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Poe gasps himself awake in the dim light of his quarters. By now, he knows that when he wakes up, he stays up, so he shakes off the dreams and sits on his bed in the dark, head held carefully, his hands clenching tightly against each other. He breathes, in-out, in-out , and runs his callused fingers along his wrists, his released, unbound wrists. He moves them in circles. He picks his head up, lifts his gaze. He breathes, and he reaches up a hand to assure himself that he still can, holds it in front of his face and flexes his fingers, watches his tendons tighten and release, tighten and release.
He lets out a shaky breath, still too short. Along his forehead, his neck, he can feel the stale sweat clammy and prickling on his skin. He closes his eyes and threads his hands through his hair. Feels the strands against his fingertips. Feels his heartbeat, still pounding too high in his chest, fragile against the skin of his throat. So thin, so thin, skin and blood thrumming underneath, stay grounded, stay grounded—
Hands still trembling, legs shaky, he swings his feet sideways; he grips the edge of his bed. Dreams. Dreams. He’s had nightmares before, but he’s always been able to shake them off. None of them gripped him like this, so that he was afraid to move from his own bed.
Well, he can’t be afraid, he is not afraid , and so he touches his feet to the ground, the cold a small shock against his bare feet. He eases himself up. His legs are shaking. Okay, okay, his legs are shaking, he can deal with this, this is not a problem .
He coughs, partly to startle himself back to the present, partly because he thinks his throat will betray him with a sob if he doesn’t.
At this time of night, the base is quiet; he knows this, he’s been up before the dawn for all kinds of reasons. Tonight, sleeplessness, that’ll do the trick; he knows when he’s awake for good, and he might as well put this to good use, put his hands to task so they’ll stop shaking.
He pulls on his clothing, his boots, and lets the door seal itself behind him as he takes off for the hangar.
His new X-wing is nothing like Black One, but she’s getting there; two days after his return from Jakku, General Organa took him aside and told him, “This is the best I can do,” and he nodded, because it was a ship, and he could do something with his hands to stave off all of the thoughts broiling in his mind at night, during the day, in the middle of debriefing, always, always. He wanted to hug her. Instead, he tucked his hands in his pockets, rocked back a little on his heels, thought about how the jacket he was wearing fit all wrong.
Now, he sits in the cockpit in the quiet time between now and when the other pilots will wake up, tinker with their starfighters, wrenches clanking, droids whirring. Breathing is still shaky, his hands are still trembling, but in here, surrounded by X-wing, he can inhale just a bit easier.
Escaping from Jakku gave him a chance to put his brain to use, to use his wit, his charm, his piloting skill to do something helpful, get off-planet, get back to the Resistance base. And then his first night back he woke up with a scream on his lips and the feeling of groping, of an incessant brain itch, someone rummaging through his thoughts, his memories, through him —and shaking his head, clenching his temples in his hands did nothing to alleviate the searching, the pull, the violation. His jaw clenches of its own accord. He hears stifled breathing, layered in memories with his own breaths, harsh and desperate.
In the pre-dawn light, sitting by himself in the cockpit of a replacement ship not yet his own, Poe wipes his eyes, and he does not close them.
—
Jessika Pava sits next to him at their evening meal. He isn’t eating.
“You look terrible.”
Poe makes a noise that could be construed as agreement. He doesn’t disagree, after all.
“Did you even sleep last night?”
“Some.” The word comes out as a croak.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He turns to her, meets her eyes, fakes his best grin. “What’s to talk about? I’ve been an insomniac for years,” he says. “Why stop now?”
She says, “You’re really bad at lying, Poe.”
“I’ll tell you if I want to talk about it, all right?”
“All right, all right. Do you think Snap wants his bread? I think I’m going to try and take it.”
—
If he flies early enough, takes off for a low swing around the planet until his hands aren’t clammy, until his thudding heart is because of the exhilaration of piloting his new fighter instead of a tight fist clamped around his mind, until he’s breathing in time with the thrum of the X-wing. Until he’s breathing.
—
General Organa calls for him one day, and he goes, already in uniform. He’s expecting a mission, because it’s been a while, and even if he hasn’t slept more than a handful of time in several days, he’s still a great pilot; he’s still Resistance.
She turns when he enters the conference room. It’s just the two of them, and it makes the room seem larger than it is, hollow, like anything he says will echo. “Hello, General.”
Her smile is a bit tight-lipped. “Hello, Poe.”
“What’s the occasion? Mission? New mission?”
“No,” she says, “I was wondering how you’re doing.”
Poe feels like he’s walked into a wall.
He runs a hand through his hair, then tucks both his hands into the pockets of his jumpsuit. “Great,” he says, nodding, for emphasis and so that he himself will believe it. “Being back on the base is fantastic, and the new fighter’s a beauty, almost got her all fixed up—”
Leia meets his eyes and raises an eyebrow, quirks her lips sideways in an expression that says I am Force-sensitive and I do not believe you .
He looks away, because holding Leia’s gaze is a veritable challenge for anyone, especially someone who’s woken up almost screaming for the last three days and has just said that he’s doing great .
Leia was there when he first got back, and she came to visit him in the medbay. Although he was feeling dizzy and nauseous, at the time, he attributed it to his recently sustained concussion, waved off her concern, and told her that she had more to worry about; the base was mourning Lor San Tekka, and BB-8 was gone, and the map was gone, and there were more concerning matters at hand than whether or not Poe Dameron could keep down his lunch.
