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Outside in the nighttime D’Qar forest, the air holds a hint of humidity, as if signaling imminent rain, and Poe hopes that maybe there will be a storm so that he can stand out in the downpour and let himself get soaked to the bone, drenched, maybe even cleansed, in a way.
Some nights, when his brain is numb or buzzing with too many thoughts all crowding in on each other at once, he walks just far enough beyond the base so that he can’t see the lights of the X-wing hangars, and lets himself breathe.
Tonight, it is harder to take in a breath, harder to exhale.
He is barefoot, because sometimes boots ground him, but sometimes he needs to feel the ground beneath his feet. Here, the dirt is soft and warm, and he can dig his toes in, start to bury them.
On Jakku, his feet sank into the sand without purchase, searing with heat and grit. Most of the walking is a blur that comes up in his dreams at night. When he dreams about walking through the desert, he always knows it’s in a circle, that he’s only prolonging his inevitable collapse, and lately, when he’s woken up, it’s been to a blur of pain, a dry throat as he gags on the memory of sand.
Those are the more forgiving nights.
Poe wanders back to the base when the first streaks of sunrise light up the treetops, orange on green, feathery soft, gentle. He thinks about how his mother used to describe sunrise on Yavin 4, like hands were reaching out, touching the sky with light, and has to swallow at the unbidden memory of touching, reaching, searching, has to tamp down the thought, because he doesn’t want the thought of his mother telling him about sunrise to be tainted like so many other memories.
Last night, when he couldn’t sleep, he climbed to the roof of the hangar. He’s thinking that he might like to do it again, sit resolutely under the glaring dawn of the D’Qar sunrise, repel thoughts of his brain being probed, shake them free like sand from his hair, watch daybreak spread over the planet, tell Jess later when she asks that it’s just because he wanted to see the sun come up.
Instead, he finds himself in the mess hall. It’s early enough that his crew isn’t here yet, but there are a few people eating. There are still enough tables that Poe can get something hot to drink and sit down alone. He thinks about striking up a conversation, Why are you up or Does this seem early or Yeah, I can’t sleep either, it’s pretty bad, isn’t it.
There aren’t words he can string together in a way that they will understand, to ask if they’ve ever felt as if they wear violation like a second skin.
He clears his throat, thinking about saying something, but the words stick and he coughs. He wraps his hands around his drink, stares into it, feels the steam against his face. It’s warm. He takes a sip. As he puts down the drink, his hands tremble.
———
Poe jerks awake in a deserted conference room, in front of a holoscreen, on the floor of the hangar fully dressed in his flight suit, in the mess hall, never in his own bed. He’s taken to avoiding his quarters. It’s too quiet without BB-8, and he’s found that if he’s too comfortable, the dreams are more vivid. The few times he slept in his own bed, he scrambled his way into wakefulness alone in his quarters only to find himself halfway across the room, already on his desperate way to vomit in the refresher sink.
If he sleeps elsewhere, he wakes up hard, he wakes up on edge, he wakes up tired, but he paces it off, taking long walks around the base when most of the others are asleep.
Outside, his lungs open up, and rather than tasting blood and choking on sand, he can draw in deep, cautious breaths.
———
On the night after the Starkiller Base mission, his nerves are stretched taut, still singing with adrenaline and an emotion that isn’t quite happiness, and rather than returning to his room to crash, his feet take him toward Snap Wexley’s quarters; if he knows Snap and Jess, they’re having a drink in there under the pretense of celebration. What that really means is that they and the other surviving pilots will be drinking to their fallen friends, and Poe has to be there for that.
BB-8 trails behind him as if it can sense that something is wrong, beeping at him to go to the medbay. According to the droid, his heart is beating too fast, a little bit erratic.
“I’m not going to medbay, BB-8,” he says as he rounds the corner, and BB-8 beeps threateningly at him. “There are people who need it worse than I do.”
BB-8 spills out a series of chirps, beeps, and intimidating whirring noises.
“Sorry, buddy,” he says, “I’m not going.”
