Poe sat down finally. He found a place in the back corner of the canteen. The captain was resting his elbows on his knees and burying his face in his palms as he sighed very deeply. He rubbed his eyes and stared into the darkness of space. He was a little bit confused. More likely, did not understand himself. He'd been so desperate an hour ago that, to be honest, he'd been seriously planning to kill Holdo. That frightened him. Poe was not a murderer. How can a man come to that conclusion all of a sudden?

Then he saw her lying there on the bed and just froze. There was something unbreakable about the whole situation. In that dark silence, a kind of rare and fragile peace that he couldn't shatter. The air was strangely, though Poe could not yet articulate it well to himself, intimate. God, the woman was unarmed. Woman... Admiral, he corrected himself mentally and shook his head.

The admiral was half dead with fatigue - he concluded the silent discussion with himself - As a captain, I could not prevent my supervisor from getting back into a physical condition ready for work. That's why I didn't wake her. Or shot her - he added. That's all. And that's why I didn't drag her up from there and press her against the wall...

He stopped here quickly. He didn't know where the thought had suddenly come from, but in any case, it had gone a little awry.

Poe run his fingers through his hair, in shock. He tried to push the scene to the back of his mind, where he slowly pulls Holdo's skirt up, along her soft thighs, to her hips, while his hand goes between her legs. And which made him suddenly feel his trousers very tight. He sat there a little more, until he pulled himself together again.

Then he stood up and started pacing again. If only he knew how Holdo intended to rescue the last Resistance battleship. The only place they had a chance to survive. And where the hell Finn and Rose were in the meantime.

He decided to go down to the hangar and start tinkering with a shoddy pod until he was instructed otherwise. It didn't make much sense, but he couldn't do anything anyway. His nerves were screaming in his head one by one, his veins were like lava. Nevertheless, the next step sent a shiver down his spine. He wondered. Was he tired, or was the air really colder than before?

"They're saving fuel," a pilot told him, who was in the hangar bay mounting something that looked like an R2, but it was far from ready yet. "Dress like you're going into space" he grinned. Poe nodded. At least someone still has a sense of humour. He envied the man for that.

After several hours of screwing and welding, he decided to leave the assembled pod to its fate. A big factor in this was that by this time his hands were frozen, for he had forgotten to put on gloves. He walked back slowly. The corridors were silent. In the control room, D'Acy stared fixedly at a screen, with circles under her eyes. Connix would occasionally lift her head and glance at her colleagues, just in case her eyes met someone's. Poe could see that she was not relaxed at all about what they were just doing.

Poe could not find his place. He wandered from room to room until finally found a place where he could find peace.

.

Amilyn felt no better even a bit, than when she had entered her cabin a few hours before. Her legs were heavy, she felt nauseous and her head was pounding. As the rotations went by, she grew more and more desperate.

"How could you leave me like this?" she asked softly, as gently took Leia's tiny hand in both of hers. She sat by the bedside for long minutes, just watching her. "They hate me, Leia," she said aloud to herself for the very first time. "They hate me and don't trust me. How could I lead them like that?" she shook her head. "I'm weird, I know. I always have been. That's what you always said: Amy, you're a freak" she laughed sadly. "Amy, you know all the races on all the planets, yet you don't know how to deal with people" she tried to smile. "An alien with a human body. But a tolerable kind, you put it that way. Then why do they look at me like this?"

She closed her eyes as another wave of pain shot through her temple. She hissed and slowly pressed the General's hand to her forehead. "What's happening to me, Leia? What's this?"

Holdo could hardly breathe. Suddenly she was alone in a way she had never been before. Hot tears welled up in her eyes. The Empire was closing in behind them, and they had only a faint, tiny hope that they would not all die too. Her crew look at her with disdain when they think she cannot see. They despise her. Meanwhile… she doesn't even understand. Someone is spying and she doesn't know who it is. She doesn't know what it is. Or how it does something like that. She's exhausted and dizzy and the voices in her head are getting louder. What will happen once she answers them? If they control what she does? And the only person who might be able to help her is in a coma. And Amilyn is in pain. Constantly. If she could just clear her head for one minute, if she could just breathe normally for that one minute.

She sobbed, burying her face in Leia's hand. She knew she should stop but she couldn't help herself.

Even Dameron! A mere captain with no DNA to follow orders! He's acting like he's in charge of the damn mission!

And Amilyn was not a leader. She was a strategist! She would gladly give her position back to anyone, but there was literally no one. Her plan was the only thing that can save these 400 people from certain death. And she was completely alone.

Tears streamed down her cheeks onto the white bed.

So what's the next step?

"Enough" she moaned.

She felt the weight of a warm palm on her shoulder. She jumped up immediately, but could not wipe the shock from her face in time. Her whole face was wet from tears as he looked into Dameron's dark eyes. The man said nothing. His hand still rested on her shoulder. Where her dress was cut out, revealing her snow-white skin and the line of her collarbone. His eyes slowly filled with concern. Amilyn blinked. Something had changed in the way he looked at her, but she couldn't understand why.

She shuddered. Dameron's hand was strong. Yet delicate. Protective. If she was honest, he was exactly what she needed most at that moment. And even if she didn't think it was a good idea, Amilyn allowed herself to melt into his touch. They stared at each other in silence as she wished she could feel that soft, warm hand all over her body.

