Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Part II

Poe hadn’t been inside an X-wing in weeks. He took shifts flying the Falcon—all the remaining pilots did—but it wasn’t the same when they were gliding through hyperspace. There were no obstacles, no challenges, no goals. They were just floating in the void, and Poe was acutely aware of that fact every second of every day. He was restless to the point of bursting.

No X-wing and no pressing tasks also meant Poe had nothing to siphon his attention away from the thing that was really bothering him. One of the things, anyway. Not even the most important one, he reminded himself. The fate of the entire galaxy rested on the Resistance, and its back was seconds away from breaking under the strain. That was what he should focus on.

“Hey,” Finn said, entering the cockpit where Poe sat idly behind the controls. Instantly, Poe sat up straighter, his heartbeat quickening.

Never mind, Poe thought, this is the most important thing.

“Hey!” Poe said, and even in his elated state, he could tell it sounded too eager. He cleared his throat, but he couldn’t completely wipe the smile from his face. “It’s good to see you out and about again, buddy.”

He didn’t say, It’s good to see you at all.

He didn’t say, I almost thought you forgot about me.

“Well, Rey started nagging me, too, so I thought maybe it was time for a break,” Finn said.

“I didn’t mean to nag you, I was just—”

“Yeah, I know. I didn’t really mean it like that. I’m tired is all.” Finn took a deep breath, then looked Poe right in the eyes. “Thank you for worrying about me, Poe.”

Finn’s sad eyes with the bags underneath, coupled with the tiniest smile that lifted the corners of his mouth, threatened to simultaneously melt Poe’s heart into mush and shatter it into a thousand pieces. He was in way too deep.

Poe knew that he should ask about Rose. It was the right thing to do. She was the reason Finn had shirked food and sleep for the past forty-eight hours, and besides that, Poe should care about the answer anyway. She was a hero. She had saved his life. Well, she had saved Finn’s life, anyway, and that was basically the same thing. But so much baggage came with asking about Rose, and it was easier to pretend they were back at the base on D’Qar and nothing had changed. For a minute there, before Crait and everything leading up to it, Poe had been so sure… He shut that thought down before he could finish it. It didn’t matter now. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

“So, um. Where’s Rey?” Poe asked. He felt like a coward.

Finn collapsed into the seat next to Poe, swiveled around to face him.

“She’s with Rose,” Finn said. “She offered to look after her so I could get some rest or whatever.” He yawned through the word whatever, completely ruining the blasé effect he was going for.

So that was how Rey had convinced him to leave Rose’s bedside. Poe had wondered. He hadn’t even thought of that tactic.

“I’m glad she did,” Poe said, skirting over the subject of Rose once again. He nudged Finn’s knee with his own. A strange look entered Finn’s eyes, and Poe worried he had gone too far. Normally, he wouldn’t be so touchy with a man who had no idea Poe was obsessed with him, but Finn always made him extra brave. Then Finn settled deeper into his seat, and Poe’s fear passed. Finn leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

“Now that I’m thinking about it, I feel like I could go to sleep right here,” Finn said. Butterflies leapt in Poe’s stomach at the thought of Finn sleeping beside him. Even if they were in the cockpit of a spaceship, sitting feet apart from each other.

“Have at it, buddy,” Poe said. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

He heard it. He knew it was a little too intense for their current situation. He didn’t care. It was true.

Eventually, Finn slumped further in his chair, his breaths slowed. Poe could’ve listened to him for hours. Poe did listen to him for hours. His relief came in, raising her eyebrows at Finn’s sleeping figure, and Poe waved her off. There was nowhere else he wanted to be right now. With all of space in front of him and Finn by his side, it was easy to believe, for once, that everything would be all right.

As he sat there, silently memorizing every line of Finn’s face, from his eyelashes to his lips, Poe kept thinking about what he had said and how true it actually was. He would do every single thing in his power, for the rest of his life, to make sure nothing ever happened to Finn. Maybe, Poe realized, that was the reason this whole thing with Rose bothered him so much. It wasn’t just that she kissed him. It was that Poe was supposed to be the one keeping Finn safe. And in that moment, when Finn needed someone most, Poe had been helpless. What Rose had done, risking her life to save Finn, was supposed to be Poe’s. That kiss was supposed to be—

Just then, Rey burst into the cockpit.

“She’s awake!” she exclaimed. Then she looked around and realized Finn was asleep. At her entrance, he had sniffed and shifted slightly, but nothing more.

Poe, on the other hand, heard the news loud and clear. He felt frozen. He was happy Rose was awake. She deserved that. He was happy. There was nothing else to be. Except that Poe was a lot of things other than happy, and he hated himself for it.

“Great!” he said, doing his best to match Rey’s excitement. Apparently, it wasn’t convincing. She rolled her eyes as she threw herself down in the seat behind Finn, both legs swung over the side.

“How long has he been out?” she asked, instead of talking more about Rose. Poe got the feeling Rey wanted to avoid that topic, too.

“Hours,” Poe said. “Pretty much since he got here.”

“Good. He needed it. I was really starting to worry about him.”

“Pff. Starting,” Poe said. He didn’t feel the need to elaborate that he had been worrying about Finn ever since they crashed on Jakku in what now felt like another lifetime.

“Did he eat anything?” Rey asked.

“No. But he will. Especially when he finds out Rose is ok.”

Neither of them moved to wake him. He would have wanted them to, probably, but that was only because he cared less about taking care of himself than they did. Poe felt a certain appreciation for Rey, a certain kinship, as they sat in silence and watched hyperspace rush past the viewport. She was always looking out for Finn, just as much as he was. Poe was glad Finn had a friend like Rey. And Poe had other things in common with her besides caring about Finn as much as he deserved. They both had flying in their veins, and though they hadn’t talked about it, it was obvious that she liked women the same way Poe liked men. Actually, just the one man these days, but still.

“How long have I been asleep?” Finn asked, his voice low and stuffy with sleep. The sound startled Poe from his thoughts.

“Um…” Now that Poe thought about it, he had no idea how long they had been sitting here like this. He had lost track of time, maybe because he didn’t want this moment to end. “A while. How are you feeling?”

Finn grunted as he shifted in his seat and stretched his arms as far as they would go. The backs of his fingers grazed Poe’s ear, and Finn immediately pulled his arms back in. Poe tried to act like his heart hadn’t stopped, like the spot where Finn’s skin had touched his wasn’t still burning.

“I don’t know,” Finn mumbled, as if he were changing the subject from something uncomfortable. “A little better, I guess. My stomach feels like it’s trying to eat itself. Can we get some food?”

“Sure, buddy,” Poe said immediately, practically leaping from his seat to get Finn something to eat. Then Poe remembered. “Oh wait. Actually, there’s something I think you’ll want to hear first.” He nodded toward Rey, who hadn’t moved from her seat. A smile danced around her lips as she watched Finn turn around and notice her for the first time.

“Rey! What are you doing here? You were supposed to stay with Rose until she…” Finn’s eyes popped open wide. Rey smiled so wide that it covered her whole face. “Did she…?”

Rey nodded, and in the next second Finn was gone from the cockpit and running down the corridor. Poe smiled in spite of himself. Seeing Finn that excited, it was impossible not to.

“How long do you think it’ll be before he realizes he doesn’t know where she is?” Rey said, leisurely getting up out of her seat to follow Finn.

“It’s a small ship,” Poe said. “I’m sure he’ll find her soon enough.”

With both of them gone, the cozy little space felt cold and empty. Poe felt like he could see the shadows of them, like black holes opening up where they had been sitting just a moment before. His heart ached dull in his chest. But he stayed where he was. He was on duty still, though he had forgotten that until just now. It was an excuse, anyway. He didn’t want to follow them. He was glad Finn would be reunited with Rose because Finn would be so happy. Poe could imagine the look on Finn’s face when he met Rose’s eyes, open for the first time in weeks. He could imagine Finn running across the room and throwing his arms around her. He could imagine all the guilt bubbling up out of Finn, all the apologies that Rose would no doubt brush away. It wasn’t a favor that she had done, it was a duty. A necessity. That’s how Poe would’ve felt in her position, anyway.

But Poe, as he remembered constantly, was not in her position. He was only watching from the sidelines.

“General wants to see you,” the next pilot on duty said when she came to relieve Poe a while later. Poe’s brow creased as he thought over the past twenty-four hours. He didn’t remember doing anything that would get him into trouble.

“About what?” Poe asked. The other pilot shrugged as she plopped down in the pilot’s seat. Poe made a beeline for the strategy room, which used to be just an engineering bay. He wasn’t exactly eager to meet with General Leia if she was going to scold him for something, but he also didn’t want to run into anyone else on the way. Well, he didn’t want to run into Finn and Rose. He wasn’t ready to let go of the fantasy world in which Finn was his. Not yet.

When Poe entered the strategy room, Leia was staring intently at a star-map, which seemed to be focused on a single planet and its surrounding system.

“General,” Poe said, and she looked up. Relief washed through Poe’s churning stomach when she smiled at him.

“Poe,” she said. “I feel like I never see you anymore.”

“We live on a cargo ship,” Poe said. “Everybody sees everybody all the time.”

“And we still don’t talk as much as we used to.”

Poe opened his mouth to say that wasn’t true, but when he thought about it, he realized that it was. He saw Leia at mealtimes and during strategy meetings just like everyone else, but they hadn’t had a one-on-one conversation since they’d been aboard the Falcon. It was strange. Back on D’Qar, they had met in private at least once a day.

“Come here, I want you to look at this,” she said, gesturing to the star-map. Poe approached the table where she stood and examined the hologram planet that hovered there. Stars surrounded it, but there were no constellations he recognized.

“You’ll have to tell me what I’m looking at,” Poe said.

“It’s a planet, Poe.”

Poe rolled his eyes. “Ha, ha. Very funny. Which planet am I looking at, then?”

Leia pressed a button on the table, and the star system faded away. In its place was a data screen that told about arid climates and a war-torn history.

“Lothal,” Leia said. “Heard of it?”

“I think so,” Poe said. “Way out in the middle of nowhere, right? It was under Imperial control until the rebel cell there took it back, and then…well. I don’t know what happened after that.”

“Not many people do. After the Empire fell, pretty much everyone forgot about Lothal except the people who lived there.” She gave him a pointed look. Now, he understood where she was going with this.

“Everyone, including the First Order.”

“Exactly. Even though Lothal housed a rebel cell in the days of the Alliance, that was a long time ago. And like you said, it’s in the middle of nowhere. What would the First Order want with that?”

“Are you saying this could be our new base?” Poe asked, perking up. If they found a new base, they could finally get off this ship. They could start rebuilding. They could do something other than run away.

“No,” Leia said. “Or at least, not yet. All I’m saying for now is that we’re running out of fuel and food, and Lothal might be the place to get some more without the First Order finding out.”

“And if we happen to find some old rebel sympathizers who come running when they find out the great Leia Organa is looking for help, that’s just a bonus, right?” Poe said.

Leia smiled. “I’ve taught you something after all.”

Poe skimmed through the planet’s data file. There wasn’t much information of interest. Lothal had villages and cities and wildlife just like anywhere else. Other than some precious mineral resources and the territory battle between the Empire and the rebels, the place was fairly ordinary. A thought occurred to Poe.

“Why are you showing this to me and not everyone else?”

“You’re my Captain. The only one I have left. I wanted to get your opinion on what we should do before I got everyone else’s hopes up.”

“Oh.” Poe was stunned. Until this moment, he hadn’t even been sure he was a Captain. And he had never been second-in-command of an entire army. Granted, it was a very small army. But still, this felt like a huge moment. For him and Leia both. He wanted to thank her or assure her he would do a good job or maybe even hug her, but he worried any of that would ruin it. Instead, he accepted quietly that this was how it would be now. “Ok. Let’s talk about it.”

They looked at each other for a moment, and Leia’s eyes were full of warmth. Poe tried to convey on his face all the gratitude that coursed through him, all the admiration he felt for this woman who had shaped most of the things about him that were good.

“Let’s,” was all Leia said. They began discussing plans as if neither noticed what had just passed between them.

In the end, after several ambitious pitches from Poe and just as many reminders from Leia that even at the corner of the galaxy, they needed to be discreet, they decided on a simple supply run.  They would get a feel for the landscape (both physical and political) and go from there. Leia told Poe he shouldn’t expect to come away from the mission with anything other than food and fuel, but she had a spark in her eyes. As if she weren’t taking her own advice. As if she expected to find something more.

Poe left the strategy room buzzing. He had been restless before, but now it was worse. Now that he knew what their next move was, he wanted to make it immediately. He wanted to touch down on Lothal right now and improvise the mission as he had done a thousand others. But he also understood why that wasn’t an option. If there were any First Order allies on Lothal and they caught one glimpse of the Falcon, the Resistance would be over. They had to be smart about this. They had to be careful. They weren’t strong enough to start another fight just yet.

As he walked down the corridor, Poe ran the plan through his mind again and again, poring over every detail they had hammered out so far. Next thing he knew, he smacked right into someone turning the corner. Their heads knocked against each other, and Poe stumbled backward. Before he could fall, whoever it was grabbed him by the arms and steadied him.

“Are you—hey, there you are,” the person holding him said. Of course it was Finn. With the distraction of Lothal and the supply run, Poe had forgotten to think about him for the past few hours. It was the first time that had happened since they met. Now Finn gripped him tightly, their faces and bodies and everything else less than a foot apart, and it felt like taking a bucket of ice water to the face.

“Sorry, buddy,” Poe said. His nose ached sharply from the impact, so much so that his eyes filled with tears. Instinctually, he wanted to touch it, but he feared that if he moved, Finn would let go. Or step back. And Poe wanted him this close for as long as he could have it. He felt Finn’s warm breath on his face. He probably would have been able to smell it, too, if he could use his nose.

“Let me see,” Finn said. He gently prodded Poe’s nose, and Poe winced. “Sorry. I just want to make sure it’s not broken.” Finn moved his fingertips along Poe’s nose. Poe thought he might go into shock. He didn’t even feel the pain anymore. All he felt in the whole world was Finn’s fingers on his skin.

“I should run into you more often,” Poe said breathlessly. Finn’s fingers paused, his brow crinkled. Had Poe said that out loud? He definitely had not meant to say that out loud. He scrambled for a convincing excuse to cover it and came up with nothing. They just stood there, looking at each other in silence, for several seconds. Finn’s fingers still rested lightly on Poe’s nose.

Finally, Finn opened his mouth to speak, and Poe had never wanted to hear anything more than whatever Finn was about to say.

And then Rose turned the corner.

