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It takes three or four tries for Poe Dameron to get his eyes open.
The effort required is astronomical, but his eyelids open just fractionally wider each time. Some sort of dust or sediment has settled in a thick layer on top of his eyelashes, and he eventually clenches his eyes shut again, trying in vain to blink the added irritation away. Both sides feel abraded and raw, thanks to his attempt, his vision a wash of white haze.
Force, I must have drunk an entire cantina’s worth of whiskey, he concludes: his head aches; his hair feels greasy and matted; his fingers, when he tries to move them, feel clammy and sticky. Globules of sweat trickle over puffy cheeks. His mouth, ears, and nose feel like they could be added to a scrapheap of second-rate, obsolete parts.
Was I asleep? Passed out? While Poe would not consider himself a morning person, he certainly isn’t used to this much trouble waking up. Nor does this seem like his bed. Something is digging into his legs, pushing them upward so he’s in an awkward half-lying, half-seated position. Don’t anybody look at me right now. I must be a mess.
Gradually, from somewhere in the distance, muffled and dull like a flute buried under a mountain of pillows, comes what Poe can only assume is music. High voices are serenading him in jumbled nonsense, which is pleasant for a while, but the more he listens the more it begins to sound like an argument rather than a melody. But who is he to judge offworld artistic tastes? He’s heard worse.
“Unresponsive, Genera…dispatching resc…alpha one…”
Lulled by the noises, Poe considers going back to sleep. Above him, there is a silvery, circular light that seems large and imposing against a sea of black. Nothing that in any way resembles a roof, but it still seems to be encouraging him back towards slumber. Surely it couldn’t hurt to take another nap. Like sinking gently into a comfortable heap of nerf-wool, he lets his body relax.
Just…just a minute or two is all he needs…
“Poe!” A harsh scream suddenly breaks through the fog in his mind, and Poe jolts, causing a shockwave of pain to shoot through his skull. He grits his teeth against a yelp. Amidst the aching, Poe does believe that he recognizes that voice in particular. Not music after all, then. A second yell, and another woman’s voice comes back again, speaking too quickly for him to follow.
Wait. Finn, that’s the name. That’s the name of the voice. Bring it back. Bring the nice voice back.
Trying to form a response, Poe opens his mouth. Sadly, it feels like trying to speak around a mouthful of insulfoam, as if his lips and tongue don’t quite remember how to work together. After a few more attempts, he manages to form the “Fi-” sound, and even that feels as futile as yelling into space itself. It’s barely more than a whisper.
The quarrelsome voices keep going. Not only is Poe unable to follow the words, but he doesn’t know if they’re even talking to him at all anymore.
“Taaalk…talk Finn,” he struggles to say again, in an effort to get someone’s attention. “Who…who ‘re you?” The sound is stretched, like in a slow-motion holovid.
Poe would have thought the hollering in his ears couldn’t get worse, and yet it does. Why are people shouting at him? What’s the problem?
“-look I got this, just tell me what to say. He’ll talk to me, just tell me what to say.” Poe sighs. Perplexing as all of this may be, he doesn’t have the energy to clarify what’s going on. “No I won’t leave the rescue ship, get off me-”
Ignoring them, not really interested in listening anymore if they’re unable or unwilling to hear him, Poe instead tries to stretch his stiff arms out to touch the transparisteel above him.
Transparisteel…
Oh, oh. He’s in his cockpit. So that must be the moon up there above him, the stars. Evening. For some reason, he can’t see the horizon like he usually can in an X-wing, but he discards this as random information. What’s more important is that there’s a large, jagged crack splitting the canopy in half through the centre. The top half of it, the part that is supposed to be above Poe’s head, seems to be missing entirely. How had this problem not been fixed in maintenance? Surely it’s a recipe for disaster.
Something’s not right. It’s not like him to fall asleep when there are repairs to be completed. Also, squinting more closely, he can see patches of red paint speckling what’s left of the canopy, and there’s no way he would have missed that. In fact, Poe is going to murder whoever did that to his beloved ship.
