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Getting captured had not been part of his mission plan, surprisingly enough. It was meant to be a quick recce to Jakku, head to Tuanul to meet Lor San Tekka, and then get the hell out of dodge. Nowhere on that list had there been ‘get captured by Kylo Ren’. Nowhere. He’s heard the rumours of course, that float around the Resistance base, but he’s always figured it’s none of his business; if General Organa wanted people to talk about it, then she’d be the first one to speak up - she’s never been known to be the shy and retiring type. Although, since he’s probably about to get killed by the guy, maybe it now is his business. Ben, Ben Organa-Solo, that’s his real name apparently, but Poe doesn’t suppose it will make any difference knowing the man’s name as he dies.
The ride back to the Finalizer is deceptively smooth and short, as if the craft he’s aboard hasn’t even taken off yet. He wishes that were true. He’s handled roughly by a few stormtroopers as they disembark, and as he steps down into the Star Destroyer he can’t help but gape for a moment. It’s so large. And so new. They knew that the First Order had been replenishing the Empire’s decimated fleet, but something on this scale, this price, Poe hadn’t realised they’d gotten this far yet. The whispers they’d heard about the shipyards at Fondor being fully functional again were clearly more than just talk. Poe worries about what else they might have been building.
The stormtroopers escorting him jerk Poe forcefully by the arms, compelling him to follow with them, and Poe tears his eyes away from the cavernous ceiling of the hangar bay. He is going to die here. Shit. The thought hits him quickly, but he knows it’s true. He looks quickly back over his shoulder to the rear of the hangar that lies open to space beyond. He doubts they’re gonna give him a room with a view, after all - this is probably the last time he’ll ever see the stars. He’d practically grown up in the cockpit of a spaceship. Back home on Yavin IV, it had been an old RZ-1 that his mother had used to fly until it had been decommissioned. His mother had died when Poe was only eight years old, but he’d learnt to fly sitting in her lap in that old A-wing. One of his most treasured memories is when she’d shown him how to take that ship apart and how to service every piece with such attention to detail. At night, when he closes his eyes, he can still hear his mother’s voice, soft but firm, teaching him about the different components to an engine, how it connects to the rest of the ship. He had loved that old ship, until it had finally refused to be fixed any further, had ignored his every attempt to repair and restart it; until a teenaged Poe was left kneeling in the dirt underneath the engine, tears streaming down his face, and a just work dammit, voice wrecked and pleading, as the last tangible piece of his mother slipped through his fingers into disrepair and disuse. Poe isn’t a religious man, not by any means, doesn’t know if he believes in the Force, but when he flies, that’s when he feels closest to his mother. When he can feel her hands ghosting over the controls under his fingertips, hear her quiet words of guidance in his ear. Poe doesn’t believe in an afterlife, but he can feel his mother watching over him every time he sits in the cockpit of a spacecraft.
The day after the A-wing refused to be fixed any further he went to work in the local scrapyard, owned by one of his father’s old Republic buddies, who’d been discharged before the Battle of Yavin, and had been consigned to watching the battle from the planet below, after spearing her leg through with some old debris. Deera Beyn had joked that it had worked in her favour, because she’d bartered with the Alliance to take their too-battle-damaged fighters off their hands, and that became the start of her scrapyard. For a fourteen year old Poe, that scrapyard was heaven. By eighteen he could fly or fix every single spacecraft in there, and even some models that he’d created on his own from an assortment of spare parts. Locals knew that if their craft needed fixing or servicing, then Deera’s scrapyard was the place to go, although they always knew to ask for Poe.