“Poe! It’s so good to see you again! I’m so happy you’re alive!” she said, flinging herself between him and Finn and throwing her arms around him. Poe patted her half-heartedly on the back, but his eyes were still locked on Finn over her shoulder. Finn looked at the ground and shuffled back a few steps.

So. This was going to be exactly the way Poe had expected. He plastered a smile on his face as Rose pulled away.

“I’m glad you’re alive, too,” he said. That much was true.

“Where have you been? Finn’s been looking all over for you.”

Under any other circumstances, the thought of Finn looking for him would have sent Poe’s heart fluttering, but now it just seemed like a cosmic taunt.

“I was in a meeting with General Leia,” Poe said.

Finn perked up. “What about?”

“Lots of things,” Poe said. He didn’t want to be here anymore. All the energy and excitement that had coursed through him earlier drained out of him in a steady stream. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

He pushed past Rose without so much as a goodbye. He told himself he wouldn’t look at Finn when he passed, but of course he did. Their eyes met, and Finn’s were as buttery soft as Poe had feared. He swallowed hard and kept walking down the corridor toward the crew’s quarters, leaving Finn behind.

…………………………………………………

For the next few days, any time Poe got to spend with Finn was the same. Rose was always there, and she was . . . fine. Honestly. Fine. But not a moment went by when Poe didn’t wish she was somewhere else. In front of her, a thousand things went unsaid between Finn and Poe, and those things hummed beneath every conversation they had.

At least now Poe had the supply run to distract him. Most of his time was spent strategizing and making preparations. He only had time to agonize over Finn when they sat beside each other during meals or when he lay alone in his bunk at night, unable to sleep.

Sometimes, when they all ate together—Poe, Finn, Rey, and Rose—Poe noticed a strange look in Rey’s eyes. Like she was silently obsessing over something, too. Any time she furtively glanced away from her food, he noticed, her eyes moved to Rose. He might have thought Rey had developed a crush if not for the deafening silence that had fallen between her and Rose. Where before they had talked and laughed together freely, now they would not even look each other in the eye. When one spoke, the other grimaced.

A thought occurred to Poe one night during dinner in the main hold. He was sitting beside Finn, stuffed into the circular booth around the small table so that their thighs pressed together. It was a miracle that Poe noticed anything other than the feeling of Finn’s leg sliding against his own every time one of them shifted, but he did. While Rose was busy talking to Finn, Rey’s eyes bore down on her with unusually intense concentration. It looked like she was seeing something that was invisible to the rest of them. And then Poe realized, maybe she was. Maybe it was a Force thing. He knew the basics of the Force—that it existed, that it bonded all living things in the universe, that it contained the light and the dark—but he had no idea how it actually worked for people who knew how to wield it. Maybe they could use it to read a person, to see beyond what met the eye. Rey stopped looking at Rose eventually, but Poe kept thinking about his theory. What if the Force was telling Rey something about Rose? What if it wasn’t good? A tangle of hope and dread rose in him at the thought of Rose betraying them all.

While his mind raced, everyone else carried on as usual. No one seemed to notice that Poe had gone silent, that he had not taken a bite of his food in several minutes. Finn was too busy with Rose to pay him any attention. A pinch of resentment tinged Poe’s thoughts, but he quickly snuffed it out. He would not be angry at Finn for caring about someone else.

That didn’t change the fact that watching the two of them together sent a stabbing pain through Poe’s chest. And on top of it all, now, was the idea that Rose might not be who she said she was. That she might hurt Finn. Of course Poe would never wish for that, but the most selfish part of him could not shake the image of a heartbroken Finn running into his arms for comfort.

As if from a thousand miles away, he heard Finn say something, heard Rose laugh in response. He could not bear all of it any longer. He stood, his eyes locked on Rey. Immediately, he felt the absence of Finn’s leg pressed against him like a phantom limb.

“I need to talk to you about the supply run,” he said. It was all he could think of to get her away from the others.

“Um,” she said. “Ok?”

Only when he saw how confused she was did Poe realize how little sense it made for them to discuss the supply run privately right now, after they had all spent the entire day going over the plan together. But it was too late to backtrack. He didn’t look at Finn or Rose as he led Rey away from the table, toward the engineering bay/strategy room. He feared he would see relief or even excitement in their faces at the prospect of being left alone together. He sensed that neither of them liked him hanging around all the time, but he didn’t need to see it.

When they reached the engineering bay, Rey was all business.

“Has the plan changed?” she asked.

“What?” Poe genuinely had no idea what she was talking about for a moment. Then he remembered his shoddy excuse for bringing her here. “Oh. No.”

“Then why are we…?”

Now that the moment had come to voice his concerns or hopes or whatever they were, Poe had no idea how to phrase this in a way that didn’t completely expose him. His theory felt stupid now, so close to the light, and he wished he had the sense to keep it to himself. Right now, though, it seemed he didn’t have any sense at all.

“Seemed like something was bothering you. Thought you might want to talk about it,” Poe said. It was a vague, harmless sentiment. Maybe, if he was right about what was bothering her, she would answer all his questions without him actually having to ask them.

Except that Rey didn’t answer at all. Her eyes bulged a little, and she froze in place. Poe could see that something was churning behind her eyes and that she was working very hard to contain it. Apparently it hadn’t been a harmless sentiment after all. If he wanted justification for his irrational negative reaction to Rose, he was going to have to get it the hard way.

“Just tell me,” he said, his face burning with humiliation when his voice almost broke. He didn’t want to bring any of this to the surface. Or he wanted it more than anything. “Is it Rose?”

Rey’s tensed body relaxed a little, but now a strange look came over her face. Almost like she was just as embarrassed as Poe was in that moment. What could that mean?

“I don’t know if I would say she’s bothering me,” Rey said. “She’s very nice and everything.”

Her voice was hesitant, uncertain, and Poe seized on that. Maybe he was actually right about this. Maybe there really was something off about Rose. Maybe he didn’t have to feel so guilty about the way he acted toward her. The possible implications of that rushed through his mind, filling him with manic energy. Deep down, he really hadn’t expected to be right, but now he was invested.

“Yeah, I know that, everybody knows that,” he said. “But you’re acting weird around her. Why?”

Rey didn’t speak for a moment, but Poe could see in her eyes that she had something to say about this. His heartbeat quickened, pounding so hard that he could hear the blood pulsing through his ears. He didn’t want Finn to get hurt, he reminded himself over and over again in the silence. Finn’s safety and happiness were more important than Poe’s own feelings.

“I don’t know,” Rey said finally, and she sounded frustrated. As if she really didn’t know why she was acting the way she was. “I can’t explain it.”

But Poe needed an answer. He could tell something was going on here, and he felt like he would explode if he didn’t find out what was wrong. He recognized that he was too close to this, that he was being irrational, but he didn’t care.

“Do you have a bad feeling about her?” Poe asked, trying to steer his questioning in the direction of his theory. “You know, like a Force feeling or something?”

Rey laughed at him. “A Force feeling? Poe, I don’t think that exists.”

Frustration swelled in Poe’s chest, threatened to choke him. He wanted this to be over. He didn’t want to have to talk about Rose out loud any more.

“You know what I mean!” he said. “I’m just saying, I trust your intuition more than the average person’s, and if you think she’s not as great as she seems, I would believe it.”

“It’s nothing like that, don’t worry. She’s fine. She saved Finn’s life!” Rey said it as if Poe’s suggestion were ridiculous. It probably was. But Poe had hoped…or feared…well, he still wasn’t sure which of those to settle on, but he had at least thought that Rey had a reason to mistrust Rose. Something other than his own reason, which was…less than substantial.

“Yeah. She did,” he said. Despite his best efforts to suppress the memory as it rose up to the forefront of his mind, Poe saw that moment on Crait as clearly as if he were there again. For a second, he had truly believed Finn was going to die. For a second, he had felt his lungs caving in on themselves, the world fading to grey around him as his vision zeroed in on Finn’s ship racing toward the laser cannon, toward the end of everything that mattered to Poe. And then Rose’s ship had come from nowhere to knock Finn out of harm’s way, and Poe had breathed for what felt like the first time in his life. His heart had soared, and anything in the galaxy had seemed possible. Until he saw them holding each other, and his towering hopes came crashing down into reality.

“Since you trust my intuition so much, do you want to know what I actually think?” Rey said. Poe blinked. He had forgotten she was there, where he was, what they were talking about. She stared at him with determination in her face. “I think you’re jealous of her.”

Hearing his most private thoughts spoken aloud by someone else sent a jolt through Poe, and he almost couldn’t recover. He had been in no way prepared for this.

“Why would I be jealous of her?” he managed to say through the dryness in his throat. He was confident that she would go no further than that.

He was wrong.

“Because she kissed Finn.” Rey said it like it was a challenge.

Poe swallowed. His brain was shutting down, and he didn’t know what to do or say. He thought he was the only one who knew how he felt about Finn. But if Rey knew, who else? Was it so obvious? Did Finn know? The humiliation of that thought burned in his cheeks, so he put his head down.

“Doesn’t have anything to do with me,” he mumbled. He had to get out of there. He couldn’t look Rey in the eye.

“Of course not,” Rey said. He still couldn’t look at her.

“Well, I’ve got some work to do,” he said, because he really needed to be alone, and he couldn’t wait for a good excuse to come to him. “Uh. Gotta prep for that supply run. See you later.”

He pushed past her and left the engineering bay as quickly as he could.

People lingered in the main hold and in the corridors, relaxing and talking after a long day of strategy meetings and preparations for their mission. Energy buzzed through everyone on the ship ever since Leia announced her plan to stop for supplies on Lothal and gave them something to work toward. People seemed more alive than they had in weeks. But Poe didn’t want energy right now, and he didn’t want to talk to anyone.

He wandered mindlessly through the corridor until he came to the cockpit. Somehow he always ended up there. He ducked inside and offered to take the controls for the rest of the current pilot-on-duty’s shift, because he didn’t know what else he was supposed to do at a time like this.

Once he was settled into the pilot’s seat with hyperspace streaming past the viewport in front of him, he felt his mind begin to slow down. There was still very little for him to do besides monitor the controls, but at least now they had a destination. Lothal’s coordinates were in the navicomputer, and every second brought them closer to the next step in saving the Resistance. This was the closest thing Poe had to a happy place since his X-wing had been destroyed on board the Raddus.  

The first thing he thought about when he let his mind go free was Finn. Not whether Finn knew how Poe felt about him, not whether Finn felt that way about Rose. Just Finn. His pure heart and his kind eyes and his smile that never failed to take Poe’s breath away. Instead of remembering Crait, as he did far too often these days, Poe remembered the first time they met. The moment when Finn—who wasn’t even Finn yet—took his helmet off, and Poe suddenly had hope that he wouldn’t die there on Kylo Ren’s ship.

Warmth spread through Poe as he sat in the cockpit of the Falcon, and for a moment, he forgot the conversation with Rey. He forgot all the things he had been worried about. Nothing mattered except this feeling and these memories.

“There you are. I should’ve known,” said a voice behind Poe. He was in no way prepared when Finn entered the cockpit and plopped down in the co-pilot’s seat beside him. Poe’s palms went sweaty as he tried to clear his mind of every thought he had had since dinner.

“Where else would I be?” Poe said.

Finn shrugged. “I don’t know. Don’t you ever sleep?”

“Not when the stars are out,” Poe said. He stared straight ahead, trying as hard as he could not to look at Finn. “What’s up, buddy?”

“Nothing, really,” Finn said. “Just wanted to see you.”

Fireworks exploded in Poe’s chest, and he felt the smile spread across his face before he could do anything to stop it.

“I’m glad for the company,” Poe said, even though he wanted to say more.

“Hey, since we’re here, how about a flying lesson?” Finn said.

Poe turned to face Finn, his brow furrowed.

“I didn’t know you wanted to learn to fly.”

“That’s because I’ve never talked about it before,” Finn said sheepishly. “But I don’t know. Hearing you and Rey talk about how much you love it makes me want to at least try. I probably won’t be any good at it anyway.”

“Don’t say that,” Poe said immediately. “You’d be great. You flew that bucket of junk on Crait, remember, and you were fine until…”

But Poe didn’t want to think about that anymore tonight. Finn was here, safe and sound and with him, and that was what Poe would focus on.

“Sure, but I didn’t really know what I was doing,” Finn said, skirting over the uncomfortable moment as easily as Poe could have wished. “And if you teach me, then the next time I’m trying to escape the First Order, I won’t need a pilot.”

Finn smirked, but the lighthearted words still stung Poe a little bit. The idea of Finn not needing him tore at the edges of his mind. It was perhaps one of his greatest fears.

“Not that I—” Finn continued after only a moment. “I mean, I’m glad I needed one the first time around. Look how that turned out.”

He nudged Poe’s shoulder. Maybe—probably—he was imagining things, but Poe thought he recognized a certain spark in Finn’s eyes. He tried to ignore the excitement expanding in his chest like a balloon being inflated.

“Of course I’ll teach you to fly, Finn,” he said.

Poe wished they were in his X-wing. He wished he could show Finn the joy of breaking through a planet’s atmosphere and suddenly feeling all of space expanding around him. Part of him wished he could show off the complicated maneuvers he had picked up over the years that earned him the title of best pilot in the Resistance. As it was, they couldn’t even drop out of hyperspace. All Poe could do was point to controls and explain what they did, and even though it seemed mundane to him, Finn hung on his every word. After Poe explained a control, Finn would run his hand over it and stare ahead intently, as if he were imagining what would happen if he actually pulled the lever or pressed the button.

Watching him reminded Poe yet again why Finn was so special. To Poe, Finn seemed like the smartest, most resourceful person in the galaxy. Even though he spent most of his life being brainwashed by the First Order, he could figure out solutions to problems Poe couldn’t even begin to understand. Poe had seen more and experienced more than Finn, sure, but he constantly felt like Finn was teaching him new things about the universe. And yet, Finn still wanted to learn more. Here he was, trying to fly on top of everything else. Just because he wanted to understand. Just because he wanted to unlock the mysteries of one more experience in the vast world around him. During the lesson, every time Poe’s gaze caught on Finn’s eyes, he saw that hunger reaching out for anything and everything it could get its hands on. And every time, Poe lost track of whatever he was saying.

“That’s about all I can do for you right now,” Poe said when they had been over every switch and knob on the Falcon’s console. “One day, when all this is over, I’ll take you out on a ship that’s free to fly wherever we want, and then I can really teach you.”

