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Chapter Text

At least Jakku had been a dry heat.

The planet that housed the new headquarters of the Resistance had been remarkably well chosen. It was just far enough out of the standard shipping lanes to be lightly trafficked, but where occasional moderate traffic aroused no undue suspicion. It was sparsely populated by sympathetic colonists who kept plausible deniability by sticking close to their settlements an ocean away. It had enough edible wildlife to add some variety to the mess hall offerings. Even the terrain, a wide valley carved through imposing mountains, was ideal for obscuring reconnaissance probes.

The only downside—so far—was the heat. The summer season didn’t last long, the research division had assured everyone, but it had arrived in force about two months after the base had begun initial operations, and by day three Finn had already started daydreaming about crawling inside a refrigeration unit.

“No, I get it. I do.” Poe’s smile, however, combined with his maddening lack of discomfort, suggested otherwise. “It’s just that this feels like home to me. But it’s gonna be hell keeping our engines from corroding.”

“You’re not even sweating,” Finn accused him, feeling betrayed. “Although…your hair is really curly.”

“Yeah, not worth fighting that.” The pilot climbed down from his craft’s port S-foil, his maintenance check complete. “Wanna go swimming before dinner and cool off a little?”

Finn shook his head. “Wish I could. Got a meeting.”

Poe didn’t press for details. After Starkiller, the intel team had started soliciting Finn’s input the moment he’d been released from the medbay. It hadn’t been long before General Organa had made it official, giving him a provisional commission as a lieutenant and assigning him duties in both intel and tactical training. That often meant learning things that were inaccessible to the rest of the base, even the leader of the starfighter corps. As maverick as Poe often was in his X-wing, he was a model soldier on the ground; if his friend was working on things he didn’t yet need to know, he left it alone. Trust: Finn still found himself surprised and touched by it. To say nothing of the fact that Commander Poe Dameron, who had no equal as far as Finn was concerned, nonetheless treated him as one.

“I’ll come find you when I’m done, all right? I still want to see that new holofilm.”

“Saving it for you, buddy. But be quick, because Karé and Iolo are on my ass about borrowing it.” Poe clapped him on the shoulder and headed for the pilots’ ready room.

Finn arrived at the general’s office to find himself the only occupant of the antechamber. Standing outside the door, he wondered again why they weren’t meeting in the command center’s intel room as they normally did. Recently they’d been having preliminary discussions about infiltrating a First Order shipbuilding facility in the Mid Rim, and if they were going to get down to specifics—

“Come in, Lieutenant.” General Organa waved him into the office. “And close the door.”

Complying, Finn found himself standing between Admirals Ackbar and Statura. A general, two admirals, and a lieutenant—and no one else. The gap between their ranks felt cavernous.

“Sirs,” he greeted them, falling into a parade-rest stance. “Ah, where is—?”

“Everyone else?” General Organa’s lips curved upward. “This isn’t about the potential strike on Malera. That’s on hold until we can factor in a couple of new variables.”

“What kind of variables, ma’am?”

“That would be the real topic at hand.” The general leaned against the edge of her desk. “When we set up contingency plans for transferring operations away from D’Qar, we distributed codes to certain trusted allies who might need to know how to contact us. One of those codes was utilized yesterday, transmitting a request to rendezvous with us. Three beings and one droid aboard an old Corellian freighter.”

Finn opened his mouth, but his voice deserted him. He’d woken every morning for five months hoping to hear that very news.

“She did it,” he finally managed.

The spark in General Organa’s eyes reflected his feelings perfectly. “She did. And she’ll be here in about nine hours.”

Admiral Statura stepped forward. “We thought it prudent to bring them in during the night, to prevent the arrival from becoming a spectacle. Everyone will know soon anyway, but Master Skywalker deserves some measure of discretion.”

At that point Finn hardly would have cared if they’d ordered the Falcon to do a barrel roll for its landing clearance. Rey was coming back to them. Nothing else mattered.

“Can I be there?” he asked. “I know you don’t want a crowd, but…”

The general smiled. “Why else would I have asked you here right now?”

The rest of the afternoon and evening were a total loss; Finn couldn’t concentrate to save his life. He went through the dinner line on autopilot and ended up with at least two suspicious-looking foods, eating both without really tasting them until Poe nudged his shoulder and asked what he thought of the bakla root.

Finn pondered the question. “Pretty awful, now that you mention it,” he replied cheerfully, scooping up another forkful.

Poe shot him a bemused look. “Are you even in there?”

Snap Wexley plunked his tray down across from them, studying Finn. “Now that is a satisfied customer,” he observed. “What’d you do to him, Dameron? And does it require flexibility?”

“Don’t look at me,” Poe drawled. “Finn, has anyone ever told you that your sabacc face is terrible?”

“Go easy on me with faces. I spent most of my life under a helmet.” A beat late, Finn realized Snap had been making a sex joke—about him and Poe, no less. Which…was that okay here? Sometimes life with the Resistance still tripped him up at the strangest times. In any case, Poe didn’t seem fazed, so Finn dismissed it. “Isn’t a guy allowed to be happy?”

“Of course.” Poe’s smile was fond. “It’s a good look on you.”

“You are honestly the only two people in this room smiling. Bakla root cannot be made palatable by or for any known species.” Snap dug into his anyway, washing it down with a drink that, to Finn, looked equally foul.

Anyway, priorities. Finn rose and picked up his tray. “You done?”

“Yeah, I’ll walk back with you.” Poe followed him out and started to turn in the direction of the barracks. Impulsively, Finn grabbed his arm.

“Hey, can you keep a secret?”

Poe lifted an eyebrow. “My track record’s pretty good if you don’t count Force interrogations.”

His tone held just enough of a bitter edge that Finn pulled up short, unsure how to undo his misstep. Poe shook his head. “Sorry. That wasn’t fair. I’m guessing this secret is a lot more pleasant, considering the way your feet don’t seem to be touching the ground tonight.”

“The Falcon's landing in a few hours. Rey’s bringing Luke Skywalker back.”

Poe’s expression shifted so slowly that Finn couldn’t really track it. All of a sudden, he looked like a sunrise. “At last,” he said softly. “Wow.”

“I know. I almost can’t believe it, even though I’ve been waiting for it for months.”

“Now we’ve really got something.” They beamed at each other until Poe gave a small, disbelieving laugh. “We must look like complete idiots right now. Not that I care. This makes it all worth it. Thank you for telling me.”

Finn didn’t have to ask what ‘it’ was. He hadn’t thought about what a gift this would be to his friend, after everything Poe had risked and suffered for this reality, and now he was incredibly glad he’d been the one to give it. “The general said I could come greet them. I’m sure she’d forgive me if I brought you too.”

“No, quiet is good for this. Just knowing is enough. I’ll see them soon.” Poe reached up and hugged him, firmly and briefly. “Good night.”

Silence hung like a low fog when Finn stepped out onto the flightline that night. Only the hum of a generator in the hangar grounded him from feeling like he was wearing a helmet again. Making his way over to where General Organa stood, looking uncharacteristically small against a row of Y-wings, he kept his voice low as well. “Did you relieve the security shift?”

“For an hour. The droids can handle the perimeter.” The general must have picked up on the energy thrumming just beneath his skin, because she fixed him with a knowing, closed-mouthed smile. “It’s all right to show excitement. You’ve had a long wait for this.”

“Not nearly as long as yours.” As soon as the words were out, he froze, wondering how far he’d overstepped.

“True,” she said simply, studying him for a moment. “You and I both have spent quite a while being alone in a crowd.”

Finn wasn’t sure how to respond to that. Did she mean his previous life, or his current one? “Well, I have Poe, at least,” he offered.

Her gaze was still inscrutable, still assessing. “So you do,” she replied. “As do I, in a different sense. We both could do far worse.”

Before he could find his conversational footing, a light flashed on the datapad in the general’s hand. “Landing clearance has been granted.” She lifted her eyes to the stars, washed out by the nearby light of the hangar, and pointed to one in motion. “There.”

Slowly, the living pinprick grew until it coalesced into the Millennium Falcon, easing its descent into a graceful curve toward the tarmac. Before long, a soft hiss announced the lowering of the boarding ramp, and Finn’s breath caught as a small—not delicate, never delicate—pair of boots came into view.

Nothing about Rey was different, and yet so much was. She carried herself with calm assurance rather than guarded self-reliance. Her hair was only half tied up, the lower half trailing out behind her in the breeze. And the saber she’d wielded in their desperate defense now hung as her belt as if it had always belonged there.

And her smile seemed even more radiant when she caught sight of Finn, abandoned her measured stride, and launched herself into his arms.

“You’re well,” she said, almost reverently. “They told me when we checked in, but it’s so incredible to really see and feel it.”

“I missed you,” he murmured into her hair. “I got an education in how to miss people, and it’s lousy. Are you staying?”

“As far as I know. At least for a while. Master Skywalker isn’t always…specific.” With another warm squeeze, she stepped back far enough for them to witness the other reunion taking place.

The galaxy’s last Jedi wasn’t physically imposing, particularly not as compared to the Wookie trailing a few steps behind. He looked worn, resigned. But he stood clear-eyed before his sister, holding her conflicted gaze.

“I’ll never be able to explain well enough,” he was saying. “For now, just believe that my regrets are all my own. And I’m here now.”

“I never blamed you half as much as I did myself,” General Organa said quietly. “Even when I might have said otherwise. You knew that, didn’t you?”

“All we can do is put one foot in front of the other.” Skywalker reached out a hand, and they melted together into the folds of his robe. Rey tightened her grip on Finn, and he reveled in the warmth of possibility.

***************

Poe ducked his head into the central comm room. “Connix, you seen Finn?”

The young lieutenant glanced up. “Negative, sir. Don’t think he was scheduled in here today.”

“Where else would he be scheduled? I thought his duty time this week was all blocked out for working on FO frequencies with the crypto kids.”

Connix shrugged. “I heard Master Skywalker pulled him into some kind of training thing a couple of days ago. Might be there.”

