Jess: You just called the General "mom". You said "thanks, mom".
Poe: What? No, I didn't! I said "thanks, man".
Leia: Do you see me as a mother figure, Dameron?
Poe: No! If anything, I see you as a bother figure 'cause you're always bothering me.
Karé: Hey, show your mother some respect!
Poe: I didn't call her "mom"!
Leia: No, no, no, no, Poe. I take it as a compliment.
Snap: It's not a big deal. I called Karé "mom" once and she's my wife.
Poe: Guys, jump on that! Snap is really weird.
Jess: Old news! But you calling General Organa "mommy"—
Poe: Hey, "mommy" is not on the table here.
Suralinda: You did call her "mom", dude.
Poe: You shut up. You're a liar. You almost exposed our location to the whole galaxy for an article!
Suralinda: Alright, alright. I was actually going to expose you for that story. I lie all the time. Everyone knows I lied about that, but the mom thing? That happened.
Poe: Aha! She admitted it! Suralinda is a liar!
Leia: I believe you—
Poe: Thank you.
Leia: —Son, do you want to talk about it over some tea?
Summary: Still reeling in the aftermath of Crait, Poe Dameron and Finn are sent to a secret Resistance base tucked away on Lothal to serve as acting generals. Their numbers dwindled to barely a handful, and with General Organa’s order grounding all surviving Resistance personnel to heal and regroup, morale is at an all time low. Poe grapples with his inability to sit still; the First Order looms, an ever-encroaching threat to what remains of the Outer Rim’s free space; intimate feelings grow impossible to ignore and a shocking return promises devastating consequences not only for those stationed on Lothal, but for the Resistance and galaxy at large.
A/N: An AU adventure, a side-quest of sorts, to account for some of the time between TLJ and ROS. Stormpilot centric. Canon up until the end of TLJ (but does not take into account Resistance Reborn or the Finn/Rose arc).
Thank you to anyone who has read, liked, and/or reblogged! I am so grateful for you and your time.
Masterlist
CHAPTER 14
“Have we met?”
Ira Nyx sat, hands folded before him on the table, his face impenetrable.“No. But I have heard your name and seen you many times. Now I know who you are.”
Still hovering by his side, Finn’s eyes searched Poe’s. He hadn’t stopped staring since Poe had woken.
“How do you feel?” Finn interrupted his exchange with Ira. A welcome break—it was too much for his sluggish mind to follow. A hollowness permeated his entire body, his head too light for his shoulders.
“Not really sure yet.”
“Oh. Yeah, okay.” Finn sat back on his heels. “Take your time.”
Poe took in the bruises forming around Finn’s cheekbones, the cuts on his lip and chin. “Are you okay?”
“You’re asking me if—“ Finn’s face crumpled and he dragged his hands down over it. When he looked up, his eyes were wet, voice a fierce whisper. He grabbed Poe’s hand. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
Poe’s heart skipped into his throat. “What?”
“Die. Almost die—whatever. Just… don’t do it again, okay?”
The edges of Poe’s smile trembled, his throat tight. “Okay.”
Finn blew out a breath then turned back to Ira. “Enough with the cryptic back and forth. Out with it.”
“He survived Order 66.” Karé’s voice startled them. Poe had forgotten she, Iolo and BB-8 were standing by the door.
Ira Nyx wasn’t the most subtle being—he had an innate reverence to him, a larger than life presence, only in small part due to his towering stature. That he had once been a Jedi… All the pieces clicked neatly into place. But as far as Poe knew, no one had survived Order 66. That was kind of the whole deal. Any Jedi from that era… They were all long dead. “How is that possible?”
“I hid.”
A frown creased Finn’s brow. “For how long?”
“Since the day I watched them all die.”
“That’s what, almost 40 years?” Poe said. “Did you know what was happening during that time?”
“Yes.”
“Yes? That’s it?”
It was quiet for a long time. Ira Nyx looked ancient when he spoke next, his giant shoulders sagged. “Indeed.” He stared at his hands. “I made a choice. Anyone around me would have been at risk.”
