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You’d heard this story before. Of the boy who had flown too close to the sun. How he got too overzealous; Giddy off the phenomenon of flying. And how the person who loved him most freaky felt responsible.
Losing count of how many times you’d warned him, you caved, foolish enough to believe he had gotten the message loud and clear. But it still kept you up at night. That memory of-
TIE fighters against X-wings. The former no match for the pure speed and graceful agility their rival offered to their pilot. That hum of the engine and shrill shriek of the shots they were firing your way. The comms in your ear crackling slightly with the voice of your fellow commander, Poe Dameron; The closest person to family you had these days. Your squadrons were working side by side and so far things were going well. Too well.
“You think if we get out of this one I’ll finally be able to take you for a drink without the fear of rejection?” You could feel the smirk on his lips. How it caused a slight alter to his words. One that was too hard to describe over the poor quality of the radio. It popped again,
“You know we can hear you. Keep the flirting out of the skies.” Snap protested, grimacing as he swerved another shot from the enemy, falling back into formations. You checked your fuel gauge, chuckling. You were okay enough to last a while longer. But you still had your team to think about.
“You all good out there, guys?” You asked, rolling in a triple barrel to avoid another series of shooting, firing a round yourself, taking out an enemy pilot and watching as it fell from the air in an almighty explosion. Remnants of the craft were now flailing helplessly with it down towards the body of ocean below. And a cloud of satisfying smoke billowed out behind it. Replies came from your squadron, all of assurance that they were okay.
“Ignoring me, Commander? How cold.”
“I’m just doing my job.” You tried to contain the smile poking at your lips from behind your helmet. “As should you.” You stated, giving in to the tweak of your lips at the familiar sound of his plane revving towards yours, hovering beside you. You saw him to your right out of the corner of your eye, smiling as he saluted you with a single finger and his signature crooked smile. The visor of his helmet covered his eyes but you could still see the mischievous glint in them. “And get back into the formation!” In any other circumstance you wouldn’t be enjoying this as much. But shooting people down in his presence didn’t seem like the horrible act it was. In some masochistic way, it felt fun. You sent a wink his way, your visor up and glinting in the two suns above the planet’s atmosphere. You never liked dogfighting. It was dangerous and unpredictable and most of all, the odds were never the same, making it a constant unlevel playing field.
“Well, I did say when this is all over.” He continued after swerving while firing a few shots at another TIE fighter, and then back diagonally in front of your plane to create the echelon you had agreed on. “Didn’t I?” You couldn’t ignore the flurry of butterflies. How stubborn they were, just like him, in making their intentions so visibly clear to you. If it weren’t for the current circumstances you would have leapt at the opportunity; Giving your left and right arm for the chance to go one even one date with him. But then there was the thin line you vowed never to cross when you solidified your friendship. The line between friends and more. Because once you do step over that threshold there is no turning back. And what makes it worse is you don’t even know you’ve done it until you have.
“Fine. But remember where we are.” There was no reason you two couldn’t go out together as just friends. You’d done it before…in a group. He beamed a toothy grin at you, checking behind and above him. You watched in awe as he yawed sharply to the left, you following as wingman. Yet the pit in your stomach grew bigger as green lasers followed him in his wake.
“Please call your moves before making them. It makes it easier to support you, dummy!”
You were too busy rolling your eyes at his antics to notice the larger, much more domineering aircraft closing in behind you and your fleet. It groaned and hissed with its own force as it moved in closer, almost tailing the planes at the back.
You felt your heart slam into your ribcage before plummeting and colliding into your diaphragm. You heard the roar of its (or what looked like) blaster as it warmed them up, preparing to fire. You’d never seen an enemy craft quite like it before. This was something new. A brand new shiny toy that the First Order wanted to try out and you were nothing but lab rats to them. Test subjects, all disposable at will.