That brought Poe up short. “Really?”

“I don’t know what it means, sir.” She spread her hands. “Just passing on the info.”

“Thanks.” Poe closed his hand around the napkin-wrapped spice bun he’d snagged Finn from the mess and considered the implications. Was it possible that Finn, of all people, was Force-sensitive? How could the First Order have missed that? He’d been damned impressive with that lightsaber, admittedly, but did that mean…?

Regardless, if Finn really was training with Rey and Skywalker, they didn’t need a pilot barging in with pilfered food. Poe was curious as hell, though. And he could always just stop by the gym and glance in. No big deal.

Of all the buildings on the new base, the physical training facility had been one of the lowest priorities for the engineers. The roof leaked in one corner, and the general humidity level was especially noticeable with various species’ sweat combining in the poorly-ventilated air. Being a born-and-bred jungle brat, Poe wasn’t overly bothered, but the elevated walkway around the edge of the main room was stuffy enough that he pulled his flight suit down to the waist and hovered near the doorway in his shirtsleeves.

On the training floor, Rey and Finn were circling each other, gripping staffs that were smoother than Rey’s former weapon of choice. Practice sabers, maybe. Finn was first to lunge, parried easily by Rey. Poe watched their give and take, fascinated by the grace of it. He himself was no great talent at fighting; he could hold his own at hand-to-hand for a while, if there was no other option, but he preferred a standoff weapon like his blaster—or, ideally, Black One.

These two, though…they were mesmerizing. How had Finn picked up the skills so quickly? Had it been covered in Stormtrooper training? Poe had never wanted to ask too much about Finn’s First Order life; surely Finn got enough of that from the intel division. At times, though, it made Poe wonder how much he still didn’t know about his friend.

Rey spun and got leverage to sweep Finn’s legs out from under him, dumping him flat on his back on the mat. Poe winced, thinking of the scar hidden under Finn’s shirt, but Finn only blew out a huff of a laugh, his grin as blinding as ever.

“That’s enough for now,” called Master Skywalker from his place against the wall. “Take a short break, and I’ll see you outside for meditation.”

Rey offered Finn a hand up, and they exchanged low, cheerful comments, their heads bent close together. Poe smiled at their enthusiasm—and then was sideswiped by an unexpected and profound wash of sadness.

They were so young, so vital. Both had weathered hardships he could scarcely imagine, and yet here they were, brilliant and strong and ready to take on the galaxy. He’d felt that way once, could distantly grasp at memories of that life, but he knew he’d never get it back. Maybe if he could feel the Force. But despite his childhood bedtime stories, all he’d ever known of that energy, that connection, was the faint glow of his mother’s tree.

And then, much later, a rending agony that even now stained all but the brightest of his thoughts and feelings.

He didn’t belong here, with these two luminous creatures. He was good at his job—most of his job—and that would have to be enough. He could be their comrade, perhaps even their protector, but he wasn’t one of them. The realization was a quiet shock, like a deep cut that had just begun to open but not yet bleed.

Quickly, he stepped back out of the room and headed back toward Starfighter Operations, unaware of the searching eyes that had just risen to scan the walkway from below.

******************

Rey’s gaze swept over the neat row of X-wings. She knew, objectively, that their hulls were worn and their systems outdated, the price of operating on the barest fringes of a faltering government. Still, they were leagues more impressive than anything that had ever flown into or over Niima Outpost, and they were the legacy of the dozens of similar craft that had dotted the landscape of her life for the past decade.

And now she was here to talk to the man who commanded them all. It would be an intimidating task, were it not for her suspicion that Poe Dameron was rarely in an intimidating mood.

She found him next to his starfighter, discussing a checklist of maintenance items with a hulking crew chief whose species she couldn’t name. The crew chief nodded smartly, and Poe had to reach up rather high to clap him on the shoulder in thanks. As they went their separate ways, Poe pulled up short at the sight of his visitor, and Rey wondered if the flicker of apprehension she sensed was in her imagination.

“Hey,” he greeted, setting aside a datapad. “You escape Skywalker’s clutches for the day?”

“We’re done, yes. Meditation is never my favorite.” At his questioning look, she explained, “I see its virtues, but sometimes I think Master Skywalker doesn’t fully comprehend that I’ve spent almost as much time in silence as he has. And for me it was rarely by choice.”

She appreciated the way Poe’s understanding expression didn’t cross into pity, like some others had lately. “Trust me, silence is a rare thing around here. You ever feel like it’s getting too quiet, you come over to the pilots’ ready room. If the off-key singing doesn’t send you running for earplugs, the ridiculously filthy lyrics will.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” Rey smiled. “You came by the gym earlier, but you didn’t stay.”

His expression did shift then, though he masked it well. “Yeah, I just wanted to bring Finn a spice bun since the mess was running out of them. But it wasn’t worth interrupting you guys. I just put it in his locker. It’s—nothing, it’s dumb, it doesn’t matter.” He ducked his head, pretending to check his datapad again, and she was struck by an urge to reassure him.

“It was kind,” she insisted, quietly. “He and I both are still getting used to kindnesses like that.”

“We’ll do our best to catch you up. You’re both working at a severe kindness deficit.” He raised his eyes to return the smile. “So…Finn is Force-sensitive, huh? That’s pretty big news.”

It would indeed have been, though Rey got the impression that it might not have been entirely welcome news. “He’s not, actually. Well, a little, according to Master Skywalker. Apparently there’s a whole spectrum of sensitivity, and everyone has some degree of it—most people just don’t have enough to use in any real way.”

“Okay.” Poe’s brow furrowed. “Then why is he training with you?”

“I’m never confident of Master Skywalker’s reasons, but he gave two. The saber training is because Finn showed so much raw aptitude for it on Takodana and Starkiller, and because he’s been training with weapons since he was a child.”

“And so it’s probably the only thing he does around here that feels at all normal to him.” Poe grimaced, but nodded. “Makes sense.”

“The meditation, on the other hand, is meant to draw him out of his former life as well as this one, to help him decide how to move forward from here. He jumped from one faction of the conflict to the other; at one point he considered leaving it all behind. Skywalker wants him to examine that instinct and see if it has merit.”

Poe had started tidying up the tools scattered around his craft’s ground-power station, but now he stiffened. “You don’t think he should stay with the Resistance?”

“It wasn’t my idea,” she pointed out, a little sharply. “I do think he should stay, as a matter of fact. But I also agree that it should be an informed choice.”

“And right now it isn’t? He’s been with us for five months and seems pretty content here. You missed kind of a lot.”

“You don’t have to convince me, Commander.” Serenity. His defensiveness wasn’t a commentary on her. “I don’t truly believe you need to convince anyone. But if you feel you need to make a case, the person you should to whom you should make it is Finn.”

Poe inclined his head toward her, conceding the point. “Sorry. I have a knee-jerk tendency toward selfishness, I guess. I want him to stay. He’s incredibly useful to the cause and he’s a good friend to me.”

“He means a great deal to me as well, and I plan to stay, as best I can.” Rey reached out to touch his arm. “I’m trying not to be possessive, I promise. I don’t expect you would understand just how strange it is for me to even be in a position to care so much about someone else.”

Neither of them moved for a moment, and suddenly she sensed a flash of troubled emotion, indistinct and turbulent. For a second or two, she felt unmoored, uncertain of its origin, and then she understood: the source was the man in front of her. She’d brushed his mind by accident—and he’d just realized it.

The pilot jerked away from her, horror and betrayal flaring in his dark eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” she rushed to say, hands flung out in front of her in entreaty. “I’m still learning—I didn’t mean to do that.”

He turned slightly away from her, his voice low. “What did you see?”

“Nothing clear. Just enough to know that you’re—” Traumatized. Haunted. Badly wronged. “—unsettled. Truly, the last thing I want to do is invade anyone’s privacy. I assure you I won’t let it happen again.”

“It’s all right.”

“But it’s not, is it? That’s a guess, not a connection. It’s distasteful to you, and for good reason.”

Poe’s tone of voice was understanding, even if it didn’t match his body language. “Really. Don’t worry about it.”

He stepped around her, looking as though he planned to head back into the hangar. Rey had the strong sense that she was being misled, and she raised her voice despite her better instincts. “Poe. I know you don’t know me, not really. But the one thing I can’t abide is pretense.”

His back stiff, he paused in midstride. “If you knew me, you’d understand how insulting that sounded. I know we’re on the same side, and I believe you when you say you didn’t…do that on purpose. But I don’t owe you or anyone else my thoughts.”

Before she could think of anything to say to repair the rift that had just opened wide, he was gone.

Chapter Text

Finn scrubbed a hand over his hair, still cropped close but longer than it had ever been. He wasn’t on duty, but his datapad kept pinging periodically anyway. Command’s requests for information had been getting more specific over the past couple of days. Instead of a few sporadic queries about small-unit tactics or troop movements, he’d been fielding a series of pointed inquiries about a particular base where he’d once trained: its layout, its schedule. Clearly somebody was getting ideas about mounting an operation; presumably they’d tell him more when or if they felt it prudent.

“You look preoccupied.” Rey dropped down beside him and peered over his shoulder at the screen. “They’ve got you studying Republic political history?”

“No, I’ve got me studying Republic political history. It’s bizarre how two groups can document the same sequence of events totally differently. Might be funny if it wasn’t about mass servitude and the occasional genocide.”

“Not having an optimistic day?” She rested her chin on his collarbone.

“It’s fine. I just think something’s in the works and I don’t yet know what it is.” Gently, Finn drew back to face her. “But since we’re talking about less than happy things, can I ask you something that’s none of my business?” Except for the part where it was having a marked impact on his life.

Rey shrugged. “I can’t promise you’ll like the answer, but I’ll always give you one.”

“Why is it rarer than a Zeval triple sunset to catch you and Poe in the same room together?”

Her wince told him that he wasn’t imagining the distance between his two closest friends. “I’d hoped it wasn’t that obvious.”

