Will of the Many~ Poe Dameron

Banter

Something in me wants more. I can't rest...

-Sylvia Plath

Serena's body trembled without the will or want to stop any time soon. She hunched over with her chin tucked into her chest as she squeezed her eyes shut. Her breath stalled in her lungs as the small medical droid moved over the burn on her shoulder. It's sharp needle dug at all the dead flesh and exposed muscle. Each swipe of its harsh blade made Serena whimper, but she couldn't move. 

She squeezed the fabric of her shirt against her chest as she kept it bunched up for the droid to work. Her right hand throbbed as she clenched her fist close to her. The bubbled flesh along her palm and fingers stretched uncomfortably under the tight, white gauze. The itchy fabric rubbed at the burnt skin and weakened the thin skin along the boils. The pain compared to the droid drilling away at her back. She couldn't tell which was worse, but decided that focusing on the physical pain was better than the pain she felt deeper. 

Her eyes peeped open to look ahead of her. The medical bay had a long, horizontal window that overlooked space behind them. The vast blackness cooled her heating qualms, but it only lasted a second before she noticed their base, Ilum, crumbling in. 

"Stop-" Serena rolled her shoulder back to disconnect the droid. Despite the stinging pain it caused her, she jumped off the bed and pulled her wool sweater down as she walked to the window. She pressed herself close to the glass and lifted her wrapped hand to hold herself steady as the planet of ice lost its perfect spherical shape. It split perfectly down the middle, from the north to the south with a horrifyingly silent crack. The left half condensed down like a crumbled piece of trash. The right side just started to compress when the core exploded. Both halves broke into millions of pieces and shot out into the dead air around it. 

Serena lifted a hand instinctively as the bright light stole all black from the galaxy around her. The entire window eclipsed with the white, then it slowly faded. Serena dropped her hand and blinked, but no matter how many times she blinked everything looked like it had a milky filter over it. 

"That's it..." 

"You sound impressed."

Serena turned away from the window as two guards dragged Kylo Ren into the medical bay. They dropped him with care on the same bed she had just occupied. 

"Ren-" Serena rushed to his side and stopped just shy of touching him as she looked him over. There was a large hole in the side of his black shirt that showed the laser blast from the Wookie. It grazed him, but had packed such a punch the tissue around the bleeding wound bruised a deep black and purple. She looked up to his face to see a charred, deep cut that sliced diagonally from his left peck, crept up the side of his neck, cup into his jaw and across the length of his cheek. It barely missed his eye, but had the tail end of the wound just above his eyebrow. His face was littered with soot and blood, the two mixed together to create an ugly, horrifying paste that she wished was gone. "What happened?"

"That girl-" Ren sneered as he tried to push himself up to his elbows. 

Serena pressed both hands onto his chest to push him back down onto the bed. "Don't move," She instructed motherly as she looked up at the doctor readying more medical droids. "Hurry up, his wounds need to be mended now." There was a caring sharpness to her voice as she rushed the doctor. 

She looked back down at Ren to see him looking at her wrapped hand. He lifted his own gloved hands and carefully grabbed her wrist. He raised her hand and turned it over in front of him as he looked at it. 

Serena opened her mouth to tell him it was okay, but she didn't want to lie to him. So instead, she told the truth. "When you pushed me away... I fell. I couldn't get up in time before the explosions. I opened the doors but... I was a bit too late."