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His footsteps echo in the otherwise silent room. Even those are unusually quiet for him, unaccompanied by the whirring of his droid or even just someone else's steps. Poe doesn't often walk alone, he's an extrovert, a very social person, and he likes to think he's well-liked within the Resistance.
Of course, they're not really the Resistance anymore. Because they've won. It was only two short days ago when they hunted down the last surviving members of the First Order, only a week ago when Rey had killed their leader. They'd won, finally, excruciatingly, they'd won.
Poe took one more step and entered the locker. The lights flicked on with a small click as always, they were motion activated. The room, which was less of a locker and more of a huge storage space for any First Order items they had recovered, was full practically to the brim. No one had bothered organizing it in a while, not when all hands on deck were needed at the end of the reign of the First Order, not when the stuff kept coming in a steady stream. Poe had known the guy whose responsibility it was to keep up the locker, label everything, make sure they were all in the right place.
He was dead now, one of the last killed in the fight against the First Order. His family would get a medal, a condolence letter, and his ashes, Poe knew.
Poe keeps walking, searching for the item he knows is in here. He picked a perfect time, as both the locker and the halls through the base he used to get to it were deserted. Everyone in peak health (and plenty who weren't) were at the party being held on base. Because they'd done it, they'd won.
Poe had gone too, if he hadn't shown up, it would have been very conspicuous. If he ducks out for a second, well, maybe he needed some air or something. The room had been packed, the air thick and warm as every young Resistance member jumped around on the dance floor, and every older one watched on and talked and smiled. He'd left Rey dancing with Jessika, the two twisting around others on the dance floor and giggling as if they'd never stop. Finn was there too, and Rose, but they'd both taken a little break from dancing and gone to eat instead. Though it was well past midnight, the party was far from winding down, so Poe took his opportunity when he saw it.
He passes a few non-wrecked First Order ships, and thinks for a moment that he'd love to take them apart, get a feel for how they worked. They had almost never gotten whole ships before, and parts were scarce as well, as Stormtroopers cleared up the wreckage of ships that were shot down quickly, so that Resistance fighters wouldn't be able to gather the parts and glean information from them. But now wasn't the time for that.
When he finds it, it's strangely inconspicuous. He's a little surprised, actually, that it's still here in the locker at all, not squirreled away somewhere, or even destroyed. The helmet looks at him, eyes dead and unseeing. There's a crack running from the side of the skull through the left eye, surely caused by the helmet and it's owner's final fight. Poe knows that his hands are shaking but he opts to ignore it as he stretches them out towards the helmet. It gives off something bad, something he would like to dismiss as just evil vibes, bad mojo, but what he knows is the Force. Poe has never been Force-sensitive, but something like this, something that is a symbol of such unspeakable evil, he knows anyone could feel it.
When his fingers finally graze it, he almost pulls them back, but he doesn't. It's cooler to the touch than he anticipated, the smooth metal feeling almost like a non-stick frying pan. He lifts the helmet gently, with more care than it deserves, and he feels his guts twist. It was almost like holding the head of the man himself. He knew that wasn't true, for besides the obvious, there had been a funeral. He'd attended, at Leia's request, and he'd watched as they lowered the coffin into the earth, leaving him buried with a small gravestone that only read "Ben". It was mostly for Leia's sake, both the funeral and the fact that he had attended, but he had also hoped that maybe the funeral would have given him some sense of catharsis, of closure.
It really hadn't. So he takes the helmet, and he puts it on. Again, hoping for catharsis, but the world didn't really look that different from inside it. He looked around the locker, down at his hands, up at the lights, and it all looked the same, save for the crack breaking his vision on his left eye.
All at once, hot tears boiled over and streaked down his face. The realization struck him that he was just sitting in a bunker after the end of a war, wearing a murderer's helmet. But it wasn't just that. He wanted, he needed to see differently through the helmet. He needed a reason why Kylo had done all of these things, hurt and killed and tortured so, so many people. His own parents, any number of the pilots Poe flew with, Rose, Rey, Finn.
Poe.
Sobs tore their way out of his throats and he tugged the helmet off, throwing it across the room, next to a First Order craft. How could someone do something like that? How could someone who saw everything the same do all of these terrible things? How could he reconcile the Ben he remembered as a child, the quiet, loving son of two bedtime story heroes with the Ben who had killed his father, the Ben who had torn Poe apart?
His face was in his hands when he felt a warm hand on his back. He started, but stilled when he looked behind him and saw Leia. She was kneeling down on one knee, and her face was exceedingly sad. Poe wanted to say something, anything, but his throats was tight and his tears just kept streaking down his cheeks.
"Poe," she said, and stopped. She took a breath, and then drew him into a hug. He sobbed a few more times into her, the way he used to as a child when his mother would hold him after a bad dream. He drew back reluctantly when he'd finished, wiping his right eye with the heel of his palm.
"I know what," she falters as he meets her eyes. "I know what he did to you. And I'm so sorry, Poe."
"It's not you," he said, and it was the truth. He'd never blamed Leia for anything that Kylo had done. He knew that she did, sometimes.
"I just-" he starts, "I just can't understand him. How could he do that, Leia?" The tears push at his eyes again, but he's determined not to let them win.
"I don't think I'll ever understand either, Poe. I don't think," she stops, thinking for a moment. "I don't think we can understand. You are too good, Poe Dameron. He was a bad person. I don't know what I did, what went wrong, but it's not up to us to understand a person like that." She looks up, and he can see from the shine in her eyes that the tears are pricking at them too. He tries to smile at her, to thank her without words, because what can he say?
They leave the locker together, return the party quietly, and the lights click off, leaving the helmet once again in darkness.