Work Text:
Poe smiles as they land on their new base planet. It’s a settlement barely in the works, but allies with manufacturing skills are less than an hour away. The Allies who gave them this planet.
The distress beacon had been shadow blocked. They aren’t alone.
But… it does still feel like it, though. Everything feels clouded and pained in a strange way, but it truly doesn’t matter.
They’re rested, refueled, supplied, and based.
Everything will work out fine.
(He doesn’t believe himself for a moment, not with the unexplained weight in his mind.)
Naturally, Everything does not work out fine. Poe immediately signs up for the solo mission when offered. It’s easy, quick, and probably fun to fly. And it’s not his job to make another plan that could very easily fail.
A new experience, all this failure.
The thing is, it goes terribly wrong when Poe somehow gets caught in his head, gets a bit too reckless. Dear Force, what is wrong with him, lately.
(He knows the answer. Almost. Or he will, soon.)
BB-8 flies the ship (not and X-wing, and certainly not his X-wing, but it’s a ship), and Poe flies the supply ship, kidnapped from a gross band of pirates and heavy with sentient cargo alongside needed fuel and food and blasters, and he ignores the pain in his arm because he can in fact be subtle, and they don’t have the medical supplies to spare.
At least, when he gets back, his first sight is Finn’s smile. He really likes Finn. First off, he knows from stories how hard it is to break conditioning. And second, Finn has proven to be a cool guy.
And Poe finds himself thinking that Finn deserves someone who can fight back, like Rey.
Poe just seems to be a screw up, lately.
And still, after everything, most people here trust him.
Finn looks like he knows Poe’s hiding his pain. But he doesn’t press it, and he lets Poe half-babble half-boast, and Poe is still not ready for reporting to Leia.
Leia calls him reckless, stupid. She’s right, of course. That’s what he thinks of himself. But then she just sighs, and she looks so tired …
She says it’s partly her fault.
And Poe learns that more than memories can scar the mind, and even heroes have regrets. Possibly the biggest and most numerous regrets, in fact.
He learns that Leia had let him lead the assault and now go on the mission compromised, and she blames herself for it, and they sit together and they finally have the talk they hadn’t had the time for, and nothing is fixed, but maybe it can be.
But Leia’s spent her whole life fighting to fix things and Poe swears to put as much weight from her shoulders onto his as possible.
And to fix himself before it risks anyone else.
(Of course Leia is nobody’s fool and also a mother who deserves a far better son (but at least she has a wonderful daughter), and Poe finds himself shoved into the makeshift medbay despite his protests.)
Poe finds himself sitting with the bacta patches wrapped around his arm, wondering what to do. Because he’s no help until he fixes himself, but where does he even begin?
Then Rey of all people enters. As it turns out, she’d been following the Force, and Poe wonders…
He asks her about Kylo Ren and the ancient books she reads with Threepio, and he almost has the answer to questions he can’t quite form.
And then they talk about Finn, and, yes, she does seem to admire and love Finn a lot, and Poe is definitely not jealous. Except that he totally is because he remembers the beacon Finn had looked at so carefully and the way the rocks had parted for Finn as he ran to Rey’s arms.
But Rey is amazing, and he’d figured that out all the way back on the Falcon only an hour after Crait, and he doesn’t hate her one bit.
Kriff Holdo. Hope needs a base, a source to use to push away the darkness, and Rey… Rey can be that.
And, right now, despite things looking up…
Poe knows that they all need that.
Rose helps repair the stolen cargo ship with Poe and BB-8 and the help from the nearby Colony. Rey does, too, but she’s not as nearby. Finn is somewhere else, reusing an ancient program and his own memories to help predict the First Order’s next moves. There’s a meeting, later. About this and other things.
Poe talks with Rose as they work, and somehow he learns about how much Paige Tico’s sister loved her and how it feels to be in the background. He remembers her face when Rey had known her name, after she’d first woken up, and he thinks that he’s glad she’s on his side.
She’s bubbly with a hard edge, and that’s something he can understand.
They talk about Finn, too. He’s different than the quickly grown myth she’d heard and more complex than the few moments Poe had first known him for, and they both have found themselves loving the man they’re discovering.