On his eighteenth birthday he had left home and signed up as a pilot for the New Republic, leaving his father at home, alone, with that old RZ-1 A-wing still growing moss in their backyard. His father who was retired now, and who had lost more than just his wife the day that Poe’s mother died. He tries not to think about what his own death will do to his father. With two parents who had met fighting for the Rebel Alliance, Poe’s own path in life had never been in doubt. Sometimes, though, Poe’s father looked at him with this strange, faraway look in his eyes and Poe knew what it meant; Poe had heard Kes Dameron talk about his dead wife only whilst drunk, but it was always the same thing: we quit together, so we could grow old together. And all I got was that damn tree. The tree in question was this tiny runt of a thing, planted at the back of their property, with weirdly iridescent, swirled silver bark and muted golden leaves. Poe’s always assumed it had been a wedding gift, but he’s never understood why his father seems almost afraid of it. At night, in those first few years after his mother had died, Poe could have sworn sometimes he heard the tree whispering to him, but never loud enough, never clear enough to make out the words, if it was even in any intelligible language to start with.
As the stormtroopers escorting him strap him into a severe looking chair in what can only be an interrogation room, he thinks of his father throwing empty whisky bottles at that tree as he shouts and cries. He’s seen it enough times, always late at night when he should have been sleeping, to picture it clearly in his mind now.
They leave him alone for several hours, and Poe knows that this itself is a form of torture. The room is uncommonly warm, and he’s been without food or water for too long now. His body aches from where the stormtroopers had hit him, and there’s a disconcerting tingling in his left hand, radiating up to his aching shoulder from where his arm is strapped up. He tries not to think about what is coming, tries instead to focus on his breathing, to calm his mind. He thinks about flying. Just as he’s started to nod off, despite the uncomfortable position, the long-faded adrenaline having drained his system entirely, the door in front of him slides open. He’s met with a young private, in the slate grey uniform of an Imperial soldier, rather than the cannon fodder stormtroopers. Imperial soldiers went through the Academy, they were an investment, a speciality. Poe has no doubts that this soldier’s speciality is questioning.
Name. Rank. Number. That’s all they’re ever told to give. Name. Rank. Number. It gives you something to scream, they say, when you’re being tortured. Something you won’t forget, but not something worthwhile, not something they couldn’t have found out anyway.
Commander Poe Dameron. 477187.
Rank Name. Number.
Poe screams it, and he sobs it. He spits it into the impassive face of the Imperial officer, but he doesn’t tell them anything else. He doesn’t tell them about the star map, he doesn’t tell them about BB-8. He doesn’t even confirm he’s with the Resistance - his rank belongs to the New Republic, after all, and they are a perfectly legitimate governance. Eventually the soldier leaves him, bloody and wrecked, but lips sealed tight, secrets stored safely inside. He can do this, at least, for the Resistance, to die without betraying them. Die with honour.
Too soon, the door slides open again, and Poe lifts his head, ready to sneer at the soldier again, throw in a quick taunt about his failure to extract information from Poe. But it’s not the soldier.
Poe sucks in a quick breath. It’s Ren.
He looks taller, somehow, in the confines of this room, like he’s expanded to fill up the available space, drawing the air out of the room. Poe’s heart rate sky-rockets. He doesn’t even want to start imagining all the things Ren might do to him.
“I had no idea we had the best pilot in the Resistance on board.” Poe is pretty sure this man is human underneath the mask but his voice is distorted by it, unnerving. So much for only giving his name, rank and number - his name was more than recognisable nowadays, even if his face wasn’t. Not that it made any difference, the First Order weren’t going to let him live, no matter who he was.
The ‘interrogation’ does not last long. At first Poe thinks Ren will just torture him further, and he can deal with that. Pain will kill him in the end, but he can endure it, for the Resistance, he won’t give in. But Ren merely stands in front of him for a moment, considering, before raising one gloved hand.
“Where is it?”
As if, thinks Poe, but there’s a weird sensation buzzing up from the base of his skull. It feels like tendrils of heavy smoke are scratching across his brain, like questing fingers, tap-tapping against the bone. It’s Ren. He’s inside his mind somehow.