Besides, this morning it only took him a couple of hours to cool down, get his breathing back to normal. That’s a new record.
He looks back at Leia. “I’m doing all right,” he tells her.
She reaches out, puts a hand on his arm. “I do know what it’s like,” she tells him, her eyes searching his. “It takes time to recover. Make sure to give yourself that time.”
He opens his mouth to tell her that he wasn’t held for long, he wasn’t hurt that badly—he came back alive , he came back easy to fix, concussion fading, blood already washed away.
She squeezes his arm. The words die in his throat.
“You’re one of the best pilots we’ve got,” she tells him. “And you’ve already done so much for us. Let me know if there’s anything that we can do for you.”
All he can do is nod.
—
Nights are when it’s the weirdest that BB-8 is gone. His room is quiet without the chirps and whirring of the droid, the metallic thunks of BB-8 running into drawers, the wall, his door. BB-8 used to wheel at him, full force, and run into his legs, weaving around them like it was seeking out affection. Maybe it knew that he drew comfort from its presence. Maybe it would know now.
Thinking about BB-8 means thinking about Jakku, means thinking about the crash, means thinking about Finn. Sometimes that helps. Most times, it ends with him dreaming about expanses of sand, unending heat, no sign of human life, makes him think about being sucked into the desert like Finn must have and what that would have felt like. It ends with him waking up choking.
By now he’s decided that he hates waking up.
The lights are still on, and Poe is lying on his bed staring up at the ceiling, hands tucked behind his head. When he feels himself beginning to fall asleep, eyes drooping, breathing evening out, he sits upright, takes shallow breaths, blinks to keep himself awake.
He slides down from the bed to sit cross-legged on the floor, running shaky hands through his hair. His limbs feel tight, itchy, like the skin is stretched over bone.
Next to his bed, there’s a datapad, and he pulls it out, stares at the screen, taps it to life. He can make it through the night, he thinks, eyes burning and dry.
He dozes off, wakes to a strangled scream, hits the back of his head in the process, and grips his hair like it will give him something to hold onto.
There’s a knock on his door, and he knows that it’s Jess, but he clenches his teeth and refuses to answer the door until she goes away.
—
They, the Resistance, General Organa—they give him a mission. He takes to the skies like he’s been catapulted there, shouts out orders and directions and swoops, spins, shoots, finally feels like something has clicked back to where it’s supposed to be.
—
The night he gets back, it’s like he’s still being buoyed up by the stars, and even though his boots are firmly on the ground when he takes his helmet off, it feels like he’s flying. And even though this was good earlier, felt electric and alive, now he feels electric in the wrong way, like if he doesn’t move he’s going to sizzle out of his own skin.
Later, he doesn’t sleep. He’s wandering back out to the hangar, feet skimming the ground on his way there like it’s been etched into his own internal navigation system, when he sees that General Leia is awake in the command room. She’s leaning on one of the consoles, staring at a screen, pensive. He gets the impression that she isn’t looking at the screen.
Poe slips inside.
“It’s hard, isn’t it,” she says thoughtfully, her voice quiet. “Living with it afterward.”
She knows.
Poe wants to say, It’s going away , or maybe It’s not so hard, I hear Snap crying at night sometimes too, but all that comes out of his mouth is a small sound of agreement, like it was supposed to be a yes but all it can do is take shape as a broken-off noise.
“It takes time,” Leia says, turning to face him. The intensity of her gaze is always startling, but it gives Poe something to latch onto, and when he meets her eyes, her own crinkle a little at the sides, not quite a smile. “Have you been able to rest?”
Two days ago, he slept for an hour in the afternoon, between meetings, and barely dreamed at all. “Sometimes,” he says, and it’s not even a lie. “I think the mission helped,” he adds, and that’s more of a lie, but being awake is better after.
Leia nods. “It’s different, when it’s the Force, used for such evil,” she says, not gentle, just quietly. His hands tremble, and she reaches out to grip him by the arm. “If my brother were here, he might know something that could help.” And, before Poe can apologize for losing the scrap of navigation they almost had, were so close to having, she silences him with a firm look. “In the meantime, we are all here to help you make it through.”
Poe nods.
Leia turns to face him entirely, lets go of his arm, and opens her arms to him, and he caves, lets her wrap her arms around him, closes his eyes, and the contact, the human contact, almost makes his mind blank out in a way it hasn’t for weeks. It’s as if her embrace extends beyond just the physical, and he feels warmth hovering at the edges of his mind, soothing instead of searching, staying out instead of barging in, supporting rather than foraging through. It’s the side of the Force that he’s heard about, the side that heals, doesn’t wound.
When she lets go, he realizes that his face is wet. She doesn’t give him the courtesy of looking away, and he supposes that it wouldn’t make much difference, anyway, thanks to her shrewd Force-imbued people sense.
He smiles. He wipes his eyes.
“Go rest, if you can,” she tells him. “I’ll have more flying for you tomorrow.”
His smile is shakier, and a few more tears dribble down his cheeks, but he nods.
When he leaves the control room, his feet still take him out to the hangar, up the ladder into the cockpit of his X-wing, the one that still needs a name. He leans back in the seat and claps an unsteady hand on the silent, darkened controls, and lets out a quivery breath.
He rests his head back. He closes his eyes.