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Sleep like unconsciousness, dreams that are closer to hallucination. That’s what he chiefly remembers from that time as they escape.
Survivors stretch out where they can, any horizontal surface good enough when all you want is to not be awake. He remembers sitting next to Finn, seeking – what is he seeking from Finn? Another rescue? Just to be close to someone who still trusts his judgement, maybe.
Then he sleeps and he’s not on this ship anymore, he’s on another one: he’s been there before and he’s going to die there. A dark figure in a mask is coming closer and closer, and in his dream he can’t move, can’t fight back, can’t fly away or wake up and General Organa, Leia, is there in the shadows, watching. Because this is a dream, he knows she isn’t glad that that dark figure is going to hurt him; she doesn’t want this to happen, but she does nothing to stop it. Blood is thicker than anything else, and blood means she won’t lift a finger to save him. He knows that. He can even understand it. This family is going to be the death of him.
“Poe. Poe,” Finn’s hands are on his arms, the weight of his body leaning over him. His face is a blur but Poe knows who he is. “You’re kicking me,” he says. “You ok?”
Poe blinks, blinks again, and his vision clears. It’s Finn, tired and rumpled, dragging him back to reality.
“Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, man.”
Finn lets go, lies down again beside him. The last line of defence.
He’s cold where Finn isn’t pressed against him any more, but a curtain of dark that must be sleep comes down before he can do anything about it.
*
There are so few of them left. It isn’t a military, it isn’t anything. One ship, twenty people and a handful of droids.
Poe knows the science of what’s happening to him. He’s lived it before, the crash after the adrenaline burnout. Every pilot has. It feels like the end of the world and you just have to grit your teeth and not make any life-altering decisions until your body chemistry settles. Try not to think.
Why would she tell me to disengage. Who was on that dreadnaught who stayed her hand. General Organa isn’t cruel, but she would be long dead if she didn’t know when to be ruthless. When to take risks for the cause. When to ask others to take risks.
*
He doesn’t see her sleep.
She’s with Rey, mostly. Heads bent together, threads of the Force whispering around them, sparking off their hair.
At least, that’s how he perceives it.
Finn frowns, looks up from Rose to the two women and after a moment shakes his head.
“I know it’s there, but I don’t see it,” he says.
Poe rubs his eyes, closes them. When he opens them again the luminescence is gone, and Rey is watching at him with her head on one side.
*
The next time he sleeps he dreams he’s in the cockpit again, but the ship is dead in space. There’s something coming, something huge and unstoppable only he’s got to stop it. He must, because everyone is counting on him. Everyone he knows and all the people he doesn’t, trusting him to do something but there’s nothing more he can do. The ship isn’t responding, BB 8 is silent. He needs to remember what he did wrong so that he can fix it, work out the next move that won’t fail, that will allow him to keep everyone alive.
It’s still sleep though. It doesn’t feel like it, but it is.
He half wakes every few minutes, enough to know which world is real and which one isn’t. His head aches, and his chest throbs where her blaster caught him.
Or maybe it was something else. They’ve all be knocked around enough that he can’t be sure, not really, that the bolt hit him there.
All in white, and come to kill him.
“Leia!” he’d said, and she’d shot him.
*
It’s very dark, outside and in. The cabin lights are low for the ship sleep cycle and Rey is asleep in Poe’s space on the floor. She squeezed his hand as they changed places.
This ship could fly itself, probably. But someone has been at the helm the whole time and now Poe is here, not thinking. When the faces of the dead come creeping in to the edge of your awareness, you have to know how to slide around them, go blank so you don’t fall apart.
Poe’s not thinking, he’s just flying. He’s good at that.
*
He hears her coming before she speaks, but still he startles. No one else on board walks like that: slow with age, a shuffle to every other step.
“No pursuit?” she asks.
“Nothing.”
She rests her hand on his shoulder for a moment before easing herself into the co pilot’s seat, weight braced on her arms as she lowers herself to sitting.
Poe doesn’t look at her. He needs another day, to sleep properly, before he can be the man she wants him to be. Pull himself back together, piece at a time, into someone you’d want to follow.
“Do you mind if I join you?” Leia asks.
He does mind. He wants her not to be here, or him not to be here. None of them to be here. He wants everyone to still be alive, his squadron, the resistance, the republic.
“No, sure,” he says. “Have a seat.” What else can he say?
Normally he’d sit up straight at least, make sure he had something smart to say to her. Not that he’s been trying to impress her, exactly, but – but, but, but. He cared what she thought of him. He didn’t want to fail her. She reminds him of why they’re fighting.
And now he hurts all over and he has nothing to say.
For the longest time, neither does Leia. She might even be asleep: he isn’t looking at her and he isn’t going to. Out of the corner of his eye he can see her hands in her lap, skin pale against her dark robe and the gleam of her ring, but he won’t look up at her face.