This pain, this, is unlike anything Poe has ever felt before. He’s burning up and yet icy cold all at the same time. The pain is inside him, redefining the borders of his consciousness. Ren is inside his mind, sorting through his memories like Poe is an open book left discarded on a table top. Poe grits his teeth as he tries to resist, he can’t let Ren know about BB-8, about where he hid the map. Letting Ren win can’t be the last thing that he does for the Resistance.
As the intensity of Ren’s force increases Poe feels a scream building in his throat that he can’t hold back, and the information he’s trying so hard to conceal slips from his mind into Ren’s grasp.
That’s it, he’s failed. And those are his last thoughts before he passes out.
— — —
The next thing he’s aware of is the door to his cell sliding open again. It’s not Ren this time, but a normal stormtrooper.
“Ren wants the prisoner.”
Poe feels his arms being unshackled from the restraints but he can’t quite connect the actions in his brain. They have no more use for him now, they’re going to kill him. He gave up BB-8, he gave up the map, he betrayed the Resistance when it mattered most. Objectively, he knows it’s not his fault, that Ren’s powers are far beyond normal, far beyond anything that Poe’s witnessed before. But still, he feels hollowed out that this is the last act of his life, this failure.
The trooper shackles Poe’s hands in front of him and then escorts him from the cell, blaster jamming into Poe’s side.
“Turn here.”
Poe turns, expecting another long corridor, but the stormtrooper seems to have turned him into a small recess.
“Listen carefully. You do exactly as I say and I can get you out of here.”
Wait, what?
The stormtrooper lifts off his helmet, revealing a youthful face underneath, surprisingly handsome, normal - no longer a faceless drone. Poe’s brain feels like it’s coming back online after Ren’s intrusion. Is the guy with the Resistance? Poe hadn’t realised that they’d managed to infiltrate the stormtrooper ranks, although he knows it’s something they’d been trying to do for a while. But the stormtrooper corrects him—
“No no, I’m breaking you out. Can you fly a TIE fighter?”
Of course Poe can fly a fucking TIE fighter, he can fly any goddamn ship in the galaxy. But why is this stormtrooper helping him?
It dawns on Poe. “You need a pilot.”
The trooper immediately nods his head in agreement. “I need a pilot.”
Poe had been expecting him to lie, or at least obfuscate a little, but the way the trooper comes clean immediately, it’s so… refreshing. Poe grins wide in response, they can do this.
They manage to make it to the hangar bay and into a TIE fighter without being spotted, and Poe can’t quite believe the way his luck is turning out today, maybe he’s not going to die after all. He winces as he sinks into the pilot’s seat, body sore from the earlier torture, and slips his jacket off, quickly running through the TIE’s pre-flight sequence.
It’s not easy-going, they’re spotted the moment they try to lift off, and the still-attached fuel pump stops them from leaving immediately, but soon they’re streaking through the open hangar bay entrance, the stars revealing themselves in the sky beyond. Poe never thought he’d see them again, and something settles inside him once he’s out in space. This is where he belongs, this is what he was born to do.
And this, this stormtrooper has given this back to Poe. Even if they’re shot out of the sky right now, at least he’s seen the stars again, at least he’s flown one more time. Poe has always considered the act of rebellion to be a beautiful thing, but to see it here before him, to hold its life in his hands as he pilots the TIE fighter back to Jakku, that is something precious, something to be honoured. This stormtrooper has saved his life, has redeemed his final failure if only they can get back to Jakku and find BB-8 before the First Order. And Poe, Poe doesn’t even know his name.
“Hey, what’s your name?”
“FN-2187!”
Poe doesn’t understand what he’s said at first, FN-? And then it hits him. All this guy has is a number, a rank. He doesn’t have a name. Poe’s heart breaks a little in that moment. Name rank number. FN?
“Finn, I’m gonna call you Finn. That alright?”
Poe swears he can feel the force of FN— of Finn’s grin as he replies, yeah that’s alright by far, and he can’t help but feel his own face split into a grin in response. They’re gonna do this.
