Fic: In the Eye, Poe Dameron Centric. Teen.
Title: In the Eye
Pairings: Minor/background Han Solo/Leia Organa, Temmin Wexley/Harter Kalonia, Rey/Ben Solo.
Character Focus: Poe Dameron
AU?: Yes. Canon Divergence.
Warnings: Discussion of torture, PTSD, seizures.
Summary: There were more than just a few wounds to recover from after the interrogation by Ren for Poe.
INTERROGATION RECORD
DAMERON, P. | YAVINIAN | RESISTANCE, PILOT
Poe had returned to D’Qar from Jakku like he had from missions so many times before: with more swagger than the man had a right to and enough fight that Harter Kalonia had given up trying to get him to medical after a twenty minute argument in front of a rather amused General Organa.
He needed medical attention, that was sure--he was still bleeding from the injuries he’d obtained in the crash--and Force knew, he needed to sleep through the aftereffects of the interrogation he’d had by Hux and by Ren.
But there was a med kit, hidden in his quarters, that he’d pilfered liberated from a shipment crate one night and he’d made sure it was stocked with just enough supplies to carry him through whatever fight he needed to be in. Medical hadn’t even realized it was missing, bless them, and as he swallowed down the painkiller, the antipyretic, he was honestly grateful for the Resistance’s inconsistent inventories.
The kit kept him upright and capable through the fight at Takodana, through the attack at the Starkiller base. Yet, as the blue light of the Millenium Falcon’s engine caught his eye, Poe could feel the fever creeping back.
He whispered, “Just a little longer,” to himself, flicking the autopilot on, and leaned back into his seat as he and his fellow pilots jumped into lightspeed.
(He fell asleep in less than a parsec, never hearing the hail from Leia.)
The jolt of Black One setting down woke him and Poe startled at the sight of Wexley at the top of the cockpit steps. He recovered quickly, sliding the canopy back, and shoving Snap out of his way as he jumped down and looked around. He only had milliseconds to conduct a headcount before the Falcon touched down on the far end of the landing pad. The med techs were waiting there already and though his limbs were beginning to cramp like they had immediately after leaving Jakku, he started to move toward the ship with Snap telling him, “Solo’s been injured. Apparently, he took a blaster to a saber fight.”
Sure enough, as the ramp dropped, Poe could see Solo, his abdomen and chest a mess of non-bleeding burns, supported between a girl (Rey, he thought) and Chewbacca as they left the ship and hurried toward the waiting grav sled. Despite his injuries, he was still grousing at everyone who approached him, med tech or otherwise.
It was Finn who told Kalonia, “He’s hurt bad,” and Poe smirked when Han grumbled, “No, I’m not!” as he tried to avoid being set onto sled. “It’s just a couple of burns. I’ve had worse repairing the hyperdrive!”
Leia rolled her eyes at her husband; Chewbacca growled at him.
“I’ll go to Medical, all right?! But I don’t need to be carried there!”
“Oh, shut up and get on the damn sled, Han.”
Bemused by it all, the medical staff and the crowd around them didn’t notice when Poe’s hand went to his temple, the sudden flare of the headache blacking out his vision for a moment. They did notice, however, when he gasped and closed his eyes against the white-hot pain that shot up his spine. He lost sense of time as he came crashing to his knees and then the ground entirely.
Voices rang out, too loud and on top of each other, “Commander?” and “Dameron?” and “Poe?” and “Is he conscious?” and he crept an arm out, put his hand to his ear. His skin felt like it was alight; he wanted to scream at the pressure. Something wet--blood, it had to be blood--oozed onto his fingers as they fell away, and he tried to open his eyes, only to actually cry out when he finally did.
He was relieved when someone, he didn’t know or care who, pressed a mask over his face and shoved a needle into his arm. He dropped immediately, gratefully, into oblivion.
Excerpt from report 5.1413, Report of Interrogation by [redacted]:
”They don’t do anything until they drug you. It’s called stage one, supposed to make a captive compliant, loosen the tongue. It’s pretty easy to get through, but if you resist, they move to stage two, and that’s where they bring in stims. Just a little at first. Just enough to make sure you’re aware how helpless you are. But they’ll drive up the power factor until your skin is burnt from the stim ‘trodes and you can actually smell it.
