A/N: Welcome back to Soap Opera Space Porn 3000. Thanks for reading this melodrama~ I love you all for coming back to this ridiculous thing every time I write a new chapter! I know that I said I wanted to hit 90k, but that might not happen! We'll see!
Friendly reminder: this isn't canon and the package does say "Damerey bits," so if you are allergic, I am so sorry for the last chapter. Do not consume? Reylo is endgame.
Recap: Poe made his move on Rey. She felt things, but was loyal to Benlo. This is just fanfic and nothing here is canon. Ben had a conversation Chewie. Hux is a major asshat.
tw: Someone's gonna die and it's not going to be fun times. Sorry.
Hey, but I'll give you a bit of fluff before it happens? Like, it won't be Reylo or Damerey, so don't get too excited. Unless you love FinnRose. Then get a little excited.
"Once we hit the Theed Hangar, you're going to need to get out of here as fast you can," Poe said as he strode ahead of the group, the rain pouring heavier as they moved up the ruined roads of the city. Chewbacca and BB-8 had stayed behind in the Falcon, ready to go. Beyond the royal palace, the area around the hangar, it seemed, was well occupied by First Order sympathizers. Landing the Falcon nearby had become nearly impossible. Instead, Poe, Rey, Finn, and Ben had taken to the city by foot.
"Our connection should have a fighter ready for Kylo," he continued as they started to jog through the soaking rain. "Once Kylo is in that ship and heading off-planet, we'll be taking a cruiser with the connection back to the rebel base."
"This doesn't feel right," Rey called over the rain as she glanced back up at Ben. The closer they got the hangar, the more that instinctual cry within her wanted them to signal Chewbacca to come back.
"If there was an issue with us being there, we wouldn't have been able to land," Poe tried to assure her. "The fact that we were at least able to make it to the strip means that we should at least be able to finish this mission."
"And we can't leave your contact waiting," Ben said, his tone knowing as if he and Poe shared some sort of secret. She knew, though, there was no way that they had shared that information amongst one another.
"No, we can't," he agreed, grudgingly before taking a sharp turn into an alleyway while the other three followed.
"The hangar is connected to the royal quarters," Finn remarked as the stood briefly in the alleyway. "How exactly are we supposed to, you know, just walk in?"
"That's where the connection comes in," Poe said as they started to move through the backstreets of the city, maneuvering out of sight of the civilians. The closer they seemed to get to the royal palace, the more repaired the city of Theed seemed to be. The reconstruction efforts, it seemed, to be focused on the where eyes would look upon the city opposed to where they had landed.
Finally, they arrived at their destination: a small hole in the wall that seemed to be some sort of servant's passage.
Poe knocked a series of rhythmic pounds before the door cracked open.
"You're here!" a cheerful voice cried out in relief as the person fully opened the door. As she stood in the doorway, Rey first noticed her infectious smile and then noticed her unruly black hair that curled away from her round face. It took her a moment before she realized that she was the girl that Finn had been tending to on the Falcon right after the battle on Crait.
"Rose!" Finn cried, his voice a mixture of surprise and frustration.
"Finn!" she breathed. In a flurry, they rushed towards each other and he embraced her tightly. Rey blinked at the pair, watching as Finn pressed a kiss to the side of her head. He kept her in his arms, even as he pulled back before pressing one more kiss to her lips. Whatever she and he had shared before, none of their embraces had ever ended like that.
She glanced up to Ben, who was awkwardly glancing away as if trying to ignore the spectacle, to her left, Poe pursed his lips as if he were trying to hold back a frustrated sigh.
"What are you doing here?" he asked. "You should be back on base, not here—"
"I'm fine," she insisted as she broke the embrace. "You don't think they would have told me to stay behind if I wasn't?"
"That's not the point—"
"You two can have your reunion later, hash out the details to whether or not this dangerous, et cetera, et cetera, but right now we need to get the galaxies greatest fugitive off-word," Poe interrupted. Rose gave a bashful smile before holding the door open for the group.
"General Organa is waiting in the hangar," Rose murmured as she started to lead them down the tight passage, her hand finding Finn's even in the darkness of the corridor. "She had to go through this whole ordeal with the queen of Naboo, pulling strings, insisting that the Resistance wouldn't bring their fight to Naboo… but she did it."
The trek was short as they finally reached the hangar with little resistance. They had paused once as some servant chatted just beyond one of the doors to the passage way, only to continue through the main halls.
