He's starting to forget what it feels like to be well-rested.
Poe has been exhausted before, running on fumes and strung out on the remnants of a long-gone adrenaline high. But this is different. This is something bone-deep, something that penetrates to his core. It's more than the need for sleep; it's a man on the brink of a mental and physical precipice yawning before him.
The Resistance has had one hell of a week.
Even reflecting briefly on all that's happened feels like a dangerous gamble, a choice that could all too easily push Poe over the edge into an abyss he isn't sure he could navigate out of. But he can't help but reflect as he's climbing into his X-wing and situating himself at the controls. What transpired on Jakku (and everything that has since come to pass) feels like a lifetime's worth of turmoil. A mere week has aged him more than all the years of his life combined. Finding the map, losing the map, finding Finn, losing Finn, finding the strength to go on in spite of losing so much. And there's a dark shadow behind it all, like a fog in his mind, the lasting vestiges of whatever Kylo Ren did to him on the Finalizer still making his hands tremble if he tries to focus on the memory of it for too long.
Yet it's difficult not to think about, especially when he's sitting out in the vastness of space, the rolling hills of D'Qar far away and behind him, casually ribbing Hux like he taunted Kylo from his knees.
Keep it light. Keep the darkness away.
Don't let them see you're afraid.
That composure goes out the viewport when the battle begins. He feels at home in the action, at least, feels like he's capable of doing something when he can point and shoot by instinct. It's easier than making decisions. Here he feels effective. And so when General Organa orders him to fall back, he argues only briefly before shutting down their only avenue of communication.
He doesn't know if she would understand. Poe has heard the stories time and time again about Leia and the Rebellion, about how she was tortured and forced to watch the destruction of her entire home planet. And he doesn't know if she would understand what it is to feel weak. Helpless. In the legends and in life, she's been nothing but strength. Even in the wake of her husband's death, she'd taken her moments of grief but had recovered from them and pushed onward. There are still days when the death of Poe's mother feels fresh, when he touches the ring on its chain and recalls the devastation when he heard the news. And now, now, with the week's pain clamoring for attention in his head, with the ghost of a monster's hand stretching towards him with the intent to tear him apart, with the knowledge that this is his fault, he's no better or stronger than he was back then. If only he'd been able to resist. If only he'd held his own against the twisted tug of the Force, none of this would be happening. He'd be dead on the Finalizer but BB-8 would have gotten the map back to Leia with no additional trouble, without bringing the wrath of the First Order down on them all.
The Dreadnaught in his sights might as well have a target painted on it, a big flashing sign saying prove yourself. Make it up to them. Show them you're still worth their respect.
If Starkiller wasn't enough, in the back of his mind, he knows this won't be enough, either. Neither will the next skirmish or the next ship or the next victory. Because the losses will always be there to tip the scale, growing heavier with each passing day.
But he has to try.
All of it will not be in vain.
It cannot be.
The demotion that follows doesn't sting as much as the open palm that connects with his cheek. When he sees the lights flashing on the control room's display, the angry red hue that indicates a lost fighter, he knows he deserves them both.
He can't even fault Leia's choice of successor, not really. If the last few days have proven anything, it's that Poe Dameron is not to be trusted. Even so, annoyance prickles at him as he listens to Holdo's glimmering speech about sparks and hope. She's talking like the general is already dead, or like she's some vapid politician making empty campaign promises. He can feel his unhappiness in the people around him, too, and he at least finds solace in the fact that he's not alone. When she all but accuses him of being a trigger-happy hothead, the resentment doubles inside of him. Images flash through his mind – torture chambers and burning sand and planets being vaporized – but in his mind they remain. She's the last person he wants to know about his problems.
He knows she wouldn't understand.
Later, when he's seated beside Leia as the salt-drenched surface of Crait comes into view, he thinks that maybe Holdo understood him better than he assumed. Maybe it was mutual all long. Because when he watches the Raddus pivot to face the Supremacy, when it lurches into lightspeed and tears a clean, beautiful line through the Star Destroyer's hull, Poe sees himself in that choice. He can't quite bring himself to regret the mutiny, for if leadership has taught him anything it's that no one leads alone and secrets are deadly at the worst of times, but in the deafening silence that follows the gambit, he feels a strange sort of kinship with the lone woman on the doomed ship's bridge.
Sometimes the choices you make in the heat of a moment are wrong. No one is perfect. Maybe all you can do is ensure that someone else survives to take your place. To light the spark. To fan the flame.
Those thoughts swirl in his head as he's skimming over Crait's sun-bleached surface, the ruddy mud kicked up in his wake landing like blood on snow. Everything in him is screaming to push forward, to ram the cannon for all its worth, but he already knows the effort will be wasted. It isn't about a present victory, because the First Order probably has ten more of those things stowed away somewhere, and the Resistance left on Crait barely has enough people to start up a grav-ball team. They can't afford a single loss, not here. Not today. And so he calls for a fallback, managing to hate himself only a little as he leaves the fight behind.
(Hesitation only comes when he realizes Finn has stayed on his course. He's about to turn around, about to reject strategy and leadership for the sake of a friend when Rose beats him to it.)
(He'll have to thank her later, after he's done reprimanding Finn for his recklessness while dutifully ignoring the irony.)
The mines manage to feel even more cavernous when he gets a chance to really assess their pitiful numbers. He's trying and failing to find optimism, something to rally the troops with, but positivity is hard to come by when death is right outside your door. The pit he loomed over on the Finalizer is opening up again, threatening to swallow him whole. The only thought in his head while strapped to that table as he waited for the executioner to show up was that he'd failed. That it had all been for nothing.
He supposes he should know, by now, that hope can never be entirely lost.
Fires are hard to extinguish. Even when they've died back to embers.
They still have the potential to burn everything to the ground.
The flame wavers again when they're met with a wall of rocks. This is it. This is the only way out. But time is ticking away and death is breathing down their necks and he doesn't know how to maneuver his way out of this one. Leia looks pained beside him, and he knows she's thinking about her brother facing down the First Order alone, thinking about how there must be another way because he wouldn't have left them like this. He wouldn't have left them to die.
And he didn't.
When he introduces himself to Rey in the hallways of the Falcon, he's so giddy he practically laughs at how surreal it all is. A week. It's been little more than a week since all of this started, since the galaxy fell to chaos before them, and somehow he's only meeting her now. Rey the scavenger girl, Rey the Jedi, Rey the hero, Rey the spark. He can see the fire in her eyes and likes her immediately. She makes him smile, makes him feel like there's more than a fleeting chance of their success.
She makes him hope.