Chapter Text
Poe hasn’t slept a night through since… well, since before. His heart is pounding and he can’t catch his breath and for a moment he can’t remember where he is, but then he focuses on the face filling his vision.
“It’s okay, Poe, it’s okay,” Rey is saying, stroking Poe’s hair back from his forehead. “We’re here, you’re here with us. It wasn’t real.”
Except it had been real, once. That’s the entire problem.
Finn’s face appears beside Rey’s, blinking his eyes sleepily. “We’re here for you, Poe,” he says, like always.
“Yeah,” Poe says, steadying his breathing. “Yeah. I’m just… I’m going to get some air.”
He slides out from the bed and gets dressed. Though Rey and Finn are still watching him with concern, they don’t protest or try to stop him.
They don’t follow him, either.
It’s really too cold on this planet to be outside at night but the chill helps him, somehow. No one ever tries to stop him leaving.
No one ever tries to stop him from doing anything. They step around him gingerly, like they’re afraid. Maybe they’re worried he’ll snap and hurt someone.
He’s killed some of them already, after all.
Poe has yet to be cleared for flight duty or even for off-world missions. He is well and truly grounded. He thinks it would be easier, if he could fly. If he could do something to make himself feel as though he were at least attempting to make up for what he’s done, attempting to level the scales. He knows he will never be able to, but it would help.
He knows why they haven’t cleared him, though. He understands. Kylo Ren was in his head. They have only Rey’s assurance that he isn’t still lurking there.
Even Luke had seemed wary. He had accepted Rey’s verdict but he’d told Leia that what had been done to Poe was difficult to shake. Ultimately no one could fix Poe but Poe himself.
Poe is trying. Until he can trust himself, he knows, the Resistance will be unable to trust him in turn.
It might be easier if Poe could fly, but it’s probably best that he doesn’t.
He doesn’t trust himself.
Poe trusts Rey. When she told him that the only one in his head was himself, Poe believed she was telling him the truth. The problem is that Poe can still feel Kylo Ren there. Sometimes he still catches himself thinking, I am yours to command, catches himself wanting to please, wanting to do what he’s been told, wanting –
That isn’t him anymore. It was never him; it was the shade Kylo Ren made him into. But that shade still exists somewhere within Poe and he is afraid of letting it out.
The cold cuts against Poe’s face as he walks and he tugs his hood farther down to block out the wind. He keeps walking because it’s too cold to stop.
He thinks of the old base on D’Qar and all the nights he sat outside beneath the stars. He remembers stumbling on Adan Hunter once, kissing a technician by moonlight. Adan is gone now, because of Poe. He won’t be kissing any more technicians.
When Poe had first come back, with Finn and Rey, he’d searched the corridors, the hangar, the mess hall, looking for all the missing faces. Then he had asked which ones were his fault.
Finn had paled and kept his mouth closed, refusing to answer. He had thought it would hurt Poe, make it worse for him to know.
But not Rey. Rey had told him. Rey understands; Poe thinks maybe she’s always understood him better.
Afterwards Poe had heaved over the trash in his quarters, barely anything in his stomach to expel, but his body had kept roiling through the motions anyway. For two days after he had been unable to eat anything at all until finally Finn and Rey forced him to get something down his throat.
Recurring nausea means that he still keeps little down, and his appetite is small, but he’s good at making it look like he’s eating more than he actually is. It keeps Finn and Rey from worrying more than they already do.
His fingers stop tingling so much, transitioning into numb, so Poe goes back inside. The sudden blast of warm air hits him with almost too much force and he pushes his hood back, rubbing his hands together.
An insistent chirping from down near the ground makes him turn. “Hey, buddy.”
BB-8 inquires after him and Poe just says, kneeling down, “I’m all right. Needed some air, that’s all.” He listens and then adds, “I know. I’ll go back soon.”
Hesitating, the droid rolls forward and then back a little, almost like he’s thinking about nudging Poe back towards his quarters.
“I’ll go,” Poe says, giving in, and walks back down the corridors to his room, to where Finn and Rey are waiting in their bed, both of them likely as awake as he is.
Poe doesn’t sleep so well anymore. Neither do his partners.
-
Poe has been different since he came back.
Logically, Rey knows that was only to be expected. After what had been done to him… Rey shudders when she thinks of it. She has to swallow her rage whenever the thought of Kylo Ren so much as flits through her head. He killed Han. He went from nearly killing Finn to trying to destroy Poe. She won’t forget.
Rey misses the person Poe used to be, friendly and open and trusting, confident and comfortable in his own skin. She knows that’s selfish and she hates herself for it. But it’s true.
She still loves Poe. She will never stop loving him. But she misses him.
