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It wasn't weird to Poe, it never had been. Everywhere he looked, ever since he was born, everyone his age or younger was followed around by a one-sixth size version of himself as he had been at their age. Something to do with a warp in the Force when he was conceived, a recursive interaction with a charged hyperspace emboitment... scientists and Force-scholars had lots of words that all meant they didn't really know. His mother had refused to let him be poked and prodded though, and his brief sojourns under scanners and in interviews had been at his own choosing, and paid his way through independent flight training.
Now he was surrounded by people close to or younger than his own age, which meant he was also constantly surrounded by himself. The little 'Damerons' never paid him any attention and he returned the favor. There he was next to a flight engineer, handing her a laser spanner and asking just the sort of questions that would help her take the problem apart. Two more of him were sitting on the foil of an X-wing as two pilots talked together, their voices as soft as their smiles. Their Damerons grinned and nudged each other knowingly.
The air was always full of his own voice at a higher pitch, small piping words of encouragement or commiseration, "it'll be okay, buddy!" and tiny laughter.
This had been his whole life. Poe had asked some of his age-mates what having a 'Dameron' was like. They'd said that their Dameron was their best friend, and that they knew he would never betray them or tell on them, and that if they got into trouble they knew he could help them find a way out, or help them deal with the consequences. They all looked at full-size-actual Poe Dameron kind of sideways when they said it, like they weren't sure whether they wanted to know if he was just like the little versions of himself or not. Like they didn't want to risk the disappointment.
All the kids had gone back to playing with their little Damerons and left the real Poe Dameron alone.
Kids a little older than him were.... weird around him. Just a bit too old to have their own Damerons, they acted like it was his fault, or like they could make him into one. He wished he had answers for them, or could just spin off a part of himself at will and give them what they wanted, but it was no use. He avoided older kids growing up.
It was okay though. It was what he'd always known. It was all he'd ever know. He didn't want to intrude, so he kept to himself, realizing that any friend his own age or younger he tried to make was a friend some weird little Force-related part of him already had. It did make him feel good, really, to see his little selves helping others, even though he had no control or connection to any of them. Not even the ones who...
Poe clenched his teeth sourly and looked out around the Resistance base at the activity of his squadmates and their Damerons.
Finn walked past some distance away with his Dameron on his shoulder, but turned to smile broadly at Poe and wave. Finn's Dameron rode everywhere on his shoulder or back or head or pocket ever since the escape from Starkiller base. It was as though the man was trying to make up for their horrific upbringing under the First Order. The Dameron was much less skittish now with the increased contact, as was Finn.
Even across the active X-wing maintenance area, Poe could see the tilt of Finn's Dameron's head as it held on to Finn's collar; his mind's eye filled in the somehow deeper gaze of devotion that accompanied that tilt. After his time on the Starkiller and being rescued, Poe thought he understood how the Dameron felt. He wondered if he ever had the same expression on his own slightly older face when he looked at the man who'd broken his own lifelong conditioning and brought Poe home, albeit the long way. Poe felt like he did sometimes, and wasn't sure if he hoped Finn might notice or not.
With a sigh and a broad grin in return, Poe waved back, watching Finn and his little buddy carry on about their business.
Poe kept walking around the base, checking on the squadrons, politely ignoring himself and the people having conversations with their own little versions of him.
"-Dameron!"
He had long ago gotten used to not responding when someone called his name, since almost always they were talking to their little buddies, and not him. Poe was used to it, he told himself.
"Commander Dameron!"
Poe blinked, stopped and turned to see Rey on the other side of the maintenance area, jogging across the tarmac toward him, something orange and tan in her hands. Her own little Dameron ran along behind her in his bright new pilot jumpsuit, followed by BB-8 who had taken to hanging out with the Force-sensitive girl.
