Work Text:
Leia started flirting with Poe Dameron by accident.
He was rattling around the officers’ lounge late one night, flicking through holographic star charts with alarming speed, getting up every two minutes to pour himself another cup of caf. Leia liked him; he was an excellent pilot, a steady commander, and his sense of humor was almost as sharp as hers. But if he kept distracting her from writing the morning briefing, he would have to die.
“Don’t you have something else to do?” she snapped, fixing him with a stare that was just this side of homicidal. “Some hot young thing to flirt with somewhere?”
Poe grinned. “Who says you have to be young to be hot?” he asked.
She could swear he winked at her on his way out the door.
That might have been the end of it, if she hadn’t volunteered to run a blockade the next day. Blockade running was usually not among her duties -- but then, half the base wasn’t usually paralyzed by a heinous gastrointestinal virus either. She listened to the increasingly hopeless morning briefing for five minutes while she flicked through the kitchen’s dismal inventory on her data pad. They were down to turnips and ration bars. Soldiers had mutinied over less.
She stood up, interrupting Poe’s long list of sick pilots, and said, “I’ll go.”
Poe blinked. “I didn’t know you could fly. I mean, of course you can fly, but I didn’t know you could, ah -- I mean, the level of technical expertise required for a mission like this --”
He was young and afraid to offend his superiors. It was sweet.
“Easy, Dameron. I learned from the best.” She fastened a holster around her waist and said, “I’ll meet you in the hangar in five minutes.”
The truth was, she was a slightly better than average pilot with an unusual knack for dealing with emergencies -- not a virtuoso like Han or Poe, but then, Han had always claimed that half of a pilot’s skill was in their swagger. Leia had certainly mastered that part, and she’d spent enough time at the helm of the Falcon to manage to the rest.
***
The blockade running freighter was called The Pox because it had endured a few too many trips through asteroid fields and its hull was pitted and cratered. Also, the lower decks smelled like a garbage dump. The pilots had put together a petition to have it cleaned, but Leia refused. The faint odor of rotten vegetables discouraged anyone from staying long enough to notice the enhanced hyperdrive or the quad cannons mounted in the gun ports. Anyway, the cockpit smelled alright once you got used to it.
Leia slid into the copilot’s seat next to Poe. For once, he wasn’t wearing a dirty orange flight suit, and his tight black shirt pulled across the muscles in his chest. Leia blinked and shook her head. If she was ogling her pilots, she really needed to get out more often.
“Been awhile?” Poe asked, and Leia’s eyes widened. Had she been that transparent?
“Since what?” she snapped.
“Since you’ve flown,” Poe said, looking completely unfazed by her tone. Her respect for him automatically went up a couple notches. He looked at her with a lopsided grin and added, “You had this little smile when you looked at the controls. Like you’d been gone awhile and you missed it.”
Right. He was asking about flying, not the last time she had sex -- though both had been a long time ago.
“I suppose I did,” she conceded, surprised to find that she really had missed sitting at the controls of a spaceship -- even one as old and ugly as The Pox. She felt her smile widening as Poe engaged the sublight engines and they sailed up through the clouds until the blue sky faded to black.
“This is my favorite part,” Leia murmured as the first stars appeared on the horizon.
“This is mine,” Poe said as he pulled down the throttle.
Leia leaned back in her chair, and the hum of the hyperdrive vibrated through her spine as the stars shifted to long blue streaks.
“You definitely missed this,” Poe said, but the proximity alert nearly drowned out his words. The engine shut down with a sudden lurch, and they dropped out of hyperspace abruptly. “Bastards,” Poe muttered. “Keep moving the blockade closer.”
“I wish I were surprised,” Leia said. But she wasn’t. The First Order wasn’t blockading them; the Republic was. A few Senators -- and Leia was pretty sure she knew which ones -- had complained about illegal weapons trading in the D’Qar sector, and suddenly the Republic Navy was at their door. Leia had tried to work out an arrangement with Admiral Verlaine, but she’d just shaken her head and said that the Resistance would have to run the blockade just like all the arms traders and spice smugglers in their arm of the galaxy.
“Hide in their garbage till they move on?” Poe asked, eying the Navy frigate on the viewscreen.
Leia nodded and concentrated on giving the engines the bare minimum of power necessary to maneuver in the debris field. They only had to wait for thirty minutes before the patrol ships drifted away. Of course, getting out of the blockade was the easy part. Neither the Order nor the Republic cared who left -- but they both wanted to stop a freighter filled with illicit goods from coming back inside.
Leia spent the first hour of their return journey in the cargo bay, submerging ammunition clips and credit chits in pots of honey. Nobody liked searching sticky things. Then she returned to the cockpit, just in time for the first TIE fighters to come into view.