“If you’re still resisting, they’ll go to stage three and it’s everything plus they throw in tox and you want to die. I wanted to die. I just wanted it to be over.
“But if you can resist that, there’s stage four and… I don’t know... I don’t think anyone can survive it...”
“Someone go to his quarters now, search them,” Kalonia ordered as she and her staff settled the grav sled into the emergency bay. “I need every medical supply he has there,” she added, “He’s been self-treating and I need to know what with.”
More orders were given in rapid succession: “I need monitoring patches placed now. And a full scan. Jo, begin critical patient prep. The General will need to sign off on the tank.”
On the other side of the room, Han pushed away the med tech who’d begun layering bacta-impregnated patches over his wounds, saying, “Help the kid. I can wait,” only to have Harter lift her head momentarily to glare forcefully in his direction.
(They’d known each other entirely too long to not understand: she didn’t have the time to argue and if she had to stop critical care because Han was being contrary, well, he’d face her wrath plus Leia’s.
He smartly relented.)
A datapad was presented to Leia and she signed it without hesitation, setting it onto a nearby cart as the tech who’d abandoned it threw open the valves over the bacta tank, the viscous substance flooding in. It was nearly full when Wexley and Finn came crashing into the room, one man brandishing a standard medkit and the other with a handful of open vials.
Kalonia took stock of it all, then called for a number of medications to be given. She eyed the kit and the vials again, calculating how long he’d had to have been self-treating and furious at herself when the estimation worked out to be his return from Jakku.
She took a deep breath--she could take her anger out in the sparring ring later--and turned her mind back to the man before her.
The scan took milliseconds: the holo hovered over him with swaths of red across virtually his entire body. A concussion with secondary contusions from blunt trauma, a bore hole in his temple from what Harter could only guess, broken ribs, broken wrist with nerve compression (how the hell had he been able to fly) and torn muscles in his ankle...
“He’s bleeding internally,” she remarked as she stared at the results, “He has injuries consistent with a fighter crash.”
He hadn’t reported a crash to her, but knowing Poe Dameron, it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d brushed off something of that magnitude. She looked to Leia to ask if she’d been aware of one, but it was Finn who bounced on his heel before interjecting, “He was in one, on Jakku. A TIE fighter. He was using it to escape the First Order.”
“A TIE?” She turned her sights on Wexley. “I thought he took Black One on that mission.”
“He did. I don’t know…”
Again, it was Finn who filled in the blanks of the report: “He was captured.” He glanced at Leia, then swallowed, throat tight as he told them, “Hux and Ren, they interrogated him... It was the only way to escape, taking one of the fighters.”
The room went quiet for a moment, broken when the bacta tank chimed as optimal temperature was reached. “A time and a place,” Kalonia murmured, tightening the mask straps on Poe’s face. There would be time later to deal with the enormity of what Commander Dameron had failed to tell them. “Strip him and place the port in the right arm. Secure it for submersion. Bring me the harness.”
If he’d been conscious, Poe would have whined at the loss of yet another flight suit as it was fully cut away from his body. His compression shirt soon joined the suit, replaced by the straps of the harness; the only garment that survived, his short leggings, were left in place and once her med techs had the harness hooked to the lift, she wrapped the weighted belt around his hips.
She injected more sedatives into the port line as he was lowered into the tank, not looking forward to the battle that always took place when Dameron had to be put in bacta. Few in their number had ever had such a strong aversion to the tank, Poe being the only one who could and would react intensely even in a near-death state.
So she was unsurprised to see his eyes fly open when the bacta reached the crown of his head. Panic was setting in, the alarm etched on his face, and Kalonia would have called for Leia, but the woman was already there: Leia’s face went placid as she set her hand against the glass where his own was grappling for purchase.
“The work is done for now, Poe. It’s time to rest.” She caught his sleepy gaze. “You kept us safe, but it’s time to heal.”