“This is great. Really,” Finn said. “Thank you, Poe.” His face was eager, and Poe could tell that he meant every word. A warm buzzing settled in Poe’s chest. It would have been an unbearable feeling if he wasn’t so used to it. The same thing happened every time he spent time with Finn.

“So,” Poe said. Suddenly he was hyperaware of Finn’s knee hovering barely an inch from his own. He looked up at Finn’s face. “What now?”

Apparently Finn didn’t feel the same tension Poe felt in that moment. He was still too focused on his lesson.

“Now I try,” Finn said, and with that, he began pointing out the controls again, explaining the purpose of each one as best he could. Poe had to step in and correct him a few times, but he was impressed with how much Finn had absorbed. He didn’t know why he was surprised at this point. Just about everything Finn did amazed him.

When Finn finished, they both sat back, staring out the viewport.

“How did you learn to fly, by the way?” Finn asked. “I haven’t heard that story.”

“Oh.” The question caught Poe off guard. “My mother taught me. She was a pilot for the Alliance. Started taking me up in her A-wing before I was old enough to remember it.”

Finn smiled. “So the stars are in your blood. I should’ve known.”

Poe felt a sharp pang in his chest. He hadn’t expected to think about his mother right now. It had been nearly twenty-five years since her death, and he had learned to live in a world without her a long time ago. Sometimes, though—now, for instance—he couldn’t help but imagine how things would be different if she were there, and in those moments it felt like he was losing her all over again.

“Yeah, I guess you could say that,” he said to Finn. Prompted by nothing at all, he added: “I wish you could meet her. My mother. She would love you.”

“Maybe I will someday. You could show me your homeworld. I think I would like that.”

The thought of it made Poe light-headed. Finn, walking the halls of his childhood home, talking to his father. In that image, too, he felt his mother’s absence.

“Sure, yeah, we could go there, buddy. But my mother, she uh—” He found that he couldn’t say it. Like he was eight years old again and hadn’t accepted yet that she was really gone. He pressed his lips into a line and shook his head as he swallowed hard against the lump swelling in his throat.

“Oh,” Finn practically whispered. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Don’t be. It’s—” Poe shook his head again. He didn’t understand why talking about his mother had suddenly become impossible, but nevertheless, it had.

A long, heavy silence fell between them. Poe’s mind flooded with memories he couldn’t shut out. When he glanced at Finn sitting beside him, Poe saw that he was lost in thought, too. His face was all screwed up, as if he was trying desperately to remember something. Finally, Finn spoke, his voice so soft Poe could hardly hear it.

“I don’t remember what my mother looked like,” he said. The look on his face screamed defeat. Poe had never seen him so hollowed out.

“Finn…” Poe had no idea what to say. He had no idea what Finn was feeling. Poe had lost his mother early on, yes, but at least he had known her. At least he had memories of laughing with her, learning from her, so that he carried a piece of her with him forever. Finn had nothing.

Poe wanted to wipe all Finn’s pain away. No one in the galaxy deserved it less. Poe felt an urge to personally squeeze the life out of every single First Order officer for what they had put Finn through, but even that wouldn’t help him now. So instead, Poe reached across the small space that separated them and slipped his hand into Finn’s own. Finn squeezed, gripping Poe’s hand tight. Neither of them looked at the other, but they sat like that, in silence, for a long time.

…………………………………………………

After that night, Poe had no time for quiet moments alone with Finn. He resented that fact, but there was still a Resistance to rebuild, and Leia was counting on him to be her second-in-command. He was busy every second of the next few days, doing research on Lothal, strategizing with Leia, briefing the other Resistance fighters on what their roles would entail. There almost wasn’t even time for him to think about that moment in the cockpit of the Falcon with Finn, feeling the warmth of their palms pressed together as they sat in the weight of the things they had shared. There almost wasn’t time for him to obsess over what it might have meant or to wish desperately that he could do it over again every day for the rest of his life. Almost. But there were still those hours when he lay alone in his bunk, dead tired but unable to sleep.

In the end, when everything was mapped out and decided, the plan for the supply run included two field teams and a security detail for the Falcon, which would serve as mission control. They would land the Falcon far away from any settlements. One field team, led by Lieutenant Connix, would travel in one direction to a small farming village, where they would pick up food. The other field team, led by Poe himself, would travel in the opposite direction to Capital City to get fuel. Poe felt a twinge of guilt that he ignored when he assigned Finn to his own team and both Rose and Rey to Connix’s. He told himself that it was for the good of the mission, that it was the best and most logical placement for everyone, but he could not deny his personal motivations.

As the day of the supply run drew nearer, Poe became even more restless than he had been before. After all the talking, all the planning, he was ready to do the things they had laid out for themselves in such intricate detail. He was anxious to see how each step of their plan would go wrong, how they would think issues through and solve them as they went. He was ready to go.

The first of the issues arose even before the mission started. Just hours before their final group strategy session, the day before the supply run, Leia pulled Poe aside to speak in private.

“I’ve decided to change things up a bit,” she said. “Lieutenant Connix is going to stay here and oversee the Falcon’s security detail. Someone else will have to lead her team.”

“That’s easy,” Poe answered immediately. “Rey should do it.”

“You think so?” Leia asked, pursing her lips in thought.

“Of course. She has tons of field experience—even if most of it is pretty recent. She’s familiar with the kind of terrain she’ll be dealing with, and she’s good in combat if things go sideways. Not to mention she, y’know, has the Force.”

“You’re right. She would be a good choice,” Leia said. She thought in silence for a moment, and a look flashed in her eyes that was far too mischievous for the current conversation. “I was thinking Finn would be a good choice as well,” she continued.

Poe’s stomach dropped.

“No!” Poe said. “No, I think Finn, um—Finn isn’t—I mean, Finn should go with—” He stopped, breathed, composed himself. “Finn is already where he belongs.”

“Mm hmm.” Leia smirked. “If you say so. Rey it is.”

Poe left her with warmth in his cheeks and embarrassment churning in his gut. For the good of the mission, he thought to himself. Yeah. Sure.

Once they had their final briefing and Rey agreed to lead the second team, there was nothing left to do but wait. Poe knew that they had done as much as they could, that they had prepared for every foreseeable contingency—and he had overseen most of those preparations, so he trusted them. Still, something nagged at the back of his mind and wouldn’t let him relax. He couldn’t help but feel like he wasn’t actually ready at all.

Despite the anxious energy running through him, Poe was one of the first to retire to his bunk after dinner. He knew he wouldn’t get to sleep for a long time. Most nights, especially before a mission, it took at least an hour of staring at the dark ceiling while his brain wrestled through a thousand unrelated things before he could actually rest. And tonight he needed lots of rest. There was, when it came down to it, no telling what the next day held in store for him. Or for the Resistance. Or for the whole future of the galaxy.

But that was too far, he told himself as he turned over beneath his blanket. He could do nothing for the whole future of the galaxy right now. All he could do was sleep—and hope. He could always hope.

Just a few hours later, long before he would’ve felt rested and mentally prepared for a day as important as this one, Poe’s eyes flew open at the blaring of the alarm. There was no emergency, he knew. It was just the easiest way to get everyone on board the ship to wake up at the same time. Even so, the sound sent a jolt of panic through him and pulled him instantly out of bed, adrenaline coursing through his veins. He stepped into the bright corridor to find others stumbling out of their quarters, rubbing their eyes and yawning.

“This is it,” he said, half for them and half for himself. He smirked. “May the Force be with us.”

After checking in with everyone to make sure they were up and ready to go, Poe headed to the cockpit. Someone had to fly the Falcon through Lothal’s atmosphere, undetected, to the designated spot in the middle of the unpopulated desert region, and of course it would be him. He was the best pilot in the Resistance and the most eager to do some actual flying. He could not stop a smile from covering his face when the ship finally dropped out of light speed. Suddenly he found himself enveloped in an unending sea of clear, bright stars. Just below him, the huge mass of Lothal swelled, with its blending shades of tan and green surrounded by crystal blue patches of water.

As soon as Poe grabbed the controls, the gravity of the moment hit him: he was about to take control of the Millennium Falcon for the very first time. This was the ship that had been piloted by Han Solo. Luke Skywalker. This was the ship that helped blow up the Death Star. That made the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs. And now he was at the helm. He thought of his mother again and wished she could be there to share the moment with him. He wished that Finn were there, too.

But Finn was busy with his own duties, double-checking the knapsacks full of supplies for the journey and reminding everyone one last time how to determine if stormtroopers were present in the area. Poe had a job to do, too, and he needed to get out of his head and do it already. There would be time for sentiment later. Maybe. He hoped.

The Falcon slipped into Lothal’s outer atmosphere with no difficulty and no surprises. They didn’t encounter a single patrol. It seemed the planet was just as dormant as they had expected.

As he pulled in for a smooth landing in the sand, Poe held his breath, just like he did every time he landed a ship. It was a habit he had picked up when he was first learning to fly, and even after all these years and hundreds of landings, he couldn’t shake it.

Poe was making his way to the main hold to join everyone else when Finn stepped out of the refresher.

“Nice work,” Finn said, smiling. It dawned on Poe that it was the first time he had flown a ship with Finn in it.

“Thanks,” Poe said. “It’s usually much more chaotic.”

Finn fell in step beside him.

“Makes sense. You’re pretty chaotic yourself.”

It took every ounce of Poe’s self control to let the comment go. There was no time to interrogate Finn about what he meant by that—there was barely even time for the warmth that flared in Poe’s stomach when he heard it. The time for the mission had finally come, and he had to be Captain Dameron now, focused and ready to lead.

In the main hold, he checked in with everyone one last time. While he listened to Lieutenant Connix’s report on the security detail she was now running, his eyes wandered around the cabin. Unexpectedly, they caught Leia’s sharp brown ones from across the room. She smiled at him and nodded slightly. Poe never doubted himself too much when it came to Resistance operations, and he didn’t doubt himself now, but still. That nod and smile made him certain that he was doing all right. In that moment, he felt ready for anything, and he knew that was exactly what Leia wanted.

When the boarding ramp lowered, revealing the crisp blue sky and scorching sand hills of the Lothal desert, Poe moved to stand at the helm of his field team. It was a symbolic and pointless gesture, maybe, but Poe felt that, as the leader, he should be the first to step foot on this foreign planet.

“Be in and out as quick as you can, and don’t draw attention to yourself,” Leia said before the field teams departed. “But at the same time, be on the lookout for signs of people who might be, shall we say, interested in our cause.”

Poe knew it was a long shot, but his heart still beat a little faster when he imagined the possibility of finding allies, of taking the first real steps toward rebuilding the Resistance.

The two teams started down the ramp, and Poe had almost taken his first step onto Lothal when Leia called after them with one final reminder.

“Most importantly, remember. Be prepared for anything.”

Poe grinned to himself. He knew her so well.

Just like that, it was time to put theorizing and strategizing to bed. The mission had begun. Poe hovered nearby with the rest of his team while Finn said his goodbyes to Rey and Rose. He hugged each of them so tightly that Poe could almost feel it as he watched from several feet away. An unwelcome twinge of sadness ran through him when he realized how long it had been since Finn had held him like that. Poe swallowed hard and looked at the ground, trying to bury the feelings he really had no time for right now.

“Don’t worry,” Poe said when Finn rejoined their group with a creased brow. “They’ll be fine.”

He hoped they would, anyway. Rey had seemed uneasy about working with Rose, and maybe it was the premonition that Poe had suggested, but maybe it was nothing. He was confident that they would get on all right. Probably.

Finn nodded profusely. “Of course they will.”

“Ok, then.” Poe flashed his most roguish smile. “Let’s do this.”

Poe led the way toward a horizon that he knew from the many maps he had studied would gradually give way to grassy plains and, eventually, the stretch of metal spires that made up Capital City.  His team had seen those maps, too, and they followed him confidently. There was Finn, of course, who kept close, never more than a step behind Poe. The rest of the group was comprised of a pilot Poe had worked with several times and two relatively fresh technicians he had never even met before Crait. Neither of them had been in the Resistance more than a year.

The sun beat down on them as they plodded along. Sweat plastered Poe’s shirt to his back. He barely noticed. Finn was right there with him, and he talked to Poe the whole time they walked. He was all Poe could concentrate on—which, he recognized, was probably not the best use of his faculties while he led a vital, sensitive Resistance mission. But he didn’t care. They almost never had time just to talk like this, and Poe wanted to savor every minute of it.

“Please tell me your homeworld isn’t a desert planet,” Finn said after they had been walking for a few hours.

Poe scrunched his eyebrows together. “Why?”

“Because I’m excited to go there with you, but I think I’ve spent more than enough time in the desert for a lifetime.”

Poe’s heart skipped a beat. His mouth curved into a stupid, dopey grin of its own accord. He remembered their conversation about visiting his home on Yavin 4, of course, but he hadn’t expected Finn to remember it.

“If it is a desert planet, do you still want to visit?” Poe asked.

Finn’s eyes went wide. “Oh, I didn’t mean—of course I would—I mean, yeah, I still want to come. No matter what.”

They locked eyes for a moment, until Finn looked down at his feet. Poe felt like he was floating instead of trudging through a desert full of sand.

“Well, no worries anyway,” Poe said. “Yavin 4 is all forest. Plenty of shade.”

Finn smiled. “Perfect. I can’t wait.”

Poe bit his lip. “Me neither, buddy.”

He thought about the long road that lay between them here, today, and that moment. For the first time, he felt impatient for the end of the war. Before, he had always had such a hard time imagining his life outside of battle, but now, he found himself wishing they could hurry up and get this Resistance thing over with. He was ready to live a life where he was free to take Finn wherever he wanted to go, show him whatever he wanted to see. Teach him to fly. There was a whole galaxy full of things for them to do together. They just had to bring down the entire First Order before they could do them. And there was no guarantee that they would both survive until then…but Poe couldn’t stand to think about that.

Instead, he thought about how this mission would bring them one step closer to the end. New inspiration, a new sense of purpose, pressed him forward faster than before.

This, he thought, glancing at Finn as he walked beside him, this is what we’re fighting for.

After another hour or so, they crested a particularly tall sand dune to find that they had finally come to the end of the desert. The dune descended into a plain of grass waving in a light breeze. Far away, Poe could just make out the hazy shapes of buildings rising from the horizon.

“You see that?” he said to his team. “Almost show time. We’re getting close to populated areas, so be on the lookout.”

“For what?” asked one of the technicians.

Poe looked her over. She was so young. She couldn’t be older than twenty. If this were the Republic navy, she would still be in training, nowhere near a high level covert operation like this one. But they were not in the Republic navy.

“Anything,” he answered.

