Tigg Lerann

Commander Tigg Lerann is one of the First Order’s best pilots, but when he makes an unusual connection with the Supreme Leader’s new prisoner, he begins to question all he’s ever known. What if…it wasn’t Finn who had been taken by the First Order as a child?

Written for the April Year of the OTP 2025 Challenge. I never thought I would write a First Order Poe fic!

Commander Tigg Lerann flew his TIE/VN Space Superiority Fighter into the hanger bay, landing the prototype with a gentle grace the belied the raucous activity surrounding him. As he pulled off his gloves and red streaked helmet, handing them to the flight deck officer that had come to assist him immediately, he eyed the shuttle he had been escorting to the Supremacy. He had not been given details about the special forces operation he had been protecting, only that they had been sent to capture an important person on the planet below.

How the hell someone ‘important’ to the First Order would be on Jakku, he hadn’t a clue, but he was curious to see this person.

He had already climbed out of the TIE Silencer and was on the deck when a dozen troopers, led by Captain Phasma herself, walked off the ship. In the center of the tight formation, Tigg could barely see a young woman, and he felt more than a little shock. Why the hell did they need so much security for a human woman? Who was she?

Curiosity getting the better of him, he followed the group as they headed for the turbolift that would take them to the detention block. He finally reached an angle where he could see the prisoner better. She was dressed in a sleeveless dark grey smock, with lighter grey trousers and tall boots. Her chestnut hair was loose around her shoulders and her lovely face was free of any makeup. She looked to be in her late teens or early twenties, but her confident attitude made her appear much more mature. From her appearance, she hadn’t put up a struggle, and she did not seem at all concerned about her predicament.

As the group entered the turbolift, with half of them stepping out of formation because all of them wouldn’t fit, she turned and almost immediately made eye contact with him. She cocked her head a bit, her expression slightly surprised, but then the corner of her mouth curved up into a sly smile. Tigg felt a tug on his consciousness, not unlike what he felt when he was in a dogfight and knew an enemy had their sights on him. Only this time, he didn’t want to dodge. If anything, he wanted to get closer. The woman was obviously dangerous, though he didn’t yet know why, but he felt no fear. Only fascination.

The lift door closed and she disappeared from his sight. The tension that had been building in his body since he spotted her eased. He felt someone walk up and stop next to him, and he turned to see General Hux standing ramrod straight as always, hands clasped behind his back. He was also looking at the now closed turbolift.

Though Tigg wouldn’t call the General a friend, he had developed a decent acquaintanceship with the young prodigy. The man had reached his rank in record time and had proven time and again that he was smart and loyal to this spawn of his father’s Empire.

“Who is she?” Tigg asked softly. Though he held a high rank and was one of the First Order’s ace pilots, Tigg knew there were still some things he wasn’t meant to know. Which is why maintaining a good relationship with Hux was so important.

Hux looked at him out of the corner of his eye, then said softly, “The Supreme Leader believes her to be the Emperor’s granddaughter.” He lifted a shoulder. “He’s been searching for her for a long time.”

Tigg turned shocked eyes back to where he had last seen the woman. The Emperor’s granddaughter? “On Jakku?”

Hux snorted. “Apparently, she was in hiding as a scavenger. Whether she was hidden by someone or it was her choice, I don’t yet know.” He looked at Tigg with a smirk. “The Supreme Leader will find out.” He turned on his heel and headed back in the direction of Command.

With a sigh, Tigg turned and followed.

******

She called to him in his sleep that night.

Though he couldn’t explain how he knew it was her, nor what she had actually said, when he opened his eyes, he expected to see the Supreme Leader’s prisoner standing in front of him. Instead, he found himself still in his darkened room. He rose out of bed and changed into his one pair of casual trousers and a loose knit shirt without bothering to turn on the lights. As he bent over to pull on his boots, the ring he wore on a chain around his neck slipped out from under the shirt.

Without really understanding why, he left his stateroom and headed aft. It was a long way to the brig from his quarters, but he was able to take two separate turbolifts most of the way. When he arrived at the security center for the detention area, he was surprised to find it unattended. He heard voices in what he assumed was the break room down the hall, but nobody came to challenge him, so he continued on down the far-left corridor. Again, he was surprised to find no guards at their posts. The silence unnerved him a bit, but he pushed on, stopping in front of the last door on the right.

Taking a deep breath, he opened it, unsurprised when he saw the young woman from Jakku sitting quietly on the bunk across the cell.

She smiled slightly. “I wasn’t sure you would hear me,” she said softly.

He stood in the door, his heart racing. Why was he here? How had he heard her?