It was easier, before. Poe had always been so quick to smile and to laugh, but now he feels fragile, like every moment he is only one wrong step away from shattering into pieces. The worst part is that if he does, Rey doesn’t know if he can be fixed.
She doesn’t know if she can fix him.
That doesn’t… that doesn’t feel right. She doesn’t like feeling that there’s something wrong with Poe, that he’s broken, that he needs to be fixed. That he needs to change.
He’s still Poe. He’s quieter and more withdrawn, but he’s still Poe.
Rey only wishes that she knew how to help him see that.
She wishes she knew how to make him happy.
Poe doesn’t like being in large groups of people. He stays on the fringes; he avoids attention; he eats at odd times when the mess hall is emptier. He often runs out of rooms, looking ill, and Rey has come upon him hiding, sweaty and shaky, looking even worse than he does after a nightmare.
The doctors can’t help him. Poe refuses to take anything and he won’t talk to them.
Poe never talks about what happened to him, not to anyone. Rey saw… enough, in his head, to understand. It still makes her feel like crying, sometimes, or throwing up. Or stabbing Kylo Ren through the chest. (Mostly that last one.) Out of respect for Poe she has never said anything to Finn. She knows that if Poe were comfortable with Finn knowing, he would tell him himself.
He is ashamed, she thinks.
She also thinks that maybe it would have been better if Finn were the one who knew and not her. Finn is… he’s better at this, he’s more open, and maybe he would be able to talk to Poe, to know the right thing to say.
Rey doesn’t. She doesn’t know what to say to him. So she stays quiet, and Poe stays quiet, and nothing changes.
She doesn’t know if talking would help but nothing else ever does.
They leave him alone sometimes. General Organa doesn’t always send Finn and Rey on missions together but she does often enough. In truth Rey doesn’t even know if Poe minds. Maybe he appreciates the solitude. Maybe their presence does nothing for him.
Rey simply doesn’t know.
-
Poe touches himself perfunctorily, without much enjoyment, like scratching an itch. Because it needs to be done. He breathes through his release and wipes his hand off. He rests his forehead against the cool surface of the ‘fresher wall and stays there.
He doesn’t sleep with Rey and Finn very often, anymore. It’s… easier to deal with it himself, when he needs to. The pressure, the need, builds and builds, and he imagines his lips on the jut of Rey’s hip, the ripple of muscle in Finn’s shoulders and back as he moves, and it’s enough.
He looks at Rey and Finn sometimes and thinks that he doesn’t deserve them, that he shouldn’t foul them with his touch. Maybe that’s stupid, and he knows what they would say to him if they knew.
Nevertheless. That’s what he thinks, sometimes, when he watches them. When he looks at their heads on the pillow beside his, expressions soft and peaceful.
He assumes that Finn and Rey must make do without him, from time to time. They must have gotten used to doing so, after all. Poe doesn’t mind. He tells himself he doesn’t mind. He doesn’t have the right to, not when he knows it’s him who is the problem.
The first time… the first time he was with them, since he came back, he had actually cried. The surge of emotion had proven too much and he’d… And Rey and Finn had been kind, because they always are, but it had been humiliating enough to keep Poe from trying again for a long while, until he’d just… needed to, needed them.
It frightens him, how much he needs them.
He remembers being alone.
So he mostly takes care of it himself.
He walks out of the ‘fresher and goes into the hangar. Karé is there, working on the hyperdrive of her ship, her R4 by her side. She’d been having some issues with it on her last trip out. Poe nods at her as he passes and finds BB-8, heading to his own X-wing.
Poe spends a lot of time with his T-70. There isn’t anything to fix, but Poe is using the opportunity to make some modifications he had been wanting to for ages. He cleans the outside of it, rubbing at all the scorch marks and touching up the paint. He dismantles the engine and reassembles it piece by piece, simply because it centers him.
She’s only been flown once since Poe left, when they evacuated the base. Poe had been surprised to learn that. She’s easily the best starfighter in the fleet and the Resistance’s resources are limited.
“We were keeping her for you,” Rey had said.
Sentiment. How… stupid. That couldn’t have been all, could it? They had all believed him to be dead. Only Rey had convinced herself otherwise. So then, why?
And then Rey had admitted, “No one wanted to sit in your seat. And no one wanted to see someone else sitting in it.”
Ah. Still sentimental, but Poe could see… He could see why. He thought maybe they had all done it for Finn and Rey, out of respect for their loss. No doubt need would have eventually put an end to it but that didn’t matter anymore.
Now Poe is back. He can’t fly yet, but he will.
In the meantime, he tells Rey she should continue to bring BB-8 with her on flights.
