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Leia Organa woke up not with a start but with a memory. Perhaps it was a yearning -- she felt a pull. A tug in her heart she hadn’t felt since before they’d landed on Ajan Kloss, since she last spoke to Luke.
It was unsettling when it should have felt soothing, a familiar brush of the Force. But the urgency! She shook her head.
It was only a dream.
--
The planet Meris II was known for one thing and one thing only: a heat-resistant bacteria that had never quite revolutionized heat shielding. Poe didn’t expect much interest when, during a briefing, he announced it was the next fly-by recon mission he was undertaking.
Meris II -- there was that pang again, thought Leia, and this time, a memory.
She looked at Poe. “Meris II? Luke once mentioned that place.”
Poe glanced down at his PADD with the mission specs. “We’ve got it next on our list of unchecked Rebel bases -- was he ever stationed there?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Leia frowned, unconsciously moving her hand to her heart. “Do you have room for one more?”
He couldn’t keep the surprise off of his face, but who was he to question the General? If she wanted to spend the day flying over another bombed-out, abandoned base to make sure there wasn’t a single scrap left to take, then that’s what they’d do. There wasn’t much chance of danger.
“Of course, General. I’ll have to get a two-seater requisitioned, though -- I normally just take an X-Wing to save on fuel.”
She was still frowning, but not at Poe. “Do what you need to do. Now, Admiral, what’s on your agenda?”
The briefing continued, Poe dismissed.
-
The shuttle Poe hastily requisitioned, not quite fully repaired, did not want to be on this trip. But Leia didn’t say a word about the shaky takeoff or the way the engine rattled, preoccupied. Poe hoped she’d let him know once she worked it out, but he didn’t always get the privilege of hearing what was on her mind.
He figured it wasn’t a position with a lot of room for sentimentality, anyway.
He ignored it, inputting coordinates and chatting lightly with BB-8. It was the most company he’d had on a recon mission in a while and it was almost off-putting. The cockpit was the only place he was alone these days, the base crawling with as many volunteers as they could scrape up, trying to prep for the impossible.
“I don’t think one is going to be that exciting, no,” said Poe, responding to a series of whistles and trills. “I doubt there’s a Star Destroyer lurking behind a moon there or a fleet of X-Wings waiting to be discovered. But Snap got lucky a few times, so we gotta finish up the list.”
“Every blaster we find is one we didn’t have before,” Leia said, glancing over at them. “Besides, a boring mission is certainly preferable to the alternative.”
Poe kept his disagreement to himself, going instead for a well-worn conversational groove. “I just wish -- the tragedy at Hosnia should have emboldened our supporters to act, not driven them into hiding.”
Leia shrugged. “War makes people cowards.”
“Power is making them cowards. And their inaction is making us into scrap rats and ash angels, picking at the bones of Rebel bases.” Poe sighed. “Sorry, sir, I know this isn’t news to you.”
You remind me of Shara Bey, Leia thought, but she kept it to herself. Poe Dameron had a unique way of making her feel nostalgic for things she never even had.
--
The entry to atmo on Merin II was unremarkable -- the planet was lush and green even from space, and the atmosphere lent itself to carbon-based beings. There weren’t solar flares or acid clouds or even any meteors or moons to avoid. It was almost suspiciously easy.
“This looks like home,” Poe said, partly to himself. BB-8 had never been to Yavin IV, something Poe used to have elaborate daydreams about. At present, he mostly tried not to think about his home moon unbidden. Every attachment was a weakness, according to the books Rey had brought back with her, and he knew there was some truth to that.
But the tallest trees here weren’t Massassi trees, the emergence layer didn’t have the faint shimmer of Yavin IV. The rainforest here was thick and foreboding rather than familiar and warm. He squinted against the strong sunlight.
“This canopy won’t hold us, will it?” BB-8 whirred a negative, which was what he was expecting -- it was something he used to do with his speeder back home, not even with an X-Wing.
Leia hummed in acknowledgement, then asked, “Are we close to the base?”
The pull in her chest felt firmer, more insistent now that they were on the planet.
“Yeah, according to coordinates we should fly over it in a few minutes.”
They were cruising, trying to find a parking space, and Poe was so preoccupied looking for some ground he almost missed it.
Then it was too big to miss -- a stepped pyramid made from stone, the only thing tall enough to be seen above the trees. Its flat top glinted with the reflected sun, brilliant and foreboding. It had to be a Jedi temple.
Leia wasn’t expecting the surge of emotion, the way her heartbeat felt like a living thing inside chest. She felt glued to the viewport, eyes stuck on the stoney ziggurat, the way the vines crawling over it looked like veins. Something in there was calling.
