Okay OP I started writing this and got A LITTLE CARRIED AWAY so I'm going to post the first two parts for you, just so you know it's being written, and hopefully I'll finish the rest of it soon :D
~
BB8 shrills at him, desperate and concerned, from his cradle on the back of the X-wing. He's upside down, which can’t be any more pleasant for a droid than it is for him. Though, Poe has to admit, it’s probably not worse — BB8 certainly doesn’t have a safety harness digging into what is very likely a broken clavicle, the sharp, insistent pain of a broken rib poking at a lung, and the cool, wet drip of leaking coolant pulsing through the tears of a flight suit.
BB8 doesn’t have a clavicle. Or ribs. Or lungs. Or a fight suit, come to that. Maybe he should — maybe, if Poe gets out of this, he’ll get him one.
He’s not getting out of this, he realizes, with a strange clarity.
Hell of a thing, he finds himself thinking, as his mind drifts and BB8’s titters fade into a soft, familiar song. Always hoped I’d die better than this.
He thinks — he feels — he remembers a cool hand pressed to his forehead, right before the world goes dark.
**
He wakes up to the safely sterile scent of D’Qar's medwing in a great deal of pain which, he’ll admit, is probably better than not waking up at all.
In addition to the chemical burns streaking across torso, and the cracked ribs, his clavicle is — to quote the delightfully unclinical droid who breaks the news to him — functionally pulverized. They’re the kind of injuries that the New Republic Navy dealt with through a quick dip in a bacta tank and a couple of days bed rest. But the Resistance, in the noble tradition of underground movements everywhere, is somewhat strapped for cash and medical supplies. The best the doctors can do for him is patches to heal the burns, which he’s infinitely thankful for, and injections of an experimental drug meant to bring down swelling and accelerated bone growth. The recovery period is about a month, requires a cast and sling, and precludes all but the most minimal movement of the effected area. And Poe Dameron’s a good pilot, the best he knows, certainly, but even he’s not exactly capable of piloting an x-wing with only minimal movement of his right arm and shoulder.
The first week, it doesn’t really matter: he spends most of it drugged out of his mind. Anesthetics are hardly plentiful but are apparently very necessary for the process, and his weak protests to the contrary are dismissed out of hand by everyone he tries to raise them with, from BB8 to the medical droids to Doctor Kalonia, not to mention General Organa, whose strangely pale visage he wakes up to on Day 3, or maybe 4.
By week two, he’s allowed to leave the medical wing, and finds himself wishing for the drugs again, because unfocused delirium has to be better than constant nausea and perpetual tedium. There’s nothing more boring than spending his days roaming the base in search of something to do that only requires his left hand. As it turns out, there’s not much: Black One's going through extensive repairs in a hangar that he’s been preemptively banned from, and the simulators are all full of new recruits. And while most of them still look upon Poe with a certain degree of hero-worship, he’s not bored enough to take advantage of that for the sake a distraction when they’re all still in need of training.
He reads a lot: starts at least five novels and gives up on them and going back to mission reports and his x-wing manual.
He goes to the commissary, then the mess hall.
He drops by the ambulance corps, to thank them for the rescue that’s put him in this particular predicament. His mom’d flown an ambulance ship for a while, he remembers: back before she’d been assigned her A-wing, a few months after enlisting with the Rebellion. Like most things related to her time in the war, Shara hadn’t talked about it. He’d had to find out, years later, from his father. Like it’d been something to be ashamed of, the fact that she’d been saving lives even before she’d been cleared for combat missions.
His squad returns, piecemeal, from a set of missions. He tries not to go crazy listening to Snap and Jess talk about their milk-run trips to the outer-rim, but his cast itches and his stomach hurts and he feels tired, the kind of exhaustion that comes not from doing too much but too little, and of having nothing to look forward to.
It’s fine. He’s dealing with it.
**
He deals with it for three weeks.