“Maybe not to anyone else. It’s not like you have much cause to cross paths. The thing is, you do have me, and whenever I sit down with one of you in the mess hall or to watch a holofilm, the other one magically has a good reason to be somewhere else.” Finn watched her steadily. “I’m not going to try to force you to be pals. I just wish I understood.”

“It’s not complicated, actually.” She exhaled, placing her hands in her lap. “I crossed a line with him a few days ago. The fault was mine, and he claims to have accepted my apology, but it’s clear he’s still not comfortable with me. I’m wondering if he’s uneasy around Force users in general.”

That possibility hadn’t occurred to him. Finn frowned. “I haven’t seen him talk to Skywalker, but—I mean, he’d launch himself into a sun if the general asked him to, and she’s a Force user.”

“She has the ability, but she barely uses it. Whereas I apparently can’t help but shove my grubby hands into someone else’s mind, if I let down my guard for a moment.”

“Oh, hell.” That explained a lot. “It’s not your fault that Poe is the absolute last person on this base to react well to that. For kriff’s sake, Ren tortured the location of the map out of him that way.”

“Oh, stars,” she breathed, paling. “I hadn’t realized—but I should have.”

Something about her tone made him wary. “You never told me much about being Ren’s prisoner on Starkiller,” he began, not sure he wanted to know.

Rey nodded, her jaw tight. “He tried. I fought him off. I didn’t have the first clue how to do it, but when he—pushed in, after a few seconds, it started to feel like a two-way connection. I figured, if he could reach in and take, then so could I. After that, getting the guard to let me go was a snap.”

Incredible. Finn twined his fingers with hers, wanting to impart to her the swell of admiration generated by her words. “I’m guessing that’d take a much higher level of Force sensitivity than I’ve got. Certainly higher than Poe’s. Maybe you could talk to him about it, though. Maybe knowing someone else has been there would help.”

“Do you think he’d be okay with that? I’m not sure it would make him much more willing to discuss it.” She drew her knees up to her chest, looking small. “I know I’m no expert at reading people, at least not without Force assistance, but he seems more challenging than most.”

“I wish I could disagree. At first I thought he really was that optimistic all the time, making everyone feel better about everything. Eventually I started to figure out that he kind of avoids talking about anything that might be bothering him. ” It had hurt, at first, when Finn had realized just how little Poe had shared with him. He knew about Yavin IV, and the Academy, and Poe’s favorite music—but not his fears, not what he wanted out of life.

He’d kept a handle on himself, and observed Poe’s interactions with others, discovering that Poe actually seemed closer to him than almost anyone else. Maybe it was an unavoidable product of being a field-grade officer; the only people who outranked the starfighter corps commander were on the senior staff.

Finn was, theoretically, considered a lieutenant. He felt awkward using the rank, and people seemed to have picked up on that, so it was rarely mentioned. He certainly didn’t want it to be a barrier between him and Poe. Finn barely knew how to aspire to anything in his own life, but he wanted that life to include his closest friend, and he wanted happiness for Poe just as much.

Of course, Rey held no military commission at all.

“Maybe I’ll ask him about it. I don’t want to drag him into anything, but I think you and he could be friends. At the very least, he ought to be able to talk to you.”

His datapad pinged again. Rey leaned over, and Finn didn’t pull it away. “Why is Intel asking you about First Order network protocols?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

She left for Skywalker’s suite not long after, having been tasked with some new mental exercises. Her zeal made it clear that she deeply regretted what had happened with Poe and was determined to better her skills to avoid any further impositions. As much as Finn understood that, he couldn’t help a trickle of envy at the fleeting, tangled glimpse she’d gotten into the mind of such a good man.

The mess hall was quiet that evening, with many of the pilots and a few squads of ground forces out on low-light maneuvers. Finn caught sight of Poe at a corner table, a fork in one hand and a datapad in the other, and invited himself over.

“Is everybody but you flying right now?”

Poe flashed him a grin. “Nah, Red’s up, but Blue finished a while ago. I’m reviewing their scores, so they’re all holed up in the ready room waiting for the results.”

“Which are?” Finn dug into his meal, a hearty stew that was flavorful but not well suited to this damned rainforest.

“Overall, the newbies are improving. They need more time in low-atmo, but that’s tough on the airframes and uses a lot of fuel, so we need to tweak the sims to be more representative on those conditions. As usual, Jess is tops for weapons, Snap for navigation. Next time I’m gonna have to throw those two a new wrinkle, knock their egos back a little and give someone else a chance to build some confidence.”

“You’re a good leader,” Finn said, without forethought.

Poe blinked, surprised. “Your standards are skewed. But thanks.” His smile was endearingly self-conscious. “There aren’t really any instruction manuals for running a fighter corps for a Resistance. Some of the Academy stuff translates, but some of it really, really doesn’t.”

Finn sensed an opening for his curiosity. “Did you expect to be with the New Republic Fleet for your whole career?”

“For a long time, yeah, I did. Not sure I could really pinpoint when that started to change, but by the time the whole Yssira Zyde mess happened and General Organa came calling, I didn’t have a lot of that mindset left. I’ve never regretted leaving, at least not for more than a few minutes.” Poe’s fingers twirled the fork as he cast a sideways glance at Finn. “I wasn’t about to make that call for anyone else, though. I didn’t ask Karé and Iolo to come with me, but they’d seen the same things I had and chose to come. A lot of other good friends stayed, and I can live with that. Just because I believe in what we’re doing doesn’t mean I think everyone has to fight, or fight the same way we do.”

Not the most subtle method of broaching a topic. “This is about Skywalker’s big goal of getting me to visualize my future, isn’t it?” Finn shook his head. “Trust me, I’m staying put. I may not have a vast knowledge of all the other lives I could be leading, but I do know that none of them would do as much to rid the galaxy of the First Order. Besides, I like it here.”

“I just don’t want you to feel like you have to stay with the Resistance out of—I don’t know, out of obligation or anything. You’re your own man, and we shouldn’t get to control your decisions any more than the First Order did.”

Finn resisted the urge to roll his eyes—no helmet to obscure it, and his friend looked so serious. “I am my own man, and I chose this fight. I’m choosing it every day, the same as you. I think everybody around here, even Skywalker, is doing more or less okay with that concept. You better than anyone, until about three minutes ago.”

“Damn it.” Poe dropped his head back to stare up at the ceiling ruefully. “I aimed for sincere and hit condescending instead. I’m sorry. My head’s not completely in the game right now.”

“Because of what Rey said? Or did?”

That brought him upright again. “She told you about that, huh?”

“She feels pretty terrible about it. I think she’s practicing shielding with Skywalker right now.”

“It shouldn’t have been a big deal. I’m just—jumpy about that kind of thing.” Poe set his fork aside. He didn’t seem tense, exactly, but he was heading in that direction.

“You’ve got a damn good reason to be,” Finn pointed out.

“You’re not the first person to put it in those terms.” His friend wasn’t looking at him, might not have been looking at anything. “Doesn’t really matter how justified it is. It’s still a pain in the ass and nobody else’s problem.”

Finn leaned forward, choosing his words carefully. “One of the first things you told me about life around here was that it was okay to speak up if anything bothered or worried me, because we’d figure it out together or find someone else who could. If that’s true, and I believe it is, then why isn’t it okay for you to say that you went through something no one should have to endure and it still bothers you?”

After a long moment, Poe met his gaze, yielding ever so slightly. “It is,” he allowed. “It’s just—not easy. Nobody else is going to get it, exactly, and it’d just be—”

“Rey would.” Finn rested his elbows on the table. “That’s why she feels so bad. Ren went into her head too.”

Poe blinked, and his expression transformed from wary reticence to genuine concern. “Kriffing hell,” he murmured. “I somehow avoided thinking about that enough to forget it was a possibility. He had her plenty long enough.”

“She’d be able to relate better than anyone else. And it might feel good, in a vindictive kind of way, to hear her story of how she turned it against him.”

“Excuse me?”

It was tough to hold back a grin of malicious satisfaction. “Oh yeah. He tried to yank the map out of her head, but she realized that she could do the same thing, so she started giving it back to him. Then, once he got all freaked out and left her alone, she used that trick on the stormtrooper guarding her, and that was that. It’s incredible. I mean, she didn’t even know she could but she just did it.”

He realized a little too late that the other man had gone very still, the line of his jaw hard. In a flash, Finn’s delight was snuffed out. “That’s not a commentary on you,” he hurried to say. “Hell, none of us could have done it. I’m just glad that somebody could.”

“Yeah,” Poe said, and it sounded like more words were meant to follow, but none did. Not until he pushed himself up from the table. “I have to go debrief Blue and post their scores.”

“I screwed up here, didn’t I? Can we—are you busy after the debrief? I still haven’t heard that song you were talking about the other day.”

“It’s fine.” Poe gave him a reassuring smile. While it did reassure him that the pilot wasn’t angry with him, it did nothing for his creeping sense that a knife had just been twisted. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Finn watched in dismay as Poe dumped a nearly-full plate into the recycler and strode out of the room.

**************

Starfighter Ops was a couple of buildings away from the mess, and Poe had taken to cutting through the outer walkway of the command center when he walked from one to the other. Every so often it would result in him getting pulled into a worthwhile tactical discussion.

Tonight he was very much not looking for a tactical discussion.

Admiral Statura had the watch in the control room, monitoring the progress of a recon flight as well as Red Squadron’s training session. He turned away from the chart display to greet Poe with a nod. “Something on your mind, Commander?”

“Sir.” Poe fell in at parade rest; standing at attention wasn’t something that was done around here, but the Academy had seared a few habits so deeply into his brain that there was no erasing them. “Is there any possibility that I might be needed to fly tomorrow?”

The admiral inclined his head. “No fighter missions are scheduled, and you know your squadron’s training rota as well as anyone.”

“I want to be clear on this: nothing? No short-notice recons, no pop-up escort flights? Nothing short of an all-out attack on the base?”