— — —
It’s a long journey back to the Resistance base. Poe comes to in the wreckage of the TIE, no trace of Finn anywhere, and he hopes to god the other man isn’t dead but he isn’t holding out much hope. He knows Finn managed to eject, but that’s not gonna be any good in the desert wastelands of Jakku.
— — —
Poe makes it back to D’Qar in time to lead the air assault at Takodana. The rumour floating around as he’s prepping his X-wing is that BB-8 is in the hands of Han Solo. Apparently he’s accompanied by a young guy and girl, presumably whoever found BB-8 on Jakku. Poe resolves to find them and thank them for completing his mission once they’re all on base.
Poe feels good to be back in the cockpit of Black One, his comrades behind him, his brothers and sisters. He thinks back to Finn, how if it wasn’t for him he wouldn’t be here now, and he takes a moment to mourn him, to mourn the new friendship that never had a chance. He puts Finn to the back of his mind as they swoop low over the water, thinking only of the TIE fighters in front of him. He still can’t believe he got to fly one of those, the way that TIE had responded to the slightest twitch of his fingers had been intoxicating.
The battle in the airspace over Maz Kanata’s palace is quick and exhilarating, and Poe revels in the feeling of flying. General Organa herself lands at Takodana, and Poe’s team are tasked with flying escort back to D’Qar.
When he lands BB-8 comes rolling up to him, chattering excitedly about Poe’s ‘friend’ Finn and how BB-8 was rescued by him and a girl named Rey. Poe can’t quite believe his ears. Finn? He looks up at that, eyes searching quickly around the base; surely not?
It takes him a second to really understand what he’s seeing, and then his feet are moving without any conscious thought. Finn, Finn is here. Finn spots him at the same time, and the two grasp each other in a firm embrace.
“Poe! Poe Dameron!”
Poe cannot believe that Finn is alive, that he’s here on D’Qar, that he completed Poe’s mission where he himself had failed. It seems like Finn has been correcting all of his failures recently. He’s reluctant to let go of Finn, scared that he’ll lose him again so soon, but he steps back slightly out of the embrace in order to get a good look at him. Wait—
“That’s my jacket.”
Finn looks contrite for a second, and then starts to shrug the jacket off his shoulders. Poe immediately reaches up to stop him.
Poe Dameron has always been a private man. Even though he’s the first to crack a joke or offer a quip, he doesn’t offer pieces of himself, doesn’t let people see beneath the cocky surface. But seeing his jacket on Finn is… He doesn’t even have words for it. It feels like he’s flying. The feeling that he’s always been chasing when he’s in the air, he feels it right now, even though both his feet are firmly planted on the ground.
“No, no, no. Keep it. It suits you.”
Poe finds that these words don’t seem enough. He’s had that jacket since the day he left home and joined the New Republic. But he wants, he wants … He doesn’t know, but it looks good on Finn, and Poe doesn’t want him to take it off. He likes knowing that a piece of him is with Finn, in case he loses him again.
— — —
He repeats this to himself when Finn heads off again to the Starkiller base - an unwelcome example of just how functional the First Order’s build yards really are. The jacket is Finn’s lucky charm Poe tell himself - he’ll be fine heading into enemy territory, he has to be. It scares Poe, to think of Finn heading back into the First Order’s clutches when he’d barely escaped with his life before. He doesn’t know how someone he’s barely known for five minutes has got under his skin so profoundly, but all he knows is that they saved each other, and that it’s tied them together more thoroughly than a lifetime of casual encounters could have done.
They’re lucky, Poe knows. The battle over Starkiller base had not been going in their favour until he’d managed to get inside the main reactor itself. Poe knows that not even one-in-a-hundred could have piloted through that opening like he had done. He’s not cocky about it, but he feels good, he feels proud of himself, that he did this thing right for the Resistance.
