Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A crowd roared around him and Poe struggled to keep his head up high. He'd failed. He'd failed his mission, failed the Resistance, failed BB-8. Poe knew that even as he stood, shackled, gun loaded and pointed at the small of his back, squadrons of First Order soldiers would tear apart Jakku until all that was left was a smouldering graveyard and his brave astromech. They would take him and tear him apart until they ripped the map out of his cold dead machinery.

"We have gathered here today to witness the execution of a traitor." A loud official spoke clearly to the crowd of people gathered for Poe's execution. 

He was scared, but he wouldn't give them the privilege of seeing him tremble.

"Look on the face of the Rebel scum known as Poe Dameron."

They ripped the blindfold away from his face and Poe blinked in the harsh sunlight. It was going to be the last time that he would ever see the sun. He wished it could have been night. How he longed for one last touch of the stars. He looked up at the sky. He missed flying.

"Son of the original destructors of the Empire, in destroying him, we will restore the natural order of the universe. It will ruin the life that his parents laid out before him, for all the children of the dreaded Resistance. The day the Glory known as the Empire fell."

Poe's bound hands trembled in anger. They had no right to speak about his parents like that. Taking down the Death Star was heroic. It led the universe to peace, a peace that the First Order wanted to take away.

The man leant down before him. "Any words, traitor?"

"You will never know true Glory." Poe Spat.

The man frowned. It was not what the man wanted to hear. Poe would not give him the privilege of begging for his life. There was no point. Poe had given too much of his life to the Resistance now. He could never be a free man.

"This is being broadcast to everyone in the System, Rebel. Is there anything you'd like to say? Divulge how you cracked, how you saw our ways, how you spilt every ounce of knowledge you had to us." Poe could hear the smirk in his voice.

Poe remained silent. This man did not deserve his last words.

A sharp slap rang out across the stadium as the man struck his face. "SPEAK!" he screamed.

Poe laughed despite himself, coughing up the blood that formed in his mouth. It may have been the adrenaline. It may have been the knowledge that he was a dead man or the sheer absurdity that the First Order could win by praising the Empire, presenting a tortured man to the world to execute and praising it as the greater good.

It was the one power he had, to die in silence, but Poe had never been one to sit quietly.

"Careful." He spoke in his home language, not sure what prompted him to swap away from Basic. Perhaps it was a sick sense of satisfaction. They could steal his words, but they couldn't understand them. It was the one privilege he had left. Poe's mouth split wide in mirth. "You'll make a martyr out of me." 

The man screamed, not understanding. He didn't turn to reface the crowd before striking Poe down.

His execution was angry, rushed.

Poe felt his body convulse around the solid beam of light, the pain agonising, ripping out of his body in a scream he couldn't repress.

He was drifting, up and away, in with the stars. 

A smile greeted his dying lips, highlighted by the cameras to the world. It was alright to go. Nothing would hurt him anymore. He closed his eyes and he was gone. The communication cut to the universe.

Poe Dameron was dead. In some ways, it was all that mattered.

Chapter Text

The wood creaked under Kes' feet as he walked back into his homestead, the scent of warm damp wood filling his nose. He closed the door behind him, kicking dirt into the air. The smell of petrichor filled the room. It was the smell of home.

He ambled slowly down the hallway, aching after a long day out tending to the bantha and runyip herds, the humidity making his body ache. He smiled up at a picture of his wife that hung at the end of the hallway and placed his house keys below it, on the same hook that they had hung from the end of the war.

Kes Dameron was a slow man to change. He woke at the same time every morning and worked till he ached. He walked into his house to be greeted by his wife's astromech, Arfour, and then sat on his old chair, and read through the datapads that he had amassed in his life. 

Henceforth, it threw a spanner in the works when Arfour did not greet him as he walked into the door, and a further one when he heard the distant sounds of his transponder flickering to life. 

Something like dread flickered in his chest.

He gripped a gun tight in his jacket, suspecting an intruder. It was a habit that the years of service had instilled in him. He never felt safe without a loaded weapon at his side.

Nothing could have prepared him for the scene that greeted him. He dropped his weapon on the floor.

Sickeningly twisted and frozen, Arfour faced the wall, a low binary distress call keeping out from him. His holovid player had been forcefully activated and displayed on the wall, in flickery blue detail stood a stormtrooper army. 

His fist cracked against the wall. All that he and Shara had fought for had been in vain. The Empire had returned, or as good as, stronger than ever. A new planet killer in the sky.

Kes flicked his eyes to Arfour reaching out his hand to comfort the droid. 

Then he saw what had him in such a state. 

"No. Mijo." Kes sank to his knees.

His son, bruised and battered with an angry fire in his eyes, knelt at the foot of a First Order officer. They didn't need to say his name for Kes to know. He knew the eyes of his son.

They screamed at him to speak and Poe stood silent. He saw how stiffly he held himself. He was in pain, the weariness of the torture he must have undergone sticking to his bones in the way he kneeled. He greeted them with silence, and Kes felt some pride for his son, mixed in with the sickening dread.