Statura regarded him with calm curiosity. “Are you asking if it’s all right to…relax tonight? Because if you are, I’d say, unofficially, that it’s been a long time coming.”

That was all the confirmation he needed. “Thank you, sir.” He turned on his heel without waiting for a dismissal, not wanting to linger long enough to find that note of unbearable sympathy in yet another person’s eyes.

The buzz of voices in the ready room swelled in greeting at his arrival. “Nice job out there today,” he called, quieting the group somewhat. “We’re going to step up the sim work on atmospheric transitions, because people are still getting behind the power curve on descents that increase G-forces. All in all, though, you’ve been working hard, and it shows.”

BB-8 rolled up to him with a string of bright beeps. “You always want to deliver the news, don’t you, buddy?” Poe dropped to one knee and connected his ‘pad to his astromech’s data port. “Go ahead, break it to ‘em.”

Happily, BB-8 projected the scores onto the nearest wall, and the pilots began to crowd around. Poe eased back toward where his flight captains were staying out of the crush. Snap Wexley and Jess Pava didn’t need to see the scores; they knew where they stood. Convenient, for the moment.

“Where’s the stash?”

Jess blinked, not expecting the question. “Say again?”

“The hooch you guys keep for when it’s been too long since an official party. Last I checked, there were at least eight bottles in the inventory.”

“Hey, boss, listen—”

Poe cut Snap off. “Kriff, guys, I just want a bottle of something and I’ll be on my way. I’m not gonna discipline anyone. You know me better than that.”

Jess hesitated. “We do, boss. But since we’re off duty in about four minutes, let’s be straight about this: you haven’t been…you for the last little while. At least.”

It’d been that obvious, then. Fantastic. “Which is why you need to give me a drink or eight.”

“How ‘bout you hang here with us,” Snap suggested. “These kids could do with an introduction to Nien’s rotgut. We’ll all have a drink together.”

“Snap, Force help me, if somebody doesn’t put a bottle in my hand in the next ten seconds and then shut the hell up, I’m not responsible for the consequences.”

Because they trusted him, they obeyed.

**********************

Karé had just stowed her gear in her ready-room locker when Iolo came back around the corner. “Thought nothing was going to get between you and the new batch of moloka sweetbread.”

“Not yet. I just saw a comm from Snap on your ‘pad.”

“Hey now. I would die for you, but reading my sexy comms might mean we’re a little too close.”

“Very funny. It came through while I was uploading flight logs.” Her wingman’s features were set in a tight mask of concern. “Snap said Poe came around an hour or so ago and took that nasty bottle of fire-rum that nobody can stand. Wouldn’t stay, wouldn’t explain. Jess went to his quarters a few minutes ago to check on him and he’s not there.”

Well, hell. Karé shut her locker and leaned her forehead against the cool metal for a moment. Red’s training hop had been her second of the day following a recon flight, with pre- and post-briefs in between, and a shower had been sounding better with every passing moment. But she and Iolo had known Poe Dameron longer than anyone in the Resistance, had followed him there from the New Republic Defense Fleet—and given how out of character this was for him, she wasn’t about to leave it to someone else to sort out.

“Anybody seen Bee?”

Iolo lifted his comlink and contacted his own astromech. “Kay-dee Niner, locate Bee-bee Eight, please.”

The Binary reply identified an odd location: the top floor of the Maintenance and Logistics building, adjacent to the hangar. “Usually pretty quiet over there this time of night,” Iolo commented.

“Probably not a coincidence.”

It was a short walk, and they began it in silence. Halfway there, Karé glanced over at Iolo. “Any ideas about what brought this on?”

In the fading light, the Keshian’s large eyes were nearly black. “Not sure where his head is regarding the Jakku mess. Other than that, your guess is as good as mine.”

They found BB-8 loitering at the end of a corridor next to an access ladder, looking forlorn. Roof access, Karé realized. “Hey, Bee,” she greeted quietly. “He up there?”

The droid nodded, beeping its relief at their arrival.

“He tell you not to come get any of us?”

Another, sadder nod. “Well, you didn’t, and we won’t let him blame you.” Karé stroked its domed head for a moment, then exhaled. “Okay, let’s do this.” She climbed the ladder and pushed open the access hatch.

After a couple of seconds, her eyes adjusted to the dusk, and she located her target. He was sitting against the case of the building’s heating unit, elbows resting on bent knees, the fire-rum bottle dangling from his fingers. About half-empty, by the looks of it. Wisely, he’d also brought a water bottle along.

“You planning to stay up here all night, boss?” she asked, keeping her voice low in case he hadn’t heard the hatch open.

Poe didn’t look up as she and Iolo sat down on either side of him. “That was the basic plan. Enough time to feel sorry for myself, then get my shit together before it could become a problem for anyone.”

“Good plan,” Iolo said. “Or it would’ve been, if, you know, your pilots were completely devoid of empathy and would characterize you having feelings as a ‘problem.’ Which—no.”

Poe lifted his head, but only to take a drag from the bottle with barely a grimace. “If I’d wanted to talk, I would have come to you guys. You know that.” He fixed Iolo with what he probably intended to be a sharp glare, dulled by the sheen of liquor. “Or stayed in my quarters.”

“Yep,” Karé said agreeably, taking the bottle from him. “And yet here we are.” Her swig of the fire-rum was true to its name and had a horrible aftertaste to boot. But any shot she drank was one that he couldn’t, so it was for the greater good. Iolo blanched when she tried to hand the bottle to him, but she smacked it into his chest with a pointed look, and he reluctantly took his own sip.

“You’ve earned the right to get fucked up if you want,” she told her commander. “Our lives are fucked up by definition. Just understand that your friends care, and your captains need to know if you need a break.”

“No. Not flying would be so, so much worse.” A hint of gratitude flickered behind Poe’s eyes, but it couldn’t break through the utter desolation written across his face. “I’m exactly the same level of fucked-up I’ve been since Jakku, overall. There was just—kind of a spike today, that’s all.”

“Something cause it?” Iolo asked.

“Yeah. But it’s not like it was his fault—he didn’t know how much it would push my buttons.”

The ‘he’ in that sentence could have been anyone. Except not really. “Finn?”

Poe nodded, swiping the fire-rum back from Iolo. “I guess Rey explained to him how she escaped from custody on Starkiller, and he was just so wowed that he had to tell me all about it.” He took a long pull from the bottle before continuing, his voice dropping low. “What Ren did to me on the Finalizer—did you know he did it to Rey, too?”

Karé hadn’t known that. She knew the generalities of his capture but hadn’t asked about specifics; she hadn’t felt she had the right. And she’d be damned if she’d make him relive it for her curiosity. “Maybe you could talk to her about it. Might help.”

“That was Finn’s idea, too. Our own little Force-torture support group.” Poe gave a soft, bitter laugh. “S’not really the same thing for her.”

“Why not?”

His gaze hardened. “Because she turned it back on him.”

Oh. Of course she had. Because she could. Poe couldn’t. He’d been utterly helpless, and now he’d had to listen to the heroic tale of the girl wonder who’d slipped the noose of his darkest nightmares as if it were nothing. Karé winced in reflexive sympathy.

“She fought him off, rattled him enough to make him leave, and then tricked a guard into releasing her. With no training, no inkling that it was even possible. She just did it. If we’d had her at Tuanul instead of me, who knows how much trouble we could have saved ourselves?”

“Don’t say things like that,” Karé said. “Don’t think she’s better than you just because of some quirk of genetics.”

“I don’t. Not really. I just…I’m better off when I don’t think too hard about any of it.”

Iolo tilted his head, in a way that might have looked casual on a human but was very much not from a Keshian. “Does it scare you?” he asked. “Having people around who can do that? To be honest, it creeps me out a little sometimes.”

“I’m not afraid of Rey. Or Skywalker. They’re light-years different from him. But…it’s tough to forget, you know? How it felt, what’s possible.” He wrapped his arms around his bent knees, drawing himself in more tightly. “I wish I could explain what it feels like to have someone rooting around in your brain like they own your soul. I don’t think I can. I think you’d have to feel it for yourself. And I hope to hell you never do.”

There was nothing to be said to that. Karé picked up the water and handed it to him while she planned out how to phrase her next question delicately. “If you were mostly worried about waking up screaming tonight, you could have stayed in your quarters and just watched lousy holonovelas until the sun came up,” she pointed out. “Or just talked to someone.”

Poe swiveled toward her with a dearth of grace that suggested the alcohol was hitting his bloodstream. “You trying to say the drinking is overkill?”

“It’s overkill unless there’s something else going on, and I’m guessing there is.”

His expression crumbled a little just then, as if he was becoming aware that holding himself together was a losing battle. “There shouldn’t be. In a week or a month, I’ll get past it. Right now, though, there is.”

Clearly he wasn’t going to make this part easy on them. Karé was weighing whether or not she really wanted to push any further when Iolo surprised her by nailing the issue.

“It’s not just that the blessed lady Jedi—”

“Show some res-sspect,” Poe warned, a little blurrily. “She’s a good kid. A good kid who kicked Ren’s ass.”

Iolo nodded in acknowledgement. “Okay. It’s not just that someone talking about Rey’s abilities makes you think about the awful things that happened to you, or what she can do that you can’t. It’s more about who was doing the talking.”

The unmitigated despair that flashed across their commander’s features stunned Karé into silence. Oh, no. She’d wondered, naturally, about the two of them; everyone had. The tale of their wild escape from the Finalizer had become the stuff of legend, and plenty of the other pilots had seen the flightline reunion after Takodana with their own eyes. The idea was romantic as hell. She’d been mildly trying to tamp down some of the rumors, figuring that Finn had enough acclimatizing to do without worrying about the vagaries of Resistance relationships. But she’d never actually asked Poe how he felt.

Now it was painfully obvious.

“Maybe it was stupid of me,” Poe said softly, staring at his hands. “I thought, the way he looks at me sometimes—I thought maybe, once things settle down and I can convince myself he knows what he’s getting into…maybe I might have a shot. Then I saw the way he looks at her.”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Karé argued. “She impressed him. She impressed all of us. It doesn’t mean everyone wants to have little Jedi babies with her.”