When he gets to Snap’s room, the door opens without him having to indicate his presence. Karé and Iolo are there, too, and although there’s soft music playing in the room, the room has a somber feel to it.
“Hey,” says Poe, “sorry I’m late—”
BB-8 chirps at the others.
Jess raises her eyebrows at him. “You’re skipping out on medbay?”
“I was just there earlier—”
The droid rolls into his leg and beeps at Jess.
She sticks out her tongue at him. “Dameron, it doesn’t count if you were watching someone else get treated—”
“He was in really bad shape and I’m not,” Poe says, and sits down before any of them can suggest that he do otherwise. “And I’m fine. BB-8 is exaggerating. Yes you are,” he scolds the droid when it beeps in reprimand.
The others have already opened a bottle of Corellian brandy.
“That’s fancy,” says Poe.
“We thought it would be fitting,” Jess says. “For Han.”
Poe’s throat tightens. He nods, pours himself a drink, lifts it in a toast. “For Han.”
They drink. BB-8 hangs its head and makes a dejected whirring noise.
Poe’s hands are jittery, and he puts down his empty cup so it doesn’t give him away. The tremors don’t escape BB-8’s notice, but when it starts to trill at him about taking care of himself, he leans down and whispers, “Shh, buddy, c’mon.”
Jess has already caught on. “Look, if you have to go to medbay, you have to go,” she says. “Did you even get checked up after you got back? We all did.”
“It’s nothing, just leftover nerves.”
She frowns at him. “That’s not like you.”
BB-8 beeps in agreement. That traitor.
Taking in a deep breath, Poe runs his hands through his hair, and then lets out a long sigh, which comes out shakier than he anticipated. “I’ll go tomorrow. After this brandy, I might need it,” he jokes, and the others smile, but it’s perfunctory; they all know why they’re drinking.
Three drinks in, Karé raises her cup of brandy. “I know this is the second time, but Poe missed the first,” she says.
Even though Poe knows what’s coming, his chest hurts when she says, “To Ello Asty,” and he drinks deeply so his eyes have an excuse to water, because if it had been any other mission Ello would be here, with them, raising a glass to the fallen, celebrating the survivors, and drinking the rest of them under the table. He wipes his eyes, and the others do the same, and he wonders why he pretended not to in the first place.
When BB-8 makes a fuss that he’s had enough to drink, Poe stops, but that means that the others nod off before he does. Karé disappeared some time ago, and Iolo followed, but Snap and Jess have both fallen asleep, Snap on his bed, Jess on the floor.
“Just one more drink, buddy,” Poe slurs as BB-8 nudges his arm away from the bottle of brandy. BB-8 trills at him, beeping softly but urgently, and Poe leans in to say, “I know, and it’s not too much! No, it is not —”
BB-8 chirps more loudly, threatening to wake the others up. It knows that Jess will be on its side.
“Okay, okay,” Poe says, dropping his hand. He leans against Snap’s bed, resting his head on the frame, and closes his eyes. “I’m done.”
The droid bumps against his shoulder, chittering at him.
“I know the floor isn’t a bed,” he says, opening his eyes to find BB-8 cocking its head sideways. It chirps. “I haven’t been using a bed lately, buddy. Nightmares. It’s easier to sleep like this.”
BB-8 makes a sympathetic cooing noise, followed by a series of beeps.
“No, medbay couldn’t help very much.” His words sound uneven to his own ears, and he wonders if it’s the brandy, the nerves, the exhaustion. Probably all of them, compounded. His eyes droop shut. “I’ll be okay. I’ve been doing okay.”
The droid chirps at him, vibrating in place, whirring.
“I missed you, too, buddy,” he says.
———
He startles awake, gasping into consciousness, tripping over thoughts of clanking metal, the buzz of an interrogation droid and its electric prodding, and he’s lurching to his feet in the dark, gagging, fighting off invisible restraints before he loses his balance, pitches over, and crashes to the floor.