He might’ve dealt with it longer, except that’s when news comes in, of a practice run turned ambush on what they’d thought was an uninhabited system far from First Order territory. Three of the five recruits were killed, Iolo and Kune took serious hits, and Poe, who would have — should have — been with them, was getting the hard cast removed from his arm and shoulder and told he needed another two weeks of light duty and a sling before he could return to active duty.
And now, he’s pacing the Control Room, trying to listen to the debate about balancing the need for off-planet training exercises and the risk of future attacks.
“Commander Dameron?”
He stills: General Organa is staring at him. “Ma’am?"
“Do you have a suggestion?"
“Yes,” he says, firmly. “Put me back on rotation."
There’s a few light titters around him; he ignores that, focuses on the General, who’s giving him a steady but almost gentle look. “I don’t think that’s the best idea right now."
The not-insignificant parts of Poe Dameron that have, through his Yavin IV upbringing and years of Academy training, developed an instinctual respect for a person of General Leia Organa’s experience, scream at him to shut up, to pause, to listen. The rest of him, the parts that are tired, angry, and, more than anything, guilty, win.
“With all due respect, ma’am, I’m the best you’ve got right now—"
“And so humble, too,” she says, dryly.
“Ma’am,” he says, utterly failing at keeping his voice even. “You need me out there. You can’t afford to lose any more pilots, and—"
“You are too important to the Resistance—"
Poe laughs, harshly. “From here? Doing nothing? I’m useless to you right now!” he glances around: the room is full of people, many of whom seem reluctant to meet his eyes. “To all of you.”
“You are not useless, Dameron. You’re healing."
“I am healed!” he says, and makes the colossally stupid decision to rip open his sling and wave his very much not healed arm around for emphasis. It’s agony, of course, but he’s got the training, and more importantly, the adrenaline, to push past that. “I’m fine!"
“Commander Dameron—"
“People are dead,” he says, trying not to think too hard about them, three kids he’d recruited fresh from flight school, talked into abandoning a promising future in the New Republic Navy in favor of low wages and suicide missions. “Because I couldn’t keep my damn ship in the air."
“People are dead, Commander Dameron, because the First Order is brutal, desperate, and sloppy. Putting you out there before you’re fully recovered from your injuries would be just as—"
“I’m recovered!"
“Son—"
“I am not your son,” he snarls, and through the swirling haze of pain, anger, and frustration, hears gasps. General Organa’s face changes, minutely, but Poe’s immediately certain that he might as well have slapped her. The momentary flash of vulnerability in her eyes fades to a cool darkness.
“Ma’am, I didn’t—"
“You’re dismissed, Commander Dameron."
He opens his mouth to protest, and she fixes him with an icy stare that cuts through him like blaster fire. He yanks his right hand up in a breathtakingly painful salute, nods, and exits the room.
**
He slinks back to his quarters and collapses, drapes his weak arm over his chest, and shuts his eyes to the sound of BB8 practically cooing at him.
He lasts about half an hour like that, before the pain gets to be too much, before he starts worrying about having done permanent, irreparable damage to his arm, and drags himself to the medwing; BB8 trails after him, chattering at everyone they pass on the way there, which is great, because it means Poe doesn’t need to.
Doctor Kalonia takes one look at his sloppily fastened sling and hustles him to a cot. “Lie down,” she says, stern, and Poe obeys. “I’m going to give you something for the pain?” she asks, like he has the option of saying no. He knows better: the minute he refuses it becomes an issue, it becomes a psych eval and another couple of weeks on the ground.
A quick jab to his thigh and relief is almost immediate. “Thank you,” he says.
She nods at him. Unfastens his sling, runs a scanner along the length of his arm and shoulder. Purses her lips as she surveys the results.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, as the waves of hazy numbness flood over him.
“For what, Commander Dameron?"
“For—did I—did I fuck up all your hard work?"
The doctor gives him a slight, but genuine, smile: “Not my hard work, Commander."
His own, then. His own efforts to become indispensable to the Resistance, to give all he has to offer to protect the New Republic, freedom, and intergalactic stability. Everything his parents had fought for. All because he’s a grown man who can’t keep himself entertained and out of trouble for five fucking weeks.
