Hey, so I'd like to point out that yesterday marked the TWO-YEAR ANNIVERSARY of me posting this story, and I'd like to say a HUGE thank you to all of you for reading and reviewing and following along for TWO WHOLE YEARS! You guys are AMAZING!
And speaking of amazing, your responses to the last few chapters have been PRICELESS, and I'm sorry I didn't get to respond individually to all your awesomeness! Things got crazy when I got back to campus (wheee), and I just didn't have the time! But here's the next update, and I hope you guys enjoy!
Chapter 35: Beyond the Call of Duty
General Organa?!
Mila couldn't believe her eyes. For as long as she could remember she'd kept a collection of names of the people who had inspired her, and she knew their stories to the letter: Amidala. Erso. Mothma. Bey. Versio. All courageous women who had served the greater good in some way. Women who weren't afraid to charge towards the fire while others bolted away from it. Women who weren't afraid to question themselves and everything around them, who weren't afraid to stand up and stare injustice straight in the face, challenge it in a fight to the death, and win.
Organa always had been and always would be at the very top of that list.
The general glided across the room, towing a chair with her that she set in front of Mila and sat in.
"Mila," she started. "I'm going to call you Mila, if that's alright."
Mila's mind and heart both raced at lightspeed. She tried to look the general in the eye but couldn't.
I should have stood up and saluted. I should have stood up and saluted. I should have stood up and saluted—
"You can answer me, if you feel so inclined."
Mila's eyes darted to and away from General Organa's face as she fumbled for a response.
Say something!
Finally she pinned her gaze in one spot, to eyes she expected to be narrowed and condescending. In her experience, people in power generally were, but Leia wasn't. She smiled warmly, quirked an eyebrow in motherly amusement. Mila chuckled breathlessly.
"I…" she fumbled. "It's an honor, ma'am. You… you've—"
"Stop," Leia cut her off, but there was no harshness in her voice. "I know what you're going to say. I'm no hero. No legend."
Mila laughed in surprise, shaking her head. "With respect, General, you're not sitting where I'm sitting."
General Antilles chuckled from behind his desk. Leia's expression gentled sadly.
"I'm just another soldier, Mila," she said. "Same as you. I fought for a long time, and for an even longer time I thought I'd never have to fight again. You and I both know why that was foolish."
She looked Mila straight in the eye, and the medic felt the gaze go straight into her. She started to squirm under it… but felt she couldn't. She didn't want to.
"How much do you know about the Resistance?"
Mila's breath caught in her throat. She had a feeling she knew where this was going.
"Only rumors," she stammered. "They think the First Order could really do some damage, and they want to keep that from happening."
Leia nodded. "More or less. But we do a little more than think they could. The First Order isn't just an angry mob, or a rag-tag group of complainers stamping their feet. They're a ticking timebomb. The Senate might not want to acknowledge it or do anything to defuse it, but we do. And, as I understand it, so do you."
To Mila's surprise, Leia took her hand.
"I heard about your brother, Mila. I'm so sorry."
Mila's heart clenched and swelled all at the same time. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes, but she forced them back down again. "Thank you," she managed. "That… that means a lot coming from you."
Leia patted Mila's hand. "If he were still alive, I would make him the same offer that I am about to make you. With a few revisions, of course."
Mila's widened eyes met the general's, and Leia went on:
"The Resistance needs all the help it can get. We are in dire need pilots. Techs. Regular infantry. Communications personnel. Intelligence officers. But what we've really struggled to find are good medics. Good surgeons. People to help train up a medical corps, to train Resistance Special Forces. Major Kalonia would love to have you." Leia's eyes twinkled. "Or, I should say, have you back."
Mila smiled fondly. "I haven't seen Harter since the Napkin Bombing," she said, her voice thick with reminiscence. "Since before I joined SpecForces. She… she taught me everything I know." The medic suddenly laughed. "Woke me up after I passed out during my first surgery."
Leia chuckled.
"She was my CO when I was trying to make SpecForces. She encouraged me to keep going. To keep trying to get where I wanted to go until I got there. I wouldn't be here without her."