“You seeing this, Poe?” You asked. He hummed a nervous yes, one which set your teeth on edge and gave your sunken heart vicious palpitations. The sickening realisation that it was ready to take aim and fire set in like stone. And judging by the sheer size of that thing, it didn’t need much time to aim for it to hit its target dead on. The diameter of its blasters must have been the wingspan of at least five X-wings in a line. Enough to take out a good portion of your fellow pilots.
“Unfortunately.”
“Should we split?” You asked, nerves never getting the chance to waiver your voice as you flipped a switch to reload your blasters.
“If we stay in group formation they’ll take us all out in a matter of seconds.” You bit your lip, close to tasting blood. If you lost your formation then your pilots would be on their own. No assured backup. “Y/n?” You took another look back. You just couldn’t risk it taking you all out.
“Go for it.”
“Attention all pilots, this is black squadron leader Poe Dameron. Break group formation. Find your pairs, echelon position, communicate with your wingmen. Fire on sight, call your shots.” Poe started. A series of ‘roger that’ and ‘copy’ buzzed through your coms as one by one your fellow X-wings split off, red blasters firing left right and centre at any TIE fighter coming their way.
“Blue squadron, do you copy?”
“We copy.” One spoke back, followed by a few others.
“Who’s still out there?” Your stomach plummeted at the thought of any of your squadron missing. The thought of people not making it back home. Or back to base anyway. It was a temporary home…not your real one. All but one replied back. You held back the fall of your heart…this was meant to be good news as you’d lost one a while back when they didn’t have enough to enter hyperspace. You’d sent them back to base with a warning, telling them it was their responsibility to be fueled up enough to at all times.
If you’d have known back then that thinking was what got a pilot killed you’d have left your head unscrewed back at the hangar. Because it was as soon as you zoned out for a second to calculate your odds that it went south. You were meant to be covering him. That was your job. You had both decided you’d be each other’s extra pair of eyes and ears out there in the skies. And you’d let him down the moment it came to it. It was something you never forgave yourself for as the guilt wrenched at your stomach every night before bed and every morning before sunrise. Your gut spent inordinate amounts of time in painful, mind numbing knots. These knots replicated tenfold in your mind as thought muddled together. It was a vicious cycle now. Clouding confusion often caused you to space out and when you realised you had, the thought alone of spacing out made it still sprint back to you.
Two unlucky shots was all it took for Poe to get clipped. One to the wing of his fighter jet to knock him off balance; Another to his engine to make it stutter and fail.
You watched in horror as the shiver of fear sunk its teeth into your skin and a bone shattering chill raced over your neck and straight down to the very bottom of your spine. Distraught anger, rage, dejection…anything- hell, everything horrible and unrelenting sank into the very marrow of your bones.
Doleful. That’s how you would describe it. That utterly consuming and condemning sensation of all your emotions teaming up to tear you up from the inside out.
A pitch black, soot filled smoke billowed out from his engine as his wing caught fire. Angry red flames licked up the side and you could feel its heat from here.
“Poe-” you gasped softly through the coms.
“Y/n!”
“Pull your chute and eject!” You yelled through the comms. But he didn’t eject. There was a fumbling in your ear as he fiddled with the controls. “Poe! I said eject! Do you copy?”
“It’s jammed, Y/n. My controls are jammed and the lid won’t open.” A tear slipped from your face, a shaky breath erupting from your chest. Your hands shook violently from the erratic beating of your heart. You had to grip your controls tighter to keep a steady cause. X-Wings had sensitive steering and the last thing you needed was to steer off course.
“Can anyone see land?” You asked. Maybe he could do a controlled crash? Your worst fear came true as everyone replied with a no. It was all blue as far as you could see.
There was nothing you could do but be forced to watch as your best friend, the man you loved more than anyone or anything, even the resistance itself, met his own downfall.