Co-piloting through a minor space battle was like riding a hoverbike: you did it once and you never forgot. And Han had taught her well. She angled the deflectors toward incoming fire and fed the engines a steady stream of coolant, all while scanning for stray asteroids and abandoned ships that might provide cover. Only two TIE fighters were left when they felt a tractor beam lock on.
“What the fuck? I didn’t see any star destroyers on the sensors,” Poe said, crouching over the scanner readout.
“It’s not an Order ship,” Leia said. “It’s a Republic border station. Look.”
There in the corner of the viewscreen was a tiny space station, drawing closer with every passing second. The TIE fighters approached with them, clearly still flying under their own power.
“Bastards drove us here,” Poe said, his fingers hovering uselessly over the controls. “They probably called ahead and reported us for smuggling. Now we’re going to get arrested by our own people.”
“Not if I can help it,” Leia said. “Come on, let’s go take care of the customs inspector.”
Poe jogged toward the cargo bay with her. “General, you know I have your back,” he said, “but is killing a customs inspector really a good idea? I mean, it’s gonna attract some attention.”
“And it would be wrong.” Leia rolled her eyes. “‘Take care of’ is not synonymous with ‘kill.’ You distract the guards and let me do the talking, alright?”
Of course, if she did her job right, there wouldn’t be much need for conversation. The station was small, and so was the boarding party - just the inspector and two guards. She flicked her eyes at Poe, and he dragged the guards off in a corner while she presented the freighter’s registration. Statura had promised it was an excellent forgery, but it had never been used before, so she couldn’t be sure.
“You don’t need to inspect the cargo,” she said, reaching toward the inspector’s mind.
“I don’t know who you think you are, Captain Khachaturyan, but I most certainly intend to inspect your cargo. We’ve had reports that you’re smuggling weapons.” The customs inspector closed the registration folder with a snap and began walking toward the back of the cargo bay, where some rather impressive artillery was buried under crates of lettuce.
Poe shot her a concerned look from behind a box of feminine hygiene supplies, which he was enthusiastically unwrapping for the two guards. Leia stepped back in front of the inspector and pushed deeper into his mind. It made her feel dirty; mind control couldn’t possibly belong on the light side of the Force. But what choice did she have?
“You will not inspect the cargo,” she said more forcefully.
The inspector’s gaze shifted toward a bare patch of floor. “I will not inspect the cargo,” he agreed.
“You’ll call off the guards and tell your superiors nothing was amiss.”
“I’ll call off the guards and tell my superiors nothing was amiss.” He touched the brim of his cap. “Have a good day, Captain. Sorry for the trouble.”
Poe stared at her wonderingly as the inspector and the two guards stepped back through the airlock, leaving behind an official clearance certificate.
***
The rest of their journey was uneventful. With the clearance certificate, they didn’t even have to worry about evading patrols. Leia settled back into the copilot’s seat and tried to focus on navigation. It wasn’t enough to block out what she’d just done. She’d spent years looking for Luke because the Resistance needed a Jedi. And here she was, not fully trained, but capable of more than she let on. Enough to get a ship full of food and weapons through a blockade. The Resistance would have supplies to spare, if she was willing to manipulate the minds of a few border officials once a week. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Was this how it started? Tiny steps to the Dark Side? Or was she being selfish and refusing to use her power just because she’d never wanted to be a Jedi?
“I know I’m not supposed to miss hiding in a debris field, but I kind of do,” Poe said wistfully as they passed the garbage dump where they’d hidden this morning. Leia was grateful for the distraction.
“Careful. You’ll be ruined for civilian life forever,” she said. She’d know. Almost absently, she started fiddling with the fuel injection settings. If she could save just a little bit, it might cover tomorrow’s low atmospheric patrol.
Poe watched her fingers move over the controls. “You know, you’re a really good copilot,” he said.
“I do know.” False modesty had never been Leia’s strong suit.
“Is there anything you’re not good at?” he asked.
He had nice dimples, she thought. Normally, she would’ve tried to block the thought out, but she’d rather ogle a pilot than contemplate the nature of good and evil. Anyway, what was the harm in looking? It wasn’t as if anything would come of it.
She leaned back in her seat, feeling comfortable for the first time since they’d reached the border post. “Hm, let’s see. Backing down from a fight, letting someone have the last word, knowing when to quit…”
“I think I might sense a theme.” He tossed her a rakish grin that would have made her swoon thirty years ago. “You sound like my kind of woman.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were flirting with me, Commander Dameron,” she said, shaking her head. Not that it meant anything. Poe flirted with everyone. Possibly even inanimate objects on occasion.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were enjoying it,” Poe answered without missing a beat.