Blinking his scratchy eyes again, Poe tries to adjust his position in the pilot’s seat, hoping to push his body up. This angle is all wrong, as if the cockpit is twice as big as usual. Still, he appears to be trapped somehow.
Oh! That’s right. Seatbelts. That’s why his arms haven’t been moving.
Unfortunately, getting a hand to the release buckle is no small feat. Once, on a two-day mission to Dantooine, Poe had accidentally brushed against a vincha tubercle and had been a floppy-limbed mess for hours, delaying the whole operation. Snap and Jessika had laughed at him, their commanding officer grounded by a tiny, insignificant plant.
This feels like that.
“Dameron, will you please respond. Dameron, respond please.” Shh, he now wants to say to the once-again feminine voice, I’m thinking.
Grunting, Poe concentrates every ounce of his effort into getting his left fingers up high enough to touch the buckle around his stomach. Fortunately, he doesn’t have to push it very hard for it to activate, but unfortunately the belts don’t want to retract all the way. The left side makes an agonizing, horrible screech that feels like someone scraping a knife over his eardrums. The right side of the belt doesn’t go up at all, and droops loosely around his midsection. That could be why his right hand doesn’t seem to want to react.
Did he not press the button correctly? Poe lifts his left hand again as high as he possibly can, barely able to see the fingers. Much of his glove appears to be missing as well, almost torn off. Tiny particles of dust, and small bits of wet snow, drift in front of the leftover black material. When Poe moves his eyes back up, a particularly large snowflake comes falling towards his face, and he jerks slightly in surprise as it hits his cheek.
The canopy is gone? When did – oh. It’s…cracked, that’s right. He knew that.
“Give me the…give it to me! What do I press to talk? Poe! Can you hear me? Poe?”
…Finn?
“Bu…ddy?” he tries to say, but Poe still can’t seem to get enough air to talk. Nothing is on top of him or holding him down, and yet he can only manage stilted, shallow breaths. It feels like there’s a Hutt sitting on his chest. “Issat you?”
“Yeah! Yeah, it’s me!” The voice sounds way too excited about this fact. Not quite a voice for sore ears, as it were, but he’s delighted to hear it nonetheless. “I told you he was one hell of a pilot, I told you!”
“Where,” Poe makes a futile effort to turn his head to look around, “where mm I?” Now he’s even more confused. Only the flight team and the base commander should be talking on the main channel when Poe is in the cockpit. When did Finn join the ranks? “What’re you doin’…fly’n on…on team?”
“I’m not, I-” A pause, and the annoying background conversations begin again. “I’m a pilot! Yeah, that’s right. I’m a pilot, just like you. Impressive, I know.” Another pause, and his friend lowers his voice to a deeper register. “That makes you feel safe and calm, right? Because it’s really important that you stay calm.”
Huh. His Finn, the sanitation stormtrooper, a pilot? When did that happen? But, you know, when he considers it it makes so much sense. Finn is so eager, so clever. Finn can do anything. Come to think of it, Poe has flown with Finn before, hasn’t he? There were…a lot of flashing lights, something about blasters, ion cannons. Yes, that’s right; Finn is a very good shooter, very skilled. This does indeed make Poe feel safe.
I knew it, pal. I knew you had it in you. So proud of you. Poe strains to say all of these things, but the only thing to come out in reply is a garbled mess. So he tries to think it at Finn instead. Visions of romantic tandem flights into the sunset fill his cheeks with warmth. Kid probably looks damned good in a flight suit. Better than the buckethead armour, that’s for sure. Maybe even better than he looked in Poe’s jacket.
“Are you okay? No, don’t answer that. We’re coming for you, Poe. Already on our way. You, you won’t even be able to blink and we’ll already be there, it’ll be so fast. Because I’m a top pilot now. Star pilot, best in the Resistance,” Finn emphasizes.