He tried to take his own advice, to stay alert and focused on the mission. They were almost to Capital City, and it was time to get serious. But as soon as they took their first steps into the sea of grass, he couldn’t help himself. He nudged Finn with his elbow.

“Are you happy now?” Poe asked. “No more desert.”

“Oh yeah, this is much better,” Finn said. He took a deep breath. “You smell that? That’s my favorite scent in the world.”

Poe sniffed, curious, but he smelled nothing. “What are you talking about?”

“Are you serious? You don’t smell that? It’s beautiful. There’s no name for it as far as I know, but I like to call it ‘sand doesn’t get in my nose when I breathe.’”

Poe laughed out loud. It wasn’t that he forgot Finn could be funny, it was just that the opportunity didn’t present itself very often.

“Ah, yes, I see what you mean now,” Poe said. “You’re right. That is nice.”

They sat down on the grass for a few minutes, resting before the next leg of their journey and all they would have to do when they reached the city.

“Everyone ready for this?” Poe asked. They all gave some sign of assent. “If you have any questions about the plan, now is the time to ask them.”

No one had any questions, of course. They had been over the plan again and again, every day. Poe just wanted them all to be comfortable letting him know if they were confused about anything. Leia had entrusted him with so much responsibility lately, making him her second-in-command, and he wanted this to go smoothly. He knew it wouldn’t, because nothing in the Resistance ever went smoothly, but he would do everything in his power to make sure it did anyway.

Finn sat a little apart from the others, staring out across the grass, a vacant expression on his face. He hadn’t responded to Poe at all. Poe sat down beside him and nudged him again. Poe was becoming so comfortable with this kind of casual contact that it almost didn’t send a thrill all the way through him, almost didn’t leave an electric tingling on his skin. Almost. 

Finn blinked hard, coming back to himself from a million miles away.

“Is everything ok?” Poe asked.

“Yeah, sorry,” Finn said. “It’s just…I’ve never seen anything like this.” He swept his gaze across the sprawling plain before them. “It’s so peaceful.”

Poe just looked at him. There was a softness in Finn’s voice as he spoke, a light in his face, that left Poe speechless.

“That’s probably a weird thing to say, isn’t it?” Finn said when Poe didn’t answer.

“I don’t think it’s weird at all.” Poe looked him right in the eye so Finn would know that he meant it. Finn’s next words seemed to swell up like a flood from somewhere deep inside of him, bursting out after being held back for too long.

“It’s so confusing seeing the galaxy as it really is after being told my whole life that violence and chaos is all there is,” he said. “It’s like, there used to be one way life could be, and now all of a sudden there are a million possibilities. There are deserts for me to hate and cities full of rich people who are terrible all on their own without any help from the First Order and huge fields full of grass with no purpose other than just to be. I’ve seen so much that I never thought I would see, and it’s great and beautiful and all that, but it’s just…” He sighed and left the thought hanging.

“A lot,” Poe finished for him. He turned his whole body so that he was facing Finn. “Listen. Finn. It’s ok for you to be confused. You have a whole lifetime of brainwashing to work through, and a whole huge galaxy to learn about. You’re just getting started. You don’t have to feel weird about finding something new.”

“Thanks, Poe.” He didn’t seem entirely convinced.

“I mean it,” Poe said. “You’re right, everything is confusing. Hell, I’m confused most of the time.”

A smile broke on Finn’s face. He nodded. “Yeah, ok.”

They sat for a few moments in silence, and the urgency of the mission began to nag at Poe again. As badly as he wanted to sit in this field and watch Finn smile forever, it was time they kept going. He had all but forgotten about the rest of his team.

“You know,” Finn said suddenly. He crept a tentative hand across the grass and rested it on top of Poe’s hand. “This is new for me, too.” His deep brown eyes settled on Poe.

The entire world stopped. Poe had no idea where he was or what he was doing there—he had no idea what thoughts were in his head. Finn’s eyes were all he saw, the warmth of Finn’s hand was all he felt. Those words, This is new for me, ricocheted through his mind, shattering anything else that had been there before. This, Finn said. This. And he was talking about Poe.

And then Poe knew that he should say something, but what could he say besides I would do anything for you? And why—he could not remember—was he stopping himself from saying that?

“Um,” was what came tumbling out of his mouth.

Something closed behind Finn’s eyes, some door Poe hadn’t realized was open in the first place. Finn pulled his hand back to his own lap. Was it panic that Poe recognized in his face?

“Just—having people who care about me. I’ve never had that,” Finn said. “And now I have so many. You, Rey, Rose. It’s nice. That’s…that’s what I meant.”

Rose. Her name brought Poe crashing back into himself. Right. She was the reason he couldn’t say everything he wanted to say to Finn. She was the reason Poe knew that whatever he thought had been happening when Finn took his hand was all his imagination. He sprang up from the ground beside Finn. He felt his cheeks burning, and he could not let Finn see that.

“That’s great, buddy,” Poe said. “I’m really glad.” He raised his voice so that the others could hear him, too. “Ok, time to go. We have a mission to finish.”

The reminder was more Poe talking to himself than anything else. He had a mission to finish. He decided right then and there that it would be the only thing he concentrated on for the rest of their time on Lothal.

Remember what’s important, he told himself. But when he walked past Finn without even glancing at him, Poe felt like the only important thing was slipping through his fingers.

…………………………………………………

Slowly, step by step, the hazy shapes of Capital City resolved into individual buildings and towers. Before too long, Poe could make out a landing platform jutting out from the side of the tallest building, near the outskirts of the city. He could see no activity whatsoever at the moment, but he thought he recognized the shapes of ships docked there. Which meant the platform was functioning. Which meant it was exactly what they were looking for. He looked over his shoulder at his team, careful to avoid Finn’s eyes.

“Everybody see that platform?” he said, gesturing to it. “That’s where we’ll start. If they’ve got fuel and they’re willing to sell, this’ll be a quick in-and-out.”

If things really turned out that easy, there was a credit disc in Poe’s pocket registered to a fake name and loaded with more than enough of Leia’s credits to take care of the transaction.

“And if not?” asked C’ai, the Abednedo pilot that Poe had worked with before.

Poe shrugged. “Then...it’ll be something else.”

As they continued walking across the plain, the city growing nearer with each passing second, Poe felt Finn’s presence behind him like a burning coal on his back. He walked a few feet behind Poe, no longer trying to stay as close as possible, no longer talking to him about anything and everything. Something had changed between them like a light switching off, and as much as Poe tried to ignore it and focus on the mission, he couldn’t go more than a few seconds without wallowing in the empty, lonely feeling in his gut.

Maybe he was busy wallowing when the figures began approaching them from the direction of the city. Maybe that was why he didn’t see them at first.

“Incoming,” C’ai said, and then Poe was paying attention.

When he squinted, Poe saw two people—both humanoids with blue skin and long black hair—coming towards them, one from the far left and one from the far right. They seemed to be zeroing in on Poe and his team in a sort of V formation. Their hands swung, empty, by their sides, so they weren’t carrying blasters. They weren’t walking unusually fast, but they weren’t going slow, either. They definitely weren’t out for a casual stroll.

“What do we do?” asked one of the technicians. She was working hard to disguise the panic in her voice, but Poe heard it anyway.

“Stay calm,” Poe said. “Maybe they just want to talk.”

Even as he said this, he was trying to decide whether or not to get the blaster from his knapsack. On one hand, if these people, whoever they were, really did come in peace, the sight of weapons might scare them and cause unnecessary violence. On the other hand, if this was an attack, Poe didn’t want them to catch him empty-handed.

As both groups kept coming closer to their inevitable meeting point, Poe noticed a holster strapped to the thigh of the person coming from the right, and the one coming from the left definitely had something strapped to her back.

Blaster it was, then.

“Don’t do anything yet,” he said quietly to his team as he pulled the knapsack off his back. “But be ready.” He rummaged around for a moment until his hand hit the cold metal of the blaster’s handle. He gripped it tight and pulled it out, then looked back to make sure the rest of his team was doing the same. Finn was the only one not digging through his knapsack.

“Finn,” Poe said. “Your blaster.”

“I didn’t bring one,” Finn said.

Poe shook his head in confusion. “You didn’t—why?”

“I didn’t want one.”

Poe didn’t understand what Finn was saying at all. This situation was stressful enough without having to worry about Finn, of all people, having no means to protect himself.

“What are you—” Poe started, but there was no time for a conversation. He sighed shortly. “Fine. Stand behind everyone else, ok?”

He hoped it didn’t sound like pleading, but that was exactly what it felt like.

When they were close enough to their mystery visitors that he could make out the features of their faces, Poe checked over his shoulder to make sure Finn had followed his instructions. A tiny portion of the pressure in his chest released when he saw that Finn had in fact melted into the background of their small company. Poe’s hand lingered over the blaster where it hung from his belt. No, he thought, it would be stupid to walk up with his gun already drawn. At that point, he would be asking for trouble. But it only took a split second for someone to attack, and if he couldn’t draw fast enough… He settled for a compromise and left his hand resting on the handle, ready to detach it from his belt at a moment’s notice. He tried to make the gesture look casual, as if he hadn’t given it a second thought. The weight of the blaster hitting his thigh with every step, the cool metal against his palm, filled his mind.

When the two strangers finally met at the point of their vector no more than ten feet away from Poe and his team, they stopped. One, the shorter of the two, crossed her arms across her chest, while the other stood in a far more diplomatic stance, neck held high and hands clasped in front of her. They seemed to be waiting. Poe didn’t want to go any closer. Neither of the strangers reached for their weapons, but something about them made him uneasy. He held up a hand, and his team stopped in their tracks.

“Greetings,” said the taller stranger. The diplomat. “Welcome to Capital City.”

Right away, Poe knew he had been right not to trust them. Her voice was far too grand, far too flowery, for a place like Lothal. The shorter stranger, who looked him dead in the face with a sour scowl in her mouth, actually seemed less threatening in this scenario. Regardless, he would have to play along until he found out what they wanted.

“Thank you for your hospitality,” he said, with only a hint of sarcasm.

The tall stranger gave him a tight-lipped smile.

“You are not familiar to me,” she said. “Forgive me, but we don’t see many new faces here. Are you from Lothal?”

“Not at all,” Poe said. “We’re from the Yavin system.” He had learned from Leia that when it came to cover stories, the best lie was inches from the truth.

“And what brings you here?” She tilted her head in what was probably supposed to be a genial manner, but Poe saw only cold analysis in the gesture.

“Necessity. Our travels have lasted longer than we expected, and we’re nearly out of fuel.”

“I see,” she said. There was a long pause before she continued. “What kind of business are you and your crew working in, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Her voice shifted only slightly, but Poe could tell that she was eager for his answer. Now they were getting to the heart of why these two had come to “greet” them. Poe smirked.

“We’re…importers,” he said. Smugglers, he meant. They had come in the notorious Millennium Falcon, after all. When satisfaction shone in her face, he knew that she understood. Her eyes were hungry now, her body growing more and more agitated. Her diplomatic act had almost completely fallen.

“I don’t see a ship,” she said, gesturing to the empty plain. “It’s a shame that you had to walk so far in the heat, when there’s a perfectly good landing platform in the city.”

“Well, you see, we’ve got some, let’s say, sensitive cargo, on our ship, and we didn’t want to draw any unwanted attention.”

At the mention of cargo, the two strangers locked eyes, and Poe’s suspicions were confirmed. They were bandits.

The next few seconds flew by so fast that Poe hardly had time to keep up with what was happening.

From behind both strangers’ backs sprang an extra pair of arms, and each of these four new hands held a blaster pointed at someone on Poe’s team. His stomach dropped as he remembered that Finn didn’t even have a blaster. He would be the easiest to pick off. Poe swung around, searching for Finn, certain that it was his turn to sacrifice himself to save Finn’s life. He had wished for the opportunity one too many times.

As soon as he turned his back on the bandits, he heard the bolts of energy fire from their blasters, saw Finn’s eyes go wide, and knew that this was it. Something told Poe he should close his eyes, let the gravity of his final moment sink in, but he couldn’t bring himself to take his eyes off Finn. If he was the last thing Poe would see in his life, that wasn’t so bad. In a desperate gesture, Finn threw his hands up as if he would catch the bolts themselves, and then…

Nothing happened. There was no bright white light, there was no fading into darkness. Poe blinked, and he was still standing there, in the grassy plains of Lothal, watching Finn. Finn’s hands pushed against the air, so hard that Finn gritted his teeth with the strain of it. New beads of sweat dripped down his temples. Poe could make no sense of what he was seeing. What was Finn doing? And perhaps more importantly, why wasn’t Poe dead yet?

Poe turned to find the most amazing and confusing thing of all. Four bright red bolts of energy, one from each blaster, hovered in the air between Poe and the bandits. Both of them had frozen in fear, their eyes wide. They understood what was happening even less than Poe did.

A memory pricked in the back of Poe’s mind. He had seen this once before. On Jakku. Kylo Ren had stopped blaster fire in midair simply by raising his hand. Using the Force.

The truth hit Poe like a sack of rocks to the head. The Force.

Finn screamed under the strain of his effort, pushing his hands out further and further. As he did, the energy bolts inched back toward the bandits bit by bit. Now that Poe understood what was happening, he had the sense to dive out of the way, in case Finn lost his grip.

But Finn didn’t lose his grip. He kept pushing until the bolts returned to their source, and with a great, deep breath, he let go. The explosion of the plasma bolts returning to life knocked the bandits back several feet, where they lay sprawled out on the ground, unconscious. Immediately, Finn’s legs buckled beneath him, and he collapsed into the grass.  

After that, Poe didn’t care what had just happened or what it meant. All he cared about was Finn’s limp figure lying face-down on the ground. Terror seized Poe like it never had before, and his blood turned to sharp, cold shards of glass ripping through every inch of him.

“Finn!” The name fought its way up from somewhere deep inside Poe, tore his vocal cords as they screamed it of their own accord.

He scrambled over to where Finn lay. As gently as he could, Poe turned him over onto his back. He cradled Finn’s head in his lap.

Finn’s chest rose and fell, filling Poe with a joy so sudden and so violent he felt as though he would explode. Tears sprang into his eyes, poured down his cheeks, and he didn’t bother to wipe them away.

Finn’s eyes twitched once, twice, then stared up at Poe. Confusion entered them immediately as Finn reached a hand up to touch the wet spot on Poe’s cheek.

“Why are you crying?” Finn asked, his voice weary and hoarse.

Poe burst out laughing. He was so happy, there was nothing else he could do. Finn stroked his fingers softly across Poe’s cheeks, wiping the tears away for him.

