IN MY DREAMS [A POE DAMERON X READER STORY] [BOOKS 1-3]

chapter three

The meadow that you saw was different this time. It was further away; you couldn't see the petals of the daisies and the lavender felt much smaller. You felt like you were soaring above it. As each second passed in time, it grew further away from your touch. But you wanted to be there so desperately. Foolishly, as if you could touch it, you reached out your hand.

Your hand. So small against the glass. The glass that separated you from the green, yellow, and purple. The area of security and happiness. You wanted to call for whoever was there, but you couldn't remember who it was that you were calling to.

I'll see you again soon, my love. I promise you that.

No --- that couldn't be real. Could it? Your heart suddenly ached so horribly as you longed for a person you couldn't remember to be real. You felt your head spin as you desperately tried to remember. Was that real? Was the voice a real person? Did it belong to someone in your family?

Did you even have a family?

When you came to, you were on your back. Your eyes were open but they weren't seeing. Strange movements were above you, blurred and bright, moving in such a strange way that you couldn't focus on them. You groaned loudly and felt your limbs come back to life. They burned like fire.

Fire. That was what was above you, licking across the broken ceiling. You wondered if it was moving up your body, too. It felt so hot and the pain was everywhere... but at the same time, you were vaguely aware of the hands underneath your arms, pulling you out of a heavy weight that was settled on your chest. You groaned as you moved, your head rolling around your shoulders, your eyesight clearing to the outline of a blurry face.

A mouth was forming words that you couldn't hear. Your eyes rolled in the back of your head and then the pain was ignited as you were lifted off of the ground and onto your feet, which couldn't hold your weight. You screamed, your right hand managing to grasp the soft touch of a shirt. Your head was leaning against a shoulder.

"Hang on, hang on. I gotcha."

"Leave her! She's from the Order!"

The person holding you, a man, angrily shouted, "I'm not just leaving her here to burn to death!"

"You didn't see what she did to these men. I did. Trust me, she deserves to burn here."

"No one deserves to die like this," the man argued.

Your eyes opened very slowly. Your head lolled and you saw a line of flames. In front of the flames was the soldier you had nearly killed before the explosion knocked you out. He was holding a blaster that was pointed directly towards you.

"A monster does," he said.

"Put the blaster down," the man holding you said, voice steady and hard. "I will not tell you twice!"

"She killed all of these men!" he yelled. Spit flew from his lips. "She deserves to die and you're willing to drag her around this Star Destroyer for what?! She's dead weight. She deserves to burn for what she has done!"

"She's just a girl," he argued, "and she deserves just as much a shot as you did!"

"That's bull." The blaster went off and you felt your body fold in. You slipped out of the man's arm and you were falling towards the ground, knees first, wrists limp as they caught the upper half of your body. You cried out and your left hand slapped across the wound on your stomach, pressing into it hard.

"No!" the man that was holding you shouted. "Why did you do that---"

You felt his hands on your sides and as he moved to lay you down, you shot your hand out, feeling the blood drip between your fingers and the Force move away from you, to shove the man that shot you back into the flames. If he thought monsters should burn, then he would burn. He screamed an ear-piercing, agonizing scream of pure pain as his clothes became ignited with the fire.

As the anger melted away from you, the exhaustion built up. Your hand pressed back against your wound and you tried to turn, your lips moving to form Kylo's name. The man holding you wasn't someone that you knew. He was an enemy and although he saved your life, you hated him. There was no reason for him to be saving you from this.

"Let me go," you murmured, but your voice was so quiet that you were sure he didn't hear you. It built up in volume as you struggled against the grip on you. "Don't touch me! Kylo, help me!"

All you wanted was to gather enough strength to get away but you were in so much pain. You needed to get away from this "rescuer" of yours. It took up all of the strength that you had inside of you to twist your body around and grab the throat of the man. He jumped, raising his hands up, one of them grabbing your wrist, his eyes widening.

You stopped yourself from tightening your grip when you saw the face of the man that had rescued you.

A pair of dark brown eyes, darker than Kylo's, a sharp jawline, and soft lips were inches away from you. But it wasn't the beauty of him that made you freeze up, but the familiarity of him. You'd seen a lot of faces that you glanced at and never felt an ounce of care towards. No one you had ever encountered had looked familiar to you before, but this man did. You could almost put a name to him. You could almost remember his face as you saw it last.

And he looked like he recognized you, too.

You yanked your hand away quickly and took a large step back. You tripped over your feet --- it was so hard to feel your legs --- and as you fell towards the ground, he launched forward and threw his arms around you to hold you up. You gripped his bicep and stared back up at him to see that he hadn't looked away from your face. His eyebrows were pulled together as he glanced over you and you felt like he might've said your name if the floor hadn't dropped slightly with a groan and snapped him out of it.

He glanced behind you and shouted, "We gotta go!"

You couldn't fight him as he moved his arms underneath you and scooped you up. You were limp in his hold, your head swinging loosely, your vision blurring as the pain became too much. But even if you were able to fight him, would you have? You didn't feel scared to be with him.

"Just hang in there," he said, breathless as he broke out into a run. "I'll get you some help. We'll get you out of here before this whole thing crashes down---"

Your hand, you realized, was holding on tightly to the neckline of his shirt. You felt the warmth of his skin and the softness of the fabric and you tried to focus on holding onto that, desperate of falling under and losing this man that you swore you could remember. You wanted to know his name.

But you couldn't ask, because your voice felt so very far away, and he didn't get very far with you. A blaster shot caught him in the back and he fell forward. You slipped out of his hold and hit the ground hard, catching most of the impact on your injured side. As you cried out, you watched the blood spill out of his back, soak into the whiteness of his shirt, and pool out around you.

"Wait," you murmured, reaching for the man with the pair of familiar eyes. He blinked at you but you wondered if he was really seeing you. You didn't want him to die.

It all disappeared as a shape of darkness blocked your view. A gloved hand cupped the side of your face and your eyes looked up to see Kylo's helmet. You sobbed out his name and he put his arms underneath you.

You were unconscious before you left the floor.