BB-8 was the closest thing to his own Dameron Poe had ever had. Loyal, faithful, supportive, a true friend to be relied on, just like the kids had said about theirs when he was young. He didn't want to examine his own motives too closely for why he'd swapped the droid's standard blue color-plates out for Resistance flight-suit orange, but he wasn't fooling himself either.
The droid wasn't the same as a Dameron at all. BB-8 wasn't his, not like Damerons were theirs for other people in that weird Force-tangled way no one quite understood. BB-8 was not solely focussed on Poe and his well-being, and that was fine, more than fine. Poe liked it better that way, he told himself. He trusted his droid, and knew that even though BB-8 interacted with others and could tell anyone what Poe had told him, even with the best of intentions, that he wouldn't. Probably.
BB-8 did keep the memories of everything Poe said to him though, and anyone with the right codes could demand those memories, or steal them if they were the sort of people Poe did not like thinking about having access to his droid. BB-8 being forced to give up Poe's secrets was a vanishingly small chance - one that Poe strove to avoid BB-8 being confronted by for BB-8's sake more than his own - but in their line of work, it wasn't an unfounded concern. It was simply better to just keep his thoughts to himself and not burden BB-8 with them anyway. The droid didn't deserve that, especially after...
Poe dodged the incoming memory again and fell into a parade-rest stance, watching the small group slow to a thumping, scurrying, rolling stop.
"Hey, BB-8, Rey. What can I do for you?"
"It's um." Rey blushed a little, holding the thing she'd been carrying behind her back. "I just.... it's nothing really."
From near her ankle, Poe heard a small whistle, and they both looked down to see Rey's young Dameron tugging on her legging, grinning and giving a thumb's up sign.
"Yes, okay, fine," Rey hissed down at her Dameron with fond exasperation.
Full-sized Poe Dameron grinned wistfully.
"It's probably kind of childish but, I just thought. Well. You don't have..." she waved down at her Dameron, who was now using her leg as a brace to climb aboard BB-8's head. "You don't have a you to talk to."
Poe chuckled. "I'm sure I talk to myself plenty."
Rey frowned and shook her head. "No, no. I mean. All of us younger humans, when things get bad we can each talk to our Dameron and he, he just listens. He knows just the right thing to say, or when to say nothing at all. It doesn't matter how bad things get, or how alone you are, you've always got your Dameron." Rey squinted at Poe. "But you don't, and that's really not fair. Everyone has a Dameron, everyone."
Everyone. Poe shivered, ambushed by the sudden memory of his time on Starkiller base, a memory he'd been trying desperately to avoid since the experience. The determined blankness of the Damerons following each Stormtrooper, glancing up at their humans with worry sometimes, but otherwise just locking away their feelings and soldiering on. Poe knew that look on his own face too well. Some of the Damerons following their white-armoured humans were so young. Younger than he'd been himself when he joined up by almost a full decade, not even wearing a flight suit yet. That felt so wrong.
But that wasn't the worst. Oh no.
The First Order interrogation room. Remembering the tiny, gaunt Dameron that had followed after Kylo Ren. The way the departing Dameronless red-haired General had glanced down at the scrap of a Dameron with a combination of loathing and unwholesome greed. As the door shut, the Dameron looking up at the ominous masked figure of Kylo Ren, tugging at his cloak, saying "Please, stop, you can stop all this, just listen to what's inside you-" The Dameron's tiny voice rasping, like it had been talking non-stop for a very long time, trying to reach some shred of good inside Kylo Ren.
Looking in horror at that small neglected version of himself, Poe had known that behind the mask, Kylo Ren was human, younger than him by several years, and that he was in torment. He also knew it was a torment that might lead him back home from the dark, if his agonized Dameron could just get him to listen.
Then Kylo Ren had raised his hand, and then the little Dameron had hidden his face and run sobbing to a shadowy corner, and then, and then-
Poe gasped and blinked, the breeze and bustle of a busy Resistance base and the cheery voices of dozens of small Damerons bringing him back to reality.
