II.

There was no safehouse.

Poe had gone over several ways the meeting with Grakkus's informant could go. He had imagined who they might be, in what kind of dump they were going to meet and how they would expect to be rewarded for their intel.

In none of those scenarios had he found himself in a dark, remote back-alley, frantically looking for a door that didn't exist.

He had BB-8 check the details Grakkus had provided them with. Three times. Both the coordinates and the time checked out - give or take a few standard minutes, thanks to a certain pickpocket. The droid had then scanned the walls for hidden entrances, but no such luck. Poe had still patted them down himself, much to BB-8's indignation. Better to be safe than sorry. He had even gone down on his hands and knees, searching the ground for a hidden underground entrance, but all he had found was dirt and more dirt.

Wherever he turned were solid walls at least ten storeys high, lining a filthy dead end that still somehow managed to reek of faeces, even though his nose had - thankfully - given out a good while ago and didn't register the planet's overall stench any more.

No safehouse. No informant. No new leads and no help. Just another dead-end. Another failure and another thing to add to the list of things he'd been wrong about lately. Poe leaned against a wall and rubbed his face with a frustrated groan.

He was just so tired.

But it wasn't just that he was exhausted; and he was. Everytime he closed his eyes, Poe was haunted by the faces of all the people - all the friends - who had died because of his mistakes. Because of his pride. Because of his vanity.

Because of him.

His nights were filled with nightmares - memories of fire and destruction, whispered accusations and the agonised screams of the dying. Poe felt like was losing his mind. His solution thus far had been to not sleep at all and it was wearing him down. What had happened earlier, the whole stupid ordeal with that woman… things like that didn't usually happen to him. He didn't let himself be blindsided like a damn rookie. He just desperately needed to rest.

But it didn't stop there.

Poe was growing increasingly weary of this war. He hid it well behind bouts of reckless behaviour and his jovial hotshot persona, but he was.

He was tired of feeling that every time he climbed into the cockpit of a fighter, it could be the last time; that every second up there could mark the moment he ran out of luck. There was a definite number of new tomorrows for every being in the galaxy, but for people like him, there were even fewer. He was tired of death following him. Of seeing his friends fall out of the skies in flames and wondering when it was going to be him. Wishing deep down that it would be him in their stead.

He didn't know how Leia had done it again and again and again for virtually her whole life and he didn't know how she could ever believe that he was fit to follow in her footsteps when all he really wanted to do was go home. Whatever that meant…

"That Hutt has a messed up sense of humour," Poe muttered and pushed himself off the wall.

"What do you say we get the hell off this planet and regroup with the others?" he asked and softly petted BB-8's head, earning him a series of excited chirps from the droid. He smiled.

"Yeah. I'm sure she misses you too, buddy."

He allowed himself a short moment to picture how it would be like to be with the others again - enjoying a simple but warm meal while catching up with Finn and Rey, taking a much needed turn in the fresher and maybe, just maybe get that good night's sleep he so desperately needed. He closed his eyes with a content little sigh. The thought alone was like balm to his strained nerves. And for one tiny moment Poe let himself forget that for him even the briefest moments of peace came with ramifications.

He heard heavy footsteps approaching behind him and just as he spun around to see who it was, the first blaster shot missed him so narrowly he could feel the heat on his cheek. It left a smoking hole in the wall behind him. Poe barely had the time to identify his attacker as a Trandoshan with brownish green skin before the second shot struck him in the right shoulder and threw him backwards and into the wall behind him with enough force to knock the air out of his lungs.

His head slammed into the wall and for a second his vision exploded in a white, painful supernova. He instinctively touched his hand to the throbbing pulse at the back of his head. He winced at the touch, his finger instantly becoming slick and sticky with blood.

His other hand desperately fumbled for the blaster he had been concealed carrying under his coat. It was gone.

That kriffing little thief.

Poe had been so preoccupied with the devastating loss of his mother's ring that he hadn't even realised his weapon had gone missing as well. He hadn't even thought about it. Like a crinking amateur. He really was a disgrace for the resistance.

Well, I probably won't be for any much longer, Poe thought grimly.

And as the Trandoshan bounty hunter approached him, he pondered how Grakkus really had the most morbid sense of humour, sending him on an elaborate scavenger hunt to the reeking rectum of the galaxy just to have him killed.

The Hutt definitely didn't appreciate loose ends.

Next to him BB-8 was beeping up a storm, but Poe stopped him with one sharp shake of his head. The motion alone caused enough pain to leave him nauseous.

"Please, don't."

There was no doubt in Poe's mind that the bounty hunter would not hesitate to destroy the droid if he as much as moved in his general direction and he couldn't bear the thought.

