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Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.
The words echoed through Finn at each running step he took, like an electric jolt up his spine as he ran to the burning wreckage. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.
He couldn’t remember anything that happened after Poe told him about Jakku, about the droid. Orange and white, he had said. One of a kind. Finn already felt responsible for this. Saved a man from torture for his own gain only to let him die after using him. Using him. Force, he felt sick. Poe Dameron was so much more than that. He didn’t know how or why, but he just was. In a weird way, Poe saved him. He gave him a name. A name. An honest to life name. He can’t die like this. He can’t.
“Poe!” He was still several yards of the smoking tangle of metal that he assumed was the craft. “Poe!” The smoke and flames were coming from the cockpit. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead. “Poe!” He spotted an arm, what looked like an arm, and reached in only for whatever he had grasped to be stuck.
Finn worked his way through the flames (thank you, Stormtrooper armor) and allowed the smoke to sting his eyes as his hands followed the arm, praying he would find nothing wet. Instead, he found a shoulder, chest, neck- Strap! He followed it down to the buckle - trying like hell to stay calm - and unlatched it on the first try, pulling at the body again.
Poe was freed on that try as Finn stumbled them back, eventually falling into the sand not a foot from the burning TIE Fighter. Finally, he got a look at the other man. There was blood, but not much. Scratches here and there. His face and shirt was spotted in black from the ashes. For a second - for a horrifying second - he didn’t seem to be breathing, then the pilot coughed. The relief Finn felt made him sag to the sand. “Poe, you okay? You with me?”
It seemed all the other man could do for the time being was cough, but his eyes met Finn’s and that was enough to know that he was definitely there. One of the coughs even sounded like, “Finn…” His name.
The sand slid beneath their bodies, faster and faster until it felt like it was falling away. Finn noticed only just in time to see the TIE lurch into the ground. He stood, finally in a panic, and gripped at Poe’s shoulders to drag him back another foot or two as the craft sank. He stopped as it was disappearing, only realizing after the fact that the pilot’s coughing had stopped while they were both gaping at where their stolen fighter used to be. Then it detonated with a soul wrenching bass, jettisoning sand high into the air.
They watched that, too, with open mouths and wide eyes before looking at each other, both realizing that if Finn had been just a moment too late- Poe chuckled, shaking his head and looking to where the craft used to be. “Figures I haven’t been out here two minutes and all I want is some water,” he croaked.
Right. Smoke. Fire. Poe coughed again, and Finn clapped him on the shoulder. “Can you walk?”
“Let’s find out,” he said hoarsely, reaching out a blind hand for help that the now former Stormtrooper grabbed easily, hauling the pilot up as carefully as he could. After a stumble or two, Poe was standing in front of him. Tired, hurting, wheezing, alive, strong, happy- The pilot started laughing, just looking at Finn like they were children with a needless secret. Finn, at some point before he even realized it, was laughing with him.
He couldn’t tell anyone which one of them did it first, but they embraced there out in the middle of Jakku’s endless desert, laughing like it was the happiest moment of their lives.