She blinks wide eyes at him. “But--”
“I trust Beebee-Ate with my life,” he says. “I trust him with yours. You guys work well together. Why change that?”
Still she hesitates.
“He belongs in a ship, Rey. Just keep him occupied for me, okay? Until…” Now it’s Poe’s turn to hesitate.
“Until you need him again,” Rey says, her eyes soft and gentle.
Poe nods weakly. “Until then.”
-
The remotes fire at her, faster and faster, darting around Rey’s head and coming at her from all angles. She twists and spins, lightsaber whirling to block the laser blasts. It isn’t enough; she wants to hit something, to fight something that will fight back, but this is all she has.
“End program.”
The remotes come to an abrupt stop, moving away from her, and Rey twirls around to glare at Luke, shutting off her lightsaber. “I wasn’t finished.”
“This isn’t achieving anything.”
“I was training.”
“You were feeding off your anger and aggression.”
Rey rolls her eyes. “And that leads to the Dark Side?”
“You know it does.”
She knows she probably shouldn’t say anything but Rey can’t help herself. “Why shouldn’t I be angry? My boyfriend was captured by the First Order, left for dead, tortured, made to… My boyfriend thinks he’s a monster and nothing I do ever makes a difference.”
Though Luke is looking at her with sympathy he says, “Your anger towards Kylo Ren--”
“Kylo Ren is a monster! He’s the monster, not Poe. I need to be stronger so when I meet him again I can…”
“Kill him?”
Rey raises her chin and meets Luke’s gaze with a challenge. “Why shouldn’t I kill him? He deserves it.”
“Perhaps,” Luke concedes, “but this isn’t the way. Focusing on your anger goes against everything I’ve been trying to teach you. Sometimes violence is necessary but it should never be your aim. This is vengeance. Vengeance is never the way.”
“You tell that to Poe, then, when he wakes up screaming, or when he hides in his room so no one can see him having a panic attack, or when…” Rey stops, breathes. “You tell him that the monster who did that to him gets to go free because my anger is wrong.”
When she starts to leave, Luke stops her with a hand on her arm. “Your anger isn’t wrong, Rey. No emotion is wrong. Your emotions are true and they make you who you are. Clinging to your anger and allowing it to control you-- that’s what is wrong.”
Rey’s immediate reaction is a surge of, yes, anger. She is controlled by nothing and no one. But in her heart she knows Luke is right. She has been holding onto her rage at what happened to Poe and using it to fuel her, to keep her going, because it’s something she can see, it’s a future she can see. She can’t quite see the future where she’s happy, where Poe is happy, but she can see the future where she stabs Kylo Ren through the heart.
It’s the one thing she actually believes might make a difference.
“I need it,” Rey says, and quells the urge to simply fall apart. “I need it; it’s the only thing that keeps me… Otherwise I feel…”
“Powerless,” Luke says, and it isn’t a question.
Rey bows her head. “Is that something you can teach, Master Luke? How not to feel so utterly useless?”
The press of Luke’s hand on her arm is gentle and grounding. “You know I would if I could, but I think this is something you need to work out for yourself. All of you, you and Poe and Finn.”
“Yeah,” Rey says. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
-
“Any more questions?” Poe asks the small group of new recruits standing before him. They just stare at him so Poe brings his hands together and says, “Okay, then, go get something to eat. Everyone knows where the mess hall is?”
They disperse so Poe assumes the answer is yes. As they leave, he notices that Leia had snuck into the background, her small frame hidden by the pilots. She walks towards him.
“I used to be better at this,” Poe tells her.
“You did fine.” Leia’s mouth quirks. “If you maybe flirted and smiled a bit less than usual, that’s not a bad thing. We might get some more work done around here with not quite so many lovesick new recruits.”
Poe rolls his eyes. “Not you, too, General. The reports of my… appeal are, as ever, greatly exaggerated.” A couple of kids get crushes and suddenly you’re the running joke of the Resistance.
“The fact that you actually believe that is adorable. And probably half the reason it’s all true.”
Though he can tell that Leia is mostly teasing, Poe can’t help but say, “Maybe it used to be. I’m not so sure anyone’s dreaming of shacking up with Kylo Ren’s pet project.”
Leia frowns a little, a line creasing between her eyebrows. Poe knows what she must be thinking, that it’s disappointing to see him feeling so sorry for himself, but she only says, “Have lunch with me, will you?”
“Okay,” Poe says, because what else can he say?
They get their plates and sit together at a table in the back of the mess hall. Leia looks at him from across the table and says, “How are you, Poe?”
“That’s a loaded question.”
“To which I’d like an honest answer.”
Poe pushes his food around with a fork. “Managing. I’m managing.”
“I’m worried about you.”