BB-8 beeps rapidly, telling him that he is still in Snap Wexley’s room, he was drinking, he’s awake, his brainwaves were going haywire while he was asleep. He tries to even out his breathing, but it’s hard to do that when his whole body is shaking in response to the feeling of invasion in his own head, the sensation of blood trickling along his temples.
“What the—” That’s Jess’s voice, Jessika Pava, here—
BB-8 is off, trilling with concern at her, and then there’s a shuffling noise.
“You’re safe,” says Jess, Jess’s voice, a little bit too distant to be grounding. “You’re on the D’Qar base, and you just woke up. You’re okay.”
He tries to nod, but his chest is heaving.
She breathes in, then out, and says, “In—two—three—”
He sucks in air, huffs it out, takes another breath, tries to hold it. His lips are trembling. When he exhales, the sound emerges as a sob. His shoulders are shaking, his hands jittering against the cold floor, salt on his tongue, blood at his temples, he’s bleeding, he squeezes his eyes shut, he is gagging.
“Jess? What is it?” A deeper voice, rough with sleep, and Poe jerks at the sound.
“That’s Snap,” says Jess, and his brain grabs onto the thought, Snap, Snap, friend, pilot, safe, safe, no mask. Snap. Jess’s voice again, low: “He had a nightmare. Keep breathing, Poe, you’ve got this. We’re here. It’s okay. In-two-three—”
He sucks in a breath, holds it, lets it out. In, holds it longer, lets it out, each breath getting steadier and steadier, until the tremors in his hands have subsided and his heart is no longer skittering around in his chest.
He opens his eyes.
It’s dark.
Nightmare.
BB-8 makes a concerned noise.
“It’s okay,” Poe says, unsettled when his voice cracks.
He’s still lying on the floor, the metal cold against his cheek. With trembling arms, he pushes himself upright. He closes his eyes against the immediate dizziness and tears dribble from his eyes, trailing hotly down his cheeks.
There’s a whirring sound, and when he opens his eyes he sees BB-8 between him and Jess in the darkness. She is reaching out, and the droid is stopping her, but Poe says, “It’s okay, she’s fine, you know Jess,” and then her hand is against his shoulder and he is leaning into the touch. BB-8 bumps against his knee. He nods, wrung out, his head pounding. “It’s okay.”
He can still hear his heartbeat in his ears. BB-8 lets out a series of beeps, asking if he wants medical attention. He shakes his head and that makes the pounding worse.
“Does this happen a lot?” Snap asks.
“Sometimes,” says Poe.
BB-8 asks what it can do.
Poe lets out a shaky breath. “I think I’m okay, buddy, thanks for asking.” He touches his fingers to his temples, and they come away wet, but it doesn’t look like his hands are covered in blood, so maybe he was sweating. He lets out a nervous laugh. “This is embarrassing. I’ll clean up. You get back to sleep.”
“Are you sure?” Jess asks. “I don’t mind staying up.”
Snap adds, “Me neither.”
Poe is already getting to his feet, BB-8 hovering around his knees as if the droid can catch him if he keels over. “I’ll be fine,” he says. “See you in the morning,” he adds, and slips from the room, BB-8 following right behind him.
———
The lights on the base are dimmed, though the Resistance never really sleeps, between the handful of human insomniacs and the species who don’t keep human hours anyway. BB-8 hasn’t left Poe’s side. The droid knocks into his knees when Poe pours himself a cup of caf with still-trembling hands, insists that he should drink some water instead, won’t stop chattering until he sips something that will hydrate him rather than keep him awake. When he swallows, it tastes a lot like blood, but he forces a smile, gives BB-8 a thumbs-up, receives the droid’s version of one in return.
When he’s back out in the hallway, BB-8 zooms in front of him, then waits, head tilted, for him to catch up. He knows what this means, knows that BB-8 is signaling for him to follow.
“I’m not going to medbay,” he tells the droid.
BB-8 beeps and vibrates, rolling toward him, then away.
“You promise?”
More beeping.
“Okay,” he says, “if you say so,” and follows it to medbay, where he skulks past the workers like he’s hiding a broken limb, as if they can see the residual panic, his shaking hands, the remnants of bruises and burns. They’re busy with the others, the pilots who came back but needed medical attention.