The longest time passes with only the hum of the engines, until he thinks she must be asleep. He’s almost asleep himself.
“You know I think maybe you were right and I was wrong,” Leia says, and he half jumps out of his skin. He wasn’t going to look at her but now he does: that voice is all wrong.
She’s aged ten years in two days. So has Poe: so has everyone who made a decision that turned out to be wrong. Maybe there weren’t any right decisions to make, but the years press down on you all the same. They’re in his bones and his dry eyes, the years that all the others won’t get to live. All the dead he isn’t thinking about.
“Yeah?”
“No one’s ever taken down a dreadnaught before. You’ll be able to use that. It’s the kind of legend we’ll need.”
“We paid for it.”
“We’d have paid anyway. At least this way you’ve got something you can use.”
“Who, me? Captain Dameron?” he hates himself for it the second the words are out of his mouth. Petulant, childish – what does it matter now, what rank he holds? He can be captain over 19 people, admiral of one ship, emperor of the Millenium Falcon’s second cabin.
“What would you like to be? I could make you an admiral now, if you want to be. You’re certainly my second in command.”
Poe shrugs helplessly. He recognises the reconciliation behind the offer, but why would he want to be an admiral?
Leia sighs, turns her face away.
“No, you’re right. We don’t need admirals and generals now,” she says, as if he’d spoken. He can hear those ten years weighing her down. It’s more than ten: a hundred years, a thousand. “We need you: someone people follow because they want to, not because they have to. This isn’t a military conflict any longer, with a chain of command and rules of engagement. But you knew that before I did.”
His head aches so much and there’s something like sand under his eyelids. Not real sand, but something that feels like it. Maybe if she shoots him again he can stay unconscious long enough for it to blow away. He rubs his temples, squeezes his eyes tight closed. The touch of his own cold fingers is almost soothing.
“I know. We have to be the spark,” he says. “I will, I can. I’ll do it.” Not like before, not for quite the same reasons, but he’ll do it.
“I know you will, Poe. I already know you will. I wasn’t asking, I was - ” she stops with another sigh. He doesn’t think he’s heard Leia Organa lost for words before, but now someone else is shocked by her weakness. Poe Dameron is barely here, he doesn’t have the energy to react to anything.
Every tiny pause is enough for dark tendrils of sleep to yank him down, an impression of eternity in each blink. He doesn’t even have to try not to think.
Maybe a long time passes and maybe only a few seconds before she finally says:
“Your mother would have been so proud of you. That was all I wanted to say,” and it’s like she’s thrown a rock at his chest.
Poe reaches out blindly even as he turns his face away, eyes closed against her words and unexpected tears he won’t let her see. His breath catches in one great gasp that he holds, and holds, and holds until he has to let it go with an awful crack down the middle that isn’t a sob.
“Yeah,” he says, eyes tight shut. “Yeah. I hope so.”
She takes his hand, one hard clasp, and then Poe’s on his feet, pulling away.
“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” she says.
He didn’t mean to turn, but he can’t help himself. He turns with his hand still in hers and she’s looking up at him, very old and very sad.
And what out of all of it is she sorry for? For her son and what he did? For not trusting Poe’s judgement, for slapping him, for shooting him – or for all the others, all the dead, for failing them?
“Me too,” he says, “I’m sorry too,” and stumbles away through the dark back to the others.
*
Finn looks up like he’s been waiting for him, shifts to his left in an unmistakable gesture of making space for Poe. Holds up a hand to help him down and Poe thinks he won’t be able to bear it if Finn asks him if he’s ok. Finn went up against the First Order, right onto their ship like he wasn’t afraid.
“I never asked you. What happened? You alright?” he whispers as they stretch out side by side. “I mean, you, not – the mission, or BB-8.”
Finn’s silent for a moment, like he has to think about it. Of course he has to think about it - Poe wouldn’t be able to answer either. It could be years before he knows if he’s alright.
“I think I killed Captain Phasma,” Finn says finally. “She was like – she was like my – she was horrible, but she - ” he never finds the word, but Poe thinks perhaps he knows.
“Can we sleep now and I’ll tell you later?”
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s – sleep sounds good. Tell me when we wake up.”
A wince as Finn shifts, floor unyielding against his just-healed back.
Poe doesn’t even know him that well, he should ask him first, but he doesn’t, he just turns on his side, back to Finn, and tugs at Finn’s arm until he turns too, resting some of his weight on Poe.
“Better?”
“Yeah,” Finn whispers into the nape of his neck. “Better.”
Poe closes his hand around the ring at his throat, closes his eyes against the dark and goes to sleep with the warm line of Finn's body at his back.
**