They slapped his face, and Kes watched as his son coughed up blood, smiled a broken toothed smile. 

Anger ran hot white through Kes' body. They had no right. 

And when Poe laughed, that desperate laugh, it clung and cut at Kes' body. It was the laugh he had heard in many others, cold and callous and wrong. His son should never laugh like that.

"Careful." 

He was scared, Kes knew, scared of the end. Poe only referred to his home language when he was scared, upset. He was scared and he didn't want them to know. Kes' heart ached.

"You'll make a martyr out of me."

Kes felt the lightsaber rip through Poe's body and knew that as much as his son didn't believe in the Force, he'd have felt the projection of his death regardless. He felt his son's fear, and the sickening wrongness, and the agony. He felt when his son left the Force, not strong enough in the ways of it to stay, and Kes felt a bit more of him die.

Angry tears ran down his face. This is why he'd never wanted him to leave. Never wanted Shara to teach him how to fly. Never wanted her to gift him with wanderlust and recklessness. This is where all of that had led. To his death. 

Kes patted Arfour on the head when he turned to him with a look of distress. For a mere droid, Arfour had felt more than a lifetime of loss. 

Locking eyes to optics, he and Arfour reached a silent agreement. The Dark Side could take no more from them. The Jedi could take no more from them. 

When Kes picked up his gun and marched to the door, it was not with the ideologies of glory and honour that he had marched to as a kid, but rather the cold burning desire for vengeance. 

If Kes was a Jedi, the power of the dark side would be running through his veins. He was going to make the bastard who killed Poe pay, and he was going to do it with his own hands.

Chapter Text

Beebee-Ate was, all things considered, feeling rather pleased with himself. He had completed his mission, and now he just had to wait for Poe to make his way back from Jakku, and when he did, he was going to pat his head and give him a nice refreshing oil bath. 

The droid beeped to himself in amusement. Artoo had completed the map and the scavenger girl had headed off to find Luke Skywalker and bring him back. Beebee-Ate didn't understand how a Jedi would help win the war against the First Order, but if he was held in such high regard, it must be something important. 

Either way, if he was half the pilot that Artoo claimed he was, he would have great fun flying with him alongside Poe. 

As far as Beebee-Ate could see, seeing no evidence to the contrary, the Force was meaningless, and they only wanted him back as a pilot. It was evident that Artoo missed flying. It was what they were made for, and Artoo had been cruelly left to rust away in the corner until he had left with Rey to find Luke. 

In some parts of its mind, Artoo was angry that he had been abandoned, Beebee-Ate was sure. After all, Poe and himself had only been separated by a fault in a mission and he missed him enough. He couldn't imagine spending ten years or more, alone and forgotten. 

Beebee-Ate rolled into Snap's fingers as he studied a map in the pilot's rec room. People should be paying attention to him. He was the droid of the hour after all and they all should be very very impressed by him. 

Mr. Bones set out a hiss of binary, chiding the younger droid. That was his pilot, and he was busy, thankyouverymuch. Beebee-Ate stuck his lighter back up at him as Snap laughed and patted his dome. 

He was important enough to do whatever he wanted. They just had to wait for Poe.

Suddenly, a strange feeling came over Beebee-Ate, and if the surrounding calls of Binary were any indication, they all felt it too.

The pilots were up in a flash. Nothing like this had happened before. Snap leant down next Mr. Bones with a spanner, threatening to fix what he assumed was an error  with violence, not realising it affected the rest of the droids in the room simultaneously. 

Terror filled Beebee-Ate. Was this a malfunction or-

His holoprojector flickered to life and the pilots turned to watch his feed, the clearest in the room. Beebee-Ate was the newest. Beebee-Ate shouldn't malfunction. 

The feed started, and Beebee-Ate saw Poe and screamed, a sort of binary harsh sound. He wanted to move but he couldn't. The broadcast had frozen him in place.

He watched the twisted recording, each second, and saw each line of pain on his pilot's face. The first order had captured him. Hurt him. 

Beebee-Ate knew he should have gone back. What did some Jedi matter if his pilot was in pain? 

That explosion. He should have gone back. He shouldn't have trusted Poe.

"Careful." It was a switch from Basic to a language that Poe only spoke to Beebee-Ate at night, or in his sleep when he was quiet and peaceful, when all that rested was the calm honesty that transpired between a man and his droid.

It was a language that Poe used when he was honest. When he felt only and missed home. Beebee-Ate could see it in his eyes. He was sad that he wasn't going to die in space. In the stars. 

The giddy laugh that escaped his pilot's mouth was like the one that he let out when he smiled at Beebee-Ate and muttered, "I can't believe that we're even alive anymore." But it lacked all the mirth. It was a broken laugh.

"You'll make a martyr out of me."

The lightsaber ripped through Poe's body and Beebee-Ate screamed. Wailed. Sharp binary cutting across the room. 

It was his fault. It was his fault. It was his fault. 

He never should have left his pilot alone.