A smile warmed General Organa's face. "I know she's proud of you. She could really use you. The Resistance could really use you. Not just because of your resume. No one doubts your skill, but you're not just another face in an army. You have grit, and heart, and drive, and you've inspired it in others. It's a rare soldier that can do that." The general paused and added, "That kind of leadership is something we desperately need, Mila. Consider this my official offer."
Mila's heart thumped hard in her chest. Not for the first time that day, she didn't know what to say. Everything she's suffered through – everything the Senate was trying so desperately to tell her hadn't happened – could mean something, if she accepted. She could finally do something about it. But if she accepted – if she left Hosnian Prime with the general now – she would leave so much behind. Too much behind. Her family, still shaken over Jaren's loss, needed her desperately. She couldn't help but feel like she'd be abandoning them.
She also had a patient to take care of.
"You don't have to answer me immediately," Leia answered the question that marched through Mila's mind without even seeing it. "You don't have to answer me at all. But at least consider it."
She handed Mila a comlink, and a still shaking hand accepted it. Leia put a hand on her shoulder, stood, and moved behind General Antilles's desk.
"That's all I've got for you, Lieutenant. You're dismissed. But think about it."
Mila stood and snapped to a crisp salute. Still breathless, she opened the door and started to go through it.
"Oh, and Mila?"
The medic stopped in the threshold, one foot in the office and one foot in the hallway. Leia put her hands on her hips, her face fixed with a clever grin and infused with a mother's kind glow.
"Tell your flyboy that was way too close of a call for my liking."
Mila laughed, and her smile seemed to light her from within. Leia's features softened.
"May the Force be with you, Lieutenant Criss," she said. "I hope I see you again."
The last time Kes Dameron had been on Hosnian Prime, it had been for Poe's Starfleet graduation. Over ten years had passed since then, and Kes had seriously doubted anything would bring him that close to the Core again, not without a good reason. Now, as he wound through the stark white hallways of the New Republic Naval Medcenter, he couldn't have had a more pressing one.
Where is my son?
He was a bear of a man – one of Han Solo's legendary Pathfinders, a veteran of the Battle of Endor, and the list went on – a person whose years of experience sat in his eyes, breathed in his words, moved in his steps. Focus, for him, was a reflex, one he was currently thanking the Force for. Kes caught a few passing, wide-eyed glances out of the corner of his eye, noted the astonished whispers of those who recognized him, but he didn't acknowledge them.
Eventually he found the room he was looking for. His stomach twisted itself in knots. Aside from the door opening, he didn't make a sound when he went in. He tried not to move too eagerly or too quickly; if Poe was asleep, he didn't want to startle him.
Kes craned his neck around the wall next to him, and after a solid month of worrying, he finally saw his son. If it weren't for the paleness in his skin or the exhaustion wrought heavily across his sleeping face, he would have looked like himself. Kes knew what Poe had done to get there. And in that moment, he was as angry at and as terrified for and as damn proud of his son as he ever could remember being.
Just as he knew Shara would have been.
Kes lightly laid a hand on Poe's shoulder. The pilot's eyes – a replica of his mother's – flickered open, and as the fog of drugs and confusion drifted from Poe's vision, Kes saw a glimmer of the little boy he'd once been.
No matter how old Poe got, Kes would always see that.
"Dad?"
Kes smiled. "Hey, hotshot."
Poe looked like he tried to sit up, but thought better of it. "How did you…" A smile of his own gently tugged at his lips. "What are you doing here?"
"My kid fell out of the sky," Kes wryly chuckled, swinging a nearby chair to his son's bedside and lowering himself into it. "Had to make sure you were okay, or your mom would've come back and murdered me."
Poe laughed, and the only time Kes had been more relieved to hear that sound was when he'd come home from his own war all those years ago. A lopsided grin – the only thing that Poe had inherited from him – eased across his face.
"It's good to see you, Poe," he said. "You scared the hell out of me."
"You mispronounced us, Kes," a voice echoed from behind the wall. Father and son were equally as shocked to hear it.
"L'ulo L'ampar?" Kes murmured, astonished. "Is that you?"