“What happened?” Finn asked.

Poe shook his head slowly, a smile he couldn’t contain still lighting up his face.

“Buddy,” Poe said, “you tell me.”

“I don’t really know.” Finn crinkled his brow as if it was difficult for him to remember. “I saw them shoot at you, and I panicked, and then…” He hesitated for a long time. “I don’t know how to explain it. Something told me I could stop it from happening if I tried. So I tried.”

“You saved my life.” Poe was in awe. Finn always found a way to be even more incredible than he already was, even when Poe thought that was impossible.

Finn’s eyes went wide. He sat up suddenly.

“Hang on,” Finn said. “Did I just…did I just use the Force?”

“Yeah. I think you did.”

“I didn’t know I could do that,” Finn mumbled, staring down at his own hands. For a long time, he just sat there and looked at them. The look on his face shifted from confusion to wonder to fear and back again.

“Are you ok?” Poe asked after several minutes had passed and Finn had said nothing.

“Yes,” Finn answered. “Maybe. I just…I can’t believe this. It’s so…”

“It’s amazing,” Poe said. “You’re amazing!”

Finn cracked a smile. He finally looked up at Poe.

“It is pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Finn said. “It feels like I’ve been waiting to do that forever without even knowing.”

“And this has never happened before? You’ve had plenty of opportunities to use the Force. You fought Kylo Ren, for crying out loud. With lightsabers. If that wasn’t enough to wake it up inside you, why this? Why now?”

“Because it was you,” Finn answered without hesitation.  As confident as his words were, the look in his eyes was tentative, fragile.

Poe’s breath caught in his throat. He felt the blood rushing into his cheeks. An instinct told him to look away, to stand up and turn his back so that Finn wouldn’t see his reaction. So that Finn wouldn’t see how he felt.

But…Poe had almost died. Not in the throes of a glorious battle. Not somewhere in the vague and distant future. Right here, on a dinky backwater planet during a supply run. Right now. He had always known that he could die at any moment, and that joining the Resistance had made it even less likely that he would live through any given day, but the full weight of that had never hit him until now. He was done hiding. Especially from Finn.

He took a deep breath before the plunge.

“Listen, buddy,” Poe said. “I would do anything for you. I need you to know that.”

His words felt empty and pointless and stupid compared to what Finn had just done for him, but at least he had finally said them. And he meant them, with every ounce of his being.

There was a split second, before Finn reacted, when Poe was certain he had just ruined his life. When he was certain he had misread Finn’s meaning, and now nothing would ever be the same between them again.

In the next second, he saw that he was half right.

Finn’s whole face lit up like the sun rising in the morning, soft and pure and bright. Before Poe’s relief had time to sink in, Finn had closed the distance between them.

Finn’s lips pressed against Poe’s with a force that was equal parts eager and tender. Both of their hands searched for the other’s face, hair, body, anything in a clumsy tangle. Poe could tell that Finn had never done this before, that he had no idea about what he was doing except that he wanted to do it. Poe didn’t care. In fact, that only made it better, because it was so distinctly Finn. It was perfect. It was more than perfect.

Then it was over. In the space just after the kiss, they hovered there, each breathing in the other.

“I’ve been waiting to do that, too,” Finn said.

Poe smiled and shook his head because he couldn’t speak just yet. He held Finn’s cheek in his hand.

“Um…Captain?” said a voice from a thousand light years away. With a shock like plunging his face into an ice bath, Poe remembered where they were. He remembered that their team included three other people. His cheeks burned.

Poe stood and turned, straightening his rumpled shirt as he went, to find C’ai and the two technicians standing together a few feet away. They had tried to give Finn and Poe their space, to let them have their moment in private, but there was only so much they could do in a wide open field with nowhere to go.

Poe cleared his throat.

“Sorry about that,” he said lamely. He didn’t know what else to say.

He was about to suggest that they get the mission back on track—even though it was impossible for him to think about anything other than the feeling of Finn’s lips right now—when one of the bandits stirred in the grass and sat up. Before he could even think about it, Poe drew his blaster and aimed it at the figure of the shorter, more blatant bandit. She sobered up immediately, all the dizziness leaving her face in an instant.

“If you kill me, my people will come for you,” she said.

“And if I don’t?” Poe answered. “You’ll just walk away and pretend like this never happened?”

“Yes.”

Poe laughed a mirthless laugh. “You don’t really expect me to believe that.”

Of course, he wasn’t going to shoot her if he could avoid it, but she didn’t need to know that.

The other bandit stirred, sat up, blinking.

“C’ai,” Poe said. “Cover her.”

C’ai pointed his blaster at the taller bandit. She didn’t seem to care, or even notice. There was a look of wonder in her face.

“You,” she said, pointing a long, blue finger at Finn. “You’re a Jedi.”

Finn’s mouth fell open. “Me?” he said. “No, I’m not—”

“Don’t deny it,” she said. “I’ve heard the stories. Only a Jedi could do what you just did.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said her companion. “Jedi aren’t smugglers.”

“Uh, ever heard of Han Solo?”                                         

Finn cut in. “Han Solo wasn’t a Jedi.”

The taller bandit rolled her eyes at him as if they were friends having a casual conversation, as if Poe and C’ai didn’t have their blasters trained on her and her companion.

“But he was still a Rebellion hero. And a smuggler. So my point stands.” Suddenly, her eyes went wide. “That’s it! You’re not smugglers, are you? You’re Resistance!”

Poe’s stomach dropped again. They hadn’t even reached the city yet, and their cover was already blown.

“What are you talking about?” Poe said. He kept his voice completely even. No one could see how much he was panicking. “I told you, we’re importing—”

“You don’t have to lie anymore,” said the tall bandit. “Don’t get me wrong, you’re really good at it. I totally believed your story until that one decided to show off his Jedi powers.” She smiled at Finn.

“I’m not a Jedi,” Finn said. He sounded so uncomfortable that Poe glanced back at him. After what Finn did with the plasma bolts, Poe would have said that yes, Finn was definitely a Jedi, but apparently Finn himself didn’t believe it. Poe wished they had time to talk about it, but there were more pressing matters at hand.

Like the fact that this bandit knew they were Resistance. Now they would definitely have to get rid of these two, Poe thought, and it was a shame. He was starting to think maybe they weren’t so bad after all.

“Don’t worry,” the tall bandit continued enthusiastically. “You’re safe with us. We’re—”

“Shut up!” said her short friend. “We have no idea who they are.”

“They have a Jedi!”

The short one eyed Finn suspiciously. “He says he’s not a Jedi.”

There they went again, carrying on a conversation as if they were in no danger of being shot. Poe stopped them before they could completely forget he was there.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “We’re safe with you? What’s that supposed to mean? You just tried to shoot me like five minutes ago.”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” said the tall one. “Wouldn’t have done that if I knew you were Resistance. But you said you were strangers with a ship parked way out in the middle of nowhere, and we really need a ship, so—”

The short one groaned in frustration. “Would you stop telling them things?”

“It’s fine! Come on, don’t you see it? They’ve got Resistance written all over them. Especially that one.” She cocked her chin at Poe. “And, do I need to say it again, they have a Jedi.”

The short one narrowed her eyes at Poe, looked him up and down. Finally, she sighed.

“Fine,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe. But maybe isn’t enough for you to start flapping your mouth!”

Poe kept losing track of the conversation. What were they keeping secrets about? Why did they care if Poe and his team were Resistance?

“Someone explain what’s going on before I get annoyed and start shooting,” Poe said.

The bandits made eye contact, and both of them laughed out loud.

“I don’t know if you’re Resistance or not,” said the short one. “But whatever you are, I know you aren’t going to shoot us. You would’ve done it already.”

Poe hated that they had figured him out so easily. They were right, now that they didn’t seem to be a threat, he had no intention of killing them. But that didn’t mean that he trusted them, or that he didn’t want them to be afraid of him.

“Start talking, or we’ll have to test that theory,” he said, trying to keep his voice as cool as possible.

“Oooh, I’m terrified,” the short one said with a smirk.

“Look, you don’t have to threaten us,” said the tall one. “We’re going to tell you everything.” She looked at her friend. “Right?”

The short one sighed again. She reached up with her lower set of arms and rubbed her forehead while the shoulders of her other arms shrugged.

“I suppose,” she said.

Poe kept his blaster pointed squarely at the shorter one and never took his eyes off of her, in case this was all a ruse. He couldn’t imagine what would make these people care about the Jedi or the Resistance or Han Solo. At least now he didn’t have to worry about Finn not being able to defend himself.

“What I was going to say before my delightful sister cut me off,” said the taller one, side-eyeing her shorter companion, “is that you’re safe with us because we’re Resistance, too.”

Poe’s brain refused to process what she said. A Resistance outpost on Lothal, of all places? One that he didn’t know about? That Leia didn’t know about? It was impossible. And if they were really Resistance members, they were not very good ones. On Crait, Leia had sent her signal out to the farthest reaches of the galaxy asking for help, and no one had answered. Despite all of this, a spark of hope ignited in Poe’s belly.

“Say more,” Poe said. He needed more information before he could decide if she was telling the truth or not. She looked disappointed, but she continued anyway.

“Ok,” she said. “Not the grand reaction I was hoping for. Anyway. We’re not really Resistance, per se. I mean, we’re not official or anything. But we’re on your side.”

“Some of our elders were alive during the Empire’s occupation of Lothal,” the shorter one said with a solemn expression. “They remember what it was like to live under the boot of a regime that would rather see you dead than out of line.”

“The First Order stopped here once, about a year ago,” the taller one continued. “They were searching for someone, I don’t know who. But as soon as the elders saw stormtroopers on Lothal again, roughing people up, interrogating them in the streets, they knew they had to do something to keep history from repeating itself.”

“So they…what? Ran the stormtroopers off?” Poe said, trying to fill in the gaps. He had to admit he was enthralled by their story. It was exactly the kind of stuff the Resistance was made of. Exactly what had made him join in the first place.

“Are you kidding?” the shorter one said. “They would’ve come back with a star destroyer and killed everyone on the planet if that happened. Our leaders are smarter than that. They just started gathering resources, gathering people to their cause, real quiet like.”

Poe nodded, impressed. Even though he probably would’ve run the stormtroopers off if it had been him. By now, he had forgotten about the blaster in his hand.

“How many of you are there?” Poe asked.

The two made eye contact again, deliberating. Something in the taller one’s face conceded. She had finally lost an argument.

“We’ve already said more than we’re supposed to,” she said. “If you want to know more, you’ll have to come back to our base and talk to our Captain.”

Suspicion rose in Poe again. This could easily be a trap. It would be stupid to follow two complete strangers to an undisclosed location on a foreign planet. And yet…Poe trusted them. Maybe it was the look in their eyes when they talked about fighting the First Order, or maybe it was the fact that the tall one insisted on calling Finn a Jedi, Poe didn’t know. But however they had done it, they had convinced him they were telling the truth.

“What do you think?” Poe asked his team, because he could be wrong sometimes.

When he turned to them, he saw a fire and determination in the eyes of the young technicians that made him smile. Their faces reflected what he felt. They were so new to this world, and so full of hope, despite everything that had happened to them in the past few weeks.

“I say we go,” one of them said.

“It’s worth the risk,” the other agreed.

“I like your enthusiasm,” Poe said. “But still. We have to be careful. Can’t go getting ourselves killed. C’ai?”

“I think we should contact the Starbird and ask for instructions,” C’ai said. The Starbird was Leia’s codename. Poe had a comm linked to the Falcon, for use in dire emergency only. The signal was scrambled and encrypted tenfold, but they couldn’t take any chances. If a First Order sympathizer (or anyone looking to make a fortune selling information) hacked that signal and tracked the location of the Millennium Falcon and General Leia Organa, the First Order would have Lothal locked down in the blink of an eye.

Was this enough of an emergency to risk giving Leia away? Poe thought hard. He remembered the look in Leia’s eyes when she first mentioned the possibility of finding allies on Lothal. He already knew what she would tell them to do if they called.

“No,” Poe answered. “Not yet.”

Finally, he turned to Finn. Whatever Finn said about being a Jedi, there was no doubt he had a connection to the Force. And Poe was still convinced that the Force could give warnings about people (Rose, for example…but he wouldn’t think about that now).

“Finn, buddy, you feeling anything?” Poe asked, his voice soft as he remembered the impossible fact that they had kissed just minutes ago. Finn had kissed him, and here he was interrogating not-bandits instead of basking in the joy of that moment. Poe wished once again for the end of the war and the Resistance and all of it, and the start of a different life.

Finn closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  He stood utterly still and quiet for several seconds.

“I think…” he said finally. “I think they’re safe.” His eyes flew open then, and an apology entered his face. “I mean, I don’t know. I have no idea what I’m doing. But…yeah. I think we can trust them.”

Finn’s backtracking made Poe’s heart ache—why was Finn the only one who didn’t see how incredible he was?—but it still wasn’t the time to talk about it.

“Well, that’s enough for me to believe it,” Poe said, injecting his voice with confidence in the hope that Finn would notice. He looked at the two strangers. “Lead the way.”

Still, Poe kept his blaster at the ready, and he motioned to the others to do the same. They followed the bandits-turned-allies at a distance, not wanting to get too comfortable with them just yet. Everyone except Finn. As soon as they began walking toward the city, Finn caught up to the two of them and began asking a million questions. Were they from Lothal originally? What was life like here? Where were their families?

The tall one answered each question, amusement shining in her face. From where Poe stood, she and Finn looked like old friends catching up after a long time away from each other. Finn could make anyone feel like a friend, Poe thought, smiling to himself.

As they entered Capital City, slipping into an alley between two soaring buildings on the city’s edge, Finn asked a question Poe himself should have asked already.

“So, what exactly do you do to support the Resistance from way out here?”

“At this point, we’re mostly gathering resources,” answered the tall one. “You know, food, fuel, equipment. Supporters, most importantly. It’s not as easy as it sounds, though. We have to stay way under the radar. There may not be a First Order presence on Lothal, but there are an awful lot of people here who would sell us out in a heartbeat if they even heard a whisper of the word Resistance.”

“In case you were wondering, we did get your signal,” the short one said quietly, speaking for the first time since they had begun their trek to the city together. “The one from General Organa. We wanted to help, really…we just don’t have any ships yet.” She sounded genuinely sad.

Poe had been wondering, in fact, why a band of people who claimed to fight for the Resistance had not come to their aid on Crait, when they thought they had arrived at the end of all things. That had been one of the main questions keeping him from fully trusting their story. Finn met Poe’s eyes now with gentle reassurance, as if he knew what Poe was thinking. As if he had been searching for this answer on Poe’s behalf all along. Poe nodded to him.