Startled, Poe meets Leia’s gaze. “You don’t have to be.”
She shrugs. “We don’t have to be anything. Sometimes we just are.”
“I don’t want-- I don’t need all this hovering,” Poe says, struggling to find the words. “I wish everyone would treat me like they used to, not like they think I might snap in half.” He knows his friends mean well. He still wishes they would remember he is their friend and not their child.
“It’s hard to find a balance, when you’re concerned about someone you care for.”
The implication of Leia’s words isn’t lost on Poe. “Rey told me what you did, that you got them the shuttle they used to find me.”
“I suppose she’ll also have told you that I was the one who refused to look for you.” Leia reconsiders. “No, that will have been Finn. I’m sure he told you.”
He had, actually, with a quiet fury time had yet to calm. “Finn isn’t like us. He doesn’t understand what’s necessary.” For Finn, nothing was more important than loyalty and devotion. Nothing was more important than the ones he loved, the ones he held close. He doesn’t understand that Poe’s loyalty stretches further than that, to an ideal he needs to uphold. It’s a trait that Poe knows he shares with Leia, perhaps the very thing that pulls them towards each other.
“He doesn’t know that this wasn’t the first time I intentionally left you in the hands of Kylo Ren.” Leia clearly already knows her statement is a fact and not a question but Poe confirms it anyway.
“No.”
“Poe--”
“No,” Poe says, afraid of what she’ll say. “I knew what I was signing up for. Don’t ever feel sorry for making the choices you have to. Your decisions affect the entire galaxy, all of us.”
“I don’t know if I should be impressed by your faith and your sense of sacrifice or horrified at your lack of concern for yourself.”
“I’m concerned, believe me, I’m concerned. It’s just that… some things are more important.”
“You still believe that? After everything?”
“I have to.”
Poe needs to believe in something.
He sure as hell doesn’t believe in himself anymore.
-
Rey is stretched up to reach the wing of her ship, cables drooping out of the open hull plate. She bites her lip as she concentrates.
“That doesn’t look good,” Jess says, and Rey looks over to see her.
“Power couplings are frayed,” Rey says, and steps back from the ship. She wipes her greasy hands on her pants.
“You don’t want a droid to work on this for you? The wiring’s going to be a pain in the ass to do by hand.”
Rey shrugs. “I’m used to fixing things myself. Besides, it… makes me feel better if I know I’ve handled it myself.”
Jess smiles at her. “You sound like someone else I know.”
Rey doesn’t quite manage a smile back.
Jess’ smile fades into concern. “How are you holding up?”
“Oh, you know. Poe’s still having nightmares; he barely sleeps. And I know he thinks he’s fooling us but I know he hardly eats. He’s so thin. Have you noticed?”
Jess moves closer, her gaze intent. “I’m not asking about Poe. I’m asking about you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you, Rey. I know you’re running yourself ragged, trying to take care of Poe, training with Luke, running missions for the Resistance.”
Rey doesn’t know why that makes her feel so flustered. She does what she’s asked to, that’s all. She’s trying her best. “I’m just trying to help.”
“I know, and we appreciate it, believe me. I just worry that you’re going to make yourself sick. Or crazy.” Jess pauses. “Or both.”
“I’m managing. It’s not me you should worry about.”
“Poe has everyone worrying about him, and he’s got you and Finn, and all of us. But who is taking care of you, Rey?”
“I don’t need anyone to--”
“I’m not trying to…” Jess sweeps a hand over her hair. “Look, I know you love Poe and you want to help him. I’m not telling you you shouldn’t, believe me, I’m not. But you can’t… He isn’t a child, Rey. He can stand on his own two feet, even if he’s a bit shakier than he used to be. Don’t be so concerned with carrying him that you forget about yourself, and about what you need.”
“I don’t need anything but for him to be okay,” Rey says, suddenly angry. She can’t explain it and she knows Jess is only trying to help. She should be grateful, or touched, or something. But she is only angry.
She is angry so often now.
“He might never be the same. You know that, don’t you?”
“That doesn’t matter. I’m not the same as I was; none of us stay the same forever. I just want… I want him to be okay,” Rey finishes helplessly.
“We all want that,” Jess says, “but one thing I know is that he never will be if you aren’t. Please promise me you’ll think about yourself every once in a while, okay? Please promise me you’ll ask for help when you need it.”
“I promise,” Rey says, more as an appeasement than because she actually means it. She thinks Jess knows that, too.
Regardless, Jess says, “Okay. Can we start by you letting me help you with your fighter?”
“We can.” Rey means that, at least, and accepts Jess’ offer with gratitude.