She cocked her head at him. “Are you coming in?” she asked. “The guards will be back soon. We can talk as long as we want if you come in and close the door.”

“Why should I?” he made himself ask, desperately grasping for logic.

“You came all this way,” she shrugged. “Might as well stay a while.”

Glancing down the corridor, which was still empty, Tigg stepped inside the cell, keying the lock so it wouldn’t catch, and closing the door behind him.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice rough. “And what kind of magic are you using to bring me here?”

“My name is Rey,” she told him, her expression calm. Her eyes, he noticed, were an unusual greenish-brown color. “And I use no magic. It’s just the Force. Your unconscious connection to it is helpful.”

Tigg had heard of the Force. Hux had claimed that their Supreme Leader was a master with it. He had faint memories of hearing stories about Jedi in his youth. Without thinking, he grasped the ring around his neck. The woman called Rey watched the action, and her eyes widened.

“Whose ring is that?” she asked, looking back up at him.

“I don’t know,” he told her honestly.

“Then why do you wear it?” There was no accusation in her voice or expression. Just curiosity.

He gritted his teeth, then answered. “It’s to remind me of the people that abandoned me.”

“You were abandoned?” she asked. “By who? Your family?”

“My family is here,” he argued. “My fellow pilots. Troopers.”

She laughed. “Is that what they tell you?” She shook her head. “You don’t remember your real family, do you? So how do you know they abandoned you? How do you know you’re not being lied to? Manipulated?”

Tigg straightened his spine. “How do I know anything you say is the truth?”

“You don’t,” Rey answered without hesitation. “But I can help you find those memories you’ve lost. The truth that you ache to know.”

He frowned. “You mean you want to implant lies in my head with your Force? Just like you made me come here tonight?”

She shook her head patiently. “I didn’t make you come. Your own sense of the Force made you come out of curiosity. A sense that it was what you needed to do.” She sighed. “And I can’t make you believe any lies. I am not capable of the brainwashing you’ve already undergone thanks to your ‘family’.” For the first time, her voice changed from calm to sarcastic.

“Why do you say it like that?” he asked angrily. “You speak as if you know my real family.”

“What if I do?” she almost whispered. “What if I told you your name isn’t Tigg Lerann?”

“What is it, then?” he scoffed. “What’s my real name?”

“Poe Dameron.”

******

A sharp pain ripped through his head, causing him to fall to his knees with a cry. Tigg grabbed his hair, pulling on it in an attempt to chase away the agony. It almost felt as if his skull was on fire.

He had been feeling that abnormal pressure from the night before just prior, and he had been afraid he would not be able to ignore it and would end up at the brig once more. Last night, after the strange and confusing conversation with the prisoner Rey, Tigg had managed to use anger to escape her magnetic pull, leaving her cell and making his way back to his quarters. It had taken him a long time to go back to sleep, and he had not had any more strange urges to obey odd feelings, but that lack of sleep still took its toll. He had requested a sick day, something he never did, and because of his rank it was given without question.

He had still found himself in the hanger that afternoon, doing his usual visual checks on all the fighters in his squadron as was his norm. It was there that the mysterious pain struck him.

Only, it wasn’t really mysterious, he realized as it eased enough for him to think. Three deck officers had run up to him, asking him if he was okay. Still feeling the effects of whatever it was, Tigg had nodded and told them he just needed rest, then he moved quickly back to his quarters before another spasm hit. But by the time he had reached the stateroom, every bit of that strange feeling was gone.

He knew it had to have come from Rey, but why? Why would she ‘send’ him torturous pain like that? Unless…

He stayed in his room the rest of the day, telling a medical droid that came to assess him that he was feeling fine, just tired. After lights-out, he lay on his bunk, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the call that never came. Finally, he rose and headed once more for the brig on his own.

This time there were guards on duty as they should have been last night. One of them was a man Tigg actually knew fairly well.

“Toson,” he nodded at the man.

“Tigg,” the man replied back. “What’s up?”

“That prisoner I helped escort in yesterday,” he started. “I was just curious about her.”

The man shrugged. “Don’t know much about her. I know she was taken up to meet the Supreme Leader earlier, but she’s back in her cell now.”

Tigg felt a sense of relief knowing she was still alive, but he also knew asking to see her would be looked on as more than a little odd. Suddenly, the man with Toson, whom Tigg didn’t know, stood.

“I gotta check on that game,” he said to his partner.

Toson nodded, then stood as well. “Yeah, me too.”

Tigg watched in confusion as the two men headed for the break room, and two guards came down the left-hand corridor and followed them. Toson looked back at Tigg. “You want to watch with us?”

