Chapter Text
There's time, after Starkiller Base is destroyed and the rest of the universe unalterably changed, for both sides to re-gather. Kylo Ren was missing, according to their sources, but it was too good to figure that was permanent. Poe supposes that's an even trade - he'll take it because Finn is still breathing , too. Still recovering, if the doctors can be trusted. Still sunk deep in his own mind.
The resistance bought a retreat in good order with their victory, but it's still a retreat. It sours the mood a little. The First Order has sights on them now for sure - singular, narrow focus, long range target sights. Possibly they don't have such an absolute reach anymore, but it is still long, still a massive power that will come to bear on the known location of their base. Time to leave Q'Dar. Poe's used to packing up and leaving.
There's an art to it, like getting out of someone else's bunk the next morning in the same clothes as yesterday - or considerably fewer clothes if yesterday's could not be located - and arriving where you belonged unobserved.
He doesn't own enough to get caught with his pants down in the event of more evacuation. Nothing that won't fit under the dash of his T-70 between his boots. Nothing except BB-8, more friend than baggage anyway, that couldn't be replaced.
"If pilots are allowed to indulge in superstition, and we are," Poe tells Finn. "Mine is 'don't get attached', right? What's a few pairs of orange underwear anyway?"
Finn hasn't been very talkative since they'd scraped him up off Starkiller base and brought him here - Poe had missed the entire victory celebration when he'd seen Chewbacca carry the still form out of the Millennium Falcon and a sea of arms lifting to get Finn onto the medical transport. He'd followed him all the way to the infirmary, and been ushered out by the medical staff after several admonishments about hovering that he was pretty sure were unwarranted.
He was stable, but the Senate was still out on whether he might be able to hear Poe but not answer. It's okay.
He's pretty good at holding up one sided conversations. He's had a few with General Organa this week too. Maybe not quite this one-sided.
Pretty close. She had a lot to grieve. She'd said, in a distracted afterthought, that she hoped Poe was still writing to his parents. That it was the worst thing to know someone you cared about was out there in the universe, and to know they were in danger but not how much.
Poe didn't have the heart to remind her that his mother had died when he was nine. Leia had known her. He'd called his father, though, straight away.
Kes Dameron had listened, with guarded expression, to news of the victory. Poe supposes it's an old story to him.
"So I told my dad I met someone," Poe says, to see if there's any reaction. No good. Well, worth a shot. "Actually, he guessed."
Poe summons up his best impression of his father's age-roughened but still military bark. "'I know that look, Poe Dameron.' Hard not to admit it after that. I think this is the first time I've admitted an interest to my dad before said interest."
It's strange to admit. There's still no reaction. It's a tough room.
The medical field tells him that everything remains at least as stable as yesterday. Poe is not entirely certain where the next stop is, which secret alcove the resistance will put itself away into next, but he hopes distantly for a jungle.
"Don't tell anybody this," Poe says, reaching out to cover the dark brown finger with his own - they're pretty cold. Poe pulls the blanket a little higher. "But without a bunch of trees and dense foliage around, I feel pretty exposed."
He pauses, leaves a beat for the pacing of the joke. "Not that I ever much minded exposing myself."
His best charm goes sailing by, and Poe supposes he deserves it. He hears BB-8 rolling up the hall, calling out inquisitively for him, and knows this visit will be over soon. Poe tucks Finn's now warmer hand under the blanket at his side, and gets up, his knees protesting straightening again after being folded for so long.
-
"Once I took on three star destroyers in a luxury yacht starship," Poe boasts. It's easier to inflate stories when the listener couldn't call bantha poodoo. It's actually the first time he's gotten to tell this story - anyone who would care was there with him, in RapierSquadron.
"I guess it actually wasn't that long ago. Less than a cycle," Poe admits. "I wonder if it caused a big First Order fuss - how do you lose a luxury yacht when you've got three star destroyers? Well, I was flying it, that's how."
Why be modest? BB-8, shifting anxiously at his side - the droid now has even less desire to be more than two feet away from him at any time - makes an anxious noise, requesting clarification. At least someone is listening to his story.
"No, I wasn't alone," Poe assures BB-8. "Iolo and Karé were there."
A scolding sound.
"Well, they weren't in the yacht," Poe clarifies, exasperated.
He gives BB-8 a look, and the droid returns his reproach without a single waver in the dark lense trained on him.
Never get into a stare-off with a droid.
"Okay," Poe clarifies, "with the support and cover of Rapier Squadron I took on three-"
A chirp.
"I ran away from, after out maneuvering..." Poe tries. This passes. "Three First Order cruisers. It doesn't sound as intense as it really was that way."
BB-8 regards him with a steady lense, but no voiced protest.
"I'm trying to look good for an audience here, BeeBee-Ate," Poe tells the droid. It doesn't gain him any immediate sympathy but BB-8 swings attention toward Finn's deeply breathing form, and then inquires.
"I don't know if he can hear us," Poe includes BB-8 by habit - the droid was usually quiet but almost always there when Poe was. "But I'd hate to find out he could and we just left him alone in the silence the whole time."
Burbling a series of conversational beeps, BB-8 shifts back and forth just a little, expectant.
"And I like a captive audience," Poe agrees, if only so he'll hear the end of it. "Yes, BeeBee-Ate. Can I finish the story now, or would you like to do it for me?"