“This has the same address as our base, General,” Poe said, starting to seriously decelerate the shuttle. “I can see why Commander Skywalker was interested in this place.”
Then the engines cut out.
The background rumble and thrum was suddenly silent, and for a full five seconds they were simply gliding -- no thrust, no sound. Then the lights and sirens exploded all at once, BB-8 adding their voice to the noise as they rolled to the engine room.
The shuttle began to skim the trees, causing birds to burst from the canopy in loud protest, adding to the panicked cacophony around them.
Leia gripped the shuttle’s controls tightly but let Poe take the lead. She was a good co-pilot from years of practice, and Poe was already adjusting the spoilers and wing flaps, controlling their slide downward into the rainforest.
The temple seemed to grow exponentially as they hurtled toward it and Leia felt -- felt something underneath the panic and the iron control she had on it that let her adjust the drag at Poe’s direction while still trying to follow that tug from the Force. It felt like something yanking her toward the ground.
“This’ll be a piece of cake,” Poe said through gritted teeth, pulling up on the yoke and letting the dense canopy at least slow them down. The shuttle crashed through it, the cockpit thrown into shadow, the sun barely filtering through the branches.
Leaves obscured the front viewport, and Poe hoped he’d calculated this right. He half-heard Beebee whistling with encouragement as he leaned into their descent. Branches screeched against the hull of the ship, loud but pulling them back. By the time the ship hit the earth, they were slow enough to skid to a halt -- to the detriment of half a dozen rubber trees. The important thing was that they were alive, the ship relatively unscathed aside from the spontaneous engine failure. Poe pushed that mystery aside, deciding to hold onto the victory of not killing General Leia Organa, who was staring at the corner of the temple that filled up their view.
The silence after landing, when everything stopped blinking and screaming -- the ship systems realizing they were no longer airborne at all -- was just as startling. There were only the groans of the trees around them, the rustling of leaves and the scuttles of hidden wildlife still too faint to be heard in the cockpit.
Poe could hear himself breathing hard.
“Piece of cake,” Leia repeated lightly as she unstrapped herself from her seat.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said with a huff of a laugh. “It’s never a boring mission with Black Squadron.”
BB-8 presented him with a bag held in three spindly arms, and he pulled out a machete.
“Thanks, buddy,” he said, testing its weight in his hand. “Gotta be prepared,” he said to Leia with a grin, and she didn’t say, You also remind me of Kes. She wondered why she felt so stuck in the past when it felt like the temple was pulling her ever forward, ever closer.
She tried not to worry about what they’d find there. It was a milk run, Leia thought. Easy.
--
Outside the shuttle, Poe was hit with the thick, humid air of the jungle, the smell of rotted vegetation sweet to his nose. Meris II was lush with flora that thrived in humidity, bromeliads bursting around them and impossibly tall trees wrapped with ever-looping vines looming above them. Even the temple felt familiar, though it was bigger and far more imposing than the ones he’d explored at home.
If he’d known how much irritating nostalgia the planet would kick up, he would’ve called his dad beforehand to get ahead of the guilt.
General Organa dabbed at her brow after he helped her off the shuttle, still staring at the temple.
“How did we not know this was here?” she asked, mostly herself. Leia stared up at it, the flat top now obscured by the surrounding trees. Was she the one leading Poe into danger here, she wondered silently, but the pull wasn’t malicious -- and now it felt like a tingle, a small electric shock every so often. The Force was telling her this was the place.
Poe adjusted the two supply packs he was carrying as they walked around the temple’s perimeter. The temple, or the portion of it left, was a tiered pyramid. The base was easy to spot -- it wasn’t built inside the temple but stacked right on one side of it. It glistened in the filtered sun, corrugated plastisteel containers covered in moss standing out against the ancient stones.
From a distance, the assortment of buildings resembled a heap of metal scrap ready for recycling, like cans and tins stacked on top of one another hastily. The semi-permanent plastisteel boxes which made up the base leaned against the temple, creating walls out of one huge side. It looked like an outgrowth, a vestigial arm. It wasn’t particularly welcoming, thought Poe.
They’d found the most useful supplies tended to be in the better-tended, more trafficked bases, the ones that had run ‘til the end of the war. Everywhere else had already been ransacked and stripped bare. This one was so overgrown it had to have been abandoned early on during the war -- it had only been a waystation and refueling spot to begin with.
What might have once been a clearing was already covered in new growth, new trees, and the shrub layer undisturbed by any sentient-sized footprints. No one had been there in what seemed like eons, although it had only been abandoned a few decades ago.