“No, that’s okay,” he said, shaking his head. What game were they talking about? He didn’t know of any big sporting event that was on now. And why the hell were they abandoning their posts for it?

He looked down the now empty corridor on his left. It was the branch that Rey’s cell was in. He looked back toward the break room, hearing a conversation similar to the one he had heard last night. With a shake of his head, he headed down the hallway quickly, stopping when he reached the last cell on the right. He opened the door and without hesitating stepped inside.

Rey was sitting in the same place he had found her the last time he had been here, but she looked very different. She was slumped, leaning hard against the wall behind her. Her hair was mussed and she had shadows under her eyes. But she still smiled when she saw him. “I didn’t know you were coming until I felt you close. I would have sent the guards away sooner if I had known.”

“You did that?” he breathed.

She nodded. “They are all obsessed with NotchBall. It’s not hard to put a thought in their head that the game on now is one not to be missed.”

NotchBall. Tigg had never gotten interested in it, but then nothing really interested him but flying.

“I’m sorry,” Rey told him softly.

He cocked his head at her as he stepped in and closed the door behind him. “For what?”

“For somehow connecting with you when Snoke was… interrogating me.”

“So, it was you?”

She nodded. “I didn’t mean for you to feel what he was doing to me.”

“What was he doing to you?” Tigg demanded.

“Trying to get in my head.” She gave him a weak smile. “He might have succeeded if I hadn’t latched on to you. So, while I am sorry, I am thankful, too.”

“I don’t understand.”

She shrugged. “I don’t really, either,” she confessed. “I didn’t expect to… feel you so strongly.” She sighed. “It’s easy to keep Snoke out for the most part, but you are always on the edge of my consciousness. It’s almost as if you and I are connected through the Force. Maybe by the Force.” She focused on him, her beautiful eyes bloodshot. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before.”

“What are you?” Tigg demanded.

“A Jedi,” she told him simply. “I thought you knew that.”

“I heard you were a scavenger.”

“I was once upon a time,” she said. “Until Luke Skywalker found me as a child. He and his sister raised me. Trained me. I went back to Jakku because we knew Snoke was looking for me, and that was the last place he knew I had been seen.”

“You mean you wanted to be captured?” Tigg was shocked. “Why?”

“To find you.”

******

Tigg drew back, startled by the intensity of her gaze. He suddenly felt exhausted and weak. He moved to sit on the hard chair-like appendage that formed out of the wall next to the door. “You allowed the First Order to capture you… to torture you… to find me?”

Rey nodded, her smile sad now.

“Why?”

“Because the people that raised me are very good friends with your real family.”

Tigg felt anger well up at the mention of his family. The traitors. The ones who abandoned him. The—Wait. Rey had claimed he had been brainwashed into believing those things. Was what he had been told true? “How do you know?” he demanded.

“We saw the holo of you,” Rey explained. “Well, not really of you. But you were in it.” She snorted. “The propaganda that the First Order released last month, trying to make the galaxy believe they were a better option than the New Republic.” She shook her head. “Leia said you look like your mother. You are also an amazing pilot, just like her.”

“And you believed that enough to come here?”

“I could have escaped yesterday if I had wanted to,” she said simply. “If I had decided you weren’t the man I was looking for.” She sighed. “But I felt you, in the hanger, when I arrived. The Force was telling me you were important.” Her gaze moved down to his chest, where the knit shirt’s v-collar was just low enough to expose the chain around his neck and the ring. “Then I saw that ring.” She lifted her gaze to his once more. “It was your mother’s. It disappeared with you.”

Tigg grasped the ring, holding it tight. For the first time he didn’t feel anger at the thought of whoever once wore the ring.

“Luke and Leia looked for you for a long time after you were taken,” Rey continued, her voice soft. Soothing. “They and your father never gave up hope that they would find you.”

“My mother?”

“She died before you were taken. That’s why you were wearing the ring.” She grimaced. “I’m surprised they let you keep it. But if they were using it as a way to continue manipulating you, telling you it was from the people who left you…”

“How do you know all this?” Tigg asked. “You couldn’t have even been born then?”

She smiled. “No, I wasn’t. But I’ve heard all the stories about you, Poe Dameron.” She leaned forward. “Are you ready to have those memories back?”

“How?”

“I can use the Force to merge my mind to yours. I can see your thoughts. Your memories. And you’ll be able to see them, too.”

He drew back, remembering the agony he felt coming from her earlier in the day.

She seemed to know what he was thinking. “But only if you let me,” she continued. “Unlike your esteemed leader upstairs, I don’t enter people’s minds uninvited.” She cocked her head. “It won’t hurt if you let me in.”