She took a shaky breath, finally, and pulled away a little.

No. She hated that he saw her like this. She pressed her lips into a defiant line. Her jaw tightened.

"You," she whispered. Poe knitted his eyebrows. "Why always you"

She turned on her heel and stormed out of the infirmary. Her shoulder was cold where his hand had been resting, but she had to hurry away. Shocked, she picked her feet in the direction of the control room again. It was only a moment. A moment later her body would have moved on its own and collapsed into his arms.

She had to pull herself together. She was just not allowed. Whatever little prestige she had, she needed it all to carry out their escape plan. She had to remain professional and never be seen so weak again. Never.

"Wake up, Leia. Please, come back to me"

.

Poe sat at the General's bedside, pondering. Suddenly, he saw a comrade run past the door. The man saw him and quickly jumped back to the door.

"They've shot another one," he grumbled quickly. "That was the last ship, Poe. Only the cruiser's left"

Poe immediately jumped up. "What?" he asked back, his pulse immediately skyrocketing. "So what do we do now?"

The man spread his arms and hurried on. Poe's hands clenched into fists. That was enough of that. He took off at a run towards the bridge.

"Is she in there?" he shouted to D'Acy, who was standing at the entrance. She turned white as saw him. "Yeah, but the admiral's banned you from the bridge" she tried to stand in front of him, but knew she couldn't stop him anyway. "Let's not have a scene"

"Holdo!" he shouted at the admiral, who stood like a statue with her arms crossed in front of her chest. She was straight, her shoulders slumped, her face hard and cold. There was nothing of the way she had looked in the sickbay. Nor that another of their ships had exploded before her very eyes. At least… Poe couldn't see it.

She had tilted her head to one side.

"Flyboy"

"Cut it lady" he shouted. Amilyn took a deep breath.

Not now, and not you. I beg you.

"We had a fleet, now we're down to one ship and you've told us nothing!" Poe was angry, desperate, but tried to control his temper. He wanted nothing but to know the truth before they all died. Not too much to ask, is it? That's what everyone wanted. He could see it in their eyes. "Tell us that we have a plan! That there's hope!"

Holdo stood still. She could feel the people around her not even breathing. The tension was palpable in the air. She felt a knife being held to her throat. She really wanted to speak, but didn't dare. She felt a cold cloud of anger emanating from her crew. And there was him. The man who took every opportunity to humiliate and embarrass her. A man who crossed every line, but who wanted nothing more than to be listened to for once. Who asked her a perfectly legitimate question, and to which Amilyn was so eager to respond.

She would have told them that they were in the same boat, that they were a team, that she was interested in what would happen to them. It would have been so easy for her to say all that. As easy as saying that since she'd set foot on the Raddus, she'd only been safe as long as she had his hand on her shoulder.

Tell us the plan.

No - she replied to the deep voice in her head.

She swallowed to keep her voice from trembling.

"When I served under Leia," she stepped closer to him. "she would say, hope is like the sun. If you only believe in it when you can see it..."

"You'll never make it throuhgh the night" Poe replied, then sighed. The anger in his eyes slowly disappeared. Instead, he was questioning, and demanding. Holdo would have done anything to have him read her mind. To make him understand silently that he couldn't. To trust her, to believe that she... Amilyn would try anything...

"Yes" she nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving his. Poe finally blinked and looked away. His eyebrows suddenly knitted.

"Are you... Are you fueling up the transports?" he stepped up to the controls. His eyes narrowed. "You are"

Amilyn swallowed.

"All of them?" asked Poe in disbelief. "We're abandoning ship? Is that... That's what you got? That's what you brought us to?"

Are you serious? That's it? – she read off the man's stunned face.

"No" she wanted to say, but pressed her lips together as tightly as she could. She gasped, when Dameron suddenly kicked up one of the iron chairs. He threw the next one with his bare hands away. He was on the verge of explosion. Poe had hoped all the way… He'd believed all along that she had a plan. And now the ground had been pulled from under her feet.

"Coward" he yelled at Amilyn, who was hit in the chest by his word. She almost staggered. "Those transport ships are unarmed, unshielded"

She saw the entire staff in the room looking at her. They all looked up from their monitors and shifted their gaze between the Admiral and the Commander. Their gazes felt heavy on her face. Accuser.

Our only chance - she wanted to say.

"We abandon this cruiser, we're done. We don't stand a chance!"

Yes we do have a chance if I stay…

Poe looked her straight in the eye. As deeply as he had looked at Leia's bedside not long ago. But now he was cold and endlessly disappointed. "No, you are not just a coward, you are a traitor"

A mournful silence sat between them. The walls of the control room echoed the captain's last words. Amilyn looked up at him with hands shaking. Anger grown inside her with each passing second. She wanted to tie him after the ship! Yes, that's what she thought! Because even being angry was better than being this hurt.

She needed a long minute to swallow all of this. But slowly, she suppressed all the emotions that arose. When she spoke, her voice rang hollow. As empty as she herself had become.

"Get this man off my bridge" she said dryly, and after Poe was led from the room, she stood in front of the control panels, her back to everyone else and stared dazedly ahead.

First she was called a coward, then a traitor. In front of all her major crew. And no one stood up for her.

Not a single one.