TOY SOLDIER [IX] ▸ Poe Dameron

PROLOGUE

"Dreams are our escape from reality.."

IT WAS AN OUTSTANDINGLY SWELTERING AND STICKY SUMMER NIGHT WHEN I FIRST DREAMT OF HER.

I didn't know it was her at the time, because it was in fact, not.

She was like an amorphous alien among the stars, foreign to me completely, taking no form. It was more like a feeling, the feeling of the warmth of her fingertips ghosting across my skin. Her touch kissed the purple bruises that painted my fatigued muscles; it calmed me.

I thought briefly, for a moment, that I might be dreaming of my mother again.

I hadn't felt this tenderness and comfort since Shara, my mother, had held me. It felt like an eternity ago. It kind of was- I was getting old, after all, it had been many years since I had begun this life of combat and war. I had been raised for this.

Though the spectre in my dreams was just that- a formless spectre, I found myself being able to hear a clear heartbeat. Thump thump thump. It was like fire crackling in my ears, surrounding me, numbing my battered-down body. Her soothing spirit, though I did not know her yet, felt like home. For the first time in a long time, though I was too proud to admit it to anyone, barely even myself, I felt loved.

There wasn't love like this for me on the base. Sure, I had loved ones, the family I had created- Snap, Jessika, and General Organa- but it wasn't like this. No one had held me and made me feel like everything was going to be alright, at least not for a very, very long time.

What even was this feeling? I was intrigued. I felt completely safe, though vulnerable. I wanted more.

But the moment I wanted more, it slipped further away. I saw the flames take shape, the smoke forming dark yet beautiful spiraling curls. I could barely make out a face, the long eyelashes and the pursed lips that were poised as it drifted away from me, almost as if she was telling me gently, "come find me."

I stepped forward into the stars. I needed to feel the warmth on my painfully sore soldier skin once more. In spite of that, however, my hands slipped past the smoke, unable to grasp hold in the darkness.

At once I felt ropes coil around my wrists. I realized I had gotten too greedy. They tied me down, my back hunched, and suddenly, a pain surged through my entire back. I heard a girl cry out as the whiplashes stung my spine. Rosy blood bloomed and seeped down the welts, my mouth hung slack in a silent scream of shock and agony. Still, I reached out to her despite the pain.

She was being taken away from me by an uncertain force, the same force that had brought us together.

The last moment of my dream was catching her hand. It was suddenly solid, suddenly whole, and suddenly real. I felt the warmth once more, but only briefly, because then I was awake.

My muscles ached in the bed. I yawned, drowsily stretching out for someone, yet reaching no-one. I blinked, the vision of bleak reality returning to me. Honestly, I wasn't surprised that I was alone.

It was always like that. I had given up everything for the war and the Resistance. No-one was here, yet again. I shifted in bed and tried to ignore my thoughts. I knew what I had felt in that dream, but I was certain it was just that- a dream, and that I would never feel it again.

I wasn't dumb, I knew it was damn near impossible to love a broken man. So I did what I had done for as long as I could remember- I buried it. Out of sight, out of mind. Focus on your work, Poe, focus on the task at hand.

And that's precisely what happened. in the morning, General Organa came to me with a covert undercover mission and I was sent away. I tried my hardest to mask my fear. After all, I was the famed war hero, Commander Poe Dameron, and war heroes don't get scared. They don't feel anything, except for maybe in dreams.