“Wha-?” Doesn’t someone else already hold that title? Poe’s dry mouth begins to taste coppery now as he speaks. “What?”
“I said we’re coming for you. All you have to do is hang on. Can you do that, for me?”
“Hang…where?” Another whispered voice, a man’s this time, halts Finn’s reply. Now, if Poe were less irritated, he might not be so jealous about that. But he is. “Who’s tha…?” he begins to say, but he is interrupted by unexpectedly noticing some spectacularly crossed wires that stick out of the right side of the broken canopy. Hadn’t he fixed some wiring just a few days ago? Moreover, above that, he can see what looks to be part of one of the S-foils. Something is off with the dimensions and placement of all these parts. He shouldn’t be able to see that from here. Whoever worked on his ship has some serious explaining to do.
Taking a stab at looking further upward, Poe only manages a tiny movement of his head. His helmet isn’t fitting correctly, feeling wobbly in places instead of snug. And didn’t he use to have a visor?
“-says you need to keep breathing. In and out. Good. Good job, just like that.” Finn sounds like a teacher, Poe thinks. Finn would be fantastic around younglings. Imagining this makes Poe smile, though he doesn’t know why. “Listen, we’re trying to make sure the data coming in from your flight suit is accurate. Can you feel anything? Don’t move, just tell me if you can feel your fingers.”
Already forgetting the command to stay still, Poe shakes his head in a negative. Dizziness. Pain. Nausea. Someone is in his head; Kylo Ren is pulling at parts of his brain, little tendrils tunnelling into memories with sharp, shredding hooks. But the sting soon dulls down, leaving just a constant throb in its wake. His right shoulder is itching like crazy as well.
“Poe?”
“Nnn…?”
“How about your toes? Can you feel your toes?”
“Not real…ly.”
“Data seems accurate, yeah. ”
“Why…I can’…can’t move?” Poe asks. His voice is still slurred. Man, alcohol is killer – literally. He feels like he’s dying.
“Because,” Finn begins, sounding uncertain, “you just stopped to relax. Stopped for lunch. Yeah, that’s it.”
Then why is he so thirsty? His throat’s as dry as if he’s been inhaling from an old tabac pipe. And why does he feel so drunk? Why is his brain sloppy?
Water, Poe thinks. That’s the usual cure for all of these problems. “Wat’r. Can…can you bring? Can you…bring me?”
“Yeah, we’re going to bring you water, Poe. Really soon. Lots of water. A sea of water.”
Poe frowns. “No.” On most planets he’s visited the seawater has been salty. That won’t do. “…Sssalt.” An obvious point, but Finn laughs at it for some reason.
“All right, good point. Not from the sea. It’s going to taste nice and fresh and cold.” This sounds very, very agreeable. “You’re going to love it. Best water in the galaxy. A hundred credits worth of wat-”
…
“-eep on listening to me, okay? Can you tell me what you can see?” Poe moves his eyes around.
“Where am…I?” Poe asks. Faintly, he can hear the distant sound of animals, and winter insects starting their night calls. He’s starting to feel cold. Is he in bed? No, that…can’t be right. He’s in a cockpit? How did he get in a cockpit? He thought he was on the…he thought he was…
“Okay you should have a, a, a life support box! On your chest.” Poe tries to look down, but it seems to make him unpleasantly disoriented. The eerie feeling of something slimy dripping down his forehead occurs before something red enters his eyes. When he tries to blink it out, it gets worse. He makes an exasperated noise to express his displeasure; he doesn’t like this at all. Maybe he should close his eyes again completely. That would be nice. Just close them and take a big, long nap.
“No no no, Poe, hey! Hey! Ears on me!” Don’t shout at me, Poe thinks, as he tries to get up with more than just his head. This time, the movement causes his vision to go white, and he cries out. “Don’t move your head! Keep it still. Just try to move your hands as best you ca – look, I’m not giving the channel back to you, you’re stressing him out, I told you to tell me what to say – Poe, get the – the what? – get the dermal regenerator. There should be a dermal regenerator in your life support box.”