“That’s why we were so…um…eager…when you mentioned your ship,” said the tall one. “We’re kind of desperate. It feels like there’s so much to do, but we can’t do any of it because we’re stuck on this rock.”

“I have a feeling all of that is about to change,” Finn said, smiling at her. Watching him, Poe couldn’t help but smile, too—it was a reflex, as natural as scratching an itch on his nose.

Their two new friends—and they were all friends now, thanks to Finn, walking together in one big group as if they had been that way from the beginning—led Poe and his team through the city using mostly alleyways and dark corners. Finally, just as the sun was about to set, they stopped in front of a tiny residence. Poe, who had been expecting a much grander headquarters, was confused. He had to remind himself that these people were working in the shadows, with limited resources, building a movement from the ground up. They didn’t have to be impressive yet.

When they entered, Poe found a bare and empty central room. A single table sat in the center, below the light fixture. It could hardly seat six people. A short hallway shooting off of the main room to their right contained two doors, one on each side. The space was stagnant, still.

“Where is everyone else?” Poe asked.

Both of the not-bandits’ brows wrinkled.

“There’s no one here but us,” the tall one said.

“But you said—” Poe’s mind reeled. Was this really it? Two people in a dinky old shack? The sting of disappointment pierced him. “I don’t understand. You talked about your leaders, you said you were gathering supporters.”

Realization dawned on her face, and she busted out laughing.

“You think this is our base?” she said between heaves of giggles.

“Oh—I—yeah. Yeah I did.” Poe felt foolish now. But he also didn’t understand what they were doing here if it wasn’t their base.

“This is a safe house we use when we have business in the city,” she said. “We can’t just establish a Resistance headquarters in the middle of the most populated area on the planet. I said we’re staying under the radar, remember? Our base is way out in the middle of the desert. It’s too late to travel all the way there tonight. The desert freezes when the sun goes down.”

Of course. It all made perfect sense. Poe felt the disappointment flush from his body, felt the reignited spark of hope flood through him to replace it.

Now that Poe knew they were stuck here until morning with nothing to do to further the mission, his mind began to wander to other things. Well, to one thing. Probably the only thing it would ever wander to again: the feeling of Finn’s lips on his.

He had a thousand things to say to Finn, a thousand things to ask him about, and now it seemed they finally had time for all of it.

Everyone had separated into groups, scattered around the main room of the house. C’ai and the shorter of their new allies were examining the two enhanced blasters she kept strapped to her back. The taller one was engrossed in a story she was telling the two young technicians, who drank in every word. Finn stood alone, watching them all from a corner of the room. Waiting, it seemed, for exactly what was about to happen. Poe approached him, biting his lip. Suddenly his palms were sweaty. Why was he nervous all over again?

“Hey, buddy,” he said to Finn. “You wanna talk?”

“Yes,” Finn said, nodding emphatically. “Definitely.”

Poe dipped his head toward one of the doors in the hallway, and Finn led the way. No one seemed to notice as they quietly slipped into the side room. When the door slid shut behind them, it cut off all sounds from the main room. They might as well have been the only two people in the world.

Of all the things he needed to say to Finn so desperately, Poe suddenly couldn’t remember one. Now that the moment had come, he had no idea where to start. There was so much inside of him begging to be let out—how could words hold all of that?

“So, hey,” Finn said finally. “I just wanted to say sorry about earlier. I know it was weird. I guess I was just confused. But I really don’t want you to be mad at me, so can we please just forget about it?”

“You’re sorry? For what?” Poe wracked his brain, but he couldn’t think of anything Finn had done that he would need to apologize for. Especially something important enough to be the very first thing they talked about after everything that had happened that day.

Finn looked down at his feet. “You know. When I kissed you. I didn’t mean to do that.”

Poe froze. “Oh. You didn’t?”

When Finn looked at him again, there was that same fragile look in his eyes from before. As if he was afraid to keep speaking, or afraid of what Poe would say next.

“Didn’t you think it was weird?” Finn asked.

“No!” Poe said immediately. He actually laughed at how ridiculous Finn’s question was. “Finn. It wasn’t weird. It was…”

All the words in Poe’s head tripped over each other trying to reach his mouth, trying to be the one that got to describe the feeling of kissing Finn. But none of them were good enough. None of them could communicate the full weight of what he wanted Finn to know in that moment. Eventually, he settled for the one that came the closest.

“Everything,” Poe finished.

A wave seemed to roll over Finn’s body, stilling his fiddling hands, loosening his shoulders, and painting his face with relief.

“Really?” he said, his eyes lit brighter than stars.

“Of course,” Poe said. He stepped closer to Finn, took his hand. The rest of the words fell out of him in a heap. “Finn, I’ve wanted this since the second you took your helmet off and told me you wanted to escape the First Order with me. You’re the best person I’ve ever met, and I’ve never been happier in my whole life than when I’m with you. The fact that you would even want to talk to me is mind-blowing, and this…” Poe lifted their intertwined hands. “This is beyond anything I even dared to hope for.”

Finn’s eyes went wide in amazement. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Because I never thought you would—”

Finn interrupted him with a laugh. Before Poe knew what was happening, he felt Finn’s warm hands on his cheeks.

“How could I not?” Finn said. “You’re the very first person who ever treated me like a human being. You gave me my name, Poe! Earlier, when I was talking about seeing all the possibilities in life for the first time—you’re the one who showed them to me. You show me every day.”

Warmth sunk into the core of Poe’s being. He couldn’t believe that Finn—Finn!—was talking to him like this. Why had they held back for so long? What had stood in their way?

Poe remembered the pangs of jealousy that had tormented him for weeks. On reflex, he pulled his face away from Finn.

“But what about Rose?” Poe said. “It really seems like you—” Love her, he was going to say, but he couldn’t make his lips form the words. He had spent so much time thinking it that saying it out loud seemed impossible. He didn’t want to breathe life into his fears.

Finn’s brow creased. “You think I want to be with Rose? Is that why you’ve been acting so weird?”

“I mean, she kissed you, and you’ve been spending so much time together. She seems to make you really happy.”

“Rose is my friend,” Finn said. He reached out to hold Poe’s chin, nudged his head up, and held his eyes before continuing. “Listen to me. She’s my friend. I know what happened on Crait, but I’ve talked to Rose about it, and she agrees with me that we’re just friends. She’s very important to me, and you’re right, she does make me happy.” Finn took a deep breath. “But the way I feel about you, Poe, the way I feel right now is better than anything I’ve ever felt before.”

The warmth in Poe’s gut swelled to fill all of him, until he felt there should be beams of light shooting from his fingertips. There was only one thing he could do. He pulled Finn’s face close. But before his lips found Finn’s, he remembered. Finn was new to this. Poe had to slow down.

“Is this ok?” Poe whispered, so close that the tips of their noses brushed against each other. He heard Finn swallow, watched the skin move across his throat.

“Yes,” Finn whispered back. “More than ok.”

Poe fit his lips perfectly into the shape of Finn’s, as if this was what they had been made for. How foolish he had been all those years, using them for talking and eating and whatever else. Now, moving in a soft rhythm, drinking in the sweetness of Finn’s mouth, they had found their true purpose, and they would never feel the same again.

Poe felt Finn’s fingers weaving through his hair as his own hands dropped to Finn’s waist. Finn pressed his body closer, so that Poe nearly fell over backwards. It was then that Poe realized they had to stop. Now was not the time to go further than this. Finn was still so new. And besides, this was more than enough. Poe had meant what he said: this was everything. As difficult as it was, Poe stilled his lips and pulled back a few inches. He smiled and leaned their foreheads together so that Finn wouldn’t think he had done something wrong to make Poe stop.

“Finn,” he breathed, but he stopped himself from saying the words he wanted to say. It was too much. It was too fast. Then he thought, Has Finn ever heard these words before? and he thought, He deserves them.

“I love you, buddy,” Poe said. “I love you so much.”

He had heard Leia’s stories, and for a split second, he expected to hear Finn say I know. But this was not Leia’s story. This was all his, all Finn’s.

Silence settled in while Finn absorbed the words. There was too much in his eyes for Poe to read.

“I don’t really know what loving someone is supposed to be like,” Finn said quietly after a few moments. “But I do know that I don’t want anything other than you.”

No one but Finn would have said such a thing, and that made it better than the best answer Poe could imagine. He smiled so hard that his cheeks hurt, and he held Finn’s face in his hands, and in that moment, he cared about nothing else in the whole galaxy.   

…………………………………………………

Eventually, they looked up from each other and realized the room they stood in was a bedroom. Poe shoved the implications of that out of his mind immediately. It was less of a bedroom and more of a barracks, anyway. Four low beds on rickety frames lined the far wall. A small metal desk and chair had been shoved into a corner. There was no other furniture in the room.

Poe walked over to the bed nestled into the far right corner of the room and plopped down. The mattress was hard and the frame’s creaking was far from promising, but it would do just fine. He leaned back against the wall. Had he been this exhausted the whole time, or was this the result of his most guarded feelings exploding out of him all at once? He patted the bed beside him, and Finn joined him. Again the frame’s metal joints groaned, but the bed held up. Finn pulled Poe’s hand into his lap and laced their fingers together. A smile danced on Poe’s lips as his eyes began to droop shut. For the first time in a long time, he felt like he could just go to sleep, without the hours of stressing or fantasizing that usually came first. His head fell as he drifted closer to unconsciousness, and it landed on something warm and solid. Finn’s shoulder, Poe thought, and even as mindfulness drained from his brain like a slow drip, he marveled at the fact that any of this was real.

The next thing he knew, his eyes were cracking open to see the room illuminated by pale early-morning sunlight streaming in through windows set high in the wall that he hadn’t noticed before. At some point in the night, he had lain down and settled into the bed properly. He was surprised to find Finn nestled under the scratchy, threadbare blankets beside him, breathing deeply, still fast asleep. Their bodies were wedged together on the small mattress, and Poe’s arm rested across Finn’s waist. So, it hadn’t been a dream, then. They really had said all those things to each other. Poe smiled for what must have been the thousandth time in the past twenty-four hours.

Poe and Finn were both lying so that they faced the wall, and just then, a grunt from behind Poe startled him so badly that he nearly tumbled off the bed. He sat up and turned around as fast as he could with his body still half-asleep. On the bed beside them, one of the young technicians had flung herself out to cover every inch of her mattress. On the next bed over slept the other technician, and on the next slept C’ai. Poe’s whole team—the team he was supposed to be leading on a Resistance mission of constantly growing importance—was here in this room with him and Finn. He had left them last night without a single word of encouragement or strategizing about what they would do today. He had run off with Finn and fallen asleep, and they could all plainly see that. Poe felt not even the slightest trace of regret, but still, this would make for an uncomfortable situation.

Before he could expand on that thought, the door to the bedroom slid open, and the taller, bubblier of their new companions bounced into the room, already as chipper at this hour of the morning as she had been the day before.

“Rise and shine!” she exclaimed. “The sun’s up, and that means we’ve got to get moving before there are too many people up and about that might take note of us.”

Poe felt Finn stirring beside him as the rest of his team stretched and yawned and put feet on the floor.

“Good morning,” Poe said quietly, just for Finn.

“Morning,” Finn said around a yawn that cracked his mouth wide open. He rubbed his eyes to keep them open. “Is it just me or does it feel like we’ve been sleeping for days?”

“I know what you mean,” Poe said. “That’s the best night’s sleep I’ve had in ages.”

“I wonder why,” Finn said, smirking. He surprised Poe by leaning over and planting a quick kiss on his nose. The pleasant warm feeling returned to the pit of Poe’s stomach.

If the other three members of their team noticed what was going on—and it was impossible for them not to notice—they said nothing of it as all five of them rose from their beds and made their way to the main room of the house.

The two newest allies to the Resistance led the way as they set out, taking them again through back streets and alleyways. They heard the noise of a city waking, of engines starting and people bustling off to do their business, but the sounds were far away, and they ran into no one. Just as the sun left the horizon behind, they stepped out of Capital City and onto the same plain they had crossed the day before. Now it was swathed in crisp, clear morning light. It was somehow even more beautiful than it had been the day before. Especially from this angle, where there was no metropolitan backdrop, and the grass seemed to stretch on forever until it swelled to meet the sky.

Finn stopped in his tracks when he laid eyes on it. He didn’t say a word, just stood there and breathed deep, as if he could inhale the scene and make it a part of himself.

“You really love it here, don’t you?” Poe asked after several moments had passed. He had waved the rest of them on already—he and Finn could catch up later—and they were many feet ahead now.

“I love it everywhere,” Finn said absentmindedly.

Poe’s brows knit together as he tried to figure out what that was supposed to mean. Finn glanced at him and cracked a smile.

“I feel like I keep going on about this, but I really think the whole galaxy is so beautiful,” Finn said. “I loved Takodana, I loved D’Qar—I even loved Canto Bite until I found out what happens there.”

“You didn’t love Jakku,” Poe said.

“Pffft!” Finn said, as if removing a bad taste from his mouth. His whole face scrunched up like he had just seen something horrible and was trying not to get sick. “Now you’re just trying to ruin my good mood.”

Poe laughed. “I would never!”

He grabbed Finn’s hand—something he couldn’t stop doing now that he was allowed to—and pulled him further into the plain. The others were getting too far ahead now for Poe’s comfort. Honestly, none of this situation was to his comfort. He was supposed to be out in front, leading his team to where they needed to be. But now he didn’t even know where they were going. He felt useless and restless clambering blindly behind two people he didn’t even know. At least if he hung back with Finn, he could make the best of it.

“You know,” Finn said thoughtfully as they walked. “I love all—I mean, most—of the places I’ve seen, but I bet Yavin 4 will be my favorite.”

“What makes you say that?” Poe asked.

“It’s the place that made you. It must be pretty incredible.”

Poe wanted simultaneously to kiss him and to run back to Capital City, jump on the first ship he found, and fly Finn to Yavin 4 right then and there. He could hardly remember what motivated him to keep moving forward, toward a shaky future in which either of them could die at any moment. At the end of the day, though, he could never forget what made this fight important, and he knew he would never run away from it. It was a nice thought, though— going somewhere far away to live a simple life with simple problems and simple pleasures, where he didn’t have to worry constantly about Finn’s safety.