They moved through the large doors, a chill running up Rey's spine as she looked back up at Ben.
"I have a bad feeling about this," she hissed, grabbing him by the arm.
"I feel it too," was his reply. "Whatever it is, we can handle it."
Within the hangar, there was a series of ships, but in the center sat a shining silver cruiser and a small fighter: one for the group to depart, and the other for Ben to leave in.
"This seems too easy," Poe mumbled as he walked into the center of the hangar. From behind the silver cruiser, Leia strode out. As always, her hair was ornately plaited away from her face. Her dress was of Naboo attire, deep blue and far more romantic than anything she had seen the woman wear.
"Commander Dameron, you made good time," she greeted as she saw him at the forefront of their little squadron. "I was worried with the rain that you all would be delayed. Instead… it looks like my rebels are soaked to the bone."
"You shouldn't have come here, General," Poe insisted as he tried to keep his demeanor serious. Even as he spoke to her, though, Rey could see that affection that he had for the woman. "This world is teeming with sympathizers to the First Order. With their decisive blow against us on Crait, that sentiment is only stronger."
"You said that over the holo earlier," she said, waving a hand at his worry. "We checked them both for tracking device and they came up clean.
She looked beyond him, her dark eyes searching. All humor at left her face, but her gaze remained soft as she seemed to hold her breath until she saw him.
Ben froze where he stood, waiting for the hatred he was sure he was going to see on his mother's face. It had been so long since he had seen her and as he stood there in the hangar, she looked so much older than he remembered. Her chestnut hair was now dark and streaked with silver, her face as lovely as it ever was creased with wrinkles.
Instead of heat, of disappointment, he found himself looking at a woman who seemed relieved to see him. She took him in, keeping that distant between them.
"Ben," she breathed, unable to hide the smile pulling at her lips as she took a step forward.
As she did, the cruiser behind her erupted in flames, the blast consuming her before knocking her forward.
"No!" two cries filled that hangar, the cries of Leia's two sons. His voice felt raw from the cry, the chill of loss striking his heart his mind momentarily went numb. In that moment, he vaguely understood that Poe seemed to be lost in that same shock. As both of them rushed forward to where the woman laid on the ground, the door behind them opened once more as a squadron of stormtroopers flooded in from the door they had just entered.
Poe took his blaster and started firing madly. From the corner of his eye, he was aware that Finn, Rose, and Rey were moving. He knelt down by his mother, carefully pulling her into his arms. Weakly, she looked up at him.
"You look… so much like your father," she breathed weakly, raising a hand to touch his cheek, cupping his cheek as she ran a finger across his scar.
"Don't go," he pleaded softly, feeling his voice waver as he held her there. He hadn't been able to pull the trigger and fire on the bridge before, and now she was in his arms, her breaths short as he felt her life dwindling from her. The Force surrounded all things, but he could feel her growing weaker.
"You need to get on that ship," she breathed. "And get as far… as you can from the First Order… Do that for me, Ben. Be… be the man you were meant to…"
One last shuddering breath and she was limp in his arms before she faded into nothing. There was no corpse to cradle, nothing to burn, nothing burry… Nothing.
Her words rang in his ears as he looked up at the chaos that surrounded him. Poe was shouting with every pull of the trigger of his blaster, cursing the First Order to the deep bowels of hell while Finn was grabbing his arm, trying to yank him towards a ship Rose had somehow managed to start in the hangar. Rey stood near them, looking as if she were ready to run to him.
A blaster ray connected with her side, causing her to stumble back into the door of the ship.
He reached down to his waist, pulling his lightsaber out quickly as he stood, nothing but grief and rage fueling him as he stood there.
Kill them all…
Something from within him called for vengeance. He ignited the blade.
Be the man who you were meant to be…
"Ben!" he heard Rey's cry from across the hangar as Rose pulled her into the ship despite her attempts to struggle towards him. She sounded so distant as if she were calling across a chasm. Her voice was strangled, holding back tears as she called to him above the chaos. "You need to go! Now!"
He met her tearful gaze, and for a brief moment, he felt serenity as he obeyed her plea.
"How's Poe?" Rey found herself asking as she sat in the makeshift medbay of the ship as Rose carefully patched up her side.
"You should worry about yourself," Rose insisted as she worked on the blaster burn. She worked quickly, seeming as skilled with a medkit as she was with the engines of a ship.