Leia felt a pleasant warmth in her cheeks, and possibly a few other parts of her anatomy. She knew now was the time to remind Dameron that she outranked him, that she was thirty years his senior, that he’d once been friends with her son and thrown up in her ‘fresher after he’d drunk too much Correllian brandy. But why should she? Even generals were entitled to a little fun -- and anyway, it wasn’t like she was actually going to sleep with him.
***
Leia slept with Poe a week later.
He found her on the catwalk overlooking the hangar bay. It was one of her favorite places to think. All the ships coming and going brimmed with possibility, even on the darkest days.
“Supplies are running low again,” he said conversationally.
She rolled her eyes. “I noticed that. Dr. Kalonia was frank about her concerns last night.” Frank was a euphemism; the doctor had yelled a lot.
Poe leaned against the railing next to her. His eyes darted around the bay, tracking the movement of the ships and their crew. His face was always animated this way, watching a dozen tiny things like they were all important and exciting The way he’d leaned out made his hair flop over his eyes, and he pushed it back with an impatient gesture.
“Wanna run the blockade with me tomorrow?” he asked with a grin.
Leia paused. Poe was standing awfully close to her, enough that she could feel the warmth of his body radiating through his flight suit. Between the grin and the light in his eyes, she could almost believe he was asking her on a date.
“I can’t. I’m needed on base,” Leia said with a touch of regret. “I’m sure Snap Wexley would be happy to go with you.”
“I’m sure he would be,” Poe said levelly. “But he wasn’t the company I was hoping for.”
Leia blinked. She hadn’t imagined it. Poe was asking her out -- and if he guessed that blockade running actually was her idea of a date, he understood her better than she’d given him credit for. Which didn’t change the fact that taking a high-risk mission would be deeply irresponsible when other pilots were available to complete it.
He took her silence for a refusal, and a faint blush spread across his cheekbones. Still, he wasn’t going to make it awkward for either of them. “I’ll make sure we get the supplies we need,” he said, his smile dimmer but still in place. “You can count on me, General.”
Respectful when refused, she thought. He was getting more attractive by the second.
“You could come by afterward and tell me about it,” she said before she had a chance to think too hard. “I’m sure you’ll have excellent stories.”
Poe raised an eyebrow. “I’ll be back late.”
“Then I suppose you’ll have to find me in my quarters,” Leia said. It was brazen, but she might as well be clear about what she wanted. No false promises or hurt feelings that way.
“I’ll bring something to drink,” Poe answered and sauntered away with a spring in his step. Leia found the view from the back quite agreeable.
She was an idiot. She had no business messing around with pilots -- especially not one thirty years younger than her who had once been friends with her son. She glanced up and he winked at her before he rounded a corner and vanished from sight. Well, if she had to be an idiot, at least she’d be the kind of idiot who had fun.
***
Leia was sure that since she’d invited a man back to her quarters, she ought to get ready. Put on lipstick maybe, or change into a pair of lacy underwear. But doing that would mean she’d spend the next few hours anticipating his return -- and probably forcing herself to feel all sorts of unpleasant and unfamiliar emotions, like nervousness and self-doubt. So she did what she always did: she lost herself in her work.
When the door chime rang, she was actually startled -- and even more startled to see Poe standing at her threshold. On crutches. With a black eye.
“Am I too late?” he asked. “Cause we kinda ran into some trouble.”
Leia raised her eyebrows. “And here I thought you fell down a maintenance shaft.”
“Well, I did,” Poe admitted. “But it’s better than it sounds. See, I took a couple stormtroopers down with me. I thought I was going to lock them down there, but they objected, and then Snap engaged the hyperdrive without really warning us. Which was fair. Because that would have also meant warning the prisoners. But anyway, I brought back a couple stormtroopers, a lot of medical supplies, and also a bottle of mystery booze.”
He limped toward her little dining table, took off his pack, and pulled out an ancient bottle that might have been brown or might have just been covered with dirt. The whole thing took longer than it should have because of the crutches, and Leia had to admit the whole effect was strangely attractive. Even in her day, fighting stormtroopers in a maintenance shaft would have been a feat -- and that was before the stormtroopers were all terrifyingly competent. It was a bigger achievement now, and Leia always did appreciate a man getting wounded in the line of duty. It was really unfortunate that her seduction skills were so rusty.
“Hey, were you filing the serial numbers off of blasters?” Poe asked.
Leia looked down and realized she was still holding a long file in her hand, and her floor was covered with metal shavings and weapons crates. “I was,” she said, bending over to put the file back in its place. Letting go of the large, blunt object seemed like a decent first step in the seduction plan.
“Do you know how sexy that is?” Poe asked, looking at the blasters lined up along the floor.
“No, I really didn’t,” Leia admitted. She thought his appreciation for her smuggling skills was an excellent sign.