He disobeys a direct order from command and waits to escort the Millennium Falcon away from the exploding planet, his team falling in to line like they’ve always done, trusting him implicitly. He’s lost too many good men and women today, and he can’t, he won’t, leave Finn and the others on board behind as well. The mood between the survivors on the flight back is jubilant, but he hears over the comms about casualties. Han Solo is not returning with them, and Finn is injured, unconscious, unresponsive.
Poe cannot get back to D’Qar fast enough, knows that Finn needs immediate medical attention, might already be dead…
He watches the Millennium Falcon touch down safely as he clambers out of his X-wing cockpit. His feet carry him over to where the Falcon ramp is descending, a sick parody of their earlier reunion. Chewbacca emerges from inside, carrying a limp Finn in his arms and Poe’s heart catches in his throat and doesn’t leave.
He sees briefly a girl - this must be Rey, Finn’s friend - approach Leia, grief written heavy in both their faces, but he can’t think about Han Solo right now, can’t think about death.
As Finn is placed on a stretcher the medical team swarm around him immediately, and by now Poe is close enough to hear them shout that he has a heartbeat, that he’s still breathing. An anxious Poe hovers uncertainly for a split second before following the unconscious Finn as he is stretchered away, wanting to hear the news about his condition straight from the medics themselves as soon as it becomes available.
— — —
Poe had been lurking in the med bay for all of ten minutes, trying to keep out of the way of the medics as they start to work on Finn, before he is summoned to the command room.
Hours later, after Rey has left and Poe has managed to choke down some food, he finally makes it back to the medical wing to find it empty and silent. A lone light shines from one of the bed bays at the back, and there Poe finds Finn with his eyes closed, looking for all the world like he’s merely sleeping.
Poe drops down heavily into the seat beside Finn’s bed before hesitating. They hardly even know each other, and Poe can’t put in to words why he feels so drawn to the other man, why it feels so important, so imperative that he be ok, that he wakes up. Poe’s stomach churns uncomfortably as he sits there and contemplates what could happen, facing the truth that Finn might never wake up. Most people don’t survive lightsaber wounds, he knows. The sick feeling in his stomach abates slightly once he reaches out to grasp one of Finn’s hands gently within his own. He feels like he should ask permission before touching Finn - thinks about all the ways the First Order have violated his mind and body before now. He’s not sure if he’s breaking some sort of boundary that he should be respecting, but he can’t find it in himself to care. He needs this touch, grounding him, as he sorts through the different thoughts swirling through his mind.
He’s almost dropped off to sleep, thinking reluctantly that he should head back to his own barracks, get some rest in a proper bed rather than an uncomfortable chair here in the med bay, when the hand still resting beneath his own twitches once.
Poe sits bolt upright, awake in an instance, years of battle situations having trained him to be ready and alert within an instance. Poe’s eyes fly immediately to Finn’s face, but his eyes remain determinedly closed, face impassive. After watching Finn’s face for a long minute where nothing changes, Poe sinks back into his chair, exhaustion dragging him down into a slump as he rubs his free hand across his face in frustration. He really does need to get some sleep.
He sits that way for a while, hand covering his eyes to block out the light, reluctant to leave Finn’s bedside, when the hand beneath his twitches again.
This time, when Poe looks up, he’s met by Finn’s dark eyes staring straight at him.
“Poe. Poe Dameron.” Finn’s voice is weak, thready, but it’s glorious all the same to hear him speak. Poe can’t help but smile, wide and genuine, and say—
“You’re alive.” And Finn smiles right back.
Poe holds Finn’s gaze as he leans forward ever so slowly until his face hovers inches above Finn’s own. Poe bites his lip as he looks down at Finn and then closes that final space between them, capturing Finn’s lips gently, ever so gently. Poe can still feel Finn smiling beneath his lips, grin growing impossibly wider.
It feels good, and it feels so right in a way that only flying has ever felt to Poe before. He can’t quite believe it, that the feeling of soaring he’s always been chasing can be found here, in a dim corner of the medical bay, but he knows he’s not going to let it go. Not for anything.
— — —
The End.