-
Most of the time, Poe is fine. Or, not fine, exactly, but he’s functioning. He gets through. Sometimes, though, sometimes he’s really not fine.
BB-8 is trundling after him, on the way to his regular diagnostics check. The droid is burbling cheerfully, like he wants to fill the silence. Poe murmurs something every once in a while to show he’s listening.
It’s busy when they arrive, droids and pilots and techs mingling about. There’s an R4 unit getting checked over, and Jess and Snap are eyeing it, talking.
Snap’s saying, “Did a memory wipe, poor thing just hasn’t been the same since--”
They notice him, then, and Snap stops talking.
Poe knows what he had been going to say. That astromech had belonged to Kodai Fel. Poe had chased him into an asteroid field and only Poe had come back out. Poe had found out later the droid had been back on base. He wonders sometimes if that might have made a difference.
Jess looks stricken. “Poe--”
“Will you make sure Beebee-Ate gets his diagnostics done, Jess?” Poe interrupts. “I need to… I need to go,” he says, and all but runs out.
He feels scummy for abandoning his droid but he barely makes it into the refresher before he throws up the contents of his stomach all over the floor. He sits there on his hands and knees, spitting up bile.
Sinking back onto his heels, Poe wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. The door opens and he looks towards it.
There’s a mechanic standing there, gaping at him. Young kid, joined after the Starkiller Base. “Sorry,” he says, and backs out of the room.
Poe almost wants to laugh. What a sight he must be, Commander Poe Dameron vomiting on the ‘fresher floor. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
He cleans up his mess and moves to the sink. My name is Poe, he thinks as he looks at his reflection, abnormally pale skin and hollow eyes looking back at him. He tells himself that whenever he sees his own face in a mirror, so that he won’t forget. He is terrified of forgetting.
Tell me what you want, tell me what to do, I want to please -
Someone’s left a glass and Poe helps himself to it so that he can rinse the taste out of his mouth. His fingers slip, though, and the glass cracks against the counter, shards breaking off and a jagged edge cutting his wrist. “Damn it,” he mutters, touching his fingertips to his sliced skin. It isn’t too bad, but the blood is seeping out.
The blood is…
The blood…
He stares at the droplets of blood that leak from his broken skin. He watches the drip, drip, drip as they fall onto the counter. There is something mesmerizing about it and he can’t stop looking.
Someone is speaking to him, he thinks, but he watches the blood and tries to remember if it was always this red. The red, the… it’s so…
Then someone’s grabbing his wrist and wrapping a cloth around it, a towel, maybe, and squeezing.
“Poe! Poe, damn it, what are you doing?”
Poe looks up into Finn’s terrified face. He blinks, focuses. “Finn?”
“Fuck, Poe,” Finn says, and his grip around Poe’s arm tightens. “What were you thinking? You can’t-- you can’t-- blast.”
“I wasn’t doing anything,” Poe says. He doesn’t understand why Finn is so frightened and then – then he does. “It was an accident. Finn, it was an accident.”
Finn exhales shakily and then he’s pulling Poe towards him, engulfing him in a hug that nearly knocks the breath out of him. “Please don’t do that. Don’t ever do that. Poe, please. Don’t… Don’t leave us. Don’t leave me.”
“I won’t,” Poe says. He’s begun to register the pain in his arm now and Finn is still gripping it tightly enough to cut off his circulation, but Poe supposes that was probably his intention. “I’m sorry, Finn, I didn’t mean to scare you. It was just an accident.”
“Okay,” Finn says, “okay,” and he’s hiding his face in Poe’s neck.
“I don’t think that little cut would’ve done much, to be honest,” Poe says, but Finn doesn’t laugh.
“Don’t do that,” he says, and Poe lets Finn hold him.
-
Rey has never feared that Poe would hurt himself. Well, maybe… maybe when they first found him, those first few terrible nights, but not since she and Finn brought him home. She knows he would never hurt himself.
But when Finn tells her how the mechanic came to him and said Poe was sick in the ‘fresher, how he found him there with his wrist cut, bleeding onto the counter, she understands Finn’s panic.
“I was so afraid, I…” Finn raises his hand to his forehead, pushes his fingers over his brow, rubbing. “He said he wouldn’t… But I don’t know what to think anymore. I don’t know what he’ll do.”
That’s the problem, Rey thinks. None of them do.
“Why aren’t we helping him?” Finn asks, filled with frustration and self-recrimination and helplessness. “Why doesn’t anything we do help? Why isn’t he getting any better?”
“I don’t know,” Rey says because she doesn’t know what else she can say and she doesn’t want to lie, not even to make Finn feel better. She wishes she had the answer, stars, she wishes she did.