He glanced at the General. “I gotta say, while the weather’s nice, this place doesn’t look promising.”
Leia didn’t disagree with his assessment. The base was obviously crumbling -- a few areas had trees growing straight through the reinforced metal walls, and foliage crammed through every potential window. There were years’ worth of vines growing and dying and growing around the building, almost knitting together the semi-temporary structure and the ageless temple.
“Commander, it’s hot as hell out here,” she said. “And I can take my own pack.” He had enough food and water for a few days -- she’d told him it was excessive. He’d told her he wanted to be prepared for anything, and it rankled to be looked after by someone she outranked. But she knew how to be gracious. Dameron was so damn earnest; it was hard to take it personally.
He grinned. “It’s an honor to carry your gear, sir. And it feels just like home for me.” The water that hung in the humid air was a familiar weight against his skin; it made him want to strip down to his underlayers. It felt like the most languid of summer days. Nostalgia prickled at his neck and he ignored it.
“Of course,” she said, as they explored the outside of the base. Birds called in the distance, but they were hidden from view. “It’s been a while since I’ve been to the Yavin system.”
It was easy to forget that Poe wasn’t a Core Worlder, easier to try to imagine him as a clean slate than to remember him as a smiling child, running with her own son in the humid forests of Yavin IV. She shook her head and tried to focus on the now, the present unfolding before her.
Luke, a good teacher and a horrendous hypocrite, had told her that was one of the most important parts of being a Jedi. And the thrum of power from the temple, loud from each step, made her feel off-kilter and distracted.
It didn’t take them long to find the blast door that served as the base’s main entrance, although it was almost invisible under the overgrowth. The door was covered in woody vines, the same type that covered a good 40 to 60 percent of the plastisteel structures, not to mention the temple itself. The plants felt familiar, like the kind Poe had slashed through on childhood adventures on Yavin (yet another thing he didn’t let himself think about).
“It feels so pristine out here I almost hate to do this,” he said, running his fingers over the ropey foliage. “It feels like we’re interrupting something.”
“Like the forest has already reclaimed this place,” Leia replied, running her own fingers over the vines. A few leaves fluttered, responding to her touch, or so Poe thought. He wondered why there were no flowers anywhere -- perhaps it wasn’t the right season.
“I guess there’s nothing for it, huh?” Poe dropped their packs to the side and adjusted his grip on the machete. The vines fell away easily, but after a few swings, they began to curl away from the door panel entirely, writhing like snakes as they retreated, the noise of leaves rustling almost sharp in warning. It was like a curtain being drawn -- an invitation.
Poe was left with a clear door and a dumbfounded expression, machete arm slack at his side. “Is this a good sign?”
He went to work on the control panel without waiting for a reply, but Leia wasn’t sure what to say. The vines didn’t feel malevolent, but that didn’t make this not a trap. She suddenly felt foolish, coming here on a whim for a routine scouting operation. There were a million other things she could be doing that were less dangerous and less frivolous than this.
But she looked at the vines again, curling into themselves to give them a doorway. Was this invitation sincere? What was inside?
Poe had hotwired a speeder for the first time at age ten, but he felt clumsy under the eyes of the General as he worked the door panel. He’d been taking her orders for a few years now, but rarely was she there to supervise his fieldwork like this. But he got it eventually, wires finding their partners under his hand. All he needed was a little spark.
“Okay, this should do it.” The doors slid open at his command.
“Wonderful,” she said, and stepped into the base. It was unremarkable inside, though the interior walls were also crisscrossed with vines running every which way, grey and green everywhere. The back-up lights whirred on as Leia activated the motion detectors, casting shadows across the walls. They were dim, but they were something.
She touched a wall, but the vines didn’t move again. “It looks like there’s still some life in this place.”
“That’s a relief,” Poe said, BB-8 rolling inside behind him.
The door slammed shut behind him with a definitive slap of metal against metal, loud and artificial in the jungle.
“Okay, this feels like a bad sign,” Poe said, and BB whistled a low affirmation.
Leia placed a hand on his arm. “We’ll get it open later,” she said, but there was something uneasy about it. The way Poe had set the wires, the doors should have stayed open, letting fresh air into a place that could’ve been a tomb.
“Sure,” he said. “Of course, sir.”
-
Inside the base, the vines were everywhere, climbing in and out of the hallways, plugging up anything that resembled a vent, falling out the windows to the point that no natural light made it in. They might as well have been sealed inside, and the stale air felt heavy in Poe’s lungs.