What an idiot, he thinks, right before he dozes off.
FILL: Poe, Kes Dameron, injury recovery and family time (1/?)
~
BB8 shrills at him, desperate and concerned, from his cradle on the back of the X-wing. He's upside down, which can’t be any more pleasant for a droid than it is for him. Though, Poe has to admit, it’s probably not worse — BB8 certainly doesn’t have a safety harness digging into what is very likely a broken clavicle, the sharp, insistent pain of a broken rib poking at a lung, and the cool, wet drip of leaking coolant pulsing through the tears of a flight suit.
BB8 doesn’t have a clavicle. Or ribs. Or lungs. Or a fight suit, come to that. Maybe he should — maybe, if Poe gets out of this, he’ll get him one.
He’s not getting out of this, he realizes, with a strange clarity.
Hell of a thing, he finds himself thinking, as his mind drifts and BB8’s titters fade into a soft, familiar song. Always hoped I’d die better than this.
He thinks — he feels — he remembers a cool hand pressed to his forehead, right before the world goes dark.
**
He wakes up to the safely sterile scent of D’Qar's medwing in a great deal of pain which, he’ll admit, is probably better than not waking up at all.
In addition to the chemical burns streaking across torso, and the cracked ribs, his clavicle is — to quote the delightfully unclinical droid who breaks the news to him — functionally pulverized. They’re the kind of injuries that the New Republic Navy dealt with through a quick dip in a bacta tank and a couple of days bed rest. But the Resistance, in the noble tradition of underground movements everywhere, is somewhat strapped for cash and medical supplies. The best the doctors can do for him is patches to heal the burns, which he’s infinitely thankful for, and injections of an experimental drug meant to bring down swelling and accelerated bone growth. The recovery period is about a month, requires a cast and sling, and precludes all but the most minimal movement of the effected area. And Poe Dameron’s a good pilot, the best he knows, certainly, but even he’s not exactly capable of piloting an x-wing with only minimal movement of his right arm and shoulder.
The first week, it doesn’t really matter: he spends most of it drugged out of his mind. Anesthetics are hardly plentiful but are apparently very necessary for the process, and his weak protests to the contrary are dismissed out of hand by everyone he tries to raise them with, from BB8 to the medical droids to Doctor Kalonia, not to mention General Organa, whose strangely pale visage he wakes up to on Day 3, or maybe 4.
By week two, he’s allowed to leave the medical wing, and finds himself wishing for the drugs again, because unfocused delirium has to be better than constant nausea and perpetual tedium. There’s nothing more boring than spending his days roaming the base in search of something to do that only requires his left hand. As it turns out, there’s not much: Black One's going through extensive repairs in a hangar that he’s been preemptively banned from, and the simulators are all full of new recruits. And while most of them still look upon Poe with a certain degree of hero-worship, he’s not bored enough to take advantage of that for the sake a distraction when they’re all still in need of training.
He reads a lot: starts at least five novels and gives up on them and going back to mission reports and his x-wing manual.
He goes to the commissary, then the mess hall.
He drops by the ambulance corps, to thank them for the rescue that’s put him in this particular predicament. His mom’d flown an ambulance ship for a while, he remembers: back before she’d been assigned her A-wing, a few months after enlisting with the Rebellion. Like most things related to her time in the war, Shara hadn’t talked about it. He’d had to find out, years later, from his father. Like it’d been something to be ashamed of, the fact that she’d been saving lives even before she’d been cleared for combat missions.
His squad returns, piecemeal, from a set of missions. He tries not to go crazy listening to Snap and Jess talk about their milk-run trips to the outer-rim, but his cast itches and his stomach hurts and he feels tired, the kind of exhaustion that comes not from doing too much but too little, and of having nothing to look forward to.
It’s fine. He’s dealing with it.
**
He deals with it for three weeks.
He might’ve dealt with it longer, except that’s when news comes in, of a practice run turned ambush on what they’d thought was an uninhabited system far from First Order territory. Three of the five recruits were killed, Iolo and Kune took serious hits, and Poe, who would have — should have — been with them, was getting the hard cast removed from his arm and shoulder and told he needed another two weeks of light duty and a sling before he could return to active duty.