And they talk about Rey. Rose still has a bit of Hero worship for her, and it’s kind of cute. And again Poe finds common ground, and a note of that feeling that Rey is going to be the hope.
(Rey’s the hope, Finn’s the legend, and Poe’s the one who has to use that, though he doesn’t understand that, quite yet.)
And things keep looking up.
Finn tells him things, himself. Things Poe doesn’t particularly need to hear because he knows already, but it helps. It helps them both.
He says Kylo Ren is powerful when Poe nearly has a breakdown over some stupid failure when the memory and the scar he doesn’t know how to heal combines in just the right way to utterly frustrate him.
He says that he never had choices as a stormtrooper and Poe learns when it means that Finn is overwhelmed and when it means he’s happy, very quickly.
He says that right and wrong are so much more complex and Poe laughs because isn’t that the truth? Because he knows who Kylo was and Finn was and Rey was and truly nothing can be predicted. But Poe also says that sometimes good people have to make bad choices for the good of all because it’s true and he’s understood it for years. And maybe even this month and a half since Jakku and the escape have healed something because he understands that maybe that’s what Holdo had meant.
And Finn is even smart and hard working. He reveals First Order secrets and works with Rey and forms Poe can barely see. And BB-8 says that Finn would have been an officer of the First Order if he hadn’t cared so much, and Poe knows that he will become one, here. An important one.
(He’s more right than he knows, and, already, a little boy dreams of the man and woman who freed his animal friends, and whispered voices speak of FN-2187, the trooper who made himself his own person and wonder if they could do the same.)
And Finn says that it’s because he finally has something to fight for and that it changes everything for him while looking at Poe, at where he knows Rey and Rose are laughing together behind him, and Poe’s just contacted his squadron, everything finally falling into place again, and he thinks, deeply, about hope and love and how the Rebellion won…
And he smiles, and he says he understands.
Poe wonders, not for the first time, what would have happened had the Resitance’s location not been discovered only a day after Starkiller. Or if any of the New Republic had survived. Perhaps it would have been easier. There would have been a sure base and resources.
Rey would have come back with Luke, in this easier world. Finn would’ve have woken up in the middle of a fight. Leia wouldn’t have been hurt. Nobody would have died to take out the canon (it had been necessary to do so, but the deaths still sting).
In this easier world, Poe wouldn’t have had to to out with his brain fried like this, and, more and more over these past two months, he has been able to notice the differences, if not fix them.
And yet… here they are.
And, somehow, Poe knows that it’s where they’re supposed to be.
Leia argues with two forms Poe can barely see, but she gets it done. Fixes whatever Kylo broke. He doesn’t know, Finn and Rey are the Jedi. Or they will be. Or at least they will be once they get back from their journey.
But the point is, she gets it done, and Poe could feel her, too, her presence and her hesitation, and something like a memory almost slipping from her mind to his? It feels familiar, somehow…
The process is quick, nonetheless, and Poe finds himself clear for the first time in a good two and a half months.
Good thing, too. He has a mission, tomorrow.
The funny thing is, Poe will later never remember how he came to sit with his new team, all looking out into the sunset.
Not that his old team is gone, thank the Force and every god known. Thank them all for small miracles and his squadron having been on a mission and their rendezvous here only a day away. Fo their third successful mission since everything had changed
But his new team, the people the Galaxy will remember him with, are here. He leans back on the grass as Rey determinedly sprawls on top of and clings to Finn all at once, Rose on her other side as they watch the sun set and then look at the stars. Rey shivers and Poe hands over his jacket without thought, and he smiles, leaning forwards and putting his hand on Finn’s shoulder.
He will remember that his last mission was a success, and they have access to real fire power, now, and responsibility over the kids they returned with, but that’s okay.
And he will remember as well that these are the first simple moments he’s spent with them since he’s finally fixed his brain, and they’re great. And that Finn’s smile is still gorgeous, and Rose is still full of happiness, and Rey is still like a light in the dark, and he finds himself thinking that… yes, everything will turn out okay.
Without a doubt, he looks up at the stars and the two moons already half risen.
For the first time in a long time, he’s sure that they’ll win.