“I’m confident I don’t,” Iolo chimed in, which may or may not have been helpful.

Poe shook his head, only half listening. “And—I can’t even be angry, you know? She’s amazing. There’s literally no one else like her in the entire galaxy. And they both have this—I don’t know, this confidence that I don’t know if I ever had. They fit together. I’m not going to get in the way of that. I just…” A small, sad smile played on his lips. “I just need a little while to get past it. And figure out how to be a decent friend to both of them. That’s not nothing, and I want it.”

Or he would want it, someday. Right now, Karé was sure, he needed to mourn the possibilities he was so sure he’d lost. She slid down and tipped her head to rest against his. “You’re too Sith-damned noble,” she said quietly, earning a light chuckle. “Fine, I sanction your night of wallowing. I still think you should ask him how he feels about her at some point. And at least let us get you back to your quarters. There’s an actual bed there.”

“Someone might see—”

“Bee-Bee will scout ahead for us.” Iolo rose gracefully and held out a hand. Karé did likewise, and together they pulled their commander upright, locking steady arms around his shoulders when he immediately listed to one side. “You’re lucky you’re tiny, Dameron.”

“No, you’re lucky I’m tiny. And’m not tiny.”

“You’re statistically below average height for your species,” Iolo tossed back.

“I am exactly th’ size I need to be to spend half my life in a really small cockpit.”

“The only reason you love the general so much is that she’s the only senior officer who makes you feel tall.”

“Least my eyes don’t frighten children.”

Karé shook her head at her squadmates. “You’re both children, and I have no idea how we’re gonna navigate that access ladder.”

“One of you’ll catch me.” Poe rubbed his cheek against her shoulder, his eyes starting to close.

“We will,” she said quietly. “Don’t ever forget that.”

Chapter Text

Rey didn’t question her teacher when he instructed her to follow him to the intel briefing room after breakfast. She trusted Finn’s instincts, and he had suspected for a couple of days that an operation was being planned. If she was to be a part of it—and Master Skywalker believed her ready—then so much the better.

Her friend was in fact already present when they arrived, standing at General Organa’s side with an expression that suggested he was ready to get down to business. She raised her eyebrows at him, questioning, and received only a miniscule shrug in return.

The general nodded at them in greeting. Rey opened her mouth to ask the obvious question, but was interrupted by another arrival. Poe Dameron stepped into the room and clasped his hands behind his back. He seemed ever so slightly ill at ease, though she supposed it might have just been the “ground greens” uniform that he typically avoided wearing.

“I won’t waste words,” General Organa said, “because we have a limited window of opportunity to launch if we choose to press a current advantage. Our intel group has proposed a mission. You three are not the only people who could potentially accomplish it, but I believe you have the best chance of success. That said, only one and a half of you have signed up to follow my orders at this point. So I’m going to lay out the objectives and parameters, and then you each can decide whether you’re willing to go.”

Without waiting to gauge their reactions, she called up a schematic on the holotable. “This is the First Order training base on Tsamitra. The complex is about a kilometer square, with capacity for at least six thousand trainees and seven hundred instructors and support staff. Intel isn’t clear on whether it’s operating at full capacity, but our best guess is that it’s around 75% full.” She looked up at Finn. “Based on your descriptions, Connix believes that you were trained on a similar base, but not this one.”

“They didn’t tell us where we were,” Finn replied. “Just taught us some basic stellar cartography. But my base had a central area for marching drills, with a firing range adjacent, and this one has those facilities swapped. The rest of the layout, though, is—“ In his brief hesitation, Rey heard home, as best I understood it. “—familiar.”

The general nodded, not unkindly. “Good. That will help. We’ve obtained access codes to their defense shield, and a source in the Mid Rim is procuring a Rho-class shuttle for our use.”

“That’s a little small to have much firepower, even with mods,” Poe observed.

“Firepower is not the goal. Ideally, you’ll get in and out without firing a shot. The target is a particular computer network in this section.” Organa pointed to a building.

“Academics and Mental Fitness,” Finn identified.

Rey blinked. “You want to disrupt their conditioning.”

She felt as much as saw Poe’s gaze dart toward Finn, waiting for a reaction. The former stormtrooper merely nodded. “I suspected,” he said. “But you know that conditioning isn’t just a one-time event. It takes place many times over the course of years. And it’s very dependent on the individual’s personality and performance.”

“That’s why our objectives for this initial operation are very limited. It’s more like a proof of concept.” The general set her hands on the back of a chair. “If we can successfully manipulate a particular aspect of the troops’ conditioning, then we might have a chance to introduce enough doubt to affect their loyalty. Finn, what were you told about the Resistance in terms of its treatment of prisoners?”

“That it was a fate to be avoided at all costs,” Finn answered without hesitation. “We were told that, if a shooting war broke out, the New Republic might agree to prisoner exchanges, though they’ve probably changed that part of the training since Hosnia. The part about the Resistance was unambiguous, though. We would be tortured for information, then tortured for fun, and then finally killed. Therefore, surrender was not an option.”

“That’s our test point.” It was Master Skywalker who spoke, and Rey realized that the two siblings had certainly developed this plan together. “We need to plant the idea that a trooper taken prisoner will be treated well and allowed to become a free citizen.”

“That would be monumental, if it worked,” Poe said. “But how will we know whether or not it did?”

“We have a moderately-sized force mobilized nearby, in the Miraksan system, larger than the First Order knows. If we provoke action there, the Tsamitra troops will be the ones to respond.” Organa’s tone was dry. “If we manage to take more than a couple of prisoners alive, we’ll know.”

Finn gazed at the projection of the complex for a long moment, and Rey schooled her mind against reaching out for his. Finally, he asked, “What’s the plan?”

“Your role is the most difficult, I expect. Conditioning is largely subconscious, correct?”

“I guess you could call it that, ma’am. The day-to-day type, at least. We’d hear speeches and instructions broadcast quietly during rest periods.”

“Our understanding is that there is a chemical component that increases suggestibility. I’m not willing to tamper with that aspect at this point, since we don’t know enough to ensure that we’d do it safely. But we can certainly influence the message.” The general regarded him calmly. “Who better to convince them that there is life outside the First Order than a successful defector?”

“Hang on,” Poe said, almost before Finn could react. “Right now the First Order doesn’t even know if Finn’s alive. The moment we set him up to speak to a few thousand troopers as a member of the Resistance, we’re painting a massive target on his back. There’ll be a bounty the size of—”

“The size of yours?” Organa folded her arms. “I’m aware. That’s why this is a choice.”

Poe took a step toward Finn, hand outstretched—whether in entreaty or in appeasement, Rey didn’t know. “Buddy, this is beyond ‘choosing the fight.’ You do this and you may end up the voice of an insurrection. The opportunity to string you up for it, to show the galaxy that defiance is useless, will be absolutely irresistible to them. They’ll stop at nothing to take you down.”

“That’s really just a new wrinkle to the same conversation I’ve had multiple times now. I’m not having it again—with any of you.” Finn’s stance was calm yet intensely determined. “The odds are good that they know I made it off Starkiller. The target’s already on my back. I’m here to fight, and I want to be as effective as I can. This is the way to do that today, so I’m ready.”

With a small nod of his head, Poe subsided. “I assume I’m here to do my usual job?” he asked his commanding officer.

“You’re also here to cover their backs while they’re otherwise occupied,” Organa replied. “But yes. You’ll pilot the shuttle.”

“I could do that as well,” Rey pointed out. “If it will be tougher for three than two, there’s no need for Commander Dameron to risk himself as well.”

That hadn’t been a terribly well-chosen statement, she realized after a moment: his tone grew frosty. “You want to let me decide when I should and shouldn’t risk myself? I’ve been doing this a while.”

“The commander’s experience flying First Order craft is limited, I’ll admit, but it’s more than anyone else has.” General Organa’s sharp gaze pinned each of them in turn. “Are you all finished trying to kick each other off the mission? If so, let’s talk about Rey’s role.”

Abashed, Rey fell silent, as did the others.

“Finn will be responsible for the technical aspects of the conditioning, and the content. Rey, you’ll assist in making sure it takes hold, in both the troopers and any guards you encounter.”

The humid air cooled on her skin. “You want me to use Force suggestions on them.”

“Yes.” That was Skywalker. “We can work on refining your technique, but you’ve proven you have the skill.”

“It’s not a skill I take pride in.” She didn’t look over at Poe, but she hoped he’d grasp her meaning. “It’s…a violation to go into another person’s mind. I know it can be useful, but it feels wrong. If a being’s thoughts and feelings aren’t their own, then the whole concept of independence is cheapened.”

“I understand that viewpoint,” Skywalker allowed. “In many cases I’d agree with it. Realize, though, that the Force does constrain independent behavior in a sense, because it connects all living things. The actions of one have an effect on all. It’s not necessarily a wholly negative concept.”

Rey saw his point, but couldn’t bring herself to acquiesce to its shades of gray. “You will never convince me that it would be good for everyone to think alike.”

“Not entirely alike. More alike, though—especially if those ‘like’ thoughts tended toward peace…”

“Peace without freedom is nothing. It’s orderly, but if order is our goal, then what are we really resisting? Aren’t we just trading one type of programming for another?” Her voice was rising and she couldn’t be bothered to care. Most of her life had been spent on guard against other people. She alone had been responsible for her survival, and anyone suggesting that they knew what she should do had only ever been interested in what she could do for them. She placed little faith in anyone’s ability to wield power over others justly, and none at all in anyone’s ability to lead through coercion. Even her.

The rebuke she expected never came. Instead, both siblings looked…satisfied. As if she’d passed some sort of test. “Fair point,” said her master, giving his beard an absent stroke. “I see this particular case more as—opening minds rather than altering them. If the Force can be used to help us understand each other more deeply, surely that is of the Light.”