Life support box. That’s on his chest, if he remembers accurately. With what must be sheer muscle memory he attempts to reach for it with his right hand, before finding out that his right hand won’t move at all. Ah, yes, he’d tried that before – forgot that it didn’t work. His left hand is a different story, but it’s a gruelling process. Eventually he does manage to bend his left arm at the elbow enough to reach the container on his chest.
Agh, his head hurts.
“Dermal regenerator, Poe. It’s a small tube, you can take it out of the side, press the button.”
Feeling accomplished, Poe does manage to find the button that ejects the tube into his hand, but it’s as if some sort of connection to his brain has been severed, because he can’t make his hand squeeze around it, the pads of his shaking fingers entirely white and without feeling. He can only watch, heart sinking, as the tool slides between his thumb and index finger and clatters between other instruments in the small space between the pilot seat and the main body of the X-wing.
No. There’s a sinking feeling like he’s just sealed his own fate somehow. His heart plummets. He doesn’t know why he feels that way. He can’t lean to the side to find the tool. He can't do anything.
“Poe? Poe?”
“…”
“It’s okay,” Finn reassures. “Can you not reach it? It’s okay if you can’t reach it.” Good old Finn. He thinks Poe couldn’t reach it, not that Poe failed miserably. Always thinking the best of everyone. “That’s fine. What about your medpac? Can you find the medpac?”
“Why?” Is Finn a nurse? He doesn’t remember Finn getting medic training. But he decides that it does make sense, because Finn is so eager, so clever. Finn can do anything.
But…no. Isn’t Finn a pilot?
“What?! Why are you asking why now, man, what happened to trust? - I am calm, leave me alone! ” Momentary silence. “Just because, okay? Just try to get it. Medpac.”
Medpac. Poe knows where that is, in theory. But his hand can barely touch the edge of the control panel. It’s just out of reach.
“Nnno,” Poe replies, weary. Finn seems upset by this, as he hears him groan over the channel. What’s the big deal?
“‘No you can’t reach it?’ or ‘no, Finn, I don’t want to listen to you?’ Because if it’s the second one, you need to know that the medisensor can tell us what to-”
…
“-getting readings from the...Black One, but they’re all over the place.” Black One? Isn’t that his starfighter? Poe tries to ponder it but the fog in his brain is constantly settling over each new thought. If this is Black One, why is his body at such an awkward angle? Why can he see the S-foils? “Sensors…damaged…surprised he’s talking but we’re going to try to keep him that way. The boy, Finn, he’s talking…minutes ma’am.”
A sudden ‘pop’ comes from the panel in front of him, followed by a loud, trailing tone that sounds like the tail end of binary produced by a droid with a nearly drained power cell. A thin trail of smoke emerges and the tone repeats again. Making a whirring sound, the sides of the panel then illuminate in bright, red light trails. The computers are trying to turn on, and they’re signalling that there’s some kind of malfunction in the…actuator? But that can’t be correct – he wouldn’t be able to maintain altitude, and no astromech would allow takeoff in that condition.
“BB…8,” Poe suddenly remembers. His astromech droid is called BB-8. “BB,” he tries to say again, but his slurred speech must cause his voice to not register, because there’s no whistle of reply. “BB…ssshut the noise off, I…have t’ fix…fix it-”
“Focus!” he hears. He’d nearly forgotten Finn was there. “Come on, focus on me.”
That’s funny, Poe smiles faintly. He’s always focused on Finn. Too much so. “Mmm,” Poe agrees out loud, a chuckle building in his throat. But it soon morphs into a wheezing cough, which brings back an intense ache to every part of his body that moves. Gradually the pain dies down to a tingling again, as if sewing pins are dancing around on his skin.
“All right. There’s something wrong with your helmet, so you can’t…” Poe again loses the rest of what is said, the words moving out of his grasp like a toy dangling up and down in front of a reekcat. “But you can access…there’s…emergency oxygen in the valve to your, uh, left. To your left.”