"I've had worse," she said, waving off her concern.
"I can tell," Rose murmured, clearly trying to keep the conversation from slipping back to what had just unfolded in the hangar. "Whoever tried to do repairs before… Well, they didn't do a great job."
"It was either let Poe, Finn, Chewbacca, or Ben play doctor and, at the time, I wasn't really keen on letting any of them see me underdressed," Rey murmured, the shock still clinging to her as she spoke. Everything in that moment felt surreal, as if she were moving through a fog.
When Han had died, all she had felt was rage. She had wanted nothing more to end Kylo Ren, to make him face punishment for what he had done. Now, sitting alone with Rose as they awkwardly spoke about past wounds, all she could think of was Ben and Poe. Leia had been a beacon of hope for them all, but she had been so much more than that to them.
"How's Poe?" she found herself repeating. Ben had left in the fighter, hopefully putting as much distance as he could between himself and the First Order. Eventually, the Force would connect him and she could attempt to comfort him. She wanted nothing more to be with him, to hold him.
When Leia had looked at him, she had seen the shock on his face. His lips had quivered, his eyes relieved to find softness on the woman's face, before the reunion ended before it could even start.
"He's flying the ship," Rose murmured as she began to blink away her own tears, finishing up her mending job. "He's doing what we need him to do. Getting us away from the First Order and to the base so that we can regroup."
Rey blinked for a moment before pulling the other woman towards her, pulling her into a gentle embrace. Even if she didn't know her, every gentle touch and passing glance she had seen shared between her and Finn made it known that she was important to him. If she was important to Finn, Rose Tico was important to her as well.
"You're going to rip open what I just fixed up!" Rose gasped, but she didn't pull away.
Poe sat in the cockpit of the ship alone after he had asked Finn to leave him there. He had been short with him, something he had instantly regretted. From the moment of the explosion, he had felt nothing but rage and the desire to see Leia's death avenged. He had fired madly at the stormtroopers who had been unfortunate enough to raid the hangar. He had taken a dozen or so down, making a dent for their getaway, but it didn't seem like enough.
As long as he could remember, he wanted to be a man that his mother could be proud of. Once he had joined the Resistance, following her footsteps, it had been Leia he had wanted to make proud. He had considered himself lucky, to live a life where he had two strong women in his life that he wanted to make proud. Now, they were both gone.
Sitting there, staring at the stars streaking past the port window, he clung to his mother's wedding ring. He had taken the chain from his neck, wrapping it between his fingers.
It was a tangible reminder of his mother, but what did he have left of Leia?
He heard the door open behind him.
"Finn, I told you that right now, I just want to be alone—"
"I'm not Finn."
He turned to see Rey in the doorway, carefully approaching him as if she were approaching a wild beast. Her voice had been gentle, coaxing as she sat down beside him in the co-pilot's chair.
"Well, you might not be Finn, but I was serious about wanting to be alone," Poe shot back, but he didn't even wait a breath before speaking again. "You know, I told her not to come, but she pushed for it. Normally, I think I could have talked her out of it, but she said that because of her mother, because it was Naboo, she was going to be safe."
He slammed his fist against the console, but Rey didn't flinch.
"And… And it was all to protect that asshole," he seethed, his heart squeezing in back as he felt tears sting his eyes. "We should have given him to the First Order when we had the chance. It's better than what he deserves. She was better than anything he deserves."
"You don't mean that, Poe—"
"I do," he assured her. "Dammit, Rey, I do. On Jakku, I saw him kill a man who wanted nothing more to help the Resistance and end this damned war in hopes that if we found Skywalker, we could stop the First Order. Then he tortured me, made me give up information on the Resistance, reveal BB-8's whereabouts… He's killed our people, Rey. Good people… And we lost… we lost Leia… for him."
His voice broke as he slumped over as he squeezed his eyes shut tightly, covering his eyes with one hand as the other one remained tight around the wedding ring.
She reached over and reached for his hand. After a moment, he entangled her small hand in his, the chain his fist wrapping around her fingers, and they sat in a long silence.
After a moment, he looked over at her, tears streaking her face. For a moment, that anguish and fury still hot for Kylo, he wondered if her tears were for her separation from him, but as she squeezed his hand tightly once more, he realized she was sharing his pain and his loss.
"I'm sorry, Poe."
"Yeah, me too."
A/N: In loving memory of Carrie Fisher.