s hair, gentle and almost loving.
Almost.
It was indisputable that Kylo and Poe were sexually compatible, but after hiding detail of their military affiliations only to watch all their unknowingly mutual hard work crash and burn two months later aboard the Finalizer, it was apparent to Kylo that the same sentiment couldn’t exist romantically? He almost whined remembering the terrified, betrayed look Poe had given him upon realization, mind reeling with apprehension and disappointed curiosity at what else Kylo must’ve hidden from him.
Rebuilding some sort of amicable relationship after weeks of coming to terms with matching infamy to the sweet (and sometimes, sinful) words of a dearly-missed lover took time, thankfully bolstered by a yearning that couldn’t go away; both longing for the comfort of idle conversation under the covers, exhausted. Blissful. Safe in the little world they’d shared in those moments. Now that they’d reestablished some remnant of what they had before, Kylo felt as if he were treading on thin ice thinking about opening up to Poe, no longer to holding back his softer feelings for fear of rejection. He’d already lost Poe once, he wasn’t going to chance it again.
Nonetheless, his qualms did little to stop his urge to intertwine his fingers with Poe’s and whisper sweet nothings to him in between languid kisses every time he thought of the pilot. Sighing, Kylo disembarked the ship. He really had to get a handle on this.
Only a few steps into his journey, he noticed a wisp of a dark green hue circle his boots unlike anything he’d ever seen before. He watched as it turned to smoke of a similar shade, expanding to wrap around him. Kylo couldn’t take his eyes off of it, entranced until it rose to occlude his vision with glimmering gold sparkles. The sudden presence of a force signature amongst the foray triggered his fight or flight response and Kylo swung around to gain sight of the being what he’d assumed to be an attacker.
This was apparently the wrong idea as the smoke dissipated along with his movement and left him falling onto damp grass with a dull thud.
Grass?
Last he’d checked, Jakku was devoid of grass.
At least, the area he’d been standing on was, until now.
What should’ve been sand baked under harsh sunlight was traded for a shady nook under of a thicket of trees. Explosions and crashes rang loudly around him, their impact dangerously shaking the foliage above him. Kylo winced, looking for the source of the sound. He caught sight of a battle raging on not too far away. The fight was clearly one-sided, a handful of AT-STs were near-decimated at the onslaught of blasts against them, blowing holes into their main shell.
Upon closer inspection of the damage, Kylo detected an odd lack of people operating the machines from inside. Unoccupied as they were, the AT-STs bumbled along only to fall along a line of explosives in an embarrassing display of incoordination. Kylo deemed them to be no more than paltry puppets of another force user — one that owed him both a concise explanation of why he’d decided to play games with Kylo in the middle of a desert as well as a means of transport back to Jakku before his fittingly swift death at Kylo’s hands. Willing away a faint feeling of nausea as he stood, Kylo brushed himself off, intent on further surveying the chaos that he’d been brought (left?) to encounter. His kidnapper would have to reveal themselves when the dust settled, right?
___________________________
Hidden amongst the rubble of a decimated statue, Natasha Romanov spoke quietly into her earpiece.
“I’ve got eyes on him — in the trees by the street. Looks like he’s about to make a run for it in disguise.”
Steve turned around, still on high alert after Loki’s sudden disappearance, to see a lone, definitely out-of-place man lingering under the cover of a few trees, eyes fixed on Tony’s easy deflection of energy-laden bolts and projectiles.
“Really, it’s like he’s not even trying to be discreet, walking away in the middle of a battle he started,” Clint scoffed. He was perched on the edge of a nearby building, raising his bow to fire a smoke bomb arrow.
“After Stark lures him out,”—Clint shot off the arrow toward the cluster of trees—“he’s all yours, Cap.”
___________________________
Kylo’s observation of what seemed to be a flying droid expertly taking out the legs of the last AT-ST (with more firepower than he assumed a droid — sans additional weaponry — should have), perplexed him. It’s structural components were far too jaunty for a military-commissioned weapon, yet leagues above the average price range of what he theorized the Resistance had allocated for combat reserves.
The sound of an arrow lodging itself into a nearby tree shook Kylo out of his thoughts. Before he could ponder an answer for why the arrow had landed so far off its target, it detonated, filling the area around Kylo with a thick covering of smog.
Kylo tensed for a moment. He exhaled, spreading his arms before him to part through the haze. Keeping his steps quiet, Kylo made his way toward the clearing. A bolt of energy blasted down his exit path, swiftly coming to a complete halt in front of his palm. From outside the trees, he heard someone begin to speak.
___________________________
“Hey, reindeer games, playing dress-up isn’t going to make this beating any sweeter for you, so you can save the identity crisis for group therapy.”
Kylo huffed indignantly at the commentary and stepped outside of the smog to see— Oh, great. It was that droid he’d just seen flitting around mid-atmo. Why was it so... gaudy?
He scrunched his nose at its red and gold exterior glinting in the singular sunlight of this planet — whoever made the thing was definitely consistent in their work, if the audacious droid’s temperament and outfitting were anything to go by.
