Notes: First time writing Kes, so that was an adventure.

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For Valor

"So. You are joining her then."

Poe winced. Actually, it was more of a cringe; he felt all of five years old with his hand caught in the cookie jar. There was nothing truly condemning about his father's tone of voice or the way he looked at him, but there was no need for that, Poe could condemn himself well enough alone.

He weighed the koyo melon they had harvested for dessert in his hands and let his eyes find the Force tree at the far end of their backyard. It stood tall and proud, right at the edge of the forest, all the signs of Poe nearly burning it down as a child long gone. The bench he sat on felt very uncomfortable, confining even, and he craved to pace.

"I have to. General Organa needs me. The Republic needs me." He turned his head to look at his father, sitting next to him and wearing this solemn-but-still-not-disapproving expression that told Poe nothing about what he truly thought.

"You have been serving the Republic well enough in your X-Wing."

"But we're not doing anything!" he burst out, his voice louder and sharper from years of pent-up frustration, "We're patrolling the border and standing by as Republic ships are raided and people are killed, and all the while the First Order is rebuilding the Empire!"

Kes looked distinctly unimpressed. "And you are going to do something about that."

He winced again. There was the condemnation. He put down the melon between them and rubbed his face with both hands. "Yes. No. I mean, I will try. The Resistance's trying. There's only so much we can do without starting a war, but… I'll do my best, and that's more than I can do while I'm wearing Republic colors."

Kes Dameron remained silent.

The sounds of Yavin 4's wildlife filled the oppressive silence between them; far away a Howler shrieked while a Kitehawk pair was hard at work building a nest in the Force tree.

"When you were born, Shara and I vowed you would never have to do the things we did."

Poe pressed his lips together, and blinked against the stinging in his eyes.

They'd only ever tried to protect him. Leaving the rebuilding of the Republic to others so they could take him to Yavin 4 and be a family, keeping all the horrors of the war to themselves and only telling amusing little anecdotes on the rare occasions they talked about the war at all. It wasn't until Shara Bey had returned to service for one last battle, and lost her life in it, that Poe had come to know what sacrifice meant. He had been eight, and he would never forgive the Empire, or the First Order or whatever they called themselves these days, but he had learned his lesson well.

So he had grown up determined to honor her memory, and her sacrifice, grown up with the mantra of don't let their fight have been for naught and when he was old enough, he had gone to do his part to protect his parents' legacy. He had made his pledge and donned his oranges, and he had been proud to call himself a pilot of the New Republic.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. He couldn't stand to meet his father's eyes.

He placed his hand on Poe's shoulder, making him look up again. He had aged a lot since Poe had last visited, there was far more grey in his black hair and the wrinkles had grown deeper, but he was still a strong and healthy man. He had just lost too much, too early.

"I know why you have to go, Poe." He smiled bitterly. "It wasn't easy for Shara and me to leave you with your grandmother while we fought in the war. But there was no choice. We couldn't make ourselves comfortable under Imperial rule, and leave this fight to your generation."

"And you were heroes!" Poe exclaimed. He had known his parents were war heroes, but knowing hadn't had quite the impact it had now, with him about to start writing his own story of rebellion and sacrifice. Maybe it would be a worthwhile one, though he didn't think he could ever be half the pilot or commander his mother had been.

Kes's headshake came fast and decisive. "War doesn't have heroes, Poe."

"Of course it does! You were heroes, and so was Luke Skywalker, and Leia Organa, and Mon Mothma, Bail and Breha Organa, the Rogue Squadron, and Rogue One, and Han Solo and Chewbacca and…"

"They were just people," Papa said firmly. "People who lost too much, each and every one of them, and many of them did terrible things for our cause."

Poe opened his mouth to protest, but before he could get a word out, Kes asked, "What do you know about Rogue One?"

He took a moment to think about the question. "What I learned in school, mostly, and the holofilms. You never liked to talk about them, or liked for any of your friends to answer my questions about them." Which he'd been terribly upset about, since he had loved the story of Rogue One just as much as every other child nursed on Rebel heroics.

"Because the textbooks and the political speeches only tell half the story, and the holofilms are bantha dung anyway." Kes grunted in annoyance. He folded his hands in his lap, and picked at a scab on his left thumb. "Scarif was before my time, but plenty of my Pathfinder squad had known Andor. Plenty of them had friends who followed him to Scarif."

"And Rook?" Poe asked eagerly, because sure, Andor was often cited as a model of Rebel valor, but Rook had been the pilot.

"After he defected he didn't live long enough for anyone to get to know him well. They told me he looked scared, but was very brave."

Poe had to fight back his disappointment. That was no revelation. Everybody knew that Bodhi Rook had been brave. "And the others?" he asked, though he had no hope of learning anything worthwhile. He knew his Rogue One timeline, they hadn't spent much time with the Resistance.

"Erso didn't want to fight at first."

"I know. But she changed her mind after Jedha, and she sacrificed herself to restore the Republic."

"Maybe," Kes said, though it sounded like she didn't to Poe's ears.

They fell silent again.

The Kitehawks in the Force tree had been joined by a flock of whisper birds.

"I bet you don't know that Andor was an assassin," Kes said abruptly.

Poe reared back, utterly scandalized. "Papa! The Rebel Alliance didn't have assassins!"

"Of course we did. How do you think we got rid off all these people who had to disappear quietly? Not just Imperials, but sometimes people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, or our own who had become a liability. The Emperor had his Hands, and we had our own."

Kes rubbed a hand over his chin, his stubble had turned salt-and-pepper just like his hair. "Andor was the best. We didn't talk about it afterwards, made him out to be a squeaky-clean knight in shining armor because people who shoot innocents in the back don't make for good propaganda. We needed people to sign up, and nobody wants to sign up for selling out their soul."

"You sound like a Centrist," Poe muttered, "you could have been writing speeches for Ransolm Casterfo."

"Poe," there was his father's hand on his shoulder again, squeezing, "Poe, listen to me. I'm not saying we did wrong. I'm not saying that. We did what was necessary. I just… Force, boy, I just want you to know what you're getting into! Rebellion isn't all heroics and valor. Shara and I were lucky that we never had to make the truly tough calls, though we had our fair share of nightmares. But sometimes being a rebel means doing terrible things that won't let you sleep at night so that other people will one day live in peace." He let his hand drop. "I hate that you might go down that path."

Poe gulped audibly. "I promise I won't. I'm going to do the right thing."

"I know you don't want to. But if you do, know that I'll be proud of you anyway, and so would Shara."

The flock of whisper birds took off.

Poe wished he could fly away, too, and leave all these heavy new truths behind, but he knew he would carry them with him wherever he went.

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Every time he went on a black ops mission, and had to choose between saving lives and his objective, Poe thought of the path Cassian Andor had walked, and his vow that he would never walk it.

Yet every time he gambled with his life and mission to save innocents instead of doing what was necessary, he knew there would come a day when the stakes were too high.

If the war lasted long enough, he would have to make these tough calls.

Sometimes, late at night, Poe Dameron wondered if a generation past, good rebels had also vowed I will never right until they did.

The End