Chapter Text
She’s so small, is Poe’s first thought when he meets the Jedi girl Finn had nearly died to save. She’s not that much shorter than Poe is - a few inches, perhaps - but she’s lean in a way that rings warning bells in Poe’s mind, muscle and bone and not a single bit of fat, worn away to nothing but the absolute essentials.
And then she turns a little, and he sees her eyes, and oh. Eyes like fire, warm and fierce and terrifying. She’s seen so many things, this lean tough desert girl, and none of them have broken her. She is a warrior, honed all her life for war, used to fighting everything for one more sip of water, one more moment to survive. She is tough as durasteel and dangerous as the lightsaber at her belt.
And she is hurting, that’s plain to see: she watches the doctors bustle around Finn’s prone form and yearns towards him with every fiber of her being, yet does not move from where she stands pressed to the observation window. Poe wants, desperately, to go down and take Finn’s unresponding hand in his, to wake him with a kiss like a fairy-tale hero, but Doctor Kalonia would quite rightly have him thrown in the brig if he tried, and Finn won’t know, one way or the other, whether Poe is there beside him until he wakes. But this girl is awake, and hurting, and maybe Poe can help.
“Hey,” he says softly, and she turns her head to look at him - not startled, she’s known he was there since he entered the corridor, that’s clear enough in her stance, in the wary desert-bred way she watches everything even as she stares desperately down at Finn’s still form - and looks Poe up and down. Poe holds out empty hands, tries a smile.
“I’m Poe Dameron,” he says. “You must be Rey.”
She nods, cocks her head and examines him again more closely. “Finn thought you were dead,” she says. Poe essays a grin.
“Yeah, well, for a bit there I thought I was dead,” he offers. “Sheer good luck I’m not.” He nods towards the observation window, the flurry of doctors and medical droids around the bed. “Doc Kalonia said they’d be a while yet. Would you like me to show you the mess hall while we wait?”
Rey sways, clearly tempted, glances back at the window. “I...what if something goes wrong?” she asks finally. “I can’t leave him.”
“Fair,” Poe says. “Tell you what, two options. One, I can leave BB-8 here with instructions to come get us if we’re needed.” The little droid beeps happily, spins a little, and Rey flashes the hint of a smile down at it, the first Poe’s seen. A tiny victory. “Two, you can tell me what you like to eat and I can go grab you some food and bring it here. Your choice.”
Rey thinks about that for a moment, glancing in the window again, then says, “Bring some here? Please? Anything. I eat anything.”
“Sure thing,” Poe says easily. “Hey, BB, want to stay here and keep her company for a few minutes?”
BB-8 goes whirring over to nudge against Rey’s legs, and she puts a hand down to pat the little droid’s head, gives Poe an honest-to-goodness smile. It’s small and shaky, but it’s real. Poe feels about ten feet tall. “Be right back,” he says, and goes jogging off towards the mess.
He grabs a handful of things that can be eaten quickly and tidily - stuffed bread rolls both sweet and savory, a bowl of assorted fruit, two tall lidded mugs of ice water - and bears his trophies back to the medbay corridor triumphantly, detouring very briefly to grab a little folding table out of his room. Rey is pressed to the window again when he returns, one hand flat on the glass, the other on BB-8’s head. Poe sets the table up, gives her the lion’s share of the food. He’s not terribly hungry, and the little voice in the back of his head that sounds suspiciously like his grandfather is chanting, Feed the poor thing already!
Rey pulls herself away from the window and looks at the table, blinks in confusion. “What...are those?” she asks, sounding intrigued almost despite herself.
“Bread rolls - these have meat, those have jam - blumfruit, cherries, and sweet-apples,” Poe says. “Help yourself.”
She eyes him dubiously, like she thinks he might be lying, might be planning to eat everything himself, then snatches a bread roll off the table and stuffs half of it into her mouth, chewing almost viciously. Poe looks away, thinking vaguely that watching her eat might distress her, takes a sweet roll and nibbles at it while he watches Doctor Kalonia finish wrapping bandages around the entirety of Finn’s torso (Kriffing hell, Poe thinks, I am going to have nightmares about this) and the droids finish cleaning up the detritus of the desperate scramble to save Finn’s life.