BB-8, looking smugly satisfied in the way of droids, croons permissively for Poe to finish.
-
"I hear that she made it," Poe announces, at the end of the first week in space. "Where, I'm not completely sure. But Chewbacca came back. I guess that means they found Luke. Great right? Hate to think we'd gone through all that for an old map."
He hesitates, thinking about Luke Skywalker. About once - when he was very little, but just old enough to remember - his father had lifted Poe on his shoulders in the middle of a massive crowd on Yavin-4 so he could see over their heads to the heroes of the New Republic. At the time, he could still hold his mother's hand - she'd squeezed his fingers tight, and pointed with her other outstretched hand, naming the figures on the stage. He remembers his father leaning down so Poe could hear her.
That was Luke Skywalker, she'd said, and Leia Organa. Han Solo. Names from the stories they'd tell him - clean of the agony Poe now knows is a part of war as inseparably as differing ideals - at night before bed. Maybe they should have known better. Maybe Poe could have stayed at the settlement with his father and forgotten his inborn and inherited wanderlust.
Probably not.
"So I guess that means she'll come back with Luke," he says. "Or whatever the plan is, now."
Poe scrubs his hand through his tightly controlled hair, leaning back in the chair that doesn't move between his visits to Finn's bedside. There's another one facing, but no one ever sits in it - he just puts his feet up on the seat. He watches the readouts of Finn's medical chamber tick by. Slow and steady. Poe knows the medical coma is because - as the doctor has assured him - they'd had to undo a lot of the cauterization made by the lightsaber blade in order to coax the wound to heal normally so Finn would regain full functionality in - pretty much everything. Because of how immense the pain would be, it is kinder just to let him sleep while he heals.
That's the theory. Poe's not sure how he'll feel to wake up in another system with Rey gone. At least this time she was gone of her own volition. He takes a deep breath and sighs it out, letting his hand trail down over the smooth surface of the sphere housing BB-8's gyros absently, trying to pick up the trail of his thoughts again.
"They used to tell stories, you know - fighting the Empire. It seemed pretty amazing. When you're little you don't think that it's like - well, what it's like, right? You know," Poe says. No answer. He looks down at the contrast of his dusky fingers against the dinged white paint, mouth running on before his thoughts catch up. "You'd hear how they faced down a whole squad of Stormtroopers - I'd convinced myself they were all just hollow suits-"
He stops abruptly.
"Sorry," he tells Finn, getting up. BB-8 nudges against his thigh, trying to get out of the way of the hurried, unexpected motion. "Guess I'm just too introspective to be a good conversation partner today."
Poe retreats from too many memories and too much consideration. He supposes he has the luxury to think of it as a tactical retreat - he'll make another sally forth in better conditions.
-
"Sad to say it's gonna be a heck of a scar, buddy," Poe tells Finn, still unresponsive. "People like that though. I like that, if you care."
A pause. BB-8 rocks a little at his side, encouraging. Poe thinks it won't be this easy to tell Finn when he's awake, but the practice won't hurt. He hitches his black and orange flight helmet up against his side.
"Be nice if you'd wake up and tell me," Poe says. he still has hope - a lot of it - but time is stretching out behind them. He barely knows Rey - they'd met when the maps had been made whole, and she'd left an impression. She's been gone longer than expected.
"You'd wake up for Rey. Everyone wakes up for the Jedi."
He waits and the nothing continues. Poe doesn't really mind.
"The medics say you could wake up any time now," Poe reminds him, as if it might just be stubbornness that holds him to silence and sleep now. "Or that you could never wake up. What kind of odds are those?"
BB-8 doesn't hesitate to calculate and tell Poe, though at least the tone is quiet.
Poe Gives BB-8 a look. "I wasn't actually asking the odds."
The droid looks unrepentant. Poe supposes that's a trait he can blame himself for.
"So, I don't wanna miss it when you wake up," Poe says. "Nobody wants to wake up after almost dying alone in some strange infirmary. On a whole other planet, even."
Nothing, not even a twitch. Well it's not the first time Poe hasn't gotten what he wants.
"Listen, buddy, I gotta fly a mission."
The helmet's in his lap already, the orange flight suit already donned. He'd found himself with a few extra moments before launch and nothing better to do with himself.
Maybe he'd hoped, a little, for a miracle of good timing. For the Force to do him a favor. He gets up and puts the helmet on, looking at Finn through the yellow-tinted visor and makes a decision.
"Don't worry, though. BeeBee-Ate will stay with you," Poe promises.
BB-8 shrills a protest and rolls into the back of Poe's knees. Looking down, Poe sees the dark lense trained up on him in clear disapproval.
Poe crouches, and puts his hands on either side of BB-8's magnetically levitating head to hold the droid's attention. He turns on the charm.
"I know it's dangerous out there," Poe says. "But this is important, right? you think Rey would want him to wake up alone either? We got a job. We gotta take care of him. And it's never a good idea to make a Jedi mad, right?"
Considering the prospect for a moment, BB-8 affirms with a slow beep. Poe thumps the droid in gentle affection. "So take care of Finn, and if he wakes up, tell him it's about damn time."
BB-8 makes him promise to take the best of the backup astromech droids, and to be extra careful.
Poe gives his word, hoping he can keep it.
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