Finn lies with his head in Rey’s lap and she strokes his hair, offering what peace and comfort she can. He seems to settle and Rey thinks maybe she’s helping. At least she can help someone.
She thinks of Jessika Pava asking who is taking care of her and wonders if maybe she does need something, after all.
Rey spends hours the next day in meditation. She isn’t as good at it as Luke would like her to be; she has too much difficulty letting go, clearing her mind, embracing the absence of it all. Embracing a communion with the Force rather than dwelling on herself and the ones she cares about. There is too much worry clouding her mind.
Too much anger.
It helps somewhat, though, and when she has finished an idea occurs to her.
She finds Luke. “Is there something I could do to help Poe? With the Force?”
He frowns at her. “What are you suggesting?”
“Perhaps I could… enter his mind, and…” Rey stops, biting her lip. It sounds terrible when she says it aloud and she doesn’t know what she was thinking. After everything, someone in his head is the last thing Poe would want.
Luke seems to understand what she wants, though. “You could offer to teach him to meditate. He doesn’t need to be a Jedi to do that.”
“Do you think that would help?”
“I think he might find the respite from his thoughts and his emotions… freeing.”
“Thank you,” Rey says and rushes out.
She doesn’t know if it will help; she doesn’t even know if Poe will agree. Nevertheless it’s the most solid idea she’s had in ages and she wants to find Poe right now.
Rey ends up dragging Poe away from Karé and Iolo, literally tugging him by the hand. Through her peripheral vision she can see the other two pilots laughing at them while Poe just seems bemused. Flustered, Rey stops, though she doesn’t let go of Poe’s hand.
“Sorry,” she says, “sorry, I just… Do you want to learn to meditate?”
Poe’s forehead crinkles, his eyebrows drawing together. “What?”
“Luke thought it might help. I thought it might help.”
Comprehension seems to dawn on Poe. He rubs his thumb over Rey’s hand. “I’m willing to try most things.”
Rey smiles at him. “Good.”
-
The meditation doesn’t really do much. Poe is awful at it. He sits quietly with Rey and closes his eyes, listens to her soothing voice, concentrates on her presence, the way he can sense her even when he can’t see her. He matches his breathing to the even pace of hers.
He closes his eyes and the darkness frightens him, makes his blood rush and his pulse beat harder. He tries to empty his mind but he’s there, he’s on that ship, and he’s alone, but he’s not alone, because he’s there, Ren, and then he’s panting, trying to catch his breath, and Rey is leaning forward, her hands on his shoulders and her eyes filled with concern.
It isn’t always that bad. But it never does what it’s meant to. Poe keeps trying, even when he doesn’t want to, even after the times it’s bad, because he doesn’t want to disappoint Rey. Sweet, bright Rey, who is trying so hard.
Poe is trying, too. He’s not sure anyone can tell, but he is.
The last cockpit he sat in was in a TIE fighter but Poe is trying to help, in whatever ways he feels he still can. He is trying to contribute.
“That’s in Hutt space,” Poe says to Leia, speaking to her in the command center, trade routes illuminated on the console.
“I’m aware.”
“You should send Snap,” Poe says, swallowing, looking briefly towards the pilot in question where he’s standing across the room in conversation with Statura. “He’s good at this sort of thing. Anyone you send will have to--”
He stops abruptly at an all-too familiar warning clang. “General,” one of the techs says, eyes widening at the data projected in front of her. “Unidentified fighters approaching. They’re ignoring our hail.”
The room becomes a bustle of activity and for a second Poe itches to run outside, to jump into his cockpit, to -
Leia looks towards him, a question in her eyes. She’ll clear him, she will, she’ll let him fly again.
The X-wing locks into place on his targeting computer and he fires. The ship explodes.
Poe gives a small shake of his head.
“Blue Squad, Red Squad, to your ships!” Leia barks. “Captain Wexley, you have the command.”
“Yes, General,” Snap says, and rushes out of the command center.
Poe sets his hands on the central console and leans there, head bowed. Kriff, kriff, kriff.
Finn slips inside, in the midst of the chaos, joins Poe where he can hear the transmissions from the fighters. Rey will be out there. Rey will be doing her duty.
Finn slides his hand into Poe’s and they stand there together, waiting.
When it’s over, when Rey comes back, she embraces them both. She doesn’t say, could’ve used you out there, Poe. She doesn’t say, where the frag were you? She doesn’t say, what use is the best pilot in the galaxy if he won’t get in a kriffing ship?
But Poe feels it.
-
Rey wakes up because Poe is whimpering in his sleep. He kicks out at Finn, who jerks awake, half out of the bed already as if he thinks he’s being attacked. He relaxes a little when he realizes what’s happening.