Which way is that? Left? It must one of two sides; he just can’t remember which one. That’s troubling, but…he’s tired, that’s all. This is temporary. “Left…?” The control panel buttons are starting to blur again.
“Uh, uh, just let me check the – got it, okay see the red button? Should be a big red square thing in front of you, size of your hand almost. What is the proper nam- how am I supposed to know the proper name? It’s not on the diagram!” Something like that seems familiar, but there’s nothing but metal on the left side of the craft. The only red he sees is the red trickle that runs down his hand as he stretches it out towards where the button should, in theory, be.
Oh well. Who needs buttons anyway? “No,” Poe says, but then he thinks of adding that he’s “Spill…ing…red stuf’ on my…ssseat. You help…me clean?” Poe can only hope that the words come out in the proper order. Putting together a sentence now is like trying to piece together a complex puzzle. Black One will be ruined with all this mess.
“Anytime, man. I’ll help you clean,” Finn says, fondly. “But only because I like you.”
“Like ‘ou too,” Poe replies. The noise in the background dies down a little. “Real...like.”
“Yeah? Can you uh, elaborate on that, a little?” But Poe has already lost his train of thought.
“M’tired.”
“I know, but you’ve got to hang on a little longer,” Finn says. “Tell me more about how you like me.” Poe doesn’t respond, concerned by how his body feels increasingly funny. Not in the good way, the motivated and childishly energized way he feels when Finn is in his vicinity, but the bad way, like a sedative is slowly seeping into every limb and he can’t turn off the drip. Anesthetised. “Or not. That’s fine. New topic. Uh, uh I’m supposed to ask you current events, because it’ll tell us how your brain is functioning. Ha ha, I told them it’s never functioning. Get it?” Finn sounds nervous, even though he’s laughing. Strange. “Who…who is the leader of the Resistance?”
The Resistance? “Gen’rl…” General something or other.
“What did you eat for your last meal?” Nope. “And when was it?” He doesn’t know.
“Who won the last game of Galactic Expansion? You, Me, Jessika or Temmin?” What does that even mean? He can’t answer any of the questions anyway, and now poor Finn sounds even more panicked and anxious. Too much stress isn’t good for pilots.
The lady agrees with him. “Heart rate and respiration increasing.” Yes, see? Finn should relax.
“Ssssh,” Poe says.
“Okay, I get it, those questions were boring, we can talk about something else - Just STOP!” The voice is muffled as if Finn has turned away from him momentarily. “Stop talking to me! Stop it! Not you, Poe, you’re fine.”
“Nnn…Fff-”
“Keep listening and talking, you’re doing really good,” Finn continues. “Let’s see, uh, how about you tell me a story, huh? Rey said you told me all kinds of stories when I was in the medbay, but I don’t remember any of them. So tell me again.”
Poe grunts a negative.
“Come on, I want to know about, uh, your home! Yeah! What does your house look like?” He’d love to take Finn to his parents’ ranch in the colony; he imagines watching his friend’s face fill with awe at everything Poe takes for granted. He thinks about whisper birds swooping in to steal Finn’s food right out of his hands, Finn chasing after them. “I’ve always wanted to see inside of a house.” Finn squeezing in with him in his old bed, even though it’s too small for the two of them. Nestling Finn up against the big tree - there was always something different about that tree, as if the air around it was alive somehow, and it would be the perfect spot. The perfect spot for a first kiss.
“No? Nothing? Your family, then?” Finn inquires. Sunlight is hitting Poe’s face through the window as mama’s ship disappears over the mountains, grandfather lifting him up to get the very last glimpse, as if he could fly after her. “I never knew my parents; they take us away from them. What about yours?” Sitting in the old A-wing as mama holds him close and lets him flip the switches all by himself. His father lamenting over his son’s never-ending obsession with being airborne, as Poe runs around with a wood-carved starfighter, up and down the halls, all over the furniture. That little starfighter toy had flown everywhere when he was young, through water and mud puddles and swamps and trees. Poe remembers that he broke one of its wings once during a particularly enthusiastic imaginary dogfight, the S-foils on one side, and only one side, had opened, which definitely wasn’t supposed to happen, and he could feel the abnormal level of heat from the other inoperative engine, BB-8, the circuitry’s damaged, we’re not going to be able to ditch in the water, it’s either the trees or straight into the hillside, before it hit…hit…the wall?