“Well, it is,” Poe said. “General working late into the night, preparing illicit weapons for her troops to use in battle. I’m pretending you did it in your underwear, but clearly you didn’t. That would just be uncomfortable. Go ahead and hit me if I’m being too forward. I’ll bet you’re good in a fight.”
“I think you’ve had enough of a fight today, and frankly, the forwardness is a relief,” Leia said, smiling in spite of herself. “Let’s just have a drink, shall we?”
She uncorked the bottle and they both reeled backward from the aroma.
“I can’t promise it’s not hyperdrive fuel,” Poe said quickly. “In fact, I think it probably is.”
“It smells like it’ll make us go blind.” She took a cautious whiff and shook her head. “Or we’ll just die.”
Poe shoved the cork back in hastily. “You know, we don’t really have to drink this. We could just --”
Leia grabbed a fistful of his shirt and cut him off with a kiss. HIs lips were as soft and full as she thought they’d be, and he made a little whining noise when she ran her teeth along them.
“Yes,” Poe said. “That. We could just do that.”
Leia looked down at his injured leg. “You sure you’re up for it?”
Poe smirked. “Well, I have this suspicion that you like to be on top…”
Leia shoved him down into a chair and slid onto his lap. “You thought right.”
***
When Leia woke up, Poe was gone and breakfast was waiting on her night table. It was nothing especially elaborate, just eggs and some sliced fruit, but thoughtfully arranged in a way that made Leia feel worried. She worried more when she peered into her tiny kitchenette. Private cooking facilities were supposed to be one of the perks of being a general, but she used them so rarely that the counter had become a place to toss things she didn’t want. Now everything was stacked neatly, and Poe’s breakfast dishes lay in the drying rack. The aroma of butter lingered in the air.
The eggs were delicious, she thought guiltily. And she was going to have to have a talk with Poe.
***
She found Poe in the hangar bay that afternoon. Technically, he was off-duty until his leg healed, but Leia knew him well enough to guess he wouldn’t obey that order. Sure enough, his crutches were propped against a battered X-wing, and he was sitting on the floor, sorting through a snarl of wiring.
“We need to talk,” she said, but her grave tone didn’t wipe the grin off his face.
“Is this the part where you tell me last night was a one-time thing?” he asked, looking thoroughly unruffled by the possibility of imminent rejection. “Because I thought you had fun, and I know I did.”
“It’s not about that, Poe,” Leia said firmly.
“Oh yeah? Then what is it about?” he asked, grabbing one of the landing struts and pulling himself to his feet.
She could’ve said that she was a superior officer, but that wasn’t the problem, and they both knew it. Technically, Poe was in Statura’s chain of command, and anyway, the Resistance had better things to worry about than who slept with whom.
“Poe, I’m still a married woman,” she said instead. That was not actually the problem either, but I have issues with intimacy and trust wasn’t a phrase that rolled off her tongue.
Poe looked at her skeptically. HIs bullshit detector was quite finely honed. “Is your husband in a place to demand exclusivity?”
“Not exactly,” she admitted. She hadn’t seen Han in more than a year. Their most recent parting had been a mutual decision, even if they hadn’t taken legal steps to dissolve their union.
Poe limped over to her on his crutches. “This is because I made you breakfast, isn’t it? Is the great General Organa really that frightened by a plate of scrambled eggs?”
Leia blinked. This conversation was not going the way she thought it would.
“Certainly not,” she said, feeling indignant. Mostly because it was true. She had been frightened by the eggs -- or rather, the implication of feelings that went with them.
“Look, I’m not asking for a relationship,” he said. “I just think life is short, and if two consenting adults have a good time together, there’s no reason to make it one-time thing. What’s going on with you and your husband -- or you and anyone else -- is not my business. And yeah, I’m nice, so if I make breakfast for myself, I’m making some for you too.”
So, an attractive man wanted to sleep with her, had no qualms about who else she might be sleeping with, and wanted to make her food? She would really have to be a fool to turn down that offer, and though she’d been called many things, stupid wasn’t one of them.
.
When Leia was almost finished making up her mind, Poe added, “If you’re worried about using me...well, I don’t mind.”
Then he bit his lip. It was still swollen where she’d sunk her teeth into it last night. She closed her eyes to try and recenter her mind, but only came up with images of herself riding him.
“You are appallingly cocky,” she said. As if she had a problem with cocky men. Poe grinned at her smugly. Finally, she added, “Don’t clean my kitchen again.”
“Then don’t make a mess again,” he shot back.
She almost shoved him against the X-wing and kissed him just to shut him up, but by then, two or three pilots were watching curiously from the catwalk and she was forced to let him have the last word. Appalling.