Rey says, sounding very surprised, “This is good.” Poe glances over to see her regarding the other half of her bread roll in something very like astonishment. She takes another, much smaller bite, chews it slowly enough to actually taste it. “How do they get the meat inside the bread?”
“They roll it up in the dough before they bake it,” Poe explains, oddly charmed by the question.
“...Bake it?” Rey asks. “It’s not from powder?”
Poe winces. His grandfather’s voice bellows, Feed her! “Not really,” he says carefully. “You start with flour and yeast, which are sort of powders, but...um. I could show you, if you liked.”
“You can make these?” she asks, and Poe hasn’t had someone look at him that worshipfully in - ever. Certainly not because of bread rolls.
“Yeah,” he says. “Baking’s not hard. Just a matter of getting the measurements right. Now cooking, there’s a good way to make some spectacular messes.”
She looks intrigued, now, has turned almost all the way away from the window and is eating her second bread roll in quick, tiny bites, eyes fixed on him. Poe keeps half an eye on Finn, sleeping peacefully now, the monitors beeping his heartbeat in a steady, comforting rhythm, and regales Rey with the story of his first attempt to make his grandfather’s famous spicy stew, which had turned out far too hot and far too salty and just generally inedible. Rey giggles when Poe pulls a particularly disappointed face, and Poe can’t help cheering internally. A laugh is an enormous victory.
They’ve eaten everything he brought by the time Doctor Kalonia comes out and smiles at them. “He’s going to be alright,” she says. “You can come in and see him, if you like.”
Rey is in the room almost before the doctor finishes speaking; Poe pauses long enough to thank Kalonia before hurrying in after her. Rey is already curled up in a chair that she’s pushed up next to the bed, both her hands wrapped around one of Finn’s. Poe sits down on Finn’s other side, takes his other hand and takes immense comfort in its warmth, in the pulse of Finn’s steady heartbeat.
“He said you saved his life,” Rey says after a while. Poe startles a little - he’d nearly dozed off, watching the steady rise and fall of Finn’s chest.
“He saved mine,” he says, smiling a little wryly at her. “Honestly I think he would have figured something out even if I wasn’t there. But there wasn’t going to be anyone coming for me, and then there he was. Thought I was hallucinating him, for a while.”
Rey nods. “He came back for me,” she says at last. “He was going to leave - Force, he was so scared of the First Order he was shaking with it - and he still came back for me.” She gives Poe a long, evaluating look. “You understand,” she says at last. “We owe him.”
“Yes,” Poe agrees, and the smile she gives him is small and sweet and true, like a tiny piece of sunshine in the dimly-lit room. Poe thinks, later, that this is the moment that he truly wins her friendship, the moment that she knows he’s safe to trust.
*
Doctor Kalonia comes by to chase them out a few hours later, which is really all to the good, because Poe is a couple of inches away from just falling asleep where he sits, and Rey is swaying with exhaustion, yanking herself upright again with an expression of pure fury at her own weakness.
“I’ll find you a spare bed,” Poe tells her, and does: the room next to his, which has been empty for a month now, the pilot who used to have it gone to xer gods (another one Poe couldn’t shield, couldn’t save, but all the gods must know he tries, he tries so hard). “I’m right next door,” he says as she stands in the doorway. “Come get me if you need anything. And - BB, buddy. Want to bunk with Rey tonight?”
BB-8 burbles happily, and Rey gives Poe a tired smile. “I see why Finn likes you,” she says, and steps into the room, BB-8 on her heels, closes the door carefully behind herself. Poe hears the lock click and nods approvingly to himself before he staggers the ten steps to his own door, stumbles in and manages to kick his boots off and wriggle out of his flight suit, leaving it in an untidy heap on the floor, before he faceplants on the bed and is pretty much instantly asleep.
He wakes to a soft knock on his door, glances at the clock as he stumbles out of bed and is gratified to find he’s gotten a good nine hours of sleep - bless Jess and Snap, who must have passed the word not to disturb him.