Still guarded, Rey said, “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“Just…project peace.” Organa smiled. “Make the guards see no threats from you, and smooth out any irrational fears the cadets have been given of the ‘alien’ Resistance. That’s all.”

“We’ll work for a couple of days on projecting general emotions onto a wider audience,” added Master Skywalker. “It’s less accurate than it would be on a single person, but in this case it’s only meant to be a nudge toward acceptance of the new conditioning message we’ll be giving them.”

“And what will that message be?” Finn asked. “What am I supposed to be telling them?”

“Your own story, to the extent that you’re willing,” replied the general. “Tell them the slaughter on Jakku was unprovoked. Tell them you’re alive because the Resistance chose to heal you. Mostly, tell them there’s an entire galaxy of choices out there, and we can help them experience something other than the cold-blooded extermination of innocents.”

Finn nodded, his features solemn. “I can do that.”

“Lieutenant Connix will help you with the recording tomorrow, to give you some time to think about what you want to say. In the meantime, the three of you should meet back here this afternoon to study the base layout and plan your infil and exfil strategies.” She held each of their gazes in turn. “This is an atypical mission, I realize. If it can’t be done, for whatever reason, no one will think less of any of you for calling it off. But if it works, even a little, an entirely new weapon will be available to us: the truth.”

Rather than dismissing them, she herself left the room, followed shortly thereafter by her brother. Rey exhaled an uncertain breath, glancing over at her new teammates. Poe was studying her with an expression of—what? Something like gratitude, although that didn’t seem quite right. He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again when his gaze caught on Finn.

“What is it?” she pressed, not wanting to miss a connection.

“Nothing. Just…” One corner of Poe’s mouth turned up. “You’re a good person.”

Rey watched him leave, a bit relieved, and then turned to Finn, whose face was broadcasting awe as plain as day.

“Poe’s right,” he said earnestly. “That was amazing. A general and a Jedi Master were telling you to do something you felt was wrong, and you stood up to them and defended your beliefs.”

The praise felt uncomfortable, somehow. “It’s not like they were going to lock me up or torture me to follow their command.”

“That’s a different thing. This was going up against people you respect. In some ways that’s harder.” Finn hesitated. “Do you think the Force can work the way Skywalker said? Helping people understand each other? It would be nice, in theory, but when it comes to manipulating minds, how do you know where good intentions stop and bad ones start? Where’s the line between Light and Dark?”

“I’m not sure there is one.” It was a thought she’d had for a while now and had never vocalized before. “I don’t know if there are really two distinct sides to the Force, or one specific point that makes a person irretrievably Dark. All I see are choices, day after day, enough of them to shape who we are. Everything else seems like…nomenclature.”

*******************

“Anybody planning to talk, or are we just going to pretend this isn’t really kriffing weird?”

Receiving resigned shrugs in answer, Poe tugged on the gloves of his newly-procured First Order uniform. He’d been hoping for a flight suit, but apparently shuttle pilots occupied a higher level of the command structure—he’d scoffed at that, his starfighter pride at stake—and so the officer uniforms were unavoidable. Particularly since they’d be sneaking around the training center as well and would need to blend in with the staff.

“At least yours fits.” Rey cinched her belt tighter and smoothed her hair again. The simple braid seemed to be a novelty for her, but it worked well.

Poe glanced at Finn. He still wasn’t wild about the unspoken pressure on his friend, not only to accept the mission itself, but to accept all the ancillary things like this that it required. Finn showed no sign of discomfort, though, standing with perfect military bearing in the all-black tunic and trousers.

Whatever it said about Poe’s messed-up psyche, the picture was striking, and he firmly reassured himself that this was the first and only time he’d ever find someone attractive in that uniform.

“Part of me used to want this,” Finn mused, tucking his cover under his arm. “Now I guess I actually prefer the greens.”

“Don’t get carried away. Nobody likes the greens.” Poe strode toward the waiting shuttle. “Let’s go check out our ride.”

The rendezvous on Raklahar had been simple enough, a brief meeting at a long-abandoned Imperial outpost. Payment changed hands, and before long he was in possession of the access codes to a Rho-class shuttle, an older model based heavily on the Imperial-era Lambda class. He chose not to dwell on how their contact might have acquired it and instead focused on his preflight checklist, letting Rey handle the exterior inspection.

“It’s well maintained for its age,” she reported at last, dropping into the copilot’s seat with careless grace. “I don’t envy whoever’s had to keep the linear inverters running—those are some of the hardest parts to come by. Though I suppose the First Order has their own sources.”

“How they get their resources is something I’ve never understood.” Poe reached over to engage the environmental seal and start up the life support system. “I mean, I know the New Republic has plenty of faults, believe me, but at least they’re trying to uphold justice and a representative government. How can anyone knowingly side with fascism over freedom?”

“Because they don’t frame it that way.” Behind him, Finn could be heard adjusting his seat’s restraint belts. “They call it lawlessness, not freedom. They find the people who slipped through the Republic’s cracks, point fingers, and promise them help. And I’m learning that they can be very precise about removing dissent until they control the narrative.”

“That’s how you convince the disenfranchised. Not the ones with means. To them, you promise security, and you stoke the fear that others are coming to take what they have.” Rey was looking out through the windscreen, and Poe wondered just what kind of societal crack she’d slipped through on Jakku. It was easy enough for him to maintain faith, in a way; he’d never gone hungry a day in his life. “Fear, as ever, is a powerful thing.”

“Well, let’s go show a few thousand troopers an alternative.” He primed the fuel injectors, set the engine start system controller, and advanced the throttles. The shuttle rose into the air.

“Smoother than I would have done,” Rey observed, a smile in her voice. Poe raised his eyebrows at her as they ascended through Raklahar’s atmosphere. “I never claimed to be a better pilot than you,” she explained. “I merely thought I was a sufficient one for the task. But I learned on an ancient simulator that didn’t cover Imperial models, and I have practical experience on exactly one freighter type. I do recognize my limitations, or at least I’m trying to. It truly was just a desire to keep you from unnecessary risk.”

“I believe you. And I appreciate it.” He wasn’t quite sure what he’d done to earn her favor or concern—maybe it was simply that he was Finn’s friend. But he did appreciate it. “The trouble is, the necessity of a lot of risks is…subjective. And the only skills that make me useful to the Resistance tend to be a little north of average on the risk scale.”

She was still watching him, a little too carefully for his liking, though this time he was pretty sure the Force had nothing to do with it. “Is being useful to the Resistance all that matters to you?”

“Right now, with the galaxy the way it is, yes.” It left his mouth easily, and it wasn’t a lie. Never mind all the things he hadn’t even attempted to contemplate for months or maybe years now: chiefly, what his life would look like should he live long enough for its sole driving purpose to become obsolete. Peering into that abyss might just be paralyzing, and he couldn’t afford that. “Someday, if I keep doing my job decently, and with you two and a lot of luck on our side, maybe that will change.”

Rey’s gaze flitted back to Finn, and Poe really did not need the distraction of imagining what the pair of them might be, separately and together, in the future.

“Does this mean you guys are okay with each other?” Finn asked, his tone a little too light to be believed. “No pressure or anything, but it would really wreck up my world if my best friends didn’t get along.”

“That’s up to the commander,” Rey said solemnly, her eyes back on Poe. “I’d like very much for us all to be friends, but the mistake was mine, so the decision is his.”

“It was a mistake, though. Not deliberate. You proved that when you said you didn’t want to coerce the guards we’re about to face. That matters to me. A lot.” Poe glanced over at the navigational display just long enough to confirm their course, then offered her a small smile. “We can start with you using my given name.”

She returned the smile, before Finn intervened. “Wait until we get back to pick up that habit. For now, it’s ranks or designations only. Officers have names, but they’re not used on duty.”

“Right. You’re ensigns, I’m a lieutenant. Like intermediate flight school all over again.” Now Poe was the one keeping his voice artificially light. Finn had a great game face, no question, but this whole mission was going to be rough on him. There was nothing more to be said about it, though. “As long as nobody glues my harness to my bootlaces this time.”

“You are a little old for training-squad pranks.” Finn smirked. “And for being a lieutenant, actually.”

I’m too old for a lot of things. Like this entire conversation. Burying those thoughts alongside so many others, Poe twisted in his seat to answer with an offhand grin. “Youth slips through the tightest of grasps, while immaturity clings as hard as it can. Ancient Jedi proverb.”

“There’s no way the Jedi said that.”

“Probably not, but my abuelo did once, so it’s wisdom. Our ETA is one point three hours. Last chance for a ration pack or a nap.”

Chapter Text

“FN-2187—” His voice fractured on the next syllable, and a spike of panic flared in his brain. He pushed ahead. “—reporting as ordered, sir!”

No one in his squad reacted to the lapse; they knew better. He waited in frozen dread to see if Lieutenant Tinal would deride his lack of discipline. But the lieutenant merely asked, with no sharpness to his tone, “Are you having bronchial symptoms, cadet?”

“No, sir.” It was even true. “Operating efficiently, sir.”

“Report to Medical after tactics today anyway. You’re in the age range for vocal changes resulting from physical maturity—Medical will have some one-time education for you to complete.”

After Tinal had gone, Zeroes grinned at 2187. “Ohh, you are in for a treat, my man.”

Anything that made a cadet stand out was bad news, so 2187 had a vested interest in moving on. “Whatever it is can’t be that bad.”

“No, not at all. It’s the best. I did it a couple of months ago. There’s a really awkward holo about how your body is changing to become a better fighting machine—but then you get recreational time. Eight minutes every morning, from here on out.”

“Recreational—?”

Nines blinked at him. “You haven’t heard the senior cadets talk about recreational time? You really are too good to be true. Trust me, the holo will show you. It’s totally sanctioned, and it will change your life.”

Finn wasn’t sure what it said about the inner workings of his mind that the first memory stirred up by their arrival into the training compound was of teenage sexual education. Maybe because it was one of the few times he’d actually felt some hint of camaraderie from his squad. Efficiency, professionalism—those were the goals of a trooper squad, and any rapport that might develop along the way was ancillary at best. Friends were almost never worth the risk.