Rey was looking at him, eyes sad with reflected hurt. "I'm sorry if I-"
"No, no," he breathed. "I'm used to it being like this. It's okay."
"It's really not," Rey said softly. "Everyone needs a Dameron."
Poe laughed. "I am a Dameron."
"You really are, aren't you?" Rey smiled crookedly. "I haven't known you long, but people here have said that about you. You're just as loyal and dedicated and brave as anyone's little Dameron."
Even the one who tugs on Kylo Ren's cloak? Poe thought, a space near his heart aching.
"It's different though. Sometimes things happen, and-" Rey squinted off towards the woods and then back, "-and you can't really talk about them. Not to anyone. Not even to yourself. You know?"
Still rattled, Poe smiled noncommittally.
"But you can talk to your Dameron about anything, and know he won't judge or make fun. He'll just listen and somehow, no matter how big or little the problems are, everything seems better." She stood up taller, bracing her shoulders. "It's not fair you don't have that the way everyone else your age does, so, um. Here."
Rey pulled the orange and grey bundle out from behind her back, revealing it to be a roughly human-shaped doll in a mimicry of a Resistance flight suit.
"I made you your own Dameron."
For a moment he stood stunned into silence, staring at the toy Dameron in Rey's hand, not sure what to think.
The doll wobbled in her outstretched grip. "I- I don't mean any offence by it, I-"
He gave a rusty laugh. "No," Poe said. "No, it's..." He reached out and took the doll gently from her hands.
It was soft, made from scraps of fabric and twists of fibre Poe recognized as padding from an X-Wing seat. It had a small stitched-in grin and its eyes were deep brown translucent beads of blaster-glass; uneven lumps fused from the dust at the target range. On the doll's head was a tousle of black curls that looked to be made from bark shavings from a local spiny shrub. Poe glanced over to note the tiny healing scratches on Rey's arms. "You really made this?"
Rey's chin tipped up. "Yeah?"
"It's great, Rey. Thanks." Rey's Dameron was making little whooping noises and waving his hands in the air, perilously balanced on BB-8's head. BB-8 burbled and vorped his amusement and approval, wobbling to let the Dameron stay aboard.
"I hope it might help to have a..." Rey's nose crinkled up and she waved a hand in the air, somehow encompassing friend/confidante/soulmate in the imprecise twisting of her fingers. "You know?"
Poe glanced across the maintenance area to see Finn sitting in the shadow of an old Y-Wing, talking closely together with his Dameron, now slid down to sit between Finn's arm and chest on a work bench. Finn said something, then covered his eyes with his hand. His Dameron nodded, stood, and reaching only a tiny fraction of the way around Finn's torso, hugged him. From across the tarmac, Poe saw Finn give a short laugh, rub his eyes and ruffle his Dameron's hair.
A breeze lifted the hair at the back of Poe's neck as he watched them.
"Yeah, Rey. I think I do know, now." He turned back to her. "Thank you. I really appreciate it."
Rey grinned. "Good. I mean, you're welcome. Come on, guys!" She turned to run back across the maintenance area, followed by her entourage.
Poe looked down at the doll in his hands. It smiled back at him, the simple stitching seeming warmly amused, sunlight glinting off its brown blaster-glass eyes.
"I think," Poe said, still hearing the clatter of a thousand tiny Dameron feet keeping up with their armored humans, still seeing his own tiny face turning away from Kylo Ren before the pain began.
"I think you and I will be having some long talks," he told his Dameron. "Very soon."
Poe looked back over to the old Y-Wing. Finn had seen Rey and her small mostly-orange armada crossing the tarmac again and stood, helping his own Dameron get settled into one of the capacious pockets of Poe's own old jacket. He saw Poe looking and waved with another broad grin.
"First though, I think you and I are going to go make a much closer friend." With that, Poe settled his toy Dameron securely under his arm and strode towards Finn through the afternoon sunshine.