***
Leia almost died eight weeks into her not-a-relationship with Poe.
She and a lieutenant had gone to Pokhara to meet an arms dealer. Like many black market transactions, the meeting took place in some desolate patch of wilderness thousands of miles from any civilization.
Surprisingly, the weapons dealers did not try to kill her. Her own lieutenant did. He shot her in the back, and if she hadn’t tripped over a root the exact moment he fired, she would’ve died. As it was, the shot ripped through her shoulder, and she was smart enough to fall down and play dead. She watched through hooded eyes as he crunched over the leaves toward her. At last possible moment, she hooked her ankle around his and he tumbled to the ground. The last thing he saw was her blaster in his face.
She was trembling when she stood up. More from adrenaline than blood loss, she thought. There was nothing to do but bind the wound and keep walking toward her ship. She could send a distress call from there.
The trouble with the ship was that it was hidden in the bottom of a ravine. The path hadn’t seemed so steep when she climbed it this morning. Now, though, her head was woozy and the humid air was sucking away her energy. She wondered if she should rest and drink some water, but no, she needed to get back to the ship as soon as possible. There was no guarantee her lieutenant didn’t have back-up hidden in the woods.
One step at a time, she told herself firmly. She didn’t have to move quickly, but she did have to keep going. She was fumbling for her water bottle when she stepped on a loose rock. Her foot shot out from under her, and she grabbed at a sapling on the way down, but the slender branches only snapped off in her hand. Then she was tumbling head over heels down to the bottom of the ravine.
When she came to, she was lying next to her ship, and the contents of her pack were scattered across the ground. Jagged scratches ran down the length of her arms, and when she touched her forehead, her fingers came away sticky with blood. Her left leg was bent at an unnatural angle, and she collapsed with a cry as soon as she tried to stand.
Dragging herself into the ship seemed to take hours. Bracing herself on the pilot’s chair, she managed to pull herself up far enough to toggle the distress beacon. By then the world was spinning like she was being sucked down a drain, and she collapsed into a heap on the floor.
When she woke up again, the sun was gone and the cockpit was bathed in eerie blue light. Moving her head made her feel nauseated, but she tilted it enough to get a view through the window. Bright blue and white bolts of energy arced across the sky. An ion storm. No rescue ship could get through that.
The green light on the comm was blinking. Through the static, she could barely make out Poe’s voice. “General Organa, report. General Organa, if you can hear me, please report.” Then, “Admiral, I’ve been calling for half an hour and she hasn’t responded.”
A distant voice said, “Keep trying. She’s out there. I know it.”
She sat up and reached toward the communications console. Pain shot through her head, her stomach heaved, and her fingers slid off the buttons before she managed to say, “I’m here.”
***
When Leia woke up again, someone was sponging her forehead with a warm washcloth. She turned toward the touch and realized her head was cradled in someone’s lap. That sent her into a panic, and she reached for her blaster, but a strong hand encircled her wrist before she could get there.
“Easy, easy,” a familiar voice said. “I come in peace.”
“Poe,” Leia said. She cracked her eyes open and shut them again immediately. The bright white bolts of energy were still shooting across the sky.
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I got you.”
***
When Leia woke up again, her head was clearer and the ion storm was fading from the sky. She watched as the last ripples of energy sparked through the clouds and looked up at Poe.
“You flew through this? To get to me?” she asked. Moving didn’t hurt so much anymore, and she eased her head slowly out of Poe’s lap.
“Well, yeah,” Poe said, shrugging. “But don’t panic. It’s not because I care about you. It’s just, you know, I’m an adrenaline junkie. An adrenaline junkie who highly respects you as a fellow officer and doesn’t want you to die.”
“Did you bring eggs?” Leia asked. Her stomach was grumbling.
Poe snorted. “Not on your life. Only the stalest ration bars for my general. I told you, we had an agreement. All sex and no feelings.”
“Good to know,” Leia murmured. Most of her attention was focused on the foil-wrapped rations sitting next to Poe’s medkit, and he handed her one obligingly.
“Okay, I know it’s probably not fair to ask this while you’re all weak and defenseless and depending on me for rescue,” Poe said, looking determinedly casual. “But on the off chance that I got really worried when you didn’t answer the distress call, and then I got even more upset when I came in here and you looked dead...I mean, supposing that had made me realize I had some feelings -- and I’m talking two or three feelings, tops, that’s all -- would I get dumped?”
“And give up your cooking? Not on your life.” But Poe had come to rescue her; she owed him better than that. “No. I wouldn’t do that,” she said, surprised at her own certainty.
“Because you maybe have some teeny tiny feelings too?” Poe asked hopefully.
