Solo's Jedi ~Poe Dameron/Star Wars ~

Chapter Twenty Five: Aftermath

As my eyes flickered open, I felt all of my body begin to ache. My limbs felt like I had taken a beating, and my head felt like it could split. The first thing that came to mind was the image of my father dying, and then the way Kylo Ren begged for mercy. I swallowed, blinking as I felt a pain in my chest from grief and sat up to see I was laid out in my old room.

I hadn't dared come in here for so long, even when I was exiled alone on the Falcon of Jakku. It contained too many memories, too many emotions. I knew Chewie would have put me in here, bless him, although even looking at the walls made me want to cry. Since we never stayed in one place, my room on the Falcon was my sanctuary, and I hadn't been afraid to decorate it as such. All over the walls I had plastered posters of my favourite cantina bands, a flag from Corellia, even some political posters for the resistance, the ones the academy had featured on, and First Order posters which had been graffitied over, spray paint decorating it with crude words and symbols of rebellion. When I put that one up my parents were horrified, but I had simply smiled and said my deviancy was taking the power out of the fear of the First Order.

Naive fool; the fear and strength of a tyrannical dictatorship had caught up with me at last.

Every other inch of my wall was covered in photographs. Some were from when I was little, one of me building pods and racer ships with Uncle Luke, another had been from when my mother took me to the republic for the first time and she had dressed me in a long white dress with my hair similar to hers, a habit she had for whenever we went out in the public eye together. There were a lot from the Academy, training photos, photos of us all hanging out together in the dorms, and a few end of year pictures, all of us wearing our jackets, our hair tied back and our faces serious. We all looked so hard, so smart with our faces like that, no one would have thought we were all just teenagers, only fifteen at most.

Underneath that, I saw the ones of dad. One photo showed us both grinning as we stood outside the Falcon on my eighth birthday, holding my first blaster proudly, another was showing Chewie holding me up on his shoulders as dad looked up at us both grinning and then one from my sixteenth birthday with both my parents, one of the last times I saw them both smiling together. I had been wearing a long sleeveless light pink dress, and my parents both had their arms linked through mine. As my eyes went across this image, a small smile formed as I remembered and then I saw Ben. Dad had his free hand resting on Ben's shoulder almost carelessly, and whilst the three of us were smiling happily, my brother looked almost sullen. Next to this image there was another family photo, when when I was thirteen and Ben had just turned ten. We were all grinning on that one, especially my father, his eyes so full of love, and his face radiating pride for us.

A wave of anger rushed over me suddenly as I looked at these two photographs and I realised I was staring at nothing but the smile of a dead man. Before I could stop myself, I tore down the two and holding them in my shaking hands, I ripped them in half, leaving myself, mum and dad on one half and Ben on the other. The lonely, sad-looking boy now truly was alone and I couldn't care less; he had murdered my father. Looking at the torn pictures, I felt tears begin to prick at my eyes and I suddenly started to feel very overwhelmed, like the walls were falling in on me, all the happy memories which were surrounding me caving in on top of me.

I threw the pictures down on the bed and stormed out of my room, practically marching out of the door and down the corridor at a fast pace to just get myself away. I made it into the main area to see Finn collapsed out on the medic sofa, looking highly wounded, whilst Rey was sat by the table Chewie once taught me to play holo-chess on, resting her elbows on the table, her head resting against her hands as her eyes stared off into the distance.

"Are you okay?" I asked her, and at the sound of my voice she jumped slightly, not expecting me to be behind her.

"I should be the one asking you that," she offered me a sad smile as I took a seat next to her. "Oh, Luci, I'm so sorry!"