It has become a routine, Poe having nightmares. That thread of knowledge is as bad as anything, Rey thinks. His nightmares are just a routine.
“Poe,” Rey says, and holds his shoulders. “Poe, Poe, wake up, it’s a nightmare.”
When Poe’s eyes open they’re wide and scared and his breathing is quick and shallow. There are tears leaking out of the corners of his eyes. He clenches his hands into the thin material of Rey’s shirt. “Rey,” he says.
“I’m here,” she says. “So is Finn.”
Finn kneels beside them, rubbing his knuckles over Poe’s skin. “We’re both here, Poe.”
“I was alone,” Poe says, and his voice makes Rey feel like her heart is breaking.
“You aren’t alone,” she says, and presses kisses to Poe’s clammy skin. “You aren’t alone. You’re never alone.”
Poe clutches her and he says, “Please, please.”
“Yes,” Rey says, and she lets Poe have whatever he wants. She would do it no matter what, just for him, but as he moves against her she thinks, yes, yes, because she misses him. She misses him, she misses this, the feel of his body against hers that has become so rare. Rey has Finn, she always has Finn, but it isn’t the same without Poe. It isn’t the same without the graze of his blunt nails on her skin, the wet warmth of his mouth, the heavy panting of his exhales.
It isn’t the same now, either, but he’s here with her, with her and Finn, and that’s more than they usually have. Poe moves in her while Finn pets his hair, whispering in his ear. When he finishes he lies there with his head against Rey’s breast, and she strokes his hair while Finn settles beside them, rubbing circles on Poe’s back.
Then the inevitable let-down sinks in, the knowledge that Rey has no idea if it helped, if it made a difference, if she did the right thing. She turns her face towards Finn’s, next to her on the pillow, and thinks his helpless expression must match hers.
-
“Blast,” Poe says and resists the urge to throw his datapad across the room. He is trying to compose letters to the families of the pilots he killed but everything he writes seems wrong. He’s started over four times and all that remains is Dear Mr. and Mrs. Nezuma, the letters standing stark on an otherwise blank screen.
“Poe?”
It’s Karé. Poe doesn’t need to look to know it’s her.
“Are you okay? What are you doing?”
Wordlessly, Poe shows her the datapad.
She gets this sort of pinched expression. “Oh, Poe.” She sits down beside him, absently beginning to rub the back of his neck. “General Organa already sent out letters. She wrote them all herself; you know she always does.”
“I know, but… Karé, it was me. It’s my fault they’re gone.” Dead. My fault they’re dead. Why can’t he say it?
“You can’t blame yourself--”
“Then who can I blame?” Poe says, furious. “Dia was barely older than Rey, she was… She was sweet and cheerful and I shot her down. She had a girl, you know, back on her homeworld, a girl she loved, she used to tell me about her, and I…” Poe scrubs his hands over his face.
“You can’t keep doing this to yourself, Poe,” Karé says softly. “And this, these letters, I don’t think this will help you or them. It’s not a good idea.”
Poe knows she’s right. He knows it was a terrible idea. But… “I need to do something.”
“Remember when we lost Muran? Iolo and I, we felt so guilty, but you… You blamed the First Order. The First Order was the reason he was dead. How is this any different? Your finger might have been on the trigger but it was Kylo Ren who put it there and made you pull it. It’s not your fault.”
“I should have fought harder,” Poe says, hating how his voice cracks. He should have fought harder. He should have been able to stop it.
He was weak. Too weak.
Karé doesn’t say anything, just stays there with him, her arm wrapped around him and her head leaning against his.
“Is this a private cuddle or can anyone join in?”
It’s Iolo. He doesn’t actually wait for an answer, instead simply sits on Poe’s other side and squeezes his knee. “Remember when we used to complain about our skills being wasted on routine flights for the New Republic?” he asks.
“I miss boring,” Karé sighs.
“No, you don’t.”
“Maybe a little.”
Poe’s datapad beeps with an incoming transmission. He looks at it and says, “Leia wants to see me. I… I’ll see you around.” He leaves before either of them can say anything.
He finds Leia in the command center, talking to Jess. When Poe comes in, Leia smiles at Jess and Jess nods and leaves quickly, brushing past Poe as she goes.
“Ah, Poe,” Leia says. “Good.”
“You wanted to see me?” Poe says when Leia fails to illuminate the purpose of this summons.
“I have a task for you.”
Poe frowns. “A task?”
“A request, really.”
“Sounds more like it’s gonna be one of those requests that’s actually an order.”
“Perhaps,” Leia says, the set of her features not doing much to dissuade Poe of his assumption. “I’d like you to find transport to Yavin 4.”
“Yavin 4?”