No one had found him worth the risk, at least. Until Poe, and then Rey.

“Hey.” Poe’s hand on his shoulder brought him back to the present, and Finn summoned his focus. The compassion in Poe’s eyes was at odds with the uniform he wore; Finn had never seen anyone wearing those stark lines show compassion. “You here, or somewhere a few years ago?”

“Little of both.” Finn didn’t mind admitting it. He was starting to get used to the idea that such things weren’t going to count against him. “Hard to put it out of my head completely. I’m good, though. And I appreciate it, but that’s going to have to be the last time you give anyone that concerned look for a while.”

“I know. Sorry.” The hand left Finn’s shoulder, and Poe straightened, schooling his expression into a blank, cool mask. He’d trimmed his hair a bit shorter for the mission and slicked it back, and when the spark left his eyes Finn wanted to snatch his words back out of the air. Poe Dameron was many things, but above all else he was meant to be warm.

All the more reason to get this over with.

Finn pointed down the corridor, toward the cavernous atrium that extended a good ten stories below the main level. “Across there are the areas that are restricted to instructors and staff. The conditioning control center will be that way.”

“That’s different from what the intel brief said.” Rey frowned. “They thought it would be nearer to the hangar.”

“See those?” Finn nodded toward the identical cutouts for guardposts at the end of each corridor on their side of the atrium. “Those are trainee posts. They take shifts patrolling their squad’s hall during rest hours. The sun was going down when we landed, right? They’re probably still at the evening skill session—working on specialized weapons. We’ve got maybe an hour before they’ll be on their way back here to bunk down.”

“We could tap into a computer terminal to check a map,” Poe suggested.

Finn shook his head. “Too risky unless we get desperate. Pulling up a map might make a network administrator wonder why someone assigned here would need one. Just trust me and stay close.”

He set off toward the nearest walkway across the atrium with a purposeful stride, feeling too exposed. His base had been set up with a similar layout, down to the yawning gap between the trainee and instructor areas. The main power generators were at the bottom, he recalled, centrally located to optimize distribution but too heavy to put on a higher level. Leaving the entire area open and exposed to a constant low level of generator noise seemed impractical, unless it was meant to save on building materials, but architecturally it was a First Order trademark. Although he couldn’t see Rey’s expression, he was nonetheless sure they shared the same memory: of Han Solo walking out into the Starkiller abyss, reaching out to the very face of darkness and being cut down by a fiery blade.

“No wonder this place looked smaller from the air,” Poe remarked in a low voice. “Half of it’s underground.”

“Now you see why I like to watch the sun rise.”

“On your toes,” Rey said quietly as they reached the other end of the walkway. Two paces later a pair of troopers rounded a corner, heading in their direction. Enlisted types, like him, based on their rank-less coveralls: probably assigned to civil engineering or sustenance services. Armed, though, of course.

Their gazes skimmed over the approaching trio and then snapped forward. “Sirs,” both said smartly. Finn gave them a sharp nod and nothing more, keeping his pace even and heading for the first available turn in the corridor.

Once they were undoubtedly out of the troopers’ visual range, he heard Poe murmur to Rey, “Are we just good at blending in, or was that your doing?”

“I’m not sure there’s a way to conclusively answer that question except by my failure,” she replied, “so let’s not. However…” With a glint of triumph in her eye, she lifted a hand and waved an access card, apparently stolen from one of the workers.

Poe blinked and gave a low whistle. “Nice! I didn’t even see you move.”

“I learned from some…interesting associates on Jakku.”

Finn continued on down the corridor, running his hand along the wall. “Has your training enhanced your hearing at all?” he asked Rey. “Any chance you’d be able to tell if these walls suddenly get thicker?”

“I can try to sense what’s behind them, but I’m not overly confident that I’ll succeed—I don’t have much practice at that. Why?”

“The background noise out here would be detrimental to the conditioning broadcasts. They’d need a more soundproofed room.”

“Like that one?” Poe nodded toward a door a few steps away, marked ‘Noise Abatement Area: Contact Supervisor Before Operating Equipment Nearby.’

“Looks good to me.” Rey handed over the access card, and Finn swept it across the scanner by the door. It slid open, revealing a short corridor and a second door marked ‘Conditioning Control.’

“I’d better cover the entry point,” Poe said. “Give me three clicks on the comm line if you need backup. Three clicks from me means you’re about to get some company.”

“Be careful of that. There are a lot of no-notice inspections and drills.” Finn glanced over at Rey. “You ready?”

She seemed not quite present anymore, as if her mind was already past the next door, but she nodded. Tapping Poe’s arm with his own in a quick salute, he took a steadying breath and lifted the access card to the scanner.

***************

Rey felt the techs inside even before she saw them, sensing the two pinpricks of light that were their life forces. They were focused on a task, but not tense. When the door opened, both paused at their consoles, but only one bothered to turn toward the visitors.

“Can this wait, whatever it is?” he asked curtly. “We need to initiate the 1900 protocol.”

“We have an authorized update,” Finn said, holding out the data chip they’d brought. “A new single-use protocol from Central Education. Play this one tonight.”

Rey reached out through the tendrils that linked her to all of her surroundings and grasped the two she needed. We are trustworthy, she told the techs silently. We serve a noble cause.

Unblinking, one reached out for the chip. “I will play this protocol tonight.” He inserted the chip into the reader in his console.

The other frowned at the resulting message on his screen. Finn’s gaze cut to Rey, but she gave the slightest shake of her head. Suspicion wasn’t the problem.

“Central Ed ought to know better,” the tech said. “It’s been months since we used that version of the software. The last upgrade included automatic triggers to activate the compliance regimen in the barracks. Did they not want this one to be chemically enhanced?”

Rey didn’t dare try to speak, for fear of losing her tenuous grip on their minds. Fortunately, Finn was able to think quickly.

“This one is designed for a manual activation. Go ahead and trigger it as soon as the recording starts.”

The tech spread his hands. “I can’t play this recording. We don’t have the compatible software anymore.”

Her control wavered, but Rey held her ground while alternate possibilities whirled in her mind. They might be able to search the mainframe for the older software, but it would take—

“Okay,” said Finn, stepping closer to the console. “Do you have the ability to make barracks-wide announcements from here?”

Help us. It is important that you find a way to help us.

One of the techs detached a hard-wired comlink microphone from the console and handed it to Finn.

Finn glanced back at Rey. “New plan,” he said with a small shrug. “I’m going to do it real-time.”

**************

On his seventh visual scan of the corridor, Poe’s gaze snagged on the wall-mounted chrono. He didn’t know what Finn and Rey had found in that room, but there’d been no shouting or sounds of a scuffle. So what was taking so long?

“Understood, sir,” came a muffled voice from the outer walkway, getting louder as it neared. “I’m on my way there now.”

Kriff. Poe flattened himself against the wall as boot heels clicked rapidly down the walkway, echoing into the expanse just beyond.

The officer had to be coming to investigate why the conditioning protocol wasn’t being broadcast on schedule. If she distracted Rey, the whole mission could disintegrate. Poe could shoot her, but the noise—and Finn had mentioned alarms—

He weighed his options and stepped out onto the walkway before the officer could turn the corner. “State your purpose.”

The woman drew up short, startled. “Lieutenant,” she greeted after a reflexive glance at his insignia. Poe did likewise and inwardly cursed; they were the same rank, and she didn’t look intimidated by him. “The nineteen-hundred CP is late. I’m checking up on the techs and the equipment.”

“And after only four minutes of delay. Good response time.” Poe fixed her with the most condescending look he could muster. “But I think we can do better during the next inspection, don’t you?”

She blinked. “This was an exercise?”

“It was. Your supervisor will be notified of your success. Carry on with your originally assigned duties.”

“But the CP still needs to be run.” The lieutenant started to step around him, toward the control room.

“Not your responsibility.” Poe blocked her path, and her eyes narrowed.

“Move, Lieutenant. I was ordered to check the control room, and I’m checking it. If that’s part of your exercise, I don’t intend to fail.”

Thoughts racing, Poe saw the comlink on her belt and realized he was running out of options. “Admirable,” he sneered, stepping back with an exaggerated gesture. “Go ahead. Complete your task.”

As soon as she brushed past him, he yanked her in hard, one hand over her mouth and the other arm pinning hers to her sides. She was strong, though, loosening his hold rapidly, and he could see his odds of remaining undetected plummet by the second.

Out of desperation, he bent his knees and pushed off the deck, launching them both toward the railing. Their combined center of gravity was high enough to topple them over the edge—and the instant he felt himself falling into open air, he released the lieutenant and twisted wildly, grasping at the rail. His fingers found it—

—and smashed sideways against it, losing their grip.

The drop was shorter than expected; almost before he could process it, his world was alight with pain, ripping through his torso and robbing him of breath. When he regained enough of his senses to choke some air back into his lungs, he realized the abyss still loomed below. He’d landed on a small platform two or three levels down, so small that his arms and legs partially dangled off the edges.

Curling onto his side felt more secure, and had the virtue of easing the fire under his ribs. Had he broken something? Not that he could do much about it now.

Poe forced himself to lift his head and peer over the edge. The dim lighting only extended another couple of levels down; the bottom could have been another two lengths or two hundred. Either way, there was no sign of the First Order officer.

On your feet, Dameron. Gingerly, he rolled onto his knees and stood up with shaky, apprehensive balance. The walls of the manufactured chasm lacked the smooth paneling of the corridors; pipes and structural beams were exposed, leaving him plenty of choices for handholds.

His first reach upward detonated fireworks behind his eyes, his side a blaze of agony. Focus. Just like climbing Mama’s tree back home. Move your feet first, to support your weight, then your arms.

Five minutes, maybe less, until the lieutenant’s supervisor attempted to check in with her. He had no longer than that to make it to the top to warn Finn and Rey.

Armed with that resolve and little else, Poe set his jaw and carefully began to climb.