“But what about all the people you could have helped?” Poe carefully pulled himself to a seated position. “On Garel alone. Not to mention the rest of the Outer Rim.”
“I knew what was happening and did nothing. That makes you angry.”
Poe willed the heated hammering of his heart to slow. “Look, I don’t know you, and I don’t really care that you did nothing. But you need to know how many suffered and died while you hid.”
“I know.”
Finn shifted. “Yeah?”
“I saw them. Not each one but many. Just as I saw you before I met you. Always in fragments. Scattered images. With you it was fire. Blood. Many beings dying. A great… wave razing everything in its path.”
“You saw the base explode,” Poe said.
Ira frowned, a far off look in his eyes. “Are there more?”
“Many more,” Finn answered for him. “Why?”
“I saw it four times. Each distinctly different than the last.”
The fire in the hearth snapped and popped into the quiet room. Realization settled heavily between them. Three other bases had probably been destroyed. There went that list, unraveling into oblivion. More names. More friends; gone.
Karé broke the silence. “You can see the future?”
“I cannot see the future.” Ira gave a good natured chuckle. “I see… echoes. Of what could be. What has not yet come to be. When I saw all of you, none of it made sense until we were face to face.”
“Did you see anything else?” Finn asked.
“Bits and pieces.” Ira pinched the bridge of his nose. “I cannot put it all together.”
Poe realized Finn still hadn’t let go of his hand as he heard him say, “Maybe we can help with that.”
* * *
With orders to stay in bed, Poe was left alone in the house while Ira led the others to where he concealed a landspeeder. Poe protested. He couldn’t help himself—he wanted to see what ancient model Ira had been hiding for the last forty years, and was eager to get his body moving, but with a fit of impressive squawking, BB-8 had won the argument in the end.
The second the tattered cloth fell back over the door, Poe crept up off Ira’s makeshift mattress to stretch by the warmth of the hearth, watching the flames lap hungrily over fresh tree scraps.
A whisper of pain crawled up his side when he moved, and he’d never felt such deep muscle soreness in his life, but he was alive. He could stand, he could walk. As the minutes went on, his body awoke more, his brain with it too. The only traces of a near-fatal injury were the blood-crusted tatters of his shirt that hung open around his midsection. It was like looking down at someone else’s body, the gore dried dark brown in places, but no injury peeking through the ruined fabric. Only a shiny scar was left, skin knitted together in a jagged line, but miraculously healed and closed. Poe ran his fingers along his face and found similarly scarred over cuts and scrapes where shattered transparisteel had peppered his face. The same ghost-echoes of pain flitted across the healed skin at his touch.
He couldn’t remember anything after the bitter cold in the G-9’s cabin and Finn’s warm chest against his back… But he could feel echoes. A distant warmth, spreading through his core, replacing the cold. A stranger knitting him back together with their bare hands. Someone he had never met.
The full-body hollowness had evaporated and been replaced with a tightness in his lungs. His confession to Finn. It was out in the open. Bits and pieces of the conversation floated back to him, but not much else. Had Finn reacted? Did he feel the same way? Like trying to catch a wisp of smoke between his fingers, the memory took half shape, but dissipated before he could grasp it.
“It’s hard to believe—you standing here. Like nothing even happened.”
Poe turned to see Finn leaning against the doorway. He crossed the room. The tips of their boots touched. Poe wrapped his arms around Finn, burying his face in the crook of his shoulder. He squeezed tight, breathing him in; that familiar, comforting smell—sweat, leather, earth. Finn’s arms slid around Poe’s back and waist, pulling him in. Given the chance, Poe might never let go.
* * *
By the time Ira, Karé, Iolo and BB-8 filed back into the hut, the fog in Poe’s brain had mercifully dissipated. But only to make room for the onslaught of issues at hand.