Poe couldn’t hear her, but seemed to understand her nonetheless. His eyes slid shut gently a moment later and everyone heaved a sigh.
Updates to Medical Report for Patient P. Dameron
1312hrs: After discussion with F, it is suspected that PD was subjected to a level of interrogation known as Stage 4. F states it involves a neuro feed probe being inserted into the skull as a means of torture, and F further indicated that the injury to PD’s left temple is consistent with this stage. However, F also added that PD managed to resist long enough that KR was called in to obtain the information. It is suspected, given current knowledge, that a mind probe was employed at that point. -H. Kalonia, CMO
2149hrs: 3rd seizure. Duration 4.1 minutes. Considerable concern for patient’s neuro status. -H. Kalonia, CMO
2301hrs: Post-ictal seizure activity. 1st dose Neuroprenoline. -H. Kalonia, CMO
Han healed. Not as quickly as he had in his youth, but within a short amount of time, the majority of the burns had turned to scars, smooth and pink and as it turned out, quite easily ignored once he had a shirt on. The ones on his chest pulled a bit when he worked in the bowels of the Falcon, but nothing intolerable.
Harter still tried to offer him a painkiller when he turned up in Medical searching for Leia, but hadn’t expected him to take it. When he refused, she merely directed him to the bacta tank.
There, he found Leia in a chair she’d taken from someone’s office, angled to face both the door and the front of the tank.
Han was quiet for a second, hands perched on his hips as he did a quick once over. Poe certainly looked worse than he had prior to being submerged, but that was part of the healing process with bacta.
“What was the kid thinking?”
Leia snorted, glancing up at the tank and Poe within it. “He doesn’t think. He acts and then tries to talk himself out of whatever trouble he’s dropped into,” she answered.
He shook his head at his wife. “He’s going to get himself killed.”
“He’s stubborn and too smart for his own good. It’s a combination I’ve seen before.” Leia leveled a pointed look at him, expecting some form of amused complaint to come in response. Instead the doors to the emergency bay opened and both turned to face Rey, who had stopped several steps inside to stare at the tank herself.
“He looks…”
Leia gave her a small, reassuring smile, and looked back at that tank for another moment, before telling the young woman, “Poe is going to be fine,” and, fully aware it was past time for her to leave Medical, got to her feet.
Han followed her, Rey beside him, as they left the bay behind and Leia asked, “You’re supplied for the trip?” right as they stepped into the clearing the crews commonly referred to as the Landing Pad.
“Yes, ma’am,” Rey nodded, “Chewie brought the last crate on a little while ago.”
“Wait a minute, you told her to take my ship?”
“Yes. Why? Were you planning on going somewhere?” Leia shot back, one eyebrow lifted in challenge.
The answer, of course, was a resounding no: Han had a vested interest in laying low for the time being, but it was the principle of the matter than no one had even asked him how he’d feel about the girl taking his ship across the known universe and then some in a search for Luke.
“Well, no, but…” He started, puffing his chest out.
Han was clearly amping for an argument, but Leia swiftly spared him. “Relax, Han. They’re taking you with them.”
“First you draft my ship, now you draft me?”
“Would you prefer I send Rey and Chewie without you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then why are you arguing?”
(Rey tried to hide her amusement at the interplay between Organa and Solo, but a flick of Leia’s eyes on hers told her it wasn’t missed completely.)
It was his turn to roll his eyes, something he’d clearly picked up from his wife, and threw his hands up as he caved. “So what’s the plan, then? Just show up and tell Luke to come home?”
“Do you have a better one?” She challenged, crossing her arms.
“No, but I’m sure I can come up with something.”
Leia peaked an eyebrow again and reminded him, “Act first, talk later.”
Pairings: Minor/background Han Solo/Leia Organa, Temmin Wexley/Harter Kalonia, Rey/Ben Solo.
Character Focus: Poe Dameron
AU?: Yes. Canon Divergence.
Warnings: Discussion of torture, PTSD, seizures.
Summary: There were more than just a few wounds to recover from after the interrogation by Ren for Poe.