The stillness of the base wasn’t peaceful. The General looked preoccupied as they walked through the different hallways and he wanted to know what with -- what on Meris II could have drawn her here.
“So… is the Force here?” Poe didn’t know how to talk about magic without sounding like an asshole. “Can you hear it?”
“There is something here. I can feel it,” she said. It felt like a slowly beating heart, rippling outward every few minutes, a baseline hum like the lighting on ships. It buzzed in tandem with the base’s lights.
“Is it the plants? Should I apologize for the machete?” His grip on its handle tightened.
She touched a dappled green leaf on the wall near her, and they both watched as it trembled, furling and unfurling before stilling on the vine.
“What does that mean, sir?” he asked. The leaves didn’t move when he touched them. He didn’t feel anything at all that could be the Force -- mostly just anxiety about their eventual exit.
“I wish I could tell you, Commander.” She brushed a few more leaves as they walked, and no matter the vine, they all shook with some unseen connection.
They kept walking -- the command station was choked under vines, which climbed through every hole on the console, buttons and keys popped out by leaves and tendrils. The beds in the barracks had vines climbing over every bed; a few had been crushed under the force of vines wrapping and tightening and tightening around the frames.
But there were also hints of life in every room. A jacket, a discarded sock, a mug caught between braids of vines: it was as if the people had disappeared rather than evacuated.
“How do these grow here without any sunlight?” he asked, as Leia examined yet another window stuffed with vines on vines on vines.
The lights flickered around them, stabilizing back to the midnight dusk of emergency power. That humming was the only thing that was keeping Poe grounded -- every time Leia or he started a conversation, their discussion petered out, as if neither of them wanted to disturb the base’s stillness for too long. Poe felt like he was holding his breath, but they kept walking.
“I think we’ve been walking in a circle,” Poe said, after they passed the comms room the third time. He’d memorized the way the vines cracked display monitors, the jagged breaks in the screens. There was the mess, the barracks, comms and command, and a few other rooms, but none of the paths they’d tried led them closer to the hangar or even the temple’s insides. All the vines were coming from somewhere, but the place was doing its best to make sure the source remained a mystery.
“You noticed that too, huh?” the General asked wryly. She gestured at Poe until he handed her her pack.
“I figured one of us should say it out loud,” he said. “Relieved I’m not crazy.”
“We could both be crazy.” Leia handed him a bottle of water, her own in her other hand.
“This heat would drive anyone mad,” she continued. “I never knew how your father Kes could stand it on that moon.” It wasn’t what she’d meant to say -- in fact, the opposite. She thought she heard the leaves rustling around them.
Poe smiled fondly and that, too, reminded her of Shara Bey. “Yeah, he thought my mom was crazy too, but it turns out the animals love it there. And he hasn’t had a bad harvest yet.”
“Luke loved it out there too, but I guess he grew up in the desert. Maybe it was a welcome change of climate.”
“It’s a good place,” Poe said. “Not sure I feel the same about Meris II, though.”
That time he definitely heard the leaves rustling in response.
“I think you’re agitating the locals,” she said.
Poe rubbed the back of his head. “Can you… can you talk to the vines? Maybe ask them how to find the hangar?”
Leia looked thoughtful, like she was listening, but she shook her head. “This is more Luke’s wheelhouse than mine.”
Poe noted the present tense and brushed his own hand against the leaves. No response.
“Maybe we should make camp for the night, clear out some beds.”
“At least we can find the barracks,” she said, and he laughed.
--
The next morning kicked off with a success.
They broke out of the loop, both going in opposite directions and carefully keeping a hand on the wall. Leia could feel a tug in her chest, faint but growing as she followed the vines. There were arrows pointing everywhere in the base -- she just needed to find them. She let it lead her, left, right, through a conference room.
Poe just picked a vine and followed it, and with these techniques they managed to reunite right in front of the enormous blast doors of the base’s hangar.
“I can’t believe this place actually has a hangar.” Poe paused. “Did the hanger… call to you today?”
Leia shook her head. “There’s something in that hangar, though. I can feel that much.”
Poe used two hands on the machete to slice through the center of the overgrowth. The vines split with a crack, a gash running right through the wall of leaves. More leaves fluttered to the ground, a few landing in his thick hair.
The response was immediate: the woody vines rustled as they shifted and regrew over the door, stretching and sprouting in fast-forward. It was breathtaking but also terrifying, the whoosh of the vines like mocking laughter.
“These plants are astounding,” Leia said quietly, her hand outstretched but not touching.
“General…” Poe said, not sure what question to ask to get an answer he would like.