“Maybe,” Leia allowed. “Two or three at the most, of course.” She wasn’t looking at Poe -- she was too busy devouring another ration bar -- but she could feel his warmth beside her, and she was sure she could picture the exact expression on his face. That was probably a sign of feelings.
“You know, it doesn’t have to change anything,” Poe said. “I mean, I thought about it while you were passed out. We’re still gonna have obscene amounts of sex, right? And we don’t need flowers, candles, any of that. Just an occasional ill-advised rescue mission. Sounds good, right?”
“Sex, adrenaline, and a maximum of three feelings?” Leia asked. She could feel a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth, even though her head ached. And her leg. And the entire rest of her body. She shifted carefully so she could lean against Poe. “I think that would be an acceptable arrangement. Don’t be offended that I’m about to pass out again.”
***
The first time they spent the night together without having sex was the night four pilots were shot down in the Illenium system. They weren’t able to recover the bodies.
When Jessika Pava told her that no one could find Poe, Leia didn’t think twice about searching for him. It didn’t matter what their relationship was or wasn’t. She knew about losing soldiers in the line of duty, and she wasn’t about to leave him at the mercy of whatever platitudes some well-meaning idiot wanted to throw at him.
She found him sitting in his X-wing. The canopy was up even though cold rain was pouring down in sheets. Maintenance was going to have a fit, but Leia bit back the comment when she got close enough to see Poe’s face. He was staring into the middle distance, apparently indifferent to the steady stream of water dripping down his cheeks.
Leia climbed the ladder and wedged herself into the cockpit beside him. It was a tight fit, but he shifted over to give her more room. Eventually, he pulled her into his lap, wrapping his arms around her waist and resting his head against her shoulder. She traced her thumb over his fingers, pausing to count the calluses and explore the lines around his knuckles. His skin was terribly cold.
“Does it ever get easier?” he asked. His voice was raspy.
“No,” Leia said. “Not if you’re a good commander. And you are a good commander.”
She squeezed his hand, and he wrapped his arms around her waist more tightly. She’d thought she was coming out here to yell at him until he agreed to come inside, but she leaned back into his embrace without quite meaning to. It had been years since she’d sat with someone like this, and it felt good even if she was supposed to be the one comforting Poe. His fingers twined through hers, and she rested her head against his.
When Poe started to shiver Leia said, “I heard it’s not raining inside.”
She looked down at Poe’s face and saw the ghost of a smile on his lips. When she held out her hand, he followed her obediently down the ladder. He was shivering violently by then, and Leia found she couldn’t make herself care who saw him follow her into her quarters, his hand still wrapped around hers.
“You get in the shower,” she said firmly. “I’ll put on a pot of tea and find you some dry clothes.”
She left a t-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts on the towel rack for him. They were his, and she’d been sleeping in them for -- well, she couldn’t say how long. Probably since he’d rescued her in the ion storm. When he got out of the shower, she was curled in a corner of the sofa, and he laid his head in her lap. She spread a blanket over him, and they both fell asleep while she ran her fingers through his thick hair.
That was the night Leia started to think of him as hers.
***
Their first fight was about the map to Luke.
Or rather, what Leia hoped was a map to Luke. She trusted Lor San Tekka not to lie to her. She did not trust herself to think objectively about the mission. Snoke was a Jedi, Kylo Ren was a Jedi, and so the Resistance needed a Jedi of its own. Or Leia wanted her brother back, and she could rationalize anything.
One thing was clear: getting the map was the most dangerous mission she’d ever asked anyone to undertake. Jakku was teeming with First Order spies, and the space around it was rife with patrols. The Resistance was too far away to provide backup.
It was a mission for her best pilot, but she didn’t take it to Poe. When he found out, he was livid.
It was almost dark when her new lieutenant -- one who thus far didn’t seem inclined to shoot her in the back -- said, “Commander Dameron is requesting a personal meeting, if you have time.”
Leia blinked. If you have time. That was downright passive-aggressive. So was going through her lieutenant to schedule a meeting.
“I’ll take care of it,” she said, and the Lieutenant wisely busied herself inventorying supplies somewhere at the other end of the corridor. Leia liked her; in addition to not being murderous, she was quite perceptive.
She did not bother to call Poe. She sent a message to his data pad: Report to General Organa’s office for requested meeting at once.
“What the hell are you playing at?” she snapped as soon as Poe walked in. “Schedule a meeting with the General, if she has time?”
Poe clenched his jaw so hard Leia was surprised she couldn’t hear his teeth click. “Well, General Organa, I wanted to know why I wasn’t given a mission for which I was obviously the most qualified candidate.”
Leia stood up behind her desk. “Because the Commander of the Black Squadron cannot simply demand whatever mission he wants. Will that be all?”