INTERROGATION RECORD
DAMERON, P. | YAVINIAN | RESISTANCE, PILOT
- STAGE 1: DOSE 1 INEFFECTIVE, RESISTED, ELEVATED TO STAGE 2
- STAGE 2: DOSE 2 INEFFECTIVE, STIMULUS INEFFECTIVE, RESISTED, ELEVATED TO STAGE 3
- STAGE 3: DOSE 3 INEFFECTIVE, STIMULUS INEFFECTIVE, TOX INEFFECTIVE, RESISTED, ELEVATED TO STAGE 4
- STAGE 4: ENHANCED TACTICS INEFFECTIVE, TOX INEFFECTIVE, NEURO FEED INEFFECTIVE, RESISTED.
- INTERROGATION TRANSFERRED TO K.R.
- INFORMATION RETRIEVED.
Poe had returned to D’Qar from Jakku like he had from missions so many times before: with more swagger than the man had a right to and enough fight that Harter Kalonia had given up trying to get him to medical after a twenty minute argument in front of a rather amused General Organa.
He needed medical attention, that was sure--he was still bleeding from the injuries he’d obtained in the crash--and Force knew, he needed to sleep through the aftereffects of the interrogation he’d had by Hux and by Ren.
But there was a med kit, hidden in his quarters, that he’d pilfered liberated from a shipment crate one night and he’d made sure it was stocked with just enough supplies to carry him through whatever fight he needed to be in. Medical hadn’t even realized it was missing, bless them, and as he swallowed down the painkiller, the antipyretic, he was honestly grateful for the Resistance’s inconsistent inventories.
The kit kept him upright and capable through the fight at Takodana, through the attack at the Starkiller base. Yet, as the blue light of the Millenium Falcon’s engine caught his eye, Poe could feel the fever creeping back.
He whispered, “Just a little longer,” to himself, flicking the autopilot on, and leaned back into his seat as he and his fellow pilots jumped into lightspeed.
(He fell asleep in less than a parsec, never hearing the hail from Leia.)
The jolt of Black One setting down woke him and Poe startled at the sight of Wexley at the top of the cockpit steps. He recovered quickly, sliding the canopy back, and shoving Snap out of his way as he jumped down and looked around. He only had milliseconds to conduct a headcount before the Falcon touched down on the far end of the landing pad. The med techs were waiting there already and though his limbs were beginning to cramp like they had immediately after leaving Jakku, he started to move toward the ship with Snap telling him, “Solo’s been injured. Apparently, he took a blaster to a saber fight.”
Sure enough, as the ramp dropped, Poe could see Solo, his abdomen and chest a mess of non-bleeding burns, supported between a girl (Rey, he thought) and Chewbacca as they left the ship and hurried toward the waiting grav sled. Despite his injuries, he was still grousing at everyone who approached him, med tech or otherwise.
It was Finn who told Kalonia, “He’s hurt bad,” and Poe smirked when Han grumbled, “No, I’m not!” as he tried to avoid being set onto sled. “It’s just a couple of burns. I’ve had worse repairing the hyperdrive!”
Leia rolled her eyes at her husband; Chewbacca growled at him.
“I’ll go to Medical, all right?! But I don’t need to be carried there!”
“Oh, shut up and get on the damn sled, Han.”
Bemused by it all, the medical staff and the crowd around them didn’t notice when Poe’s hand went to his temple, the sudden flare of the headache blacking out his vision for a moment. They did notice, however, when he gasped and closed his eyes against the white-hot pain that shot up his spine. He lost sense of time as he came crashing to his knees and then the ground entirely.
Voices rang out, too loud and on top of each other, “Commander?” and “Dameron?” and “Poe?” and “Is he conscious?” and he crept an arm out, put his hand to his ear. His skin felt like it was alight; he wanted to scream at the pressure. Something wet--blood, it had to be blood--oozed onto his fingers as they fell away, and he tried to open his eyes, only to actually cry out when he finally did.