“Commander.” Leia reached out and didn’t yank her wrist away when a single curl of vine wrapped around it.
“I’m the last person who should be saying this, but this is risky, sir.”
“It’s a plant, Dameron.” Leia was strong enough to wrest her hand back from the vine, which was a relief to Poe.
“It’s obviously a little more than that,” he said. He glanced down, and a vine had split from the dense thatch of them to glide across the flow, wrapping gently around his ankle.
“Sir, these plants seem a little too friendly.”
Leia wanted to protest, but she couldn’t. The vines were curious, she wanted to say, but she couldn’t be sure they didn’t mean harm. But there was something almost childlike about the way another vine hesitantly reached out to her -- the way it curled around her finger.
--
Finding the hangar was a victory, but the evening left them no closer to discerning how to enter it. They found one closet full of blasters, which -- as Leia reminded Poe -- wasn’t nothing, but he wasn’t sure it was worth it: the time, the unease, the second night in a dark barracks with a potentially hostile plant growing next to him.
The door was still sealed shut.
--
Poe was ready to admit defeat by day three. They were sitting silently in the mess, eating MREs under the watch of thousands of leaves, when Poe finally said, “No offense to Commander Skywalker, but I don’t think there’s anything here. There’re definitely no ships.”
Leia sighed. She looked tired -- still beautiful, but tired. Poe had spent the past few years ignoring it, but it was true. The weight of the war rested on her shoulders, but she still managed to involve herself in every aspect of the Resistance. And he’d managed to get her stuck in a haunted rebel base.
“Sorry, sir,” he said.
“No, no need to apologize. I’m not sure what’s keeping me here -- but the base doesn’t seem to want to let us go, either.”
“Do you have any ideas?”
“Have the doors decided to cooperate with us yet?”
“The vines are twice as thick today on the door we came in from -- haven’t checked the hangar yet.”
She took another bite of the protein bar and chewed thoughtfully. Poe waited. It was no hardship to sit with her in a companionable silence; in fact, Poe sincerely wished this mission didn’t feel so dire, so he could enjoy the quiet. But he was privately starting to panic, just a little.
“There must be a reason this place won’t let us leave,” Leia said. “But I can’t figure out what Luke would’ve been looking for.”
“Maybe the temples wants a sacrifice.”
She laughed, and it made some of his anxiety ebb away. If she could still find humor in their situation, how bad could it be, really? He leaned into the thought. Reality was much less funny -- BB-8 needed a solar recharge soon, and they had a finite supply of fresh water and food; plants had kept sneaking up on him and brushing his ankles, his arms, sliding over his hair as he slept the night before.
“No,” Leia said. “I think it wants us to find something -- even if it doesn’t turn out to be ships.”
“I don’t know how much more of this place is safe to explore. These buildings aren’t exactly structurally sound.”
“It’s held up this long.”
“That’s what Ben used to say about the temples,” Poe said, reflexively, and winced. It had tumbled out of him -- everything about this place screamed nostalgia: the humidity, the crumbling stones, the way everything felt exciting and dangerous at the same time. It made him itch between his shoulders.
Leia didn’t flinch, exactly, but he could see the way her jaw clenched.
Poe swallowed. “I guess I haven’t been buried alive in rubble yet.”
She took the out gracefully. “Let’s hope your luck holds, Commander.”
“Yes, sir.”
--
The hangar doors were still covered in stems and vines and leaves when they arrived. There was a trellis of dead vines right up against the door, being subsumed every day by the newer growth. Efficient, if a little cannibalistic, Poe thought, but how different was it from their mission to steal what was left to build a new rebellion on top of it?
“Let me in!” he demanded, watching Leia’s eyes crinkle as she smiled. The vines were wholly uninterested in him today, the leaves fluttering in Leia’s direction, and small, soft tendrils growing out of the thick woody vines to brush against her fingers.
“You should use some of your negotiation tactics to get us in, sir.”
“I don’t think I can talk this plant into letting us in,” she said, but she batted her eyelashes at the door. “Please, won’t you let us in? We’re here on a mission for the Resistance, to save the galaxy.”
The leaves rustled like they were laughing. “They seem to know you’re talking to them, at least.”
Leia frowned, and then pushed both her hands into the thick, hardened tangle of vines. The vines moved under her palms, starting to wrap around her fingers, and she, for the first time in the mission, pushed against the pull. She closed her eyes and felt the thrum of power, the Force, and the way it ran through the plants like electricity through wires.
Poe could only guess at what was happening -- the General’s hands were entirely subsumed, and the plants over her fingers were beginning to glow. And then, slowly, those vines too began to pull away from the door, one by one by two by three until the vines moved as a mass, wriggling around her hands.