Kylo’s effortless hold of the energy beam seemed to floor the droid for a moment until it gave an amused “Well that’s a new party trick,” I with a tilt of its head. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Before Kylo could reply, he noticed a man running toward them, dressed just as horrendously as the droid’s exterior. He wore an unnecessarily skin-tight bodysuit in blue, red, and white that left Kylo at a loss for words. The man retrieved a similarly-colored disc from his back, gearing up to attack head-on despite his lack of weapons. Kylo sent the bolt toward him with a dismissive wave.
In an instant the droid shot at him again, sighing as Kylo froze the bolt in mid-air again.
“Aaaand it’s lost its charm. Keep your hands to yourself, Loki.”
Who was “Loh Kee?” Was that the name of the force user that sent him here, apparently to be a stand-in for a battle with some of the most eccentric beings he’d had the misfortune of meeting? Kylo hoped the confused look still plastered on his face would clear up the misunderstanding so he could track down Loh Kee and get back to Poe.
instead, he found himself running, dodging shots from the droid and more arrows.
“You’re surprisingly quiet all of a sudden,” the droid taunted.
“No more theatrical tirades about your “glorious purpose” left?”
As Kylo ran, his patience grew thinner and thinner. He admonished himself for not killing the lot of them upon his arrival and moving on with his day. Maybe Poe’s penchant for trying to get Kylo to “dismember less and talk more” when interacting with others had started to grow on him. Well, the first half had.
That was less of a heartfelt realization now that he’d allowed himself to waste so much time on silent mercy for the sake of someone else’s misunderstanding — time he could’ve been wasting on top of Poe, though Kylo never considered any moment spent with the pilot as a “waste.”
His hand itched for his saber. The chiding disrespect from a flighty bastard of a droid was not helping him figure out where he was, let alone why they wanted to attack his kidnapper in the first place.
As if the droid sensed Kylo’s intent to yield his saber and retaliate (impossible, only living creatures could manipulate the force in such a manner... right?) it shot at Kylo’s side where his lightsaber rested, intent on keeping him from taking the offensive. Kylo redirected the shot, brows furrowed as he watched the droid dodge it with ease.
“Guess not.”
A torrent of more arrows nearly rained down upon Kylo before he could bring them to a halt, the maneuver using considerably more of the force than was most likely necessary as he began to grow exhausted. He turned the arrows around, changing their path and aiming at the irritating red and gold target. The gaudy disc he’d seen earlier slammed into his back, its impact causing him to lose his breath as he tumbled. He’d been preoccupied with his growing distaste for the droid’s banter and left himself open when diverting his attention between sending back shots and projectiles. Kylo groaned at the pain, willing himself to get back up and even the odds.
Forget trying to make sense of these incongruously uninformed enemies; Kylo was done playing nice.
Using the force to push back another barrage of arrows from force knew where, Kylo ignited his saber and ran toward the blue clad man, intent on exacting twice, no, thrice as much pain as his ridiculous saucer had caused him. The man tensed, crouching behind his disc in a battle-ready position as if they were to brawl like savages. Insolence, seemingly from every inhabitant of this planet.
A blast shook the ground in front of Kylo, halting his tracks. He swung around to bat a series of energy beams back at the flying droid before returning to face his original conquest, barely reacting fast enough to slice the disc in two.Instead of flying off in separate directions, the disc bounded off of the kyber-imbued flare to return to its owner’s arm.
That should’ve been impossible. Kylo balked at the display, a creeping tendril of fear wearing its way into his mind amongst his fury and slight intrigue. There wasn’t a single material he could think of that withstood the blaze of a lightsaber, let alone ricochet off of a crackling ray of sheer energy. The thought defied physical possibility and would’ve been laughable had Kylo not been so distracted by attempting to make sense of how it happened.
His hypothesizing was interrupted by the sudden appearance of a hand tightly gripping his shoulder and a trace of an accent breaking through their curt remark.
“Goodnight.”
Before he could thrust his saber into the side of this newest assailant, Kylo felt his body come alight with a cold, burning sensation emanating from the side of his neck to the rest of his body in an instant. The feeling lingered long enough for Kylo to be kneed into the ground before he could retaliate. His muscles were still stiff as he felt a sharp prick sink into the opposite side of his neck. Slowly, the world around him became hazy, the force he usually felt coursing through his entire being floating just out of his grasp.
Kylo panicked at the loss, reluctantly allowing reality of what was happening to sink in. Immobilized and alone, here he was — subdued by an unconventional group of tricksters mistaking him for someone who had (possibly? probably.) caused his appearance within their midst. Millions of miles away from his pilot and their long awaited rendezvous, he’d be unable to reassure Poe that his sudden absence didn’t signify a change in their ‘arrangement’ and that Kylo hadn’t lied just to use him or sell him out to the First Order. He’d be unable to stop Poe from leaving him again, and he was helpless to do anything about it.
With the last dredges of Kylo’s strength unable to hold out against whatever had been shot into him, he closed his eyes, succumbing to unconsciousness.