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Like the eye of a storm, the world is at its most quiet in the middle of an explosion. Poe always suspected he’d find out the validity of that myth eventually, and now he knows it to be true. It’s dead calm, serene. He floats, untethered in the darkness, finds all the colors surrounding him in the stars and nebulae and the scattered debris of his ship. Dying has never been so enticing as it is now, coaxing, gently tugging him into its kind arms.
“Son of the stars,” it says, “you are where you were so long ago, where you were always going to end up.”
Yes, he thinks, home, at last.
.-:𝝮:-.
“Poe.”
The voice is gentle, kind as it speaks. There is something in it that croaks in a familiar way, and he knows it from somewhere. A place he remembers from eons ago.
“Come home,” she whispers, like a continuous beacon, beckoning him to return, a homing signal, a lighthouse on the dark seas.
Home.
He tastes the word on his tongue, turns it over, tries to understand what it means. Something pounds, hacks, aches deep under his ribs, in his heart and deeper still. It tries to remind him of a memory that swims past just outside his reach. It reaches for him, too.
Home?
Home is a leather jacket, stitched together with a needle that pricks his clumsy fingers. Once his father’s, then his, but now better suited for someone else’s shoulders. Shoulders with soft, dark skin, the scars and bumps he maps out in the moonlight under his fingertips.
It’s her hands holding his when he’s breaking, salty tears that fall, stopping in the crease between his lips. The loose strands of hair that slip out from her braided bun, brushing against his cheek before she kisses him there and says that despite the failures, despite the flaws he’s still enough.
Home is a youthful laugh and hope for a better future even when it seems everyone stands before Death itself. To see the tilted scales and become determined to find a new balance. To stop the wavering of the world.
The chirps and beeps of a friend, a creature that should not have a soul, but has acquired one through means no one could possibly hope to ever understand.
The pats on his back both in the losses and victories, the bedtime stories that make even the darkest nights bearable and the most hopeless moments hopeful.
But there’s more, he can feel it. Home is a place, too.
Home is the cockpit of a black X-wing, the smell of ozone and motor oil. It’s his mother’s A-wing and it’s the roaring of an engine as he stares into the vastness of the stars for the first time, and he thinks, this is where I’m born, this is where I’ll die.
It’s the Force-sensitive tree by a house in a clearing on Yavin IV. Scraped knees and bloody chins, the soothing of his thoughts by something more profound than can be explained with words. It’s in his father’s arms, his mother’s singing.
But there are no such things in this realm.
He understands, knows the choice lies with him, his life hangs on a thread about to snap. The stars open their arms again and oblivion smiles at him, it promises to end the burden of existence and the weight of suffering. It’s easy, he only needs to let go, disappear, fade into the fabric of the world.
But, something calls to him, tugs him like the string of a harness, backwards. It thrums, beats steadily like a homing signal, begging him to return from the deep dark. It promises tears, the aching of the heart, but it offers love, too. The blood rushing past his ears, the feeling of knowing he is alive. He knows, then, he knows it has come to take him far away.
It comes to take him home.
.-:𝝮:-.
Whatever people say about waking up is a lie, Poe knows that, now.
There is no gentle rousing, no soft shine of the sun on his cheek, no gradual rising of the noise, no twitch of his fingers as he slowly feels his way into the world, exploring, fumbling at his own pace.
Instead, everything explodes into a bright light and Poe is met with faces everywhere around him as he takes the first breath of the rest of his life, gasping and feeling the expansion of his chest, pushing the boundaries and knowing that yes, he is alive, at last.
“You’re home, thank the stars, you’re home.” Leia wraps around him, falls into him and everyone follows.
They engulf him, surround him without suffocating; a tether in the endless expanse, and he knows, feels it in the deep vibration of his bones and the tears that drip down his face in an unending stream; the son of stars has come home, and his feet are on solid ground.