When they’re inside, BB-8 wheels away without waiting for him to catch up, and he hurries after it, boots thudding heavily against the tile floor, loud in the subdued quiet of medbay at nighttime.
BB-8 stops, beeps for him to come in, and he enters one of the rooms, expecting to see Finn.
Instead, he stops in the doorway when he sees the empty bed, and Rey sitting beside it. His skin thrums when he sees her, and it sets him on edge, his skin prickling as if suddenly dry and pulled over jagged bones.
She turns, her eyes wide as if surprised, still wearing the same clothing as earlier, dirtied and torn from her fight in the woods, which Poe has only heard about and not in great detail. BB-8 wheels across the room and bumps into Rey’s leg, and she laughs a little bit and looks away from Poe.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she says. “They patched me right up. There wasn’t a lot to fix.” Then her mouth twists, and Poe is thinking the same thing: not like Finn. His brain flashes memories at him: Finn, bleeding. Finn, unconscious, being whisked away by the surgical crew; Poe, running behind them, arguing with the droids, trying to wheedle his way in to see his friend, that’s my friend, is he okay, is he okay.
He rubs one hand against his eyes in a rather futile attempt to clear his head.
In one fluid motion, Rey turns away from BB-8 and stands to face Poe, her eyes meeting him in a way that seems to pin him in place, hold him there, demand that he pay attention. He doesn’t think she knows she’s doing it, which makes it more intense.
“You’re having nightmares,” she says, like the words are being drawn out of her, and she is delivering them to him with utter certainty. “You’re up now because you can’t sleep.”
“Is it that obvious?” he says, tries to put an easy smile on his face, like it’s a good joke between the two of them, Poe Dameron, Insomniac. Occasional suffer of frightful dreams. He tucks his hands into his pockets so they don’t visibly shake. “I thought the caf might help with that.”
“I can sense it,” she says, “you can’t sleep, because of him,” and her voice is haunted but determined, her eyes bright and sharp as she connects the experiences they share that have brought them here, to this space, to Rey telling the truth and him, Poe with his hands shaking in his pockets, wanting to flee.
BB-8 looks from him to Rey and back again.
I can sense it, he thinks, she can sense it, and his brain trips on the words. With Rey, there’s no sensation of invasion, but there’s a feeling like a warm, oppressive blanket, not meaning any harm but still stifling. He blurts out, “Look, if you’re in my head, I need that not to be happening—” He closes his eyes, takes a breath, opens them again. “It’s just. I can feel it. And it’s not a great time right now.”
Rey takes a step backward as if shocked. “I’m not! I would never.”
He looks at her, and he wants to believe her, but his skin is prickling, prickling, prickling, and he can feel the electric imbalance of fingers digging in, searching through his thoughts, prodding at memories with too much vehemence, too much of an edge. His stomach roils, his vision goes white, and he dashes from the room in search of a place to vomit, BB-8 on his heels.
———
He finds her at breakfast, where she’s picking at a plate of fruit with her brow furrowed. He sits next to her. He says, “I’m sorry.”
She says, “I am too.”
He shows her how to peel a Mandalorian orange.
———
Outside, it’s cool, with a slight breeze, which chills Poe’s clammy skin. BB-8 picks its way over the uneven forest ground until the two of them reach a clearing, where Poe sits on the grass, wipes his forehead, stares up at the sky, the stars, tracing them together.
His feet are bare, and cold, and for a moment he wishes, as he does every so often, to be back on Yavin 4. He craves the familiar humidity, the comforting warmth, the sounds of wildlife and fluttering fauna, even if the Poe Dameron he was then is not the same as the Poe he is now.
Maybe he could sleep through a single Yavin night. Maybe he could wake up without the clench of fear gripping his chest and throat.
He pulls his feet up to his chest. He rests his forearms on his knees, his chin on his arms. Next to him, BB-8 leans sideways to bump him, beeps quietly.