****************

“Compliance regimen activated.” Expressionless, the tech at the main console scrolled through a list of commands. “It might take a minute to open the broadcast. I’m not used to doing it this way.”

Rey was standing stock still in the center of the room, one hand just barely lifted from her side. Finn couldn’t imagine the level of concentration she was having to expend just to keep the techs from sounding any alarms. Quietly, she asked, “Do you remember enough of what you said when you made the recording?”

“I remember most of what Intel wanted me to say, and I remember all of what I wanted to say. I’ll let you guess which parts are which.” Finn checked his chrono: they were behind schedule. He had no idea how long the effects of the ‘compliance regimen’ would last.

“Set up to transmit.” The tech nodded at the microphone. “Press the button on the side when you’re ready.”

No time for hesitation. Finn steeled himself and pressed the button.

“You are the backbone of the First Order. Its successes and failures depend on your abilities, your courage, and your loyalty. Your loyalty is the most powerful force in the galaxy today. It should be earned, not demanded. No matter what your role, no matter what your aptitude—you have worth, and you are worthy of loyalty in return. Do you believe you have it? Do you believe you have value to the First Order? Not as a weapon, but as a person? Does it seem right to you that you should spend the rest of your life fighting for a cause you never chose?

“Choice is essential. When you are given a task or an order that you don’t understand, do you have a true choice? Obey, face reconditioning, or discipline, or worse? Explanation is not an option you have. And so you have only your superiors’ word that the galaxy and the enemy are what you have been taught. I am here to tell you that they are not.

“I was one of you once. I didn’t know anything beyond what the First Order taught me. One day I stood in front of unarmed civilians and disobeyed an order to fire because I just couldn’t see any proof that they were the enemy. When I made that choice, I knew I had to run—and when I did, I discovered that there was so much more out there than we had been told. Some of it is harsh, but some of it is more beautiful than you can possibly imagine.

“For the first time, I could think, and question, and choose, and discover. What I discovered for myself was that the Resistance, the force that you have been trained all your life to defeat, is not what we were told. Your leaders tell you that the Resistance wants chaos and lawlessness. What the Resistance wants is for each and every being to have the freedom of choice. And that includes you. They do not want you to die. They want you to live free.

“I don’t blindly follow anyone any longer. The Resistance values me not for how well I can fight, but for who I am and how I treat others. They gave me a name. These things aren’t forbidden. They are your fundamental rights. There are as many ways to think as there are stars in the universe. You should be allowed to try them. The First Order won’t allow that. The Resistance will.

“If you come to us without intent to harm, you’ll be treated well, and allowed to explore, and whether you stay or leave will be your choice. I know the New Republic isn’t perfect. There are too many systems that have been allowed to slip through the cracks, too many people allowed to suffer because politicians became shortsighted or biased. But we can’t fix these things through subjugation and genocide. We have to fix them by hearing each other.

“So I won’t tell you what to think. Neither will my new comrades. What I want is for you to be free to think. To have a name, and a path of your own choosing. You deserve that. Come take it. The more of you that do, the faster we can move toward a future built on peace.”

That was it; that was all he had. Either it would be enough to open up the smallest of cracks in someone’s mind, or it wouldn’t. He brought his hand down on the control panel and cut the transmission.

“Time to move,” said Poe from the doorway. “Had to take out an officer coming up here to see why the broadcast was late. Won’t be long until she’s missed.”

Rey rose somewhat tiredly from where she’d started to lean against the console, her gaze never wavering from the two techs sitting disconcertingly still. “I think they heard you, for whatever that’s worth,” she said. “What will happen to them?”

After this? Nothing good. “If the base gets mobilized to fight the Miraksan incursion, maybe it’ll buy them some time,” Finn offered, setting down the microphone and glancing over at the doorway, where Poe seemed to be catching his breath, looking drained. “Did you have to run somewhere?”

“No, I had to climb somewhere. Come on, gang.”

Rey eased toward the exit, clearly trying to hold onto control of the techs’ minds until the last possible moment. “We were never here,” she told them. “An incoming transmission took over your system. You attempted to stop it.”

As soon as she was through the door, Finn shut it and smashed the lock pad with the butt of his blaster. Rey visibly sagged. “That was exhausting. Don’t make me do that again.”

“No promises.” They moved as swiftly as possible back across the walkway and toward the hangar bay, still attempting to maintain their flimsy cover as best they could. When two armed troopers rounded a corner in their direction, Finn acted on instinct and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Conditioning Center’s having trouble. Go check it out.”

The troopers moved out without a word, but he likely hadn’t bought them much time. If only he knew more about the drugs Intel said were being used to “enhance” the conditioning. Were the instructors and support staff exposed as well? Who had heard his broadcast, and who might be receptive to it?

They had reached the other side of the atrium before another pair of troopers appeared—and this time their blasters were up.

“Identify yourselves,” one demanded.

“DK-4185,” Finn replied, using the code of one of his former weapons instructors. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Rey’s hand move ever so slightly.

The troopers paused, just long enough for him to wonder if she’d managed to ‘help’ them believe him. Then— “What’s the code of the day?”

Well, hell.

The sudden flash caught him by surprise, but his instincts were good, whipping his own blaster up and felling the other trooper, the one that Poe’s first shot had left standing. “Boring conversation anyway,” the pilot said grimly.

As if in answer, an alarm wailed. Finn cursed. “They’ll start locking down access points. We need to move.”

They were most of the way to the next junction when four separate voices shouted “Halt!” Only half a second passed before the blaster bolts followed. Finn kicked into a sprint, checking behind him to make sure the others were following.

Around the corner, a blastproof door at the end of the corridor was slowly beginning to close off their escape route. Rey had pulled ahead of Finn by two strides, and she must have been gauging their odds of making it through the narrowing gap just as he was.

He glanced back.

“Go!” yelled Poe, lagging behind.

Finn likely would have made it. Rey certainly would have made it. Both skidded to a halt instead. The door slammed into place with a resonant thunk half a second before Poe reached it.

“Should’ve gone ahead,” Poe said, breaths coming fast and ragged.

“Don’t be stupid.” Rey had already yanked open the nearest control panel, looking for circuits to bypass. Her first two harried attempts got no result. “Did they cut power to this as soon as it closed?”

“Might have. There are usually a few evac routes that fail open instead of closed in a power loss. Makes it easier to figure out where everyone is, friend or foe.” Finn racked his brain for the layout of his training base, trying to mentally overlay its corridors with these. He’d weathered an attack on his base once—pirates with more bravado than brains, he’d been told. Now he wondered if they’d actually been Resistance fighters. “Heading for one of those would be walking into an ambush. We’ll have to go through a maintenance tunnel or something.”

Poe leveled his blaster on the empty corridor behind them, waiting for their pursuers to catch up. “What about the air ducts?”

Finn scanned the panels along the walls for a vent. “Here, but it’s high.” It was embedded in the ceiling, which was beyond the reach of his fingers. Rey wasted no time, drawing her lightsaber out from under her tunic and swiping two slashes across the sides of the vent. The liberated grate hit the floor with a clang.

Rey dropped to one knee and motioned for them to use her thigh as a step. “I can boost you with the Force.”

Finn glanced at Poe, who also seemed to hesitate.

The rhythmic sound of boots pounding on the floor began to get closer. Glaring at them, Rey gestured with her saber. “Unless you have a better plan?”

“Sure don’t.” Finn holstered his blaster and stepped up reaching into the manufactured opening for a handhold. “I’m set.”

It felt like a lift platform under his feet, shoving him up through the gap. Once inside, he folded his knees and scrambled to one side of the narrow duct. When Poe’s hands appeared next, Finn grabbed them and pulled, hauling him up easily with Rey’s assist.

Poe grimaced, hunching over. “Getting Force-lifted is bizarre.”

They inched around to make room for each other and reached down for Rey, just as a volley of blaster bolts lit up the corridor below.

Chapter Text

Rey spun her saber, deflecting the shots, but more troopers were pouring around the corner. It was only going to get harder the longer she waited. She powered the saber down and leapt upward at the same moment, feeling her friends’ hands seize her wrists.

A searing jolt of pain caught her off-guard, and when she tried to roll to her knees inside the duct, her left leg refused to take any weight. “Kriff, you’re hit,” Poe swore, darting a hand toward the scorch mark on her uniform.

“Later. We need to move.” Rey had minimal experience in blocking pain with the Force, but she managed to dull it enough to keep it from consuming her focus. The bleeding, on the other hand—that would have to wait.

“This way.” Finn began to crawl in the general direction of the hangar bay. More shots rang out below, bouncing off the ductwork.

Her leg dragged uselessly, but Rey gritted her teeth and moved forward, inch by inch, on her hands and one knee. Maybe a hundred and thirty meters. Not far to run, but considerably more difficult to crawl. Surely the troopers would be signaling their compatriots in the hangar bay. There would be no more evasion possible. This would be a firefight.

In all likelihood, the Force didn’t respond to prayers, exactly, but she sent one out anyway, asking for the shuttle they’d brought to still be accessible to them.

At long last Finn halted at another vent, this one on the side of the conduit, and set to work removing the grate. Before Rey could pull her concentration back into the moment, Poe had whipped off his belt and wrapped it twice around her thigh, cinching it tight. “Can you run?” he asked, dark eyes urgent and penetrating.

“I can do whatever I have to,” she answered, biting back a wince at how the rough material dug into the wound.

“It’s loose,” Finn reported, leaning close to peer into the hangar. “We’re about fifty meters from the shuttle, on the rear wall. It looks passable. Let’s—”

More alarms began to shriek, filling the few aural spaces remaining in the cacophony of the air. “That’s not a security alert,” Finn said. “It’s a call for infantry to report for deployment.”

Poe’s brow creased. “To chase us?”

Finn shook his head. “Probably to augment the defense at Miraksan. If so, our assault teams may have jumped the gun a little.”

“Tell ‘em in the debrief. Where will the trooper squads form up?”

“