TOY SOLDIER [IX] ▸ Poe Dameron

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO [XXXII]

[alya pov]

I AWOKE WITH MY HANDS TIED ABOVE MY HANDS IN SHACKLES. MY WRISTS WERE SORE WITH THE LINGERING PAIN AND THE EVER-PRESENT TUG ON MY BATTERED DOWN SKIN.

I awoke with my hands tied above my head in shackles. My wrists were sore with the lingering pain and the ever-present tug of my battered down skin. My head was lull, feeling too heavy to support, but I forced my eyes to open anyway. I had to.

My heart felt empty, shattered and kicked to the dirt, like the bounty hunters had done to me. My heart had been left back at the whipping stand, chained to always be abused with those images, those sounds.. The sounds of the gunshot in the darkness as I was dragged away, the sounds of the whip against Poe's back, shiny with blood, his grunt of pain, crying out in anguish. He had helped me when I was down, in exchange for his own suffering. He had made a choice, him for me.

The way his back muscles were slick with red sliding down, his chest heaving in pain, the way his hair stuck to his scalp with sweat, cocking back in agony with every strike, the way his hands gripping the sides of the post he was chained to, desperately wanting someone to hold in these few moments that he thought were going to be his last, the way his back tensed and released when the coils of the whip struck the same welts over and over and over again. I couldn't get the image out of my eyes, even if I squeezed them shut, they were still there, jeering at me, dancing on the back of my eyelids. I wanted to scream, like I had been doing for what had felt like the past thousand years, but my throat had been rubbed raw with the desperate screeches for life.

I wanted so desperately to let the tears fall, and they did, but I had to force myself to pay attention to the bigger picture. It was what I had to do, what I had been ignoring for the past couple days while I was fighting with Poe. It had been stupid. I had been stupid. Naive, stupid little girl whose heart was her downfall. I sniffled, shifting in my chains uncomfortably, pulling a lockpick from my sleeve, wedging it between my teeth, and fumbling it in the lock until I heard a soft click!

The shackles fell from my bruised wrists and clattered to the dirty floor. I heard a grunt from beside me, Poe shifting his aching muscles.

I was at his side at once. I unlocked his burdens as well, though hastily and sloppy- I just wanted to hold this man in my arms. His body gave out as soon as the chains fell. The chains had been holding him up entirely. His knees buckled and his limp body tumbled onto me. Struggling, I pushed him up, his weight resting entirely on me, and I slowly lowered him down. He laid on my lap, my fingers in his mussed-up curls, a bitter deja vu of a past situation, a simpler one. How I wish we could return.

He let out a wheeze of exhaustion as I removed his thin blood-sopped, once-white shirt. I nearly couldn't bear to look at it. Ridges of inflamed skin, curling over welts where the flogs had dragged tantalizingly over his back. Welts over and over again, in the same spots, puncturing the same zones of contact. But thankfully, I could feel the reassuring rising and falling of his chest. That was all that mattered for now.