“Give me something,” Finn pleads.
Poe can hear his own breathing echoing in the cockpit. Each breath makes pools of swirling clouds appear in front of his eyes. Cold. Everything is cold.
“Pulse elevated, blood pressure dropping…Yes ma’am, still responsive, just barely.” Ma’am? Who is ma’am? General…General Organa? Wait, General Organa had sent him…sent him to a star cruiser, and…and he was coming back…
“Tell me anything!” Finn asks, urgently.
Poe’s frown deepens. I broke my favourite ship. I broke my ship.
Wait, what?
And abruptly the puzzle pieces snap together just right.
There had been a malfunction.
He can recall it now, in flashes, the images clearer, sharper. A tiny explosion in the reactant injector, just minutes after re-entry, had caused one of the engines to fail, caused damage to the S-foil actuator that had caused the starboard side to open and banked them sharply to the left. He couldn’t maintain altitude. They’d fallen, fallen until the hilly landscape was swimming past, until they were skimming along the green trees, knocking off their crowns of white, BB-8 trying desperately to restart the engine, Poe doing everything he could think of to keep the fighter in the air. “Emergency comms, BB-8. Mayday!” his own voice, “Mayday! This is Black One, we’ve lost control-” BB-8’s buzzing wail of alarm. “-I don’t have a safe window to eject, BB, we’re too fast. Get as good a pitch as you can. Hang on, buddy!”
Then, like a distant nightmare, the jarring, deafening moment of impact as the ground came up to meet them.
So he’s here because…and the cockpit is cracked because…
“What’s going on, man? Stop doing whatever it is that you’re doing. G-go back to how you were before.”
…because he’s in the wreckage of his own X-wing.
He’s still alive.
“Poe, calm down! ” comes the yell over the channel.
He’s still alive. Force, he’s still alive.
But the seatbelt is unbuckled and he’s still trapped. Why?
Raising his head up as far as he can, fighting against the unbearable agony, kriff how did he not feel this before, he looks down to the rest of his body. His right knee is sticking out to the side at an inhuman angle. Below the panel, where the pitch and roll control pedals are supposed to be, is just a sea of crumpled metal. So the rest of his leg must be stuck beneath it. No, not stuck. Crushed. He screams in pain as he tries to see if he can dislodge the limb anyway, before he can’t bear to look at it anymore.
His stomach heaves. I think I’m going to throw up.
“Poe!”
He tries to sit up again, but his upper half is still pinned as well, on the right side. With the cracked helmet blocking his peripheral vision significantly, he has to crane his head far to the right. It feels like torture. Worse. But nothing could be as horrible as the sight of what is actually there, disappearing into his upper shoulder.
Poe actually lets out a broken shriek of shock and abject terror. It’s a pipe. A piece of the laser cannon…no, it’s a hydraulic line from the left side of the X-wing. Because they’d landed on the left side, and they had rolled, and it must have broken through the canopy. That’s why he couldn’t raise his arm. That’s why the seatbelt didn’t retract. He’s impaled.
Shaking, he averts his eyes, hyperventilating in weak, quivering breaths. Up on the canopy, that’s not paint; it’s his blood. His blood. Everywhere.
He has to get out.
“Poe, stay still!” Rapid beeps can be heard over the channel. “It’s going to be fine!” Finn shouts, authoritatively. “Listen to me! – It’s fine, he’s just confused! – Help is coming. We’re coming for you!”