He was relieved when someone, he didn’t know or care who, pressed a mask over his face and shoved a needle into his arm. He dropped immediately, gratefully, into oblivion.
Excerpt from report 5.1413, Report of Interrogation by [redacted]:
”They don’t do anything until they drug you. It’s called stage one, supposed to make a captive compliant, loosen the tongue. It’s pretty easy to get through, but if you resist, they move to stage two, and that’s where they bring in stims. Just a little at first. Just enough to make sure you’re aware how helpless you are. But they’ll drive up the power factor until your skin is burnt from the stim ‘trodes and you can actually smell it.
“If you’re still resisting, they’ll go to stage three and it’s everything plus they throw in tox and you want to die. I wanted to die. I just wanted it to be over.
“But if you can resist that, there’s stage four and… I don’t know... I don’t think anyone can survive it...”
“Someone go to his quarters now, search them,” Kalonia ordered as she and her staff settled the grav sled into the emergency bay. “I need every medical supply he has there,” she added, “He’s been self-treating and I need to know what with.”
More orders were given in rapid succession: “I need monitoring patches placed now. And a full scan. Jo, begin critical patient prep. The General will need to sign off on the tank.”
On the other side of the room, Han pushed away the med tech who’d begun layering bacta-impregnated patches over his wounds, saying, “Help the kid. I can wait,” only to have Harter lift her head momentarily to glare forcefully in his direction.
(They’d known each other entirely too long to not understand: she didn’t have the time to argue and if she had to stop critical care because Han was being contrary, well, he’d face her wrath plus Leia’s.
He smartly relented.)
A datapad was presented to Leia and she signed it without hesitation, setting it onto a nearby cart as the tech who’d abandoned it threw open the valves over the bacta tank, the viscous substance flooding in. It was nearly full when Wexley and Finn came crashing into the room, one man brandishing a standard medkit and the other with a handful of open vials.
Kalonia took stock of it all, then called for a number of medications to be given. She eyed the kit and the vials again, calculating how long he’d had to have been self-treating and furious at herself when the estimation worked out to be his return from Jakku.
She took a deep breath--she could take her anger out in the sparring ring later--and turned her mind back to the man before her.
The scan took milliseconds: the holo hovered over him with swaths of red across virtually his entire body. A concussion with secondary contusions from blunt trauma, a bore hole in his temple from what Harter could only guess, broken ribs, broken wrist with nerve compression (how the hell had he been able to fly) and torn muscles in his ankle...
“He’s bleeding internally,” she remarked as she stared at the results, “He has injuries consistent with a fighter crash.”
He hadn’t reported a crash to her, but knowing Poe Dameron, it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d brushed off something of that magnitude. She looked to Leia to ask if she’d been aware of one, but it was Finn who bounced on his heel before interjecting, “He was in one, on Jakku. A TIE fighter. He was using it to escape the First Order.”
“A TIE?” She turned her sights on Wexley. “I thought he took Black One on that mission.”
“He did. I don’t know…”
Again, it was Finn who filled in the blanks of the report: “He was captured.” He glanced at Leia, then swallowed, throat tight as he told them, “Hux and Ren, they interrogated him... It was the only way to escape, taking one of the fighters.”
The room went quiet for a moment, broken when the bacta tank chimed as optimal temperature was reached. “A time and a place,” Kalonia murmured, tightening the mask straps on Poe’s face. There would be time later to deal with the enormity of what Commander Dameron had failed to tell them. “Strip him and place the port in the right arm. Secure it for submersion. Bring me the harness.”
If he’d been conscious, Poe would have whined at the loss of yet another flight suit as it was fully cut away from his body. His compression shirt soon joined the suit, replaced by the straps of the harness; the only garment that survived, his short leggings, were left in place and once her med techs had the harness hooked to the lift, she wrapped the weighted belt around his hips.
She injected more sedatives into the port line as he was lowered into the tank, not looking forward to the battle that always took place when Dameron had to be put in bacta. Few in their number had ever had such a strong aversion to the tank, Poe being the only one who could and would react intensely even in a near-death state.