Kothal was under attack—yes, the galaxy was at war and that was an unfortunate byproduct—but the Resistance presence on Kothal had brought the fight to them. Kemi’s haunted eyes floated into his mind. It could have been lifetimes ago that they found her in the ruined market square, but the sharp memory of the betrayal in her eyes kept it fresh. They had to get back. They had to warn the other bases. Leia.
Then there was the chip from the virus-ridden BB unit back on base. Whatever information they could glean from it. Poe paced the dirt floor of Ira’s tiny home. He was alive. In fact, he felt more alive than he had since arriving on Kothal and considering he had been essentially dead just a few hours prior… A reinvigorated fire burned in him.
BB-8 bleeped disapprovingly.
“What? No, I—“ Poe looked down at the floor. He really had almost carved a figure eight into the dust. “Okay, fine. I’ll stop. Can you display the information on the chip and still protect yourself from the virus?”
BB8 hummed a resounding no, blinking expectantly at Poe.
“Okay, gimme a second to think. Our G-9’s astromech was completely fried…”
Karé perked up suddenly. “Our nav computer still works. Everything else is shot, but we can at least try that.”
“That just might work.”
And so, in Ira’s landspeeder—Poe had been right, it was a creaky relic of a SoroSuub X-34—they returned to Karé and Iolo’s wrecked pod. It was in better shape than Poe and Finn’s G-9, but still completely unflyable.
Ira stood outside the craft as the fighters crowded in, jostling wounds and pressed against each other in the tiny space made for two. BB-8 beeped in annoyance, shoving his way through their legs. He popped out his durasteel storage vault and Poe took the First Order branded chip from it, inserting it into an awaiting port.
The nav computer’s screen fizzed into static and went black. Just their kriffing luck. Then, white letters built themselves into words and sentences against the dark background. Some made sense, some just looked like a jumble of letters and numbers to Poe.
But one thing stood out starkly to all of them, and Karé cursed at the name and title: Tallon Voxel, First Order Engineer.
“I thought he was dead,” Iolo murmured into the stunned silence. “He went missing on that aid mission to Ryloth.”
Finn and Poe exchanged a glance. Everyone else on that mission had been killed.
“You’re as good as dead if they have you,” Poe said. “They’re not big on the whole catch and release thing. They must have had a use for him to keep him alive.” Although, there was no guarantee he was still alive at this point. The chip had served its purpose. Tallon Voxel might have already, too.
“Engineer.” They all turned to look at Iolo, who shifted uncomfortably. “He created the working model for our base network security protocols.”
“Single-handedly? He can’t possibly have all that information,” Karé said.
Iolo nodded. “He designed the systems. They need him to override it.”
“So… it’s only a matter of time before the other bases…” Karé let the end of her sentence drop off.
They were running out of time—against a ticking clock they could not see. It was foolish to hope that coordinates to every remaining Resistance base in the galaxy hadn’t been tortured out of Tallon. There was only so much you could withstand… if you were trained. Engineers weren’t.
“Lothal was one of the planets listed as a diversionary location for General Organa,” Finn said.
Iolo paled. “That means Cassidode IV, Primtara… and Mako Ta… could be gone too.”
“We have to warn the others.”
“And get back to Kothal,” Poe said. “Who knows how long the tunnels will hold.”
Finn rubbed his temples. “Our ship’s comms were destroyed in the crash.”
Karé flicked the pod’s hyperwave communicator on. Predictably, nothing happened; the shredded antenna was the first thing Poe noticed as he had climbed into the wrecked craft.
“I know where you can get a ship.” Ira Nyx startled them all. They turned to him standing in the gaping hole where the pod’s engine once sat. “Garel City. You can broadcast your message from there. The streets are crawling with First Order troopers, but their main area of concern is the spaceport.”
“And where exactly is this ship?” Finn asked, eyes narrowed. Poe already knew the answer.
“The spaceport.”
“Of course it is.”
“A friend owes me a favor. Jem Cade. Hangar 71-C.”
“And you’ll be staying here?” Poe also knew the answer.