But Finn’s not a pilot, Poe realizes, his faith taking a rapid nose-dive. Finn’s not a pilot. Finn’s not coming for him. Finn was just saying that so Poe wouldn’t panic.
He feels almost betrayed. Is anyone truly coming, or had they just not wanted him to feel alone?
And now he can smell it, too: the blood, the burnt fabric, the superheated metal. An ammonia smell from his flight suit – it’s supposed to be insulated but his legs are damp and already cool. Urine, he realizes with shame.
Sooner or later, he knew this would happen to him. As a Resistance fighter he was just counting down the days, that’s what his father had said. But he always thought he’d go out with respect, for his cause, smashing into an Imperial base perhaps, a sacrificial blaze of glory that would bolster everyone’s morale. Not like this. Not vanishing in the middle of nowhere, as insignificant as a small match being snuffed out.
Not only that, but it’s also entirely his fault.
Poe was supposed to have performed maintenance on the reactant injector days before, due to some strange readings. A minor check, so routine that he didn’t even normally bother logging it in. But Blue Squadron had been called on an emergency mission at the last minute, and when they’d returned he’d celebrated with the rest of his team, completely forgetting to check it. So in the end, Black One hadn’t been hit by debris. It hadn’t fallen victim to a design flaw or caught a stray blast in battle. This happened because of his sheer stupidity. At the end of everything, the only thing he has to his name, his reputation, is ruined. It’s his fault.
So much for the Resistance’s star pilot. Maybe Finn deserves that title more than he does after all. Please leave this off the record, General.
I’m so sorry.
“Poe!”
Pressure, extreme pressure. The throbbing in his shoulder around the pole is worsening. Deep, so deep, excruciating. Poe knows what that means, scientifically. He has been lying here for so long that the adrenaline is wearing off. “No,” he says in disbelief. This is claustrophobic. He needs to get out. He can’t go out like this. “N-no.” He screams against the torment as he once more struggles in vain to lift the pinned shoulder.
Don’t panic. That’s the number one rule in these situations. But how is that possible when the distress beacon, respirator, and microfiber are all in the crash kit, with the medpac? Chances are the rescue team don’t even know where he is. The exit release handle isn’t even visible. Though he can’t smell smoke, if anything is on fire he could burn to death. Even if they got to him in time, he could be paralysed; he might never fly again. There's literally nothing he can do.
“-stening to me? Stay calm, please Poe! You have to, for me. Please.” This whole time, they’d been talking him through the end of his life, because they knew it was too late. Finn why did you do this to me? Why didn’t you give me time to say what I wanted to say?
“I’m going to die,” Poe calls out, the first full sentence he’s managed since awakening. Look at him now. This isn’t facing his end with dignity. This isn’t brave. He’s terrified. “Going to…die, F’nn.” Without even the satisfaction of saying goodbye to the many people he won’t ever see again. Jess, Snap, the General, “BB,” oh Force, who’s going to take care of BB-8? She should be with Rey; she deserves better than to be handed to some random person in need of an astromech. And if she’s been destroyed in the crash they probably won’t bother to rebuild her. Everything about her gone, because of him.
“-is thrown and a bit dented, but fine. Nothing that can’t be fixed. We’re still getting your location data transmitted. BB-8’s okay, everything’s going to be fine!”
No. No it’s not. And especially not when it comes to Finn. So much time wasted, trying to keep his heart in his chest and not on his sleeve, giving Finn space to figure out who he is outside of the First Order, giving him the chance to decide if Poe Kriffing Dameron is even worth his attention. And Poe had never even told him.
Wheezing breaths are coming out of his throat, forcing their way out despite the fist that is squeezing his heart tighter and tighter. Another sound, like a wounded animal, but it’s actually coming from him.
Finn. Finn.
“I’m here. You’re going to come back home, you hear me? Poe. Poe, listen to me,” Finn says, moving closer to his ear, his voice on the channel more intimate. “We’re so close, I promise. So close. I love you.” He’s almost certain that the last part isn’t said at all. So perfectly Finn, so awkwardly said but so sincere. Poe’s so desperate that he has to imagine his own happy ending. Pitiful.