Even as Poe thought this, they passed a spot where the grass had been beaten down, and two parallel scorch marks streaked the ground. This must have been where they had first met their new allies the day before, where—

“Hey!” Poe exclaimed, suddenly remembering that there had been other things to talk to Finn about besides the kiss. “Why didn’t you have your blaster yesterday?”

His tone was harsh and accusing, though he hadn’t exactly meant for it to be. Thinking again about that moment the day before, when he had been sure that Finn was about to be shot with no means of defense, awakened the same surge of panic in him. On second thought, maybe he did want to be harsh and accusatory about this.

“I told you, I didn’t want one,” Finn said.

There was that same maddening answer.

“What does that even mean?” He didn’t want to protect himself? Didn’t he care whether he lived or died? He had to care.

“I don’t like blasters,” Finn said.

“Finn, that doesn’t make any sense. I’ve seen you use a blaster. You’re damn good at it. Haven’t you been training with blasters your whole life?”

“Exactly!” Finn exploded at him. “My whole life! With the First Order!”

Poe stopped walking. If the others got too far ahead, oh well.

“You’re not with the First Order anymore, Finn,” Poe said gently.

Finn sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly. When he spoke again, he didn’t sound angry. He just sounded tired.

“I know that,” he said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that since before I can remember, the same people who tortured and brainwashed me have been putting blasters in my hand and telling me shooting people is all I’m good for.”

“But don’t you see?” Poe said. “You can use that against them. They tried to make you into a killing machine, and you said no. Now the only people you’re shooting at is them.”

“I guess I just don’t like the idea of shooting at anyone.”

“Even the First Order?”

“There’s something Rose said to me on Crait that I’ve been thinking about a lot,” Finn said. “She said we’re not going to win by fighting what we hate. That’s what the First Order does. We’re going to win by saving what we love. Does what I’m saying make any sense?”

Poe thought about how his own outlook on life had shifted since he met Finn, how he had begun to dwell less on the war itself and more on what life would be like after they won. He thought about his mother and father, working so hard for so many years to take down the Empire so that their son could live in a world without it.

“Yeah,” Poe said. “It makes sense.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Finn said. “I still want to smash the entire First Order with my bare fists, and I’m going to keep fighting until I do. That’s why I’m here. But I don’t want to do it their way, and for me, that means no blaster.”

Poe nodded. He still didn’t understand the difference between using a blaster and, say, using the Force to throw plasma bolts back at someone, but to Finn, there was a difference, and that was all that mattered. There was so much about what Finn had gone through that Poe would never be able to understand, no matter how badly he wanted to or how hard he tried. All he could do was listen to Finn and support him.

“Well, hey, I guess you don’t need a blaster, anyway,” Poe said with a smile. “Seeing as you’re a Jedi now.”

“I wish people would stop calling me that,” Finn mumbled.

Poe’s face fell. He reached out to stroke Finn’s cheek with his thumb.

“Why do you keep doing that?” Poe asked. “What’s wrong?”

Finn cleared his throat, shook his head rapidly. He turned away from Poe and used a hand to shield his eyes from the sun as he stared out at the figures of their teammates shrinking in the distance.

“We better get going. Pretty soon we won’t be able to see them at all.”

With that, Finn took off jogging through the tall grass.

Poe was missing something, some hidden reason why Finn couldn’t accept the amazing thing he had unlocked inside himself. And now Finn was running away from him.

Poe followed shortly after him, but he gave Finn some distance. It felt wrong to be even a few feet away from him right now, but Poe knew Finn needed space to be alone with himself. So they both jogged on in silence until they caught up with the rest of their team.

Their two new allies led them out into the desert, where the sun bore down on them just as oppressively as it had the day before. Once they had been trudging up and down sand dunes for at least an hour, the thought occurred to Poe that they might run into the spot where the Falcon was parked. Instinctively, he panicked at the thought of their hiding spot being discovered by two strangers, regardless of how trustworthy they seemed. From then on, he paid more attention to where they were going. Really, he should have been paying attention all along, but he was so easily distracted when Finn was around.

Now, Finn kept himself removed from the rest of the group as they walked. He wore a grave expression on his face. Every few minutes, Poe would look over his shoulder to check on him as he walked alone, and any time their eyes met, Finn looked away immediately. It was clear that all this talk about him using the Force and being a Jedi was weighing on him. Poe wanted nothing more than to help shoulder the burden, but he didn’t know how.

After several hours of slogging through the sand, Poe realized that they must be nowhere near the Falcon. They would have run into it or at least seen it in the distance by now. That made one less thing he had to worry about, but there were still plenty more. His team, for instance. As he looked around at them all, he saw that they were fading. Sweat gleamed on every inch of exposed skin, drenched their hair, stuck their clothes to their backs. Their feet barely lifted out of the sand when they took a step.

“How much longer until we reach your base?” Poe asked their new companions. The words tore through his throat as if they had jagged edges, and he realized it had been far too long since he had had a drink of water.

“Just a couple more hours,” the taller one said sympathetically. “I know the journey can be a lot if you aren’t used to it. Should we take a break?”

“I think that might be a good idea,” Poe said. He addressed his team. “Listen. Get off your feet for a few minutes. Drink some water. We’ve got this.”

He reached around into his own knapsack and pulled out his canteen. He gulped down water until his throat stopped burning. Then he walked over to where Finn sat in the sand and collapsed next to him.

“Still think Lothal is beautiful?” Poe asked.

Finn huffed a laugh.

“Maybe not this specific part,” he said.

Poe offered him the canteen. Finn looked at him with a strange, almost confused look in his eyes before taking it.

“Thanks,” Finn said. He lifted the canteen to his lips and drank until it was empty. When he handed it back to Poe, he said, “Wow. I guess I needed that.”

“I got you,” Poe said.

“Yeah. You do. Huh.” That same strange look narrowed his eyes, furrowed his brow again.

“What is it?” Poe asked.

“I’m just…” Finn took a deep breath. “Still getting used to people taking care of me.”

Poe’s heart swelled. He reached over and took Finn’s hand.

“You’ve got the rest of your life to get used to it, buddy.”

For the rest of their journey through the unrelenting desert of Lothal, Finn and Poe walked hand-in-hand. Finn was quiet most of the time, but, Poe thought, at least he wasn’t alone.

Just as the sun began to fall from its peak in the sky, they reached a village standing amidst the sand dunes. It was the first trace of civilization they had seen since leaving Capital City that morning. It was a small village, comprised of a cluster of shacks lining one dusty street that ended at the entrance to a massive warehouse that looked entirely out of place. Its metal walls were solid and sturdy. They seemed much newer than the grimy stone walls of the village’s other buildings. People bustled from building to building, and they, too, looked out of place. A village this small shouldn’t have had such a large population. Poe felt the electric energy running through the whole place like a current, and he realized with a shock of nostalgia that it reminded him of their own base on D’Qar.

“Welcome,” said the taller of their new companions when she turned to find every member of Poe’s team transfixed on the village, “to our Resistance.”    

The faces of at least a dozen different species turned to stare at Poe and his team as they wove through the swarm of people moving to and from the warehouse at the end of the street. Conversations stopped when they approached, and whispers followed in their wake. It was clear that everyone here knew each other and recognized immediately that there were strangers in their midst. It felt odd to Poe, the way their roles had reversed. Only hours ago he had been worried about strangers finding Leia and the Falcon, and now here he was, strolling unannounced into someone else’s base of operations. He tried to keep a pleasant, friendly expression on his face, but he knew from experience that sometimes, that was more suspicious than an open scowl.

“Relax,” Finn said quietly beside him. He squeezed Poe’s hand. “There’s nothing to be nervous about. You’re Poe Dameron. You’ve got this.”

Poe slowly let out the breath he hadn’t noticed he’d been holding.

“Right. Yeah. Thanks.”

How did Finn know exactly what he was feeling? Was that a Force thing, or did Finn just know him that well? Either way, knowing he had Finn’s vote of confidence melted Poe’s nerves. When they finally reached the door to the warehouse, he was ready for whatever awaited them inside.

“Wait here,” said the shorter of their new allies. She punched a number into a keypad set in the wall, and the door slid open. Before she and her sister stepped inside and the door shut behind them, Poe caught a second’s glimpse of the inside. He couldn’t believe what he saw. Mountains of crates, shelves full of fuel pods, and—had that been a hangar door set into the opposite wall? And most importantly, there were people everywhere. At least as many as they had already seen outside. If they were really who they said they were, if they really wanted to join Leia’s fight against the First Order…the Resistance just might stand a chance after all.

The door slid open again, and the sisters were back. They led Poe and his team inside, walking through row after row of any kind of supplies Poe could think of. Blasters, food rations, proton torpedoes—and the shelves towered so high that he felt like he was back in Capital City, sneaking through alleyways between skyscrapers.

They kept walking until they reached the back of the building, where it seemed a command center had been tucked into the corner. Several people stood around a huge table that glowed with a holo-map of Lothal’s surface. Panels of screens surrounded them on all sides.

As Poe and his team approached, a human woman with dark skin and a lined face stepped away from the table. The outfit she wore looked more like a mechanic’s suit than anything else, but she carried with her an aura of leadership. Poe understood at a glance that she was in charge here.

“I hear that you are part of the Resistance,” she said, addressing Poe.

“I hear the same about you,” he said.

“We do what we can from our little rock on the edge of the galaxy.”

“It looks like you’ve done quite a bit here, General,” Poe said, gesturing around the massive room.

She shook her head sharply. “Captain. Not General. We don’t have a general here.”

“Why not?” Poe asked in confusion. It didn’t really matter to him what she called herself, but it seemed like an odd choice.

“Because all of us here serve under General Organa.” She met Poe’s eyes with a solemn look. “Just like you.”

A smile spread across Poe’s face. That was all it took to win him over.

“Hell yeah you do,” he said.

He introduced the rest of his team and explained their purpose on Lothal. When he told the Lothal Resistance members that Leia Organa herself was on-planet, their eyes went wide. They explained, again, that they would have come to provide aid on Crait if only they had a navy. There were no shipyards on Lothal, they explained, and there was no way for them to buy a ship here without raising questions. They apologized profusely that the sisters had attempted to steal Poe’s ship and assured him that no matter how desperate their movement was, they would never condone such actions. Their Captain and other leaders talked for a long time, detailing how they had built this base from the ground so they would be ready if the First Order ever came back to Lothal. After about an hour, Poe decided it was time to call Leia. He could imagine the look on her face when she saw all of this and found out she had been right about Lothal.

“What are our coordinates?” he asked the Lothalites, so that he could send their location to Leia. When they told him, he wrinkled his brow in confusion.

“Wait a second…” he looked at Finn, at his other teammates, and they all looked just as confused. “I’m not crazy, right? This is where we sent Rey and Rose.”

Finn’s entire body froze. “Yes,” he said stiffly. “It definitely is.”

“Has anyone other than us been around here in the past couple of days?” Poe asked, panic rising in his stomach. “Two women, travelling alone? They would have thought this was a farming village. They would have asked to buy food.”

“No,” said the Lothal Captain. “We keep scouts on a wide perimeter around the village, and we haven’t seen anyone.”

Poe forgot all the excitement he had felt since the moment they stepped foot in the village. Rey and Rose were missing. Rey and Rose. He had sent them out alone, and if something had happened to them, it was his fault. Why had he been so stupid and jealous? Guilt churned in his stomach as he remembered all the times he wished Rose would disappear.

“We have to go,” he said to the Lothal Resistance leaders, but he had already turned away from them. He grabbed Finn by the arm as he hurried back the way they had come. He didn’t check to see if the rest of his team was following.

“We’re gonna find them,” he said to Finn as they half-walked, half-ran to the exit. “I promise you, we’re gonna find them.”

“Of course we are,” Finn said. He put on a determined face, but a current of fear ran through his words.

They burst through the warehouse door the second it slid open, but Poe kept going. He pulled Finn along with him as he walked all the way back down the busy village street. This time he didn’t notice the stares or the whispers of the people they passed. He didn’t stop until they were well away from the village and all its noise.

He planted his hands squarely on Finn’s shoulders.

“Everything’s gonna be ok,” he said.

“Ok,” Finn said.

“I have a plan.”

“Ok.”

“I’m gonna call Leia and tell her to come get us in the Falcon…”

“Ok.”

“And you’re going to find Rey and Rose,” Poe finished.

Finn blinked. “I don’t know where they are.”

Poe knew that what he was about to say was a sensitive subject for Finn, so he chose his words carefully.

“You and Rey have a connection,” Poe said. “Use it.”

Finn was starting to get frustrated. “What are you talking about? Use it how?”

“The Force, Finn. Use the Force.”

They stood in silence, staring at each other.

“I can’t,” Finn said quietly.

“Sure you can! I’ve seen you do it.”

“That wasn’t… Look, I don’t even know how I did that.”

“You think Rey knew what she was doing the first time she used the Force? Or Luke Skywalker? Or Leia? I’ve heard enough stories to know you don’t have to know what you’re doing to be—”

“Don’t call me a Jedi!” Finn snapped. “I’m not! I’m not like Rey or Luke Skywalker or Leia or any of the rest of them. I’m not special. I’m just a stormtrooper who got out.”

“Finn—” Poe didn’t even know where to begin. He wished he could make Finn see himself the way everyone else did. He was the most special person in the galaxy.

“You’re wrong,” Poe said. Finn objected immediately, but Poe stopped him. He held Finn’s face in hands. “Shhh, listen. I know you don’t believe me. That’s ok. You’ll see eventually. But until then, take it from me. You’re wrong. You are so special. And you can use the Force. Deep down, you know that. Remember what you said to me? That it felt like you’ve been waiting to use it forever? Why are you shutting that out?”

“I just don’t think I can do it,” Finn said, sounding utterly defeated. All the energy had drained from him. “I can’t be a hero like them. That’s not who I am.”

“So don’t be a hero like them!” Poe said. “Be a hero like only you can. I mean, Finn, that’s what you’ve been doing since I met you! Maybe you don’t see it, but it’s true. You’re exactly what heroes are made of.”

“Poe, I don’t—”

“Try. Just try. It can’t hurt. C’mon, search your feelings or whatever. Prove to yourself that I’m right.”

Finn stared at him, but Poe could tell his thoughts were a thousand lightyears away. Slowly, Finn’s face shifted. Hardened.

“Ok,” he said. “I’ll try. For Rey and Rose.”

“There you go, buddy!” Poe said, clapping him on the shoulder.

Finn stepped a few feet away so that he could focus. He fell to his knees on the ground, buried his hands in the sand, and closed his eyes. His breaths became deep and even.

Meanwhile, Poe called Leia on his comm.