“You know it’s not,” Poe snapped. “Is that how this works? I sleep with you and then I don’t get the work I’m qualified for? Because that’s not the arrangement I agreed to.”
“It was a strictly voluntary mission, Dameron. Don’t get your panties in a twist. I’m sure we’ll find equally dangerous work for you here on base,” Leia said, sliding back into her chair and retrieving a data pad from the stack in her inbox.
Poe leaned over her desk. “This discussion is not over. If it’s a voluntary mission, I volunteer.”
Leia forced herself to look him in the eye. “I don’t want you risking your life as a favor to me,” she said, biting off every word.
“Is that what you think of me? That I’m just some mindless idiot who does your bidding?” Poe recoiled as if she’d kicked him. The fury on his face vanished, and he looked colder than she’d ever seen him.
“It’s what I think of me, Poe. That I can be manipulative. That I can persuade anyone of anything, when all I really want is to get my brother back,” she said quietly. “So no, I didn’t ask you. I asked someone I thought I could trust to be objective about the mission.”
“Do you think you’re the only one who wants Luke back? Do you think you’re the only one who hurt when he left? Because I grew up with him. He was friends with my mom. He knows things about her that nobody else would ever be able to tell me - and by the time I was old enough to figure out what to ask, he was gone.” They stared at each other for a moment, the office silent except for the sound of their breathing. Then he said, “I’m going on this mission. Officially or unofficially. Your choice.”
Leia passed him the memory stick with Lor San Tekka’s coordinates. “May the Force be with you,” she said. It was as close as she could come to I really need you to come back.
Poe nodded. The hard lines had vanished from his face, but his eyes were still snapping. He took a breath and said, “Leia, if I have to choose between being with you and getting the work I want, I choose the work.”
Leia swallowed. “Then when you come back, I’ll be sure not to make you choose.”
***
Poe didn’t come back.
The intelligence reports were grim. The village burned, and the villagers with it. Lor San Tekka’s head was found separately from the rest of his remains. A source at Niima Outpost swore that no off-worlders had been found among the ashes, but Statura rated his credibility as questionable at best.
When a trader called Teedo claimed to have retrieved an injured pilot from a wrecked TIE fighter, Leia paid the ransom from her personal account. She didn’t need to ask whom Poe had escaped from.
She let Admiral Statura handle the debriefing. She’d wanted to be there, whether to help Poe or to hurt herself she couldn’t say. But getting accurate intelligence was more important than indulging her feelings, and she could hardly ask her -- lover? partner? boyfriend? -- to look into her eyes and describe what her son had done.
And anyway, it didn’t matter what Poe was to her. After what had happened, she didn’t expect even his friendship anymore, but he appeared at her door just before she went to bed.
He walked with a limp. One of his eyes was black and swollen. His fingernails were bandaged for reasons she didn’t want to imagine, and small bacta patches were taped to his temples. He looked like hell, which was surprisingly good for a man who’d been captured, tortured, and ejected from a crashed TIE fighter in the past seventy-two hours.
She looked him in the eye because that was the least she owed him, and said, “I suppose you figured out that Ben didn’t die.”
He nodded. When he spoke, his voice was raspy. “He said some things -- and yeah, I figured it out.”
Leia didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how he could look at her with such kindness in his eyes.
He said, “That’s a lonely secret to keep for such a long time.”
She fell into his open arms.
***
They did not use the word relationship.
One night, she said, “I think I might have exceeded my allotment of three feelings.”
Poe said, “I can handle five or six. Possibly up to ten.”
He kept a spare toothbrush in her ‘fresher and knew how she took her tea. They didn’t talk about how awful war was, because they both knew -- and they spent hours tangled together in her sheets, sweaty and grateful and guilty to be alive. She expected that she would see him at the end of every day, and she was not wrong.
They had a good thing going. And then Han appeared.
Being near him was like putting on an old sweater: comfortable, familiar, irritating when you found all the threadbare patches and holes. She loved him -- would always love him -- but she didn’t love him the way she used to. He’d left. She wasn’t angry with him, but she didn’t trust him anymore.
“I’m seeing someone,” she said. How like Han to resurface the second she thought she might have moved on.
“The kid trying to burn holes in my back with his eyes? Yeah, I kinda figured. You always did have a thing for pilots.” He paused, looked off into the distance. Then he wrenched his eyes back to her. “You deserve it, Leia. I’ll sign the papers now if you want me to.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Leia snapped. Of course, there never was time. To grieve, or to talk about anything. Only time to fight.
An alert klaxon sounded, and Han excused her with a little nod of his head. Just when she thought she was going back to the command center alone, he caught up to her in the corridor. Ready to throw himself on top of her if the ceiling collapsed, no doubt. But not willing to stay after the crisis is over, her brain added. She should ask him to sign those divorce papers she’d been carting around on her datapad for half a decade. Instead she asked him to bring back their son, and she knew that if he did, she’d try again because nothing could be more important than Ben. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Poe.