“I will eventually. It’s not like I can just turn me off for the night,” he says. “No power-down switch.” At BB-8’s alarmed chirp, he adds, “I’m not going to power you down, don’t worry. We don’t want a second R2.”
Behind him, he hears sticks cracking, and BB-8 whirls to see who or what is approaching. Poe scrambles to his feet, putting his hand to where his blaster would ordinarily be, but his hand comes up empty; he’s dressed in sleep clothes and didn’t strap on a blaster, and—
Rey slips into the clearing and stops immediately when their eyes meet.
BB-8 rolls to greet her, bee wooooping enthusiastically, and Poe lets out a breath as Rey stoops to greet the droid.
“Nothing like the middle of the night for some fresh air,” he says.
“You’re one to talk.”
“The droids out here put the local wildlife to shame,” he says. “What’s not to like?”
BB-8 whistles in agreement.
“I thought you might be out here,” says Rey.
“Lucky guess.”
“BB-8 told me that you come out here a lot when you can’t sleep. Are the dreams bad?”
He shrugs. “No worse than usual.”
BB-8 tells Rey the dreams are bad.
“It’s hard, living with it after,” she says. “It’s hard to trust your own mind.”
He nods. He moves to sit back down, because his legs are trembling just slightly, and Rey follows suit.
“Had you ever met someone Force-sensitive before?” she asks, looking at him intently.
He shrugs. “The General is, but she doesn’t, er. Put it on display.”
Rey nods. “It’s different with her. She never tries to take, it’s more—internal.”
Poe shudders at the thought of Leia Organa reaching icy probe-hands into the depths of his mind, and has to swallow hard, shake his head to banish the thought.
“Thinking of myself as Force-sensitive is—odd,” Rey says decisively, as though she’s just now putting a descriptor to her abilities. “But I want to learn. I never want to think—that just because I can—” There’s fiery anger on her face, now, and she turns to him, says fiercely, “I will never, ever go into someone’s mind if they don’t want me there.”
All Poe can do is nod.
“He took so much,” Rey whispers, and when he looks at her he discovers tears tracking down her face, her eyes bright, still fierce. “And it’s not like other pain, is it?”
Poe thinks about how on some days he wakes up not remembering his own dreams, throat raw, how on those days he’s jumpy, easily startled, how he has to get through every hour feeling as though he can’t catch his breath. His nights spent awake, toes dug into the dirt, the air on D’Qar cold and wrong. How he hasn’t seen his bed in weeks, how the word intimidated holds different meaning, how his temperature gauge is all wrong. He thinks about shaking hands and too much caf.
He says, “No, it’s not.”
Rey wraps her arms around her knees. “I’ll learn how to make it through,” she says, “I always have,” and Poe wants to ask, Make it through what? This? Interrogation, mind-shredding torture? but she’s nodding, resolutely, and he wonders if this is her version of starting to be okay, of making it through the night with less and less hardship.
Poe leans back, and takes in a breath, and lets it out as he looks at the sky. It’s starting to lighten, stars fading, the sun beginning to rise, and he wants to close his eyes without sleeping, to rest with no interruption from dreams.
He yawns, and his watering eyes spill over. Rey turns, startled, as if broken from a reverie. “Are you tired?”
“Very,” he says, wiping at his eyes. “Sleeping’s just not a popular choice, lately.”
“You could check on Finn with me,” she says. “He hasn’t woken up, not yet, but he will. I believe that.” She nods again, and Poe wonders how she is so sure of all of this, if it’s a deep unshakable sense of what’s to come, or just fearless optimism.
———
The next time he wakes with a gasp, he’s tucked into the corner of Finn’s room in medbay, heart racing, remnants of his nightmare already forgotten, just the ill-fitting, uneasy sense that something was wrong.
He takes a breath, lets it out, clamors to his feet to stand next to the bed.
Lying in bed, Finn looks almost peaceful, but there’s a furrow to his brow, and Poe wonders if he’s really sleeping, if he dreams. He thinks he must.
———
The insistent patter of rain guides Poe into consciousness, teases him awake, and he realizes, it is raining, and runs out barefoot to offer himself up to the sky.