“Come in, Starbird,” he said. “We need a pick-up.”

“Poe?” Leia’s staticky voice said through the speaker. “What’s happening?”

“Rey and Rose are missing,” he said. “We’ve reached their destination, but they aren’t here.”

“Why are you all the way out there?”

“No time to explain right now. We’ve gotta find them before something happens to them.”

“How will we know where to find them?” Leia asked.

Poe’s eyes fell on Finn, still kneeling in the sand, his face wrinkled with concentration. 

“We’re working on it,” Poe said. “See you in a few.”

He watched Finn warily. His lips were moving, as if he was mumbling something under his breath. Poe had no idea how to tell if it was working or if something had gone horribly wrong.

Suddenly, Finn shot up from the ground in a spray of sand.

“I feel her,” he said in amazement. “I feel Rey.”

Relief swept through Poe’s body, and he smiled.

“See! I told you! You’re amazing, Finn!”

But then Finn’s face fell. He squeezed his eyes shut as if in pain.

“I feel something else, too,” Finn said, his voice strained. “Something…big. And powerful. And…I don’t know. Whatever it is, I feel like it’s trying to pull me in.”

His eyes flew open wide. Poe’s heart beat too fast, and his chest felt like it was restricting.

“What’s wrong?” Poe asked.

“It’s got Rey,” Finn said. He locked eyes with Poe. “I think they’re in trouble.”

…………………………………………………

As soon as the Falcon landed and the boarding ramp lowered, Finn ran on board. Poe followed closely behind him. The rest of his team made it on board, too, though he hadn’t noticed them catching up. If he was honest, he had forgotten about them. That kept happening when he was with Finn. He would have to work on it, but for now, he just hoped Leia wouldn’t notice.

“What is going on?” Leia asked when they met her in the main hold. “I don’t like the Falcon being exposed like this.”

“Don’t worry,” Poe said. He had forgotten that she still had no idea what they had discovered here. “Everyone here is on our side.”

“What do you—”

“We don’t have time for this! Something’s got Rey!” Finn burst out, surprising all of them. “We have to go right now.”

“Ok, buddy, come on,” Poe said, grabbing his arm again and leading him down the corridor to the cockpit. He shooed the pilot away and took her seat. Finn sat beside him, though how he was sitting down, Poe had no idea. He was practically vibrating with anxious energy.

“It’s gonna be ok, I promise,” Poe said while he checked everything and made sure they were ready to fly. It wasn’t a promise he could make, not really, because he had no idea if anything would be ok. But he couldn’t stand to see Finn like this. “All right, we’re good to go. Where is she?”

Finn pointed out the viewport, to the left.

“That way,” he said.

“No, I mean, specifically, where is she?”

“I don’t know,” Finn said, shaking his head. “It’s not like I have her coordinates or anything. I just know that she’s somewhere that way.”

Poe didn’t know what to do. If he took off in a general direction with no idea where he was going, they would never find Rey and Rose. He could get off course. He could pass right over them without seeing them from the air. Finn could correct him if he made a mistake, but how long would that take? And according to Finn, they had no time to lose.

Poe had an idea that, despite the circumstances, put a smile on his face.

“Why are you smiling?” Finn demanded.

“Because,” Poe said. “You’re gonna fly.”

“I don’t know how to fly.”

“Sure you do! You learned from the best.”

“Poe,” Finn said, his voice desperate. “Please. We have to go.”

“I know that! And you’re the only one who knows where we’re going. It’s gotta be you.”

“I’ve never done it before.”

Poe looked him square in the face. “You’ve done a whole lot of things in the past twenty-four hours that you’ve never done before, Finn.”

Finn exhaled, nodding. “Ok. Yeah. Ok. Let’s do it.”

Poe jumped up from the pilot’s seat. “That’s the spirit! You’ve got this, buddy!”

Once in the pilot’s seat, Finn took the controls. His leg bounced wildly, so Poe reached over and put a hand on his knee to steady him. Even now, it amazed him that he could do something like this without Finn jerking away from his touch.

“I’ve got this,” Finn repeated to himself as the Falcon thrummed to life beneath them. He eased on to the controls and slowly, carefully, they lifted off the ground.

The shadow of a smile touched Finn’s face.

“I’m flying,” he said.

He lifted them higher into the air and pressed on in the direction he had pointed out. A sense of elation overcame Poe. Finn was doing so well. Maybe the Force was helping him, or maybe he was just good at everything he did, but either way, they glided smoothly through the air without a hitch. Poe never would’ve believed someone could be this good after one lesson. But of course, this wasn’t just someone, it was Finn. He was special.

After a few minutes, they could see something massive and cone-shaped piercing the horizon.

“Whoa,” Finn said. For the first time since he had taken the controls, the Falcon bobbed in the air. “That’s…whoa.” They bobbed again, more violently this time.

“Are you ok?” Poe asked. 

“Fine,” Finn said. He shook his head as if to clear it. “That’s it. That…that mountain. Or whatever. That’s the thing that’s pulling at me.”

Poe’s stomach dropped. “Can you still feel her? Is she ok? Is it hurting you?”

“No, it’s not hurting me,” Finn said in a daze. “I don’t think it wants to hurt me. It doesn’t…it doesn’t feel so bad anymore.”

The closer they got to the not-mountain, the more relaxed Finn seemed.

“I think they’re ok,” he said when they were nearly on top of the thing. He looked at Poe suddenly. “But. Um. I just realized I have no idea how to land.”

Poe laughed. Of course he had forgotten to teach Finn how to land. That was his least favorite part. It always meant the flight was over and he had to get back to the rest of the world.

“I’ll take it from here,” Poe said. “But you were perfect.”

They swapped seats again, and Poe explained everything to Finn as he did it. He pointed out the lever for the landing claw and showed him exactly how much to pull back on the controls. Finn watched and listened attentively, just as he had before. It seemed almost like they were still in that first lesson, like none of the past few days had happened at all. Like it had all been a dream.

Then they touched down, and the spell was broken. Finn smiled at Poe. He still buzzed with energy, but now it felt closer to excitement than anxiety. He leaned over and planted a kiss on Poe’s cheek before he hopped up and jogged out of the cockpit.

Poe touched the warm spot on his cheek and smiled to himself. No, he thought, it definitely hadn’t been a dream.

Poe stayed back and waited by the Falcon while Finn ran off to get Rey and Rose.

“They’re so close!” Finn said “I can practically hear their voices.”

Poe watched him go, with only a hint of worry that things would be different when he returned. When the other two people Finn loved more than anything in the world were there, and it wasn’t just the two of them anymore.

When Finn came back around the curve of the mountain, Rey and Rose—both all in one piece—walked behind him. As the three of them got closer, Poe realized that Rey and Rose’s hands were laced together. He busted out laughing. Apparently he and Finn weren’t the only ones who had gotten completely distracted on this mission.

“You had an eventful time, I see,” he said when they reached the boarding ramp. He made eye contact with Rose, maybe for the first time since Crait. He tried to fit as much as he could into that gaze—how sorry he was for treating her like an enemy, how stupid he felt for acting like a child—and she smiled at him in return. It was a start.

“You could say that,” Rey said. She smiled, too. And Finn smiled. And Poe couldn’t have stopped smiling if he wanted to. Was this what the Resistance would be now? A group of people so happy and full of love that they all they did was stand around and smile at each other?

Maybe that didn’t sound so bad.

“I always knew, you know,” Poe said as he led them down the main corridor to the engineering bay/strategy room for their debriefing with Leia.

“Knew what?” Rey asked.

“That you like women,” Poe said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Because, as far as he knew, it was the most obvious thing in the world. He had taken it for granted since the first time he met her.

Rey stopped dead in the middle of the corridor. Poe turned to look at her. She was quiet for a long time.

“Well, you could’ve told me,” she said, finally.

“What! You didn’t know?” Finn said. Poe laughed. Apparently he hadn’t been the only one who thought it was established information.

“No! Did you?” Rey said.

“Of course! I think everyone did. I mean, Rey, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s pretty obvious.”

Rey looked around at all of them in utter disbelief.

“You’re so cute,” Rose said, shaking her head. She made eye contact with Rey, and the look in their faces sent warmth spreading through Poe’s gut. He was shocked at how happy it made him to see them happy. He cared for them more than he had ever expected to.

When they reached the strategy room, Leia leapt from her seat and bounded across the room to embrace Rey and Rose in turn. Last she heard, they were possibly in terrible danger.

After only a few minutes of explanations about what had happened on the mission—or rather, why both halves had gotten so off-track—Leia dismissed them. They had all had a long day, she said, and they should all go get some rest.

As Poe turned to leave, she placed a hand on his arm.  

“Not you,” she said quietly. He sucked in a deep breath. There were any number of things she could reprimand him for now that they were alone.

“Your other team members told me everything while you were flying,” she said. His stomach dropped. Everything…like how he had been a terrible Captain? How he had entirely ignored them for the majority of the past two days? He turned to look at Leia, and tears gleamed in her eyes.

“Is it true?” she said, her voice rough, almost a whisper. “They have everything we need to rebuild?”

“Oh,” Poe said. This wasn’t what he had been expecting, but it reached out and grabbed his heart. He felt a lump in his throat as tears swelled in his own eyes. “Yes. You wouldn’t believe what they’ve managed to do all the way out here on their own.”

“So it’s not over,” she said.

He shook his head, beaming.

“Not even close.”

They embraced, Leia squeezing him so tight that it hurt.

“Thank you, Poe,” she said. “We wouldn’t have made it this far without you.”

When he pulled back and looked at her, a complicated mix of emotions rose in him. Leia always reminded him of his mother, which brought with it the hollow stab of loss. There was guilt, too, over the many ways he felt he had let her down over the years. But mostly, right then, he felt proud. Proud of Leia for never giving up the fight, even after losing first her entire planet, then her own son, and her husband, and her brother. Proud that he got to know her and fight with her. And yes, proud that he himself was a person she valued and loved.

“You deserve it, you know,” she said, and for a second, Poe thought she had been reading his mind.

“I deserve what?”

She smirked. “The rookies still think a debrief means they have to tell me every little detail.”

Poe’s face burned.

“I’m sorry about all the stuff with Finn,” he blurted. “I really didn’t mean—”

“Don’t apologize! I’m serious. You deserve it. I’m happy for you.”

“Oh,” Poe said, but his cheeks still felt white-hot. “Thanks.”

“It’s nice to see you thinking about something other than the fight for once. Even I had Han.”

“Yeah, well,” Poe said, remembering what Finn had told him, “if we aren’t fighting to save the people we love, what are we fighting for?”

“Exactly,” Leia said.

They began to discuss their plans moving forward. For tonight, she said, they would do no more. No one was mentally or physically prepared to establish the next stage of the Resistance right now. Going forward, they would have to find ships and make sure all the Lothalites were trained properly and figure out what the First Order’s next move was and a thousand other things. There was much work still to be done. But both Poe and Leia were confident that they had what it took to do it all.

“Now go,” Leia said after a while. “I know there’s someone else you’d rather be talking to.”

Poe smiled, and heat rushed into his cheeks once again. This was going to take some getting used to.

He left the strategy room and went in search of—Leia was always right, after all—Finn. From down the corridor, Poe heard his voice coming from the main hold. Before he turned the corner, he realized what Finn was talking about and stopped, listening.

“It was great,” Finn was saying. “I mean, obviously it was great, but that’s not even enough to describe it. It’s like, one second, I thought he was gonna die, and the next thing I know I wake up with my head in his lap, and then—well, you know. I didn’t think I would ever get to do that. With him. I didn’t think he felt that way about me.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” Rey said. “He’s obviously obsessed with you.”

“Whatever,” Finn said. “I’m just glad I know now. Is it weird that I found out I can use the Force literally yesterday, and I still feel like Poe is the best and most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me?”

Poe bit his lip. Surely he would explode if he listened to any more of this. He couldn’t take it. He took a few steps back down the corridor so he could turn the corner as if he hadn’t heard anything at all.

“It’s not weird,” Rey was saying to Finn when Poe walked in, a smile plastered across her face. “I know exactly what you mean.” She turned her smile to Rose.

Poe slid into the booth beside Finn, who quietly settled in closer to Poe’s side.

They sat like that, all together, for a long time. Rey told them all about the Jedi temple and seeing Luke Skywalker and building her lightsaber. She said that, since they would be staying on Lothal, Finn could probably build one, too. The two of them talked about training together, about using Master Skywalker’s old texts to pave their own path through the Force. Finn seemed much more comfortable being called a Jedi now, even if he wouldn’t say it himself just yet.

Soon, Rey’s head began to nod, then Finn’s, and they decided it was time for bed. Rose pulled Rey by the hand to the crew’s quarters, but Poe held Finn back.

“Hey,” Poe said, “think you can stay awake a little longer?”

“I guess I can,” Finn said, a smile growing on his lips. “What did you have in mind?”

Poe led him into the cockpit. It was completely dark except for the light of the stars glowing softly from above.

“Somebody has to fly the ship back to base,” Poe said. “I thought maybe you would want to do it.”

“Oh,” Finn said, looking disappointed for some reason. “That’s not what I thought you were gonna say.”

Poe furrowed his eyebrows. “What did you think I—”

Finn smacked into him before he could say another word, so hard he had to brace himself against the back of the pilot’s seat to keep from falling over. Their mouths found each other, lips moving in a rhythm that had already become so comfortable. Finn’s fingers moved through Poe’s floppy curls, and Poe used his free hand to stroke Finn’s cheek, his neck, his chest.

This time, it was Finn who stopped just before they went a step further, but they stayed close, holding each other, breathing in each other’s air with deep, heavy breaths.

“So, um,” Poe said after a length of time that was impossible to measure. “Do you wanna fly now?”

Finn laughed, and they were so close that Poe could taste it.

“Yeah, sure,” Finn said.

He sat down in the pilot’s chair, and Poe sat beside him. He watched as Finn switched on the engine, prepped for take-off, and finally lifted them into the air. The ship moved as smooth and easy as it had the first time Finn flew. It only made sense, Poe thought, that the love of his life should be a natural pilot.

As they glided through the deep blue night, stars streaming past overhead, Poe thought, This could be my life forever. Him and Finn and the stars, on Yavin 4 or wherever else they wanted to go.

Poe swiveled his chair and leaned until his head rested on Finn’s shoulder—because he wanted to touch him, because he could—and he said, “When the war is over, this is all I want to do.”

Finn could’ve said But the war is so far from over or We might not both survive. But he didn’t.

Instead, he said, “Of course this is what we’ll do.”

And Poe believed him, and that was that.