He shouldn’t trust her. She could hurt him, he was convinced of it. If he let her play with his brain, how did he know she wouldn’t cause him serious damage? Horrible pain? But why would she want to? In the great cog of the First Order wheel, he was nothing. There were other ace pilots, much younger than him, with long careers ahead of them… if they survived long enough. He wasn’t a leader. He wasn’t anything more than a soldier.

And the fact was, he did trust her. He didn’t know why. The logical side of his brain told him he shouldn’t, but logic was not in charge right now, and hadn’t been since this woman had made eye contact with him in the hanger yesterday.

“Poe?”

The name was unfamiliar, and yet hearing it made him feel so much. Comfort. Happiness. Love.

He swallowed. “What do I do?”

“Just sit and relax,” she said as she stood and walked over to him. She brought her right hand up and let it hover next to his head. She closed her eyes and began to take deep breaths. “You might feel a tickle, and that’s okay. Don’t fight it. If you fight, then I won’t continue.”

“But you could,” he said, watching her.

“I could,” she agreed, nodding without opening her eyes. “But I won’t.”

Taking a deep breath, Poe closed his own eyes and relaxed as best he could. He felt a strange pressure, which must be the ‘tickle’ she had mentioned, but then nothing. Until…

Green. Trees. Strange monkey-like creatures calling at him from the branches above. Heat. Sweat. The smell of growing things and mold and petrichor. A bright sun and an orange/pink planet on the horizon. Towering stone pyramids. A woman with dark curling hair, laughing. A man, hair close-cropped, watching the woman with a gentle smile.

Home.

He opened his eyes, gasping. He looked at Rey, who was watching him. She looked even more tired than before. She stepped back so she could sit down on the bunk. Then she smiled at him.

“Welcome back.”

*****

 “I…” Tigg couldn’t continue. He put his face in his hands, shame and guilt swarming him. All the hate. The anger. The overwhelming urge to destroy. To kill. He felt tears well up in his eyes. How? How could they do this to him?

“They want everyone to hate,” Rey said softly.

Tigg’s head shot up. At first, he thought she had read his mind, but then he realized he had spoken aloud. “I was raised to be a killer,” he muttered, anger at himself growing.

“Yes, you were,” Rey said matter-of-factly. “But that doesn’t mean you want to be one. And it doesn’t mean you have to continue to be one.”

He sat up straight. “You said you could have escaped yesterday,” he said. “Was that your plan? Prove it was me, then leave to tell your Resistance?”

She shook her head. “No. My plan is to prove it was you, then take you with me back to the Resistance.”

He laughed without humor. “You want to take me to the Resistance?” he scoffed. “A First Order Special Forces TIE pilot?”

She shrugged. “Why not? We need more pilots.”

“You can’t trust me!” he practically shouted.

“Why not?” she asked again. “We take in defectors all the time.” She leaned forward, her expression earnest. “Poe, the brain-washing the First Order uses isn’t infallible. In fact, it’s very much susceptible to breaking down completely. That’s why you and your fellow pilots and troopers are always going in for ‘reconditioning.’ Once you’re away from here, Poe, you’ll be free to be you once more.”

“I don’t know who I am,” he whispered.

She stood suddenly, moving forward and taking his hands in hers, pulling him to his feet. “Let me help you find out,” she said softly. “Run away with me, Poe. You can always decide if you want to help the Resistance or just go off and live your own life later. For now, just be with me.”

He looked at her, the warmth and sincerity in her eyes comforting him and giving him strength. He breathed in deep, a combination of excitement and contentment filling him. “There’s no way we can get to my Silencer without being spotted,” he said. “Not to mention it only seats one, but…”

She cocked her head. “But?”

Tigg raised an eyebrow and smirked at her. “We’re gonna do this.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

******

The special forces TIEs were docked in the back of the hanger, and at this hour of the day cycle, absolutely nobody was around. The guards in the brig were still watching the not-very-important game, and he and Rey were able to slip out without encountering anyone. To play it safe, Rey wore an un-latched pair of manacles, and Tigg walked behind her holding one of the guard’s blasters, set to stun. However, they passed very few people, and nobody looked twice at them.

They made it to the TIEs fairly quickly, and then rushed to climb inside the one on the lowest level, Tigg in the pilot’s chair, Rey in the gunner’s. He made sure the umbilical was detached, then started it up. Almost immediately his comm came alive with an officer demanding to know what he was doing. At least someone was awake, Tigg thought.

“This is Commander Lerann. Just taking a joy ride,” Tigg crowed over the comm. “Can’t sleep!”

“Commander! This is highly unusual!”