“Talk to me.” You had blurred sight as tears swarmed and welled up in your eyes. Your helmet was starting to steam up. Any other time you would have refused and told him to keep fighting. To not be a martyr. But his voice said it all. He was gone. “Tell me something nice.” You sniffed. His tone wavered, sorrow sunken and defeated, still determined to hear your voice. He wanted an angel to sing him to sleep. You wanted to reach out to him and wake him up. To touch him one last time. To take a moment with him. Feel him. Love him. “Please.” It took all your willpower and a shake of your head to choke something out.
“Would you take me dancing?” He chuckled, pulling up his controls to flatten himself out. It was protocol to prolong the impact and soften it slightly.
“I’d take you dancing.” This made you smile, a better taste of longing resting upon your tongue.
“What else would you do?” A few tears fell, a steady flow starting to mount up.
“I’m going to take you out for a drink. And on your birthday this year I’m going to play that song you like while singing along. I’ll do that in the cantina for the whole base to hear. Then we can get off the planet for a bit. Take the day to ourselves. I want to take you exploring.” He was getting smaller and smaller, closer and closer to the water. Tauntingly close. A sob shattered you. It broke him to hear you cry.
“Where would we go?”
“You tell me. I want to hear your voice.” You knew he was crying too, even if you couldn’t hear through the sentences you wished to get lost in. You knew that you would cling to this.
“I- Ajan Kloss? I’ve always wanted to go. But can I trust you not to climb a tree?” He chuckled gently, the sound vibrating in your own chest, matching your heart momentarily. You wanted to bottle it so you could listen to it over again. You had wanted to do that before. But now more than ever.
“You can climb one with me.”
“No chance, Flyboy. I’ll break my neck.” You shared a smile together, unknowing of the others. It was just like that. You were in sync with each other. Two identical halves. What shitty timing to only just realise it now.
“Can I tell you something?” You nodded although he couldn’t see, shaking a few tears from your eyes as sorrow swallowed you whole. He was too close to the sea to turn back now. There was a beeping coming from his controls as the dials oscillated back and forth. It was total sensory overload for him. But he had to focus on you. On your voice. He had to keep this positive. He couldn’t forgive himself if he let you live in guilt for the rest of your life.
“Please.”
“I’m sorry for not saying it sooner-“
“No.” You croaked out, inhaling a tear “You don’t- don’t you dare say that, Poe!”
“Y/n, listen to me, this is important.”
“Okay.” You replied pathetically.
“I know I love you now-”
Static filled your ears.
His craft smashed into the sea.
A spray of water shot up, exploding.
The flames were no more and the orange speed stripes of his craft faded out of sight, gurgled down by seawater. You wanted to rip yourself from your seat, to dive below and look for him. It made your stomach hurl and churn to think of him struggling. Of the cockpit filling with water and how he was panicking for breath right now at the very moment you were perfectly fine. How, as the pressure increased, the glass would crack and give way to the wall of cold blue ocean. It would crunch at first, lines running from a pinprick point, spreading into a fragmented pattern with no exact sequence. Then, it would blast through, its force knocking him out for good if the impact into the ocean hadn’t already given him whiplash.
You may not have been drowning in that way, but you were in another.
Sometimes you would have nightmares of it being you and not your Poe. You never got to relive the moment before. Or any moment before. Only the one as you fell; Your stomach seemed to push into your lungs and gut at the same time from the g-force. There would be a crash of the plane against the water. The spray and a hiss of the flames being starved out. Your head would slam into the headrest, helmet visor now sporting a long crack through it. A fuzz would start to muddle your vision, making your eyes squint and strain to pull into focus again. The smothering squeeze of water against your legs; Now your waist; Your shoulders; Chin. Gasping. Wheezing. Anything to feel heavenly air in your lungs again.
You never got further than the glass to the cockpit cracking. That was one thing you were grateful for. But it never excused any of the agony you had to endure. Both waking and sleeping hours were sick torturous torment for you. Dark shadows had sunken under your eyes, a memory of nightmares as you sobbed into the scarf that he let you borrow the night before takeoff.
“I failed you. I failed everyone, but you most of all.”
You missed your Poe, your flyboy, your Icarus.