The knocking turns out to be Rey, who looks reasonably well rested, which is good. She says, a little hesitantly, “I didn’t know where the mess hall was, or -”
“Give me ten minutes to get changed,” Poe says instantly, “and we’ll go grab breakfast and check on Finn.”
Rey nods sharply, and Poe hustles through his morning routine, glances at himself in the mirror as he rakes his comb through his hair and can’t help grinning. He’s alive, and Rey’s alive, and Finn’s alive, and Starkiller is destroyed - and okay, as soon as Poe has a few minutes to think about all the people he’s lost, he’s going to be a kriffing wreck, but here and now, he is alive, and that is victory enough.
In the mess hall, Rey collects an entire plate full of fruit and then Poe gets to introduce her to the concept of omelettes, which she finds astonishing and delightful. Poe leads her over to the table the other pilots have staked out, and sits beside her drinking his caf while Jess and Snap and Bastian pepper Rey with questions about flying the Millennium Falcon - they all give Poe shit for his hero-worship of the General and her infamous husband, but every pilot in the Republic or the Resistance would give their left hand for a chance to fly the famous ship. Rey is dubious about the other pilots at first, but whenever she glances over at Poe he gives her an encouraging nod, and so between bites of omelette and fruit she describes the modifications which have been made to the Falcon, and the maintenance she plans to perform on it. No one asks about Han. If they start mourning their dead now, it’ll break them, and there are things that need doing. Time enough for that later, if they’re all still alive.
“Snap,” Poe says as he and Rey rise, her plate so clean it looks polished. “We’re going to need a new base.” Snap nods. He’s the best of them all at finding good spots - he found D’Qar, months ago - and this location is well and truly compromised.
“I’ll go up today,” Snap promises, and Poe claps him on the shoulder and leads Rey to the bin for dirty dishes, and then out through the corridors to the medbay. The droid on duty beeps resignedly at them and lets them into Finn’s room, and Poe can feel himself relax at the sight of Finn’s steady breathing, the peaceful expression on his sleeping face. Rey sighs and loses some of the tension in her shoulders.
“When will he wake up?” she asks.
“No idea,” Poe tells her, and they sit down again, one on either side of their sleeping friend. Poe manages to stay quiet for a good ten minutes - a personal record, given that he is neither drunk, exhausted, nor drugged - and then says, idly, “So you’re from Jakku?”
“I was left there,” Rey says bluntly, and Poe winces. Okay, sore spot. He casts around for some other thing to talk about.
“You built BB-8,” Rey says, saving him from making another conversational blunder. Poe grins at her. He can talk about BB-8 for hours. So he does. He talks himself hoarse, in fact, while Finn sleeps on between them and Rey watches the whole room with wary eyes.
Doctor Kalonia kicks them out again in the middle of the afternoon, and Poe begs them some food from the kitchen droids and tries to figure out what to do next - and then they are both summoned to the control room, and R2-D2 wakes, and there hovering in the air above them is the map to Luke Skywalker that Poe risked so much to win. Poe stares at it wide-eyed and astonished, and Rey’s fingers clench around his arm hard enough that he’s going to have bruises to mark this moment.
“Rey,” General Leia says, kindly, once the celebration has died down a little, “you must go. His lightsaber came to you.”
Rey hesitates, fingers still wrapped around Poe’s forearm, and Poe says, softly so that no one else can hear, “I’ll keep Finn safe. When you get back, he’ll be waiting for you.”
“Alright,” Rey says to the General, nodding sharply. “I’ll go.”
She visits Finn again before she leaves, kisses his forehead and promises to return, while Poe lurks in the doorway feeling vaguely out of place. But then she turns to Poe, and looks him solemnly in the eyes, and says, “You’ll be waiting, too, when I get back?”
“Yes,” Poe promises, and it feels like a binding vow, settles over his shoulders with actual weight to it. Yes, he’ll wait for this girl with the fierce eyes and the Force shining around her like sunlight, this woman who does not need his protection but who will let him feed her and comfort her and stand beside her. He’d wait until the heat-death of the universe, if he needed to.
He doesn’t think she’ll take that long.