The door groaned, hinges grimy and unoiled, but it opened, pulling up and revealing the last secret the base had kept from them.
“Wow, sir.” Poe whistled and stepped through the door, Leia following.
The hangar was large, a corrugated platisteel cylinder sliced and propped against the temple’s stone exterior. Vines in bloom covered every wall, every ridge of metal, the ceiling, the frame of the door behind -- flowers were bursting open all around them. Bright reds and purples and yellows unfurled explosively, like broken glass scattering. There were blossoms everywhere, running along vines that were so old and so thick it seemed impossible for flowers to grow on them.
The most striking feature, however, was that the hangar was completely empty aside from plants.
Poe began to laugh. He couldn’t help it -- the laugh started and poured out of him without his control. It boomed loud under the high ceilings. Leia didn’t join him, but she did put her hand on his arm, either to comfort or ground him. It did neither, just made his heart ache. He stepped away from her and leaned against the temple wall, the flowers wild and popping around him.
“All of that for nothing.” Poe didn’t say, We’re going to die here, but he wondered.
“Poe,” she said. “Do you really not feel that?”
He readjusted the machete in his hand. “The humidity? Or the despair?”
“The Force.” It was loud, heavy like the humidity, a rushing in her ears. She felt wide-awake, and her fingertips tingled.
Poe closed his eyes and tried to take a deep, steadying breath -- he couldn’t feel anything except the anxiety he’d had since the first door shut behind them, the hum of the base’s generator and lights, the water in the air.
Then he felt something curl around his wrist.
“What do you think this plant wants, then? You said earlier it wasn’t a sacrifice.” He pulled his arm sharply, snapping the vine around it, but two more darted out from the wall to take its place. He felt it being pulled back to the wall, steady and firm. More began to dart out at his elbows, his other arm; one curled around his fingers. The green was vibrant against the olive skin of his arms.
“Commander!” Leia cried, reaching out with her mind to the vines. Could she get them to stop, she wondered. She could feel the pulsing energy in them as they pinned him down. She thought, Stop, as loudly as she could, and the leaves budding from the new shoots didn’t even tremble. It was as though the plants were too busy to pay attention to her, despite the thrum around her.
“Sorry, sir,” Poe said as a thin vine slid across his throat -- a single one, a warning. Poe’s machete thudded against the mossy floor as it fell from his hand, more and more tendrils curling into shoots around his wrists, his fingers, running up his forearm. He was held fast, his back flush with the stone wall of the temple. It was slightly angled, the very first step of the tall pyramid, forcing him to lean slightly, stretched and caught.
A tendril tugged on his hair and it made his skin crawl.
“Poe,” she said -- chided, almost. “Just don’t panic.”
Leia crouched and carefully, slowly took hold of the machete from the ground.
“What do I have to panic about, sir?” Poe asked. His head tilted back as a flower budded and bloomed under his chin, like a holo on fast forward. Pollen shot upwards, sparkling and bright yellow, like a sprinkle of gold.
“Really wish I hadn’t put BB-8 in standby mode this morning,” Poe said, and then he sneezed. And sneezed, and inhaled more. He could almost feel the grains dispersing in his lungs, a tingle, something -- he imagined the pollen running through his blood, all over.
“Okay, hold really, really still, Commander,” Leia whispered, more of a rasp. Poe just looked at her as she gripped the machete in both hands. She edged closer, thinking she might as well not draw attention to herself, and tried to slice through some vines wrapped around Poe’s left arm.
His limb was free for only an instant before vines shot out to recapture his hand, and more pulled the machete right from hers. Poe was once again pinned against the stone, and they both watched as tendrils spun around the blade and then tightened, the metal crumpling with a loud crunch.
“Well!” Leia snapped. That had been a bright flare of energy, but it still didn’t feel malicious -- there was no hatred in the way it crushed the weapon, just practicality.
“That is really terrifying!” Poe stammered, and then looked surprised, twitching in his bonds. “Did I say that out loud?”
His cheeks felt hot and limbs tingly -- like he’d hit the spice or had a few fingers of Corellian whiskey, which he only drank because it was Han Solo’s supposed favorite, and he was definitely saying that out loud too, because he heard Leia snort.
Leia chuckled despite herself. She could hear Amilyn saying, “You’ve got a type, Organa,” the way she had the first time she’d watched her and Poe hash it out on the bridge, and she was right.