“I won’t be long!” With a touch of the lever, Tigg maneuvered the TIE away from the dock and toward space. They passed through the barrier as he turned off his mic. “Where to?” The glow of Jakku was off to their left.

“We’re still at Jakku?”

“Yep.”

“The Raddus should be on the other side of the planet, waiting for me then!”

“Wait! The Resistance has a ship here?”

“Get us to it, and they’ll get us out of here!”

Tigg turned the fighter toward Jakku, intent on orbiting it as close as he could so as to disappear from the Supremacy’s visual. He was well on his way when his radar picked up a squadron of TIEs following them.

“Kriff!”

“What?”

“They’re not buying my joy ride story.”

He heard her laugh. “I don’t blame them! It sucked!”

“Well, maybe you should have come up with a better one!”

“Too late now!”

Tigg heard the pilots, some of which he had trained, calling to him over the comm. “Turn back, Commander, or we’ll consider this an act of desertion!” He ignored them, gunning the engine full bore. They were almost around the curve of the planet when the TIEs started firing.

Without hesitation, Rey began firing back. Tigg started weaving, ducking and dodging to avoid the missiles being shot at them while Rey worked at taking them out. Unfortunately, despite his extraordinary piloting skills and her almost perfect aim, they were still outnumbered, and the squadron of TIEs started to gain on them.

Tigg soon recognized the shape of an MC85 Star Cruiser up ahead, and he knew this must be the Raddus Rey had mentioned. “Does your ship have fighters?” he shouted at Rey.

Before she could even utter a word, a dozen T-70 X-Wings flew past them and immediately engaged the TIEs.

“Uh, yeah! We do!” Rey answered, then laughed.

“Damn, those are nice ships!” Tigg gushed.

“I bet you’ll be flying one in no time!” Rey told him. “Hey, send a comm to frequency 418025. Tell them who you are, that you’re defecting, and that I’m your gunner.”

******

Tigg landed the TIE in the main hanger of the Raddus less than ten minutes later. Almost immediately, all the X-Wings followed, settling down around them, and within seconds he felt the familiar engine surge of a ship entering hyperspace.

He was free.

Maybe.

As he carefully climbed out of the TIE, he was very aware of the group of armed men and women standing in a circle around the ship with their weapons pointed at him. He raised his hands. Rey climbed up behind him, swinging her legs over the edge of the portal and looking over the hanger. “It’s okay, guys!” she called out. “He’s with me!” She nudged him with her elbow, grinning. The weapons lowered.

She clambered down the ladder and he followed a bit more slowly. Once his feet were on the deck, he looked to see where she had run off to. The people around him, which included a large number of non-humans (something he wasn’t used to), nodded to him and offered him welcomes, but his focus was on finding Rey. He rounded the ship only to see her jump into the arms of a tall dark-haired man, one of the X-Wing pilots. A surge of jealousy roared through him.

Of course, she had someone here, he thought. She was young and beautiful and most likely in love and loved. Why had he not considered that? And why did it bother him?

“You showed up right on time!” Rey was telling the man, her smile huge.

“Kriff, Rey! We were worried about you! You weren’t supposed to be gone so long. Mom said she could feel that you were in trouble.”

“I’m sorry,” she said with a grimace. “Things didn’t go quite as planned because someone was a bit stubborn.” She turned toward Tigg, pulling the man along with her by his arm. “This is Ben Solo,” Rey told him. “You might remember him in time, ‘cause I think you used to play as children.” She shrugged. “For all intents and purposes, he’s my brother.”

Tigg felt an overwhelming sense of relief at her words, and again he chastised himself for feeling that way. Just because this woman had helped bring back his lost past didn’t mean she could be more to him than a friend. The crew members and pilots on his left suddenly parted, making room for an older woman he vaguely recognized. Two men, one bearded, walked behind her.

“General,” Rey smiled, looking at the woman. “I told you I’d find him.”

“And I know what you went through to get him,” the General said sternly.

Rey looked at him, her smile bright. “It was worth it.”

“Our coordinates are set for Yavin IV,” the General said, looking at Tigg. “We’re taking you home. You can decide what you want to do from there. Since I can see you still aren’t sure about everything, let me introduce myself.” She reached out a hand, and Tigg took it. “I’m Leia Organa.”

He accepted her firm handshake, and in doing so was struck with another memory of this woman, much younger, laughing with his own mother. She had a dark-haired baby in her arms. Ben.

“Welcome to the Resistance… Tigg.”

He looked at Rey, who was smiling warmly at him, then he looked back at Leia.

“Poe,” he corrected softly. “Poe Dameron.”

THE END