…two truths and a lie.
one. If you cut Poe Dameron open (and they have, a few times, because shrapnel is a kung-fucker, and he’s gotten sort of attached to not having alusteel in his bloodstream) you’d find the Republic there, scored into the underside of his ribs. Mama used to say that nursed them together, Poe and his little sister, Revuelta, born screaming in the cockpit of her x-wing.
but I’m your favorite! Poe had always giggled, finishing the story for her, and mama always had said, never doubt it, ishoco, because that was simpler than, it was easier to bring you into the world. there was less blood.
(every child’s origins are the stuff of mythology, at least in the way you tell it—Ben Organa came too early, in the midst a magnetic storm that almost tore the Falcon to pieces; Rey breathed her first during starfall, on a planet whose name no one could quite remember. The boy who would one day be called Finn, meaning fair, slept in the circle of his mother’s arms that first night, because she never wanted to let him leave her skin.
Poe Dameron was born screaming into the cockpit of his mother’s x-wing, cradling alzamiento between his heart and his breastbone.)
two. Everyone gets it wrong, they say it must have been when and talk about control sticks and x-wings, punching through to the blue-white of hyperspace. Maybe for everyone else, it was. But to him, flying didn’t even register as something else, different than breathing, or internal organs, something that could be articulated in the subjunctive. Sitting in a cockpit is like tasting the inside of his mouth, there’s nothing there but more of him, more himness.
He couldn’t have fallen in love with a thing indistinguishable from the shape of his skin.
No, the first time Poe fell in love, it was with a hastily holo-copied piece of flimsi, handed out among T-14 class. Through the transparisteel was a bright, clear afternoon, so he caught only fragments of what his teacher was saying, perished with Alderaan, and best known poet of the civil war—
It’s chance that his eyes land on the single line of hand-scrawled poetry:when the multitudes run rioting against you and against everything unjust and inhuman, I will be in their midst with the torch in my hand
(Under his breastbone, Revuelta stirs. Poe falls in love—not with poetry but with the image, himself, all skinny adolescent elbows, standing against the unjust and holding the torch.)
After his mother’s funeral, he goes on a nerve burner of a bender, and wakes up three days later at the foot of the Force-tree. (It hasn’t flowered since the attack on the new Jedi temple, but Poe fights the strange urge to apologize.) His side aches sharply, and he cringes, stumbling inside to the refresher.
He lifts his shirt to see ‘with the torch in my hand’, tattooed along the slant of his ribs.
three. He hasn’t slept more than four standard units for a week when the General finds him under his x-wing. BB-8 (that traitor) doesn’t warn him, and so suddenly she’s there, passing him the sonic wrench he had been vainly reaching for.
She’s shorter than he is, Poe realizes with a start. Standing in the command center, surrounded by people who need orders and answers, she’s always seemed to eat up space, towering above them—here she’s just a woman. He can see the places where the eumelanin regeneration has left her scalp blotchy.
general, he says.
you know my brother blew up the Death Star, the General replies idly, and it takes Poe a minute to remember that Luke Skywalker, Star-killer, is actually the same man as General Organa’s brother. (Poe mostly remembers the latter skipping stones across a pond with the Force, talking to a tree in Poe’s yard as though he expected it to answer back.)
he asked to be moved to planetside combat, after that, she adds after a moment.
Poe blinks. I didn’t know that, ma’am.
Luke said he had heard them, crying out, all the voices of the Death Star as they perished. he couldn’t do it again, he said—he said ’at least with a blaster, you can only kill one at a time.’
Poe stares. His fingers are numb around the sonic wrench.
war is ugly, lieutenant, the General says. There’s something carved-out about how she says it, like she’s had this conversation too many times before. anyone who tells you different is lying, or trying to recruit you. but you did good work on Eraski; it was necessary and you did it well, you did it cleanly. I wish that weren’t such a cold comfort.
I—is it worth it? he asks the General. He wants to ask Princess Leia Organa, whose planet was swallowed up by black and fire, everything she loved with it, but it’s not his place. Only mama had ever called her leia, with the artificial lung to prove she had earned the right.
(the kriffing bey legacy, Poe’s father had snarled, when Poe told him he was defecting to the Resistance. always happy to bleed for leia organa.)
For a long moment, the General is silent. When she reaches up and touches Poe’s face, he flinches—but she just traces his cheek with her fingertips before dropping her hand. go to bed, dameron, she says, very quietly. your mother would have killed me if she knew I’ve turned you into such a lich.
yes, ma’am, Poe says.
She’s very tall, walking away.