The Duros chuckled, low-timbered and raspy, as he stepped into view. The deep green of his flight suit harkened back to his days of flying with the Rebellion, and for a moment, Kes thought he'd gone back in time. A wide grin stretched across his surprised face as he stood, threw his arms around his old friend and gave him a sturdy clap on the back. The retired Pathfinder was laughing.
"I'll be damned!" he exclaimed, beaming. "Didn't think any of you Resistance jockeys got leave."
L'ulo smiled, a mischievous shrug in his large red eyes. "Who said I was on leave?"
Uncertainty quirked on Kes's brow. L'ulo – as sharp and as impish and as kindhearted as ever – only simpered in return, and that look alone raised as many questions as it answered. Father and son exchanged glances.
L'ulo snickered triumphantly, having gotten the reaction he was after from both of them. "Classified mission," he finally explained. "I'd tell you if I could." His long-fingered hand dropped from Kes's shoulder as he extended it to Poe. "How're you feeling, son?"
Poe returned the Duros's grasp, though Kes could tell it was not as strong as either of them would have liked.
"Hanging in there, L'ulo." The wounded pilot nodded towards his window, which sported a sprawling view of the flight line and the warm-hued afternoon that poured across it. "Dying to get back."
L'ulo grinned. "Ever your mother's child," he said fondly, ruffling Poe's hair. "She would be proud, son. Real proud."
Poe nodded thoughtfully, appreciatively. His dark eyes wandered to the holo above L'ulo's head, and a smile eased across his weary face. Kes and L'ulo both turned to see what had caught his attention and watched for a moment. General Antilles came to an outdoor podium in the middle of the Memorial Gardens, sober satisfaction thick in his voice as he started to speak. Though his face remained firm and straight, a smile danced in his eyes, traveled on his voice like a cool morning mist:
"…went above and beyond the call of duty, saving almost five hundred soldiers from certain, brutal death at the hands of a ruthless enemy…."
The holocams panned to the subject of Antilles's praises: a stern-faced, immaculately turned out Special Forces soldier standing sharply at attention by the general's side. An evac medic, Kes realized. He smiled.
"That's the type I'd want in the trenches with me," he said, no lack of admiration in his voice. "Wish we'd've had something like them back in the old days." His dark eyes didn't leave the holo. "Lot more of my guys could've come home. She's damn brave. They all are." He turned to his son, who was so enraptured in the broadcast that Kes had to repeat his following question twice:
"You hear about her, Poe?"
A smile stretched across Poe's face, gentle and knowing and proud. He nodded.
"I've done a little more than hear about her, Dad."
Mila hadn't heard a word of Antilles's speech, and she was glad of it. She fought to maintain calm, to rein in the emotion that was welling up inside of her. It wasn't pride. It wasn't excitement. It wasn't anything close to a feeling of accomplishment.
It was guilt, and it was strangling her.
I don't deserve this.
She was vaguely aware of Antilles stepping away from the podium and moving across the stage; she saw the cool white glint of silver in the afternoon sun out of the corner of her eye.
Out of the thousands of people that suffered through the carnage or died on Rattatak, why was she the one to be recognized? What made her better than any of the others that had run in with her?
What about those who didn't make it back? Where was their honor?
Why had she even survived in the first place?
Antilles was standing behind her now, and the weight of the medal he presented soon tugged at the back of her neck. It hardly weighed anything, but Mila felt it could have dragged her straight through to Hosnian's molten core. She straightened – met Antilles's eyes and smiled at his congratulations for his sake – and saluted.
"Feel free to say a few words, Lieutenant," he said, squeezing the top of her arm and smiling as a father might have. Before she knew what she was doing, Mila was standing at the podium.
Why did I do this? Why do I deserve this? Why am I alive? What about the others? I don't—
"This is an incredible honor," she heard her voice bouncing through the sound system, "but I am the last person who deserves it. For every man we saved, ten or twenty of fifty didn't come home. And I wasn't alone. Without the courage of my platoon, I would have gotten nowhere."
She caught Wex and Darren's gazes from the crowd. Next to them sat her family. In the empty seat next to Lana was a framed flat holo and a folded New Republic flag, the same one Mila had clung to so desperately only a few nights before. Tears poked at the medic's eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She tried to find words, but discovered she had none. None that could adequately capture what those heroes – heroes like Jaren – deserved. None that could express her gratitude, her grief and shame. Her awe.
"If you had my back that night," she managed, smothering the waves of emotion that threatened to tumble out, "or if you lost someone… stand up." She tapped the medal – an Alliance starbird wrought from silver – with her nail, gently grasped it around its sturdy, royal blue suspension ribbon and held it up. "Because this belongs to you, too."
For a moment no one moved, and Mila was beginning to wonder if she'd done something wrong. Then Calo stood – she could see the tears glistening on his face from where she was standing. The rest of her family followed suit. Her platoon. Major Deso, who'd come to stand in for Rapier. The young Zabrak pilot that had waited for her on the flight line that night, who had saved her life moments after she saved his.
It took her a moment to realize that most of the crowd was now on its feet. Her breath caught in her throat. Her heart was pounding. She fought to keep the tears reemerging in her eyes from falling. Again she lost her ability to speak, so she offered them the best thing a battered soldier could:
A straight, fervent salute.
Though they deserved so much more, and it killed her that she couldn't give it to them.
When Poe had commed Rapier and told them the ceremony was starting, they'd practically sprinted from the flight line and swarmed into his room at breakneck speed. All of them – even Muran – had sported big grins as they were reunited with Kes, and Poe had fought back an amused laugh as he introduced them to L'ulo. Then Karé and Muran had flopped in chairs, and Iolo had folded himself comfortably on the floor, using the wall as a backrest, and settled in to watch the proceedings.
They all reeked of coolant and stale, recycled air and engine grease. The smell – the black oil plastered across the bridge of Karé's nose – made the itch of Poe's growing restlessness even more unpleasant.
When the general had draped that medal around his girlfriend's neck, no one had said a word. Poe swore he'd saw tears in Karé's eyes when Mila spoke. Kes and L'ulo had both been smiling. Now Poe just waited for the medic to come back, and the wait was driving him mad. If he had been able, he would have stood and ran to meet her as she came back in.
He hated that he hadn't be there for her in person.
Poe heard his door hiss open, and judging from the dizzying quickness with which he watched Karé stand and run to it, he didn't have to crane his neck around the wall to know who'd just come in.
A second later, he finally saw her – smiled broadly at the woman who had saved his life – and his heart raced at lightspeed as he held out his hand to her.
"Let me see it."
Mila fumbled with the clasp and gently laid the medal in Poe's hand. At first it was hard to believe there was really holding a Medal of Honor– Mila's medal, and easily her most staggering accomplishment – but the longer he stared at it, the more real it became. A grin sprawled across his face.
"I am so crazy proud of you," he said, handing it back to her.
A bashful smile – a tired smile – tugged at Mila's lips. "You helped me get it," she replied, quickly leaning in and kissing his forehead before sitting on the bed next to him.
The weight – the raging war – had returned to her eyes, and it had only intensified. Her thoughts, which Poe knew by the blank stare she burned in the floor were nothing but happy, claimed her. He softly took Mila's hand in his, hoping that might ebb the sting of whatever it was that was tearing at her exhausted mind. She returned his grasp – wrapped her fingers in his so she wouldn't drop them – and held on like he was a lifeline thrown to her through storm waters.
"How're you feeling?" she asked.
Poe could have said something cheeky, but the need in Mila's voice brushed an honest answer out of him. "I'm still wiped, but at least nothing hurts. Well… nothing hurts as bad as it did."
Mila genuinely smiled. Her rigid, tense posture slumped a little; the tension had released its grip on her – even if only a little bit. Poe found himself breathing a sigh of relief. He'd got what he bargained for.
"He slept like you told him to, too," Karé added. She'd sat back down and propped Poe's data pad against her folded knee as she worked through the correspondence her commander had missed out on during his month under. "Out cold for a few hours."
Poe jerked a thumb towards his squad. "They're on my case, doc. You don't have to worry."
Mila let out a breathy chuckle. Poe gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "And they've got reinforcements."
By the slightly confused look in her eye, Poe could tell she hadn't noticed anyone besides the Rapiers when she came in. She started to ask the question that was forming on her lips, but as her eyes darted around the room, she found her answer. Her eyes widened, and she shyly started to smile.
Kes grinned. "You must be Mila," he said, coming over to her and extending his hand. "Kes Dameron."
Mila didn't know what to say. This man – a legend in his own right – had fought and survived the Battle of Endor. He'd fought for the galaxy's liberation against an evil so unspeakable because he'd felt like it. He was one of the reasons why the Rebels had won.
"It's… it's an honor," she fumbled.
Then all pretenses dropped, and he wrapped her up in a big warm bear hug, and all of a sudden Sergeant Kes Dameron wasn't screened away on some faraway pedestal, but present and real and so bafflingly human that it almost took Mila aback.
He was just… him.
He may have been a legend, but he had been a father first.
And she'd saved the life of his only child.
Kes didn't have words either; the look in his eyes – one that Mila had seen in many parents over the course of her career – had given him away. She'd never been able to respond eloquently if at all then, and she certainly couldn't now.
All Mila could think to do was hold on, so that was what she did.
And infinitesimally, the guilt that was strangling her heart released its grip, let her soul come up for a tiny breath of air, and when she stepped back – when that grimy hand pulled her back down again – its grip was not as strong.
Kes grasped her little shoulders, and she was suddenly very aware of the fact that his son hadn't inherited his towering height. He smiled kindly at her.
"The honor's mine, Mila," he said softly. "And thank you. For everything you've done."
Still a little dumbfounded, Mila managed a grateful smile of her own. She felt another hand on her shoulder – a longer-fingered, bonier hand – and when she turned around, her jaw fell slack.
That can't be—
"I know, right!?" Karé gushed. Poe laughed.
L'ulo L'ampar chuckled and held out his arms, that same gratitude brimming in his eyes that had filled Kes's. A little confused, she hesitated for a second before grinning herself and throwing her arms around him.
"You're very brave, Lieutenant," he said, and though she'd hardly met him, Mila could hear the smile in his voice. "Honestly, you remind me of someone I used to fly with." L'ulo pulled back, and the warmth with which he spoke released the grip of that invisible hand a little bit more. "Someone who would be every bit as proud of you as I am."
The smile returned to Mila's face. "Thank you," she replied, more than a little touched.
The aging Duros grinned cheekily. "And that one wasn't kidding when he said you were pretty."
Mila laughed outright and looked at her boyfriend, who nonchalantly shrugged. "Had to tell the whole truth, babe."
Mila shook her head, smiling. "I'm flattered," she said, softly sitting on the edge of Poe's bed. She could feel herself blushing a little bit, and she prayed no one would notice.
"You guys are so damn cute." Karé didn't look up from the data pad in her lap as she spoke, but she still beamed. She scrolled through the messages, more focused on the conversation around her than the work she was halfway doing.
"Anything earth-shattering, Two?" Poe asked.
Karé shook her head. "Unless you wanna know about the most recent Mirrin-sector trade route patrols, then no."
Poe good-naturedly scoffed. "Read it off to me next time I need to go to sleep. That'd do it."
"Nah," Karé shot back, continuing to scroll as a chuckle bubbled up inside her. "I'll save you the pain. Besides, you know Muran'll drop before you do, Commander, and then we'd all lose half our hearing from—"
She suddenly froze, staring at the screen with baited breath. Quickly she opened the message, and she clamped a hand over her mouth when she read the first lines:
Commander Dameron,
A recovery team was dispatched to Rattatak to—
"Karé?" Poe's concern momentarily pulled her back to them, but Karé kept reading until she found what she was hoping beyond hope to find.
Finally she looked up, and there were tears brimming in her eyes.
"They found him," she said, choking. The smile on her face, while grieved, shone with relief as the realization hit her, as she shakily voiced it to the others:
"He's coming home."