And he cries.
No tears are coming from his eyes, his body heaving against the debris in dry, stilted spasms. He knows what this means, no tears; there’s no water left for his body to use. The shattered bone in his shoulder grinds against the hydraulic line with every movement. All he can do is shudder in silence, an unimaginable suffering, until he uses up almost everything he has left.
“I know you don’t think I know what that means, but I do. And I know you like me too, but I was just...I didn’t know how to say it before, but now I said it, okay? I said it,” Finn declares. “Are you going to say it back? Don’t be rude.”
Poe huffs. Just saying that because I’m dying, Poe tries to say, when he should have said I love you too, because now he doesn’t even know what his last words are, if they come out in distorted, unintelligible syllables, or if anything even comes out of his mouth at all.
“That’s not true,” Finn says angrily. Something clatters in the background over the channel. “I want to punch you and kiss you right now. Why do you have to be stubborn? Will you just believe me? That’s what trust is, right? Right?” Poe’s breathing subsides further, everything slowing down. A punch, not so much, but the feel of Finn’s lips against his – that’s a nice thing to think about in the end when his mouth doesn’t move anymore. Somehow it makes him feel warm although he’s very, very cold. Finn’s lips would be soft, like his skin. The kiss would be gentle and uncertain and enthusiastic and unaffected all at the same time, just like Finn himself.
“You’re going to be my boyfriend.” Incredibly, Finn sounds relaxed and centered, certain for the first time during this whole event. Serene, like Rey. Then, and Poe would swear it was barely audible, too quiet for anyone else but himself to hear, “You’re not going to save me from the First Order just to die on me in a stupid crash. Okay?” Poe was the one saved, not Finn. “Not again.”
The words no longer make sense.
“Can you not see I’m busy confessing something over here? I don’t care where we are – oh oh I see it I see it!"
"Stay with us, Dameron.”
And then, no pain at all. Finally, mercifully, he’s drifting. “Flying, darling, you’re flying,” mama says, beaming down at him with pride. He doesn’t feel anything anymore. Doesn’t hear the crunching noises, the harsh, grinding groans, squeaks and bangs. But he does see him.
They say that the angels of Iego often appear at the moment of death, shining pale white and beautiful, but instead Finn is here, dark skin gleaming and haloed by the moon, the light reflecting off of the snow around his face, his palms moving, pushing against the canopy, leaving foggy fingerprint auras in their wake. And there’s nothing more beautiful than that.
I’ll miss you.
Everything is busy again now, and something is being put into his arm, Finn disappears. Then, oh, Symoxin, he knows the sudden heavy feeling as the drug spreads from the injection site to his brain, making it feel like it’s solidifying into rock. Ooh, it’s nice. Real, real nice. Lights are shining in his sore eyes – that’s what people see before they die too, isn’t it? Lights and angels.
“Can you handle anticeptin-d?”
“Stormtrooper, remember? I can handle it.”
“You, bloodpacks, get ‘em in now. You, imobilin, don’t let him move against that kriffing pole…Flexclamps in place before you two separate that front panel – watch those levels, we’re going to do a slow pressure release. Keep his heart going.”
Nonsense, it means nothing to him. Where is Finn? Where is Finn?
Come back, he begs with his eyes. Come back.
Another hand is behind his head, holding it still as yet another slides the helmet off, something is shoved into his mouth...but it’s like it’s happening to someone else, because through chaos he only has eyes for Finn. He just…he just wants to look at his face a few more seconds.
Then, mercifully, the angel returns, its hand reaching over the left side of the hull, Poe giving his last effort to simply nudge one finger up to meet it. In his mind, he thinks he even hears a faint, droid-like whistle.
His friends are here. Finn is here. Of course he is, at the end. Poe tries to smile. Now he can finally take that nap.
“It’s going to be okay. Everything’s going to be okay.”
Poe agrees, and closes his eyes.