She took a deep breath, feeling the thrum in the room press down on her in the inhale, expand on the exhale. It was a weighted blanket now, draped around her;, she just had to harness it. It felt like static at her fingers. “I’m gonna need some time to think up another plan, kid.”
He shook his head, hair curling at his forehead from sweat. “I think…I think the pollen is messing with me, and you should leave before you get close and the plants get you too!” Every thought in his head felt loud and necessary, things about the General he would never say to her face floating to the surface and threatening to push their way out of his mouth. The constriction of the vines felt like the only thing holding him up.
“You don’t need to worry about me right now, Commander,” she said, and the vines seemed to agree, slithering their way over his chest now. She stepped closer, wondering if she could make it stop.
“Don’t!” Poe bit his lip, and his face was flushed. “Don’t -- if anyone here is a sacrifice, it should be me. If you can get out, you need to forget about me.”
He was painfully earnest, and that was terrifying, for a moment, the blinding energy that emanated from him in waves. He was ready and almost eager for it.
“Dameron, no one here is going to be sacrificed.” She squinted around the room. The flowered vines were becoming more animated all around the empty hangar, not just where they surrounded Poe. But that temple wall was the brightest area, the most alive.
“I think there are runes in the wall behind you!”
“And you’re absolutely sure they don’t say the only way out is a blood ritual?” Poe’s chest was flutter of panic.
“My ancient Aurebesh is rusty -- give me a second!” She stepped closer again and he kicked out in protest, causing vines to curl around his ankles as well. The letters were old and their detail eroded away, but the message was clear -- to entwine.
“If you get hurt on this mission, I’ll never forgive myself,” Poe said, and then, “I think the pollen is making me pretty emotional over here.” He thrashed for a moment, trying to pull his arm free again.
“Emotional?” Leia asked. She slid a hand over the vines near him, then ran a finger over the three that ran over his chest. He shuddered as she brushed against him, twisting in the vines.
The vines didn’t curl around her, but they sang with the Force, running through each stem like blood through a vein. She wondered if they would move if she asked them, if they could pour it into her tired body and lift her up.
“Sir!” he said, cutting through the roar of power in her ears. “I need you to be safe.”
“The runes,” she said, watching another flower bloom near his shoulder, “say that there is a ritual, but it’s not a sacrifice.” Or she hoped it wouldn’t be.
“Is it safe? I don’t give a damn what it is if it helps you get out of here.”
It was too much. She cupped his face with her hand, leaned in, and there was the sparkling pollen, gleaming at his throat. There was a shove, the plants wailing in harmony, like this was it, and she inhaled deeply. Poe’s movements stilled.
The pollen felt warm in her nose, her lungs, her body -- the thrum felt so loud she was enveloped with it, the ache in her joints lifting, the tension in her neck fading. Her movements felt unburdened from age.
The Force was bright around her. She smiled at Poe and he smiled back, doe-eyed and worshipful. It scared her, but she wanted more, wanted to lean into that feeling he emitted. It wasn’t a new want.
The vines began to uncurl, slowly unwrapping her naval Commander.
“General,” he said softly, and she just took a step back.
“We must entwine ourselves to get free,” she said with a wry smile, but he nodded solemnly.
When the vines fully released, Poe landed on his knees with a wince, but he didn’t bother to get up. He shuffled forward instead, staring up with wide eyes. “I can do that. Please let me do that.”
Leia wondered if this was an old desire in Poe, too -- being a war hero wasn’t something she put much stock in, but it meant Poe had known her long before she’d ever known Poe. She found herself meeting him on the earth floor, watching him settle in between her legs. He trembled like a leaf.
“General, I want -- I’ve wanted,” he said, her small ankle in his hand already. The room was full of the crackle of anticipation; it was almost as though the flowers were leaning in around them, the room shrinking to just themselves and the dirt and the flora. The smell was sweet.
“There’s something so familiar about you,” Leia said, coaxing. She felt like the Force was making her glow like a sun, but when she looked at herself, she was just skin and bone.
He ran his hand up her bare leg, under her long skirt. His skin was rough against hers, the calluses of engine work and long flights moving to her thighs, bunching up the fabric. His clever fingers made quick work of her clothes, bunching her skirt around her waist. He kissed a thigh, soft and reverent; kissed her hand when she reached for him.
This was the part of Poe that didn’t remind her of anyone. Amilyn teased her about cocky and difficult and beautiful flyboys, and she did love all those things -- especially loved Han, who was difficult especially to love. She loved him enough to watch him fly away; he loved her enough to come home.
