Fire Meet Gasoline | Poe Dameron

Eleven

Hope

That night I'm laying in my room with a weight on my shoulders considering my droid's been taken hostage to keep me from leaving, only now when it's quiet do the regrets truly start sinking in. I didn't come back because I cared about rank or any other bullshit like that, I came back because I missed my Mom and wanted to be with her again, the last family I've got left.

But it's the fact she still doesn't trust me, that she still trusts me less than she ever has, and it hurts. It hurts like nothing else and maybe it's my defence to that to be spiteful and pretend I don't care but I've always been a bad liar.

The last thing I wanted to do was to disappoint her.

Meanwhile I've disappointed two people today.

The commander... I don't think I've ever quite felt sparks like that before but that's all gone now. I'd be lying if I said I didn't want to feel those things, and for some reason I didn't shut myself off from it, but nonetheless the end result is the same. It would be easy to just hate him, to dismiss him as another asshole flyboy who thinks he knows better, who doesn't care about anyone but himself, but unfortunately I know that's not true.

He is a good person, more than good. For some reason he's given me the benefit of the doubt and taken the effort to try to know me, to understand me. He took a chance on me with Saber Strike and sat down with me to reach a compromise for the mission, to work as partners, and for a moment I really did like the idea of that. I liked the idea of him. The idea of being close to him, and not just physically.

Even then as I stormed out he still tried to reason with me even if I couldn't hear it, and the hell I gave him he threw right back at me. I respect him, and somehow I still like him, even if I know it's certainly no longer reciprocated.

And that's where the guilt and regret sets in, and it remains until the door opens and Mom silently walks in and I don't know what to expect, but considering she's brought R2 with her it seems to be a peace offering.

R2 comes to my side, beeping in concern and I reach out to touch his dome from where I lay in bed, Mom humming as she looks about my room, fixating on the bottle of perfume on the desk. She reaches over to take it in her hands, examining it.

"Made with extracts of millaflower," she says, spraying some in the empty room and my heart clenches slightly, the smell always bringing me back to the Lakehouse. "What is the flower used for again on Naboo?"

"Aromatherapy," I answer tiredly. "It's airborne chemicals are meant to be calming."

"I know, it's why I've always made sure you had a supply of it," she remarks and softens her voice. "In the hopes that it would in fact be calming enough to keep you out of trouble, or at least so that we could have a civil conversation."

"Don't get your hopes up," I say and she frowns, sitting on the edge of the bed beside where I lay and leaning in enough to no doubt see the evidence of tears. In response she cups my swollen and splotchy face and tries to reassure me.

"I'm glad you're home Hope. You might not believe it, but I am."

"It's a hell of a welcome back being put on probation and pulling off a suicide mission only to be demoted to a rank below anything I'd ever held in the first place"

She sighs and withdraws her hand from my face only to clasp my own hand in hers. "I know you are meant to be more than a low ranking pilot but you need to learn to work as a team. I know you are angry, with me, with Luke, with the whole damn galaxy. But, if you want to become a captain again, to become a commander and someday perhaps more, you need to start here."