And now, he’s pacing the Control Room, trying to listen to the debate about balancing the need for off-planet training exercises and the risk of future attacks.
“Commander Dameron?”
He stills: General Organa is staring at him. “Ma’am?"
“Do you have a suggestion?"
“Yes,” he says, firmly. “Put me back on rotation."
There’s a few light titters around him; he ignores that, focuses on the General, who’s giving him a steady but almost gentle look. “I don’t think that’s the best idea right now."
The not-insignificant parts of Poe Dameron that have, through his Yavin IV upbringing and years of Academy training, developed an instinctual respect for a person of General Leia Organa’s experience, scream at him to shut up, to pause, to listen. The rest of him, the parts that are tired, angry, and, more than anything, guilty, win.
“With all due respect, ma’am, I’m the best you’ve got right now—"
“And so humble, too,” she says, dryly.
“Ma’am,” he says, utterly failing at keeping his voice even. “You need me out there. You can’t afford to lose any more pilots, and—"
“You are too important to the Resistance—"
Poe laughs, harshly. “From here? Doing nothing? I’m useless to you right now!” he glances around: the room is full of people, many of whom seem reluctant to meet his eyes. “To all of you.”
“You are not useless, Dameron. You’re healing."
“I am healed!” he says, and makes the colossally stupid decision to rip open his sling and wave his very much not healed arm around for emphasis. It’s agony, of course, but he’s got the training, and more importantly, the adrenaline, to push past that. “I’m fine!"
“Commander Dameron—"
“People are dead,” he says, trying not to think too hard about them, three kids he’d recruited fresh from flight school, talked into abandoning a promising future in the New Republic Navy in favor of low wages and suicide missions. “Because I couldn’t keep my damn ship in the air."
“People are dead, Commander Dameron, because the First Order is brutal, desperate, and sloppy. Putting you out there before you’re fully recovered from your injuries would be just as—"
“I’m recovered!"
“Son—"
“I am not your son,” he snarls, and through the swirling haze of pain, anger, and frustration, hears gasps. General Organa’s face changes, minutely, but Poe’s immediately certain that he might as well have slapped her. The momentary flash of vulnerability in her eyes fades to a cool darkness.
“Ma’am, I didn’t—"
“You’re dismissed, Commander Dameron."
He opens his mouth to protest, and she fixes him with an icy stare that cuts through him like blaster fire. He yanks his right hand up in a breathtakingly painful salute, nods, and exits the room.
**
He slinks back to his quarters and collapses, drapes his weak arm over his chest, and shuts his eyes to the sound of BB8 practically cooing at him.
He lasts about half an hour like that, before the pain gets to be too much, before he starts worrying about having done permanent, irreparable damage to his arm, and drags himself to the medwing; BB8 trails after him, chattering at everyone they pass on the way there, which is great, because it means Poe doesn’t need to.
Doctor Kalonia takes one look at his sloppily fastened sling and hustles him to a cot. “Lie down,” she says, stern, and Poe obeys. “I’m going to give you something for the pain?” she asks, like he has the option of saying no. He knows better: the minute he refuses it becomes an issue, it becomes a psych eval and another couple of weeks on the ground.
A quick jab to his thigh and relief is almost immediate. “Thank you,” he says.
She nods at him. Unfastens his sling, runs a scanner along the length of his arm and shoulder. Purses her lips as she surveys the results.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, as the waves of hazy numbness flood over him.
“For what, Commander Dameron?"
“For—did I—did I fuck up all your hard work?"
The doctor gives him a slight, but genuine, smile: “Not my hard work, Commander."
His own, then. His own efforts to become indispensable to the Resistance, to give all he has to offer to protect the New Republic, freedom, and intergalactic stability. Everything his parents had fought for. All because he’s a grown man who can’t keep himself entertained and out of trouble for five fucking weeks.
What an idiot, he thinks, right before he dozes off.
**