The way Poe’s mouth moved against her skin wasn’t the quick heat of Han, but a prayer, his lips and fingers getting closer and closer. Poe nipped then soothed, and she felt hotter herself, felt the way the Force throbbed with her own arousal, the way even now she could feel the brilliance around her and in her. Here, here, here, it seemed to pulse, This is where you’re meant to be.
Finally, after bites and soft bruises and delicate fingers, Poe licked a hot, wet stripe up her center, his mouth slick against her folds, his tongue firm as it traced her lips. He teased her entrance, his tongue blunt but steady as it then found her clit, curling around it. The Force was red now, a heartbeat, the blood flooding to each spot Poe licked and sucked.
His fingers pressed around her clit, arousing those deep buried roots and making her moan, the pleasure brighter and brighter as he sucked her clit directly. His other hand dug into her thigh, a grounding sensation amid the lights, the building crescendo of pleasure burning inside her.
Leia heard him groan against her, and she couldn’t help it; she buried a hand in his hair and pushed, grinding against his nose as his tongue thrust inside her. Each buck of her hips was a starburst, and when she tugged at his hair, she could feel the reflected pleasure from him as well. It wasn’t quite a feedback loop, but he seemed ecstatic with his work. Ripples of his pleasure at pleasing her lapped at her mind.
She only felt the vines rustle through the Force, her own eyes squeezed shut in delight. She fell back, her legs splayed open and her sex blooming like a flower under Poe’s mouth as he ate her like a koyo fruit from Yavin’s rainforest, messy and wet and eager, rapacious with desire.
Leia let herself grow, expand under the ministrations of his tongue and his rough mechanic’s hands, one now gripping her hip, short nails blunt against her skin. When she breathed, she could feel the pleasure roiling from her into the air, whipping down the ropey vines into their broad green leaves.
It was a long stretch of pleasure, her nipples tight and her heart pounding and her entire sex swollen with the way Poe crooked his fingers inside her, the way his tongue was firm against her clit, the way he held his breath until his vision swam. There was nothing but yes, yes, yes broadcasting from him, more, more, more, and that was how she felt when her thighs tightened around his head, grinding, using, and his met her in kind, pressing harder, the whole of her in the wet heat of his mouth, tongue no longer teasing.
The pleasure glowed in her chest, down her gut, and burst out of her, out of her fingertips and her own mouth, shouting. She could feel her pleasure, her power, traveling through the vines and rupturing out of them as buds, flowers exploding by the hundreds around them, petals and pollen and all.
Poe lapped at her gently until she pushed him away, and he shifted, sitting back and looking at her. His face was covered in her, his hair standing up because of her fists. He smiled at her, devoted and happy to be.
“If I had to die after that, it would be worth it,” Poe said with unnerving sincerity, and she kissed his mouth, wet with the taste of herself. He melted, responsive to each scrape of tooth and press of tongue, letting her push him to the ground until she could mount him, the afterglow dissolving into another rising tide of need, another crest, another wave. The flowers around them bloomed and bloomed and bloomed.
--
The next morning, Poe awoke first. He managed to slip out from under Leia’s arm, noticing that they were both lying in a weak sunbeam. The vines that had plugged up the windows appeared to have retreated.
He stretched, knees aching, jaw sore, body sated and languid anyway. He pulled on his flight suit, unsure where his tank and shorts had been thrown the night before, and was shocked to see that the vines hadn’t re-barricaded the door. In fact, they’d also pulled away from an enormous section of the temple wall, revealing a large hole in the stone. It had been hidden, totally imperceivable behind the thatched vines that had sealed it closed.
The hole was conspicuously large -- and as Poe stepped through it, he realized why. It was big enough to fit an X-Wing. Six X-Wings, if they entered one at a time.
--
As he returned with an armful of vines and a few bottles of water, she stirred and started to finish unraveling her braids, half unplaited from their vigorous work.
“Let me do that,” Poe said, his hand over hers. He settled in behind her in their blanket nest -- requisitioned from the barracks -- and began to gently brush her hair with his fingers.
“This is longer than I thought,” he said, and she almost couldn’t reply. His touches were soft, but they brought back the thrill of the night before -- the way she felt shocked by so many things, the way the Force had plunged into her body. They way his touch felt like static even now.
“Not a lot of time to get a haircut during the war.” Leia wished she didn’t sound quite so gruff, and that she could see Poe’s face.
She felt him begin to plait her hair, his hands brushing her shoulders and neck. She could feel the concentration in him, rippling in the Force as he carefully wove flowers into her hair.
It was peaceful, the opposite of the frenetic pace of earlier. It was a stillness that felt like home.
“You’ll never guess what I found this morning,” Poe said, and she could hear the smile in his voice.