***
Leia escaped from Han’s funeral as quickly as she could. She did not want to spend the day saying uncomplicated things about a complicated man, and so few people at the service knew she was grieving for her son even more than she was for her husband.
The bottle Poe had brought on their first night together was still underneath the sink in her kitchenette. This time, when she pulled it out, she didn’t recoil from the smell. She didn’t even bother finding a glass. Dangerous liquor from a dirty bottle was exactly the sort of memorial Han would have wanted. Much better than the eulogy she’d made herself deliver.
She only made it through half the bottle before she had to vomit. Maybe her tolerance wasn’t what it used to be. Or maybe the stuff really was that vile.
Afterward, she stared at herself in the mirror over the sink. The elaborate knots and braids in her hair were starting to come undone. Fixing it would take hours that she didn’t have. Why had she never cut it?
But she knew.
Because Alderaanian princesses had long hair, and hair was the only thing from Alderaan she could keep.
Because her mother had spent hours combing it, even though one of the handmaids could have done it, and she’d roll over in her grave if she knew Leia was thinking of cutting it. Except that her mother had no grave. She was stardust now.
But it wasn’t just her mother. This was how she’d worn her hair when she’d known Han, when Ben was born, when Luke lived with the three of them on Hosnia Prime. If she looked in the mirror and still looked like an Alderaanian princess who’d married a smuggler and reunited with her long-lost twin brother, maybe she didn’t have to feel like she’d lost so much.
But it hadn’t worked, had it? She’d tried to hold on, but she’d lost them all. First the planet, then the son. After that the brother, and now the husband was gone for good.
She pulled out her hairpins and picked up a pair of scissors. Her head had never felt so light.
***
Her comm link chimed sometime close to midnight. The message from Poe said, If you need me, I’m here.
Another message came five minutes later. I don’t have to be your -- whatever we were. I’m just here, if you need me.
She did not answer because she didn’t know how. Poe didn’t give up.
The next message said, Are you drunk? I’m drunk. I left a bottle of water and some pain relievers outside your door. You don’t need it. You probably have a whole pharmacy. You’re always prepared. But I left it in case.
The message was riddled with typos, but she could still hear it in Poe’s voice. She did have her own hangover supplies, but she dragged herself over to the door because she wanted his more.
***
In the morning, when her head finally stopped pounding, she thought she should find Poe and thank him -- and maybe apologize for disappearing from the funeral without saying anything. He’d lurked around the edges of the crowd, looking uncertain of what to say, and Leia hadn’t spoken to him because she had no idea what to say either. Except maybe that she missed him.
But Poe was gone. He’d volunteered for some foolhardy mission at dawn, and he wouldn’t be back for two weeks. Assuming, of course, that he came back at all.
And so Leia waited. She helped Rey outfit the Falcon and accepted donations from planetary leaders who’d taken one look at the Starkiller base and decided they wanted to be friends with the Resistance after all. In her free time, she filed the serial numbers off yet more blasters and volunteered to lead target practice for the newest infantry recruits.
Poe did not come back.
Jessika Pava told her that he’d left a letter for her in his locker. Leia refused to read it. She was finished with goodbyes.
***
Retrieving a single pilot from a bounty hunter’s lair on Oord Mandel was technically not a responsible use of a general’s time, but Leia figured she owed Poe at least one adrenaline-fueled rescue mission. It had been part of their agreement, after all.
The bounty hunter -- some distant relative of Boba Fett -- had left a weak-minded guard at the door of his fortress. He obeyed Leia’s command to open the door and lock himself in a closet. The next four guards resisted both bargaining and mind control, so she shot them in the chest. Her ammunition didn’t last through the confrontation with the bounty hunter, so she choked him with the help of the Force, and figured she could anguish over the Dark Side later.
Now she had a more pressing problem: she’d killed everyone who might have opened Poe’s cell, and she had to search all the closets for the weak-minded guard. By then, she didn’t have to bother controlling him with the Force. He took one look at the bodies on the floor and handed her the keys with a flourish.
“How are you?” she asked, rushing to Poe’s side.
He took a few steps forward and winced, bracing himself against the wall. “Limping, but still standing,” he said, grinning through a split lip. He surveyed the mayhem in the corridor. “And honestly, kind of turned on.”
Leia looped his arm around her shoulders. “Please tell me that’s not a metaphor for our relationship.”
“Think it might be,” he said, managing a few steps forward. He ran a thumb along the ends of Leia’s newly shortened hair. “What’s all this about?”
She looked into his eyes and smiled. “I was in the mood for a new beginning.”