“You’re going to take a few days, Poe. You’re going to go home. You’re going to visit your father. Rey and Finn will come to meet you on the way back from their scouting trip to bring you back to base, if and only if that’s what you truly want. If not, then…” Leia pauses and then says formally, “The Resistance thanks you for your service.”
Poe gapes at her, aghast. “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“Poe, I should hope you know what I’d like your decision to be. But it needs to be your decision, and you need to actually think about it.”
“I’ve become a burden. I’m a drain on Resistance resources.”
“Now you’re just being dramatic. You know that isn’t true.”
“But I’m… I’m not what I used to be.”
“None of us are,” Leia says. “You’re a help, you always are, and goodness knows we aren’t in a position to be turning down assistance. But you haven’t flown since--”
Since I shot Rey and Finn out of the sky.
“You aren’t flying, Poe. Something needs to change.”
Poe could say that he isn’t flying because no one’s cleared him to, and if Leia wants him to fly she should say so. He doesn’t say that, though, because he knows if he trusted himself in a cockpit in the middle of a dogfight, Leia would put him there.
But he doesn’t.
“You think this is what’s best,” he says.
“Don’t you?” Leia counters, not unkindly.
Poe can’t look at her. He knows that Leia believes this is in the best interests of everyone involved, the Resistance as well as himself. He knows she is trying to win a war. He knows she doesn’t mean to hurt him and in fact is trying to help him.
But it still feels like he’s being put out to pasture.
“I’ll pack a few things,” he tells her.
-
“What do you mean, you’re leaving?” Rey asks, watching Poe throw a couple of shirts into a bag. Finn’s eyes are wide and he looks as stricken as Rey feels.
Poe tells them what General Organa said to him, in a flat, dull voice, no emotion seeping through. Rey can’t begin to guess what he’s thinking.
But she knows what she’s thinking and she storms out of the room in a rush.
The general is in a small office just off the command center, sitting behind a desk. She doesn’t seem at all surprised to see Rey.
“Did you tell Poe to leave?” Rey says furiously.
General Organa sighs. “That isn’t precisely what I said, no.”
“Why is he packing for Yavin 4 and acting like he doesn’t know when he’ll back? Or even if he will?”
Moving out from behind the desk, General Organa leans against the front of it, half-sitting as she looks at Rey. “It might have been better if I’d spoken to you and Finn first.”
“You think so?”
“My hope is for him to return with you. Did he mention that part?”
Rey half-shrugs. “Maybe.”
“You must know I don’t truly wish for him to leave, not forever.”
“Then why make him go at all?” Rey can’t stop thinking about the defeated slump of Poe’s shoulders, the way he had seemed so sad and lost, like the last shred of purpose he’d been clinging to was being ripped away from him.
“Rey, I understand how difficult this must be for you. I know you only want to help Poe. But eventually we all need to consider what’s best for Poe, and not what is best for ourselves. If he isn’t getting what he needs here, then perhaps here isn’t where he should be.”
“You don’t care about Poe; you just want your precious pilot back!”
Rey regrets it as soon as the words leave her mouth. She doesn’t mean it; she knows it isn’t true. General Organa knows the name of every single person in the Resistance and she hand-picked Poe herself. Rey knows both the affection and the regard Poe and Leia hold for each other because she’s heard the way Poe speaks about her.
“I’m sorry,” Rey says, ashamed.
“No need,” General Organa says wearily. “Force knows I’ve made enough decisions at the expense of individuals.” She gazes off into the distance for an instant before making eye contact again. “Poe’s importance to the Resistance doesn’t need to be stated. Losing him would be a crushing blow. But that’s not… I fought alongside Poe’s parents in the Rebellion. I would owe it to them to watch after their son even if I didn’t care for him as much as I do.”
General Organa pauses for a beat, making sure that Rey is looking her in the eyes. “But I do care for him, Rey. I hope you believe that. I hope he believes it, too.”
She does believe it. She doesn’t know if Poe does, but Rey believes it. She runs her hand over her hair and chews on her lip uncomfortably. “You think I’m being selfish. Trying to keep him here.”
“No. I think you’re afraid of losing him again. That’s only natural, but… You need to decide what you’re willing to sacrifice for the sake of his well-being.”
Poe might not actually need her. That’s what General Organa is saying. He might not need her. She might not actually be helping, just as she feared - in fact, she might be contributing to his hardships. The thought of it makes Rey feel sick.
Rey mumbles something to Leia, she doesn’t even know what she’s saying, and stumbles out of the room. She has to let Poe go. For him, not for herself. She has to let him go and hope that… Hope that he’ll come back?
No, that’s for herself. She has to hope that he’ll be okay. That’s all.
She has to hope that he’ll be okay.