So she was unsurprised to see his eyes fly open when the bacta reached the crown of his head. Panic was setting in, the alarm etched on his face, and Kalonia would have called for Leia, but the woman was already there: Leia’s face went placid as she set her hand against the glass where his own was grappling for purchase.
“The work is done for now, Poe. It’s time to rest.” She caught his sleepy gaze. “You kept us safe, but it’s time to heal.”
Poe couldn’t hear her, but seemed to understand her nonetheless. His eyes slid shut gently a moment later and everyone heaved a sigh.
Updates to Medical Report for Patient P. Dameron
1312hrs: After discussion with F, it is suspected that PD was subjected to a level of interrogation known as Stage 4. F states it involves a neuro feed probe being inserted into the skull as a means of torture, and F further indicated that the injury to PD’s left temple is consistent with this stage. However, F also added that PD managed to resist long enough that KR was called in to obtain the information. It is suspected, given current knowledge, that a mind probe was employed at that point. -H. Kalonia, CMO
2149hrs: 3rd seizure. Duration 4.1 minutes. Considerable concern for patient’s neuro status. -H. Kalonia, CMO
2301hrs: Post-ictal seizure activity. 1st dose Neuroprenoline. -H. Kalonia, CMO
Han healed. Not as quickly as he had in his youth, but within a short amount of time, the majority of the burns had turned to scars, smooth and pink and as it turned out, quite easily ignored once he had a shirt on. The ones on his chest pulled a bit when he worked in the bowels of the Falcon, but nothing intolerable.
Harter still tried to offer him a painkiller when he turned up in Medical searching for Leia, but hadn’t expected him to take it. When he refused, she merely directed him to the bacta tank.
There, he found Leia in a chair she’d taken from someone’s office, angled to face both the door and the front of the tank.
Han was quiet for a second, hands perched on his hips as he did a quick once over. Poe certainly looked worse than he had prior to being submerged, but that was part of the healing process with bacta.
“What was the kid thinking?”
Leia snorted, glancing up at the tank and Poe within it. “He doesn’t think. He acts and then tries to talk himself out of whatever trouble he’s dropped into,” she answered.
He shook his head at his wife. “He’s going to get himself killed.”
“He’s stubborn and too smart for his own good. It’s a combination I’ve seen before.” Leia leveled a pointed look at him, expecting some form of amused complaint to come in response. Instead the doors to the emergency bay opened and both turned to face Rey, who had stopped several steps inside to stare at the tank herself.
“He looks…”
Leia gave her a small, reassuring smile, and looked back at that tank for another moment, before telling the young woman, “Poe is going to be fine,” and, fully aware it was past time for her to leave Medical, got to her feet.
Han followed her, Rey beside him, as they left the bay behind and Leia asked, “You’re supplied for the trip?” right as they stepped into the clearing the crews commonly referred to as the Landing Pad.
“Yes, ma’am,” Rey nodded, “Chewie brought the last crate on a little while ago.”
“Wait a minute, you told her to take my ship?”
“Yes. Why? Were you planning on going somewhere?” Leia shot back, one eyebrow lifted in challenge.
The answer, of course, was a resounding no: Han had a vested interest in laying low for the time being, but it was the principle of the matter than no one had even asked him how he’d feel about the girl taking his ship across the known universe and then some in a search for Luke.
“Well, no, but…” He started, puffing his chest out.
Han was clearly amping for an argument, but Leia swiftly spared him. “Relax, Han. They’re taking you with them.”
“First you draft my ship, now you draft me?”
“Would you prefer I send Rey and Chewie without you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then why are you arguing?”
(Rey tried to hide her amusement at the interplay between Organa and Solo, but a flick of Leia’s eyes on hers told her it wasn’t missed completely.)
It was his turn to roll his eyes, something he’d clearly picked up from his wife, and threw his hands up as he caved. “So what’s the plan, then? Just show up and tell Luke to come home?”
“Do you have a better one?” She challenged, crossing her arms.
“No, but I’m sure I can come up with something.”
Leia peaked an eyebrow again and reminded him, “Act first, talk later.”