"You better get out of here, buddy," he managed to grind out through gritted teeth. The answer was as short as it was unsurprising.

Never.

Every bit as stubborn as his master and loyal to the very last.

"You see," the Reptilian spoke, showing off his sharp teeth as he clearly struggled with the foreign tongue. His accent was almost too thick to understand. "I'm facing dilemma here, Dameron. My client wants me to bring your head, but First Order pay much more for living resistance General to be interrogated."

"Joke's on you," Poe shot back. Was it just him or did his words really come out like his tongue was weighing a ton? "I have been recently demoted."

This display of bravado was just a front, of course. Poe knew he was as good as dead. Even if the Trandoshan didn't have every intention to kill him - which clearly he had - and even if he wasn't bleeding out through the wound in his shoulder that had not been cauterised upon impact - which, judging by both the excruciating pain and the way the front of his shirt was turning red and sticking to his skin way too fast, was also very terrifyingly true - Poe had made a promise to himself that he was never going to be taken prisoner by the First Order again.

He had learned from painful experience that there was not a piece of information that those people could not torture out of even the most resilient soldier. And where torture failed them, Kylo Ren could always just take whatever he pleased.

There were still nights when Poe woke up in a cold sweat and with a scream on his lips and for a second it felt like Kylo Ren was still right there in his head. There was no way in the galaxy he would ever allow for this to happen again.

"You can save us both the hassle, because I have no plans to let the First Order take me alive. Just… don't take my head to Grakkus. That seems a little excessive."

The bounty hunter bared his teeth again, this time in a laugh.

He slowly shook his scaly head. Trandoshans cherished the thrill of a good hunt; so much so that it was an integral part of their culture. What a let down this particular one must have been for him.

"Boss told me you're smart mouth. I see he was right. But he also said Poe Dameron don't go down without fight. What happened to that?"

What happened?

Poe tried to process the question - even though he knew perfectly well that the bounty hunter was just taunting him, probably to make up for the annoyance of a disappointing hunt - fervently searching for an answer in a mind that was tumbling towards blackness fast.

Where was his will to fight? What had happened to that inextinguishable survival instinct that had helped him get out of the most impossible situations for so many years? Where - and not even this thought could rouse him in that very moment - was his will to live?

He was tired indeed. Not just of the fighting and the war.

Poe was tired of living this life.

And if there was to be no end to it - Leia still fighting her father's fight, him still fighting for the same cause as his parents and the war never ending - maybe the end of him wasn't so bad…

"Any last words, Poe Dameron?" the bounty hunter asked.

Poe turned his head to BB-8 again in a slow, painful motion. Looking at his best friend - and for once the thought did not come with a side of embarrassment - he was suddenly hit with a wave of regret. Not enough to revive his spirit - not when he could already feel his body failing him. He forced a smile, even though he now felt the sting of tears in eyes that had already lost the ability to focus.

"You were great, buddy," he breathed. "Thank you."

"I will sell him for good price," he heard the Trandoshan say, his tone somewhere between a taunt and a promise, but Poe didn't answer. Didn't turn back.

He didn't want the last thing he saw in life to be the face of his killer. He had been granted a small moment of goodbye instead of the sudden blinking out existence that so many of his fellow pilots got and he wanted - needed to - make the most of it.

So he closed his eyes and tried to picture the people he loved. Tried to conjure their faces through the numbness and the pain, wishing that somehow they all knew how much they meant to him and that his last thought had been of them.

He heard the high pitched whirring of a blaster being fired, the air filled with the faint smell of ozone and then…

- the startling realisation that he was still there. Hurt, bleeding and yes, dying. But still there.

He opened his eyes, an act that almost took more strength that he had left.

The bounty hunter's lifeless body was lying on the ground exactly where he had been standing just a few seconds ago with a smoking hole in the back of his head.

A figure quietly emerged from their cover around a street corner, carrying a familiar weapon in their hand.

"You!"

Poe took an instinctive step forward. At least he tried to. He didn't feel his knees hit the ground as he fell, the dull ache of it barely registering against the cacophony of pain.

One second he saw the figure approaching him with quick steps and the next someone had tilted the whole world to the side and it took him an awful long moment to realize he was lying on the ground.

The last thing he saw before his vision faded was a familiar pair of broken goggles peering down on him. The last thing he heard was a familiar voice, laced with worry.

"Hey, I need you to stay awake!"

I don't think I can, he wanted to say, but somehow his brain wouldn't tell his mouth to move.

And then finally the very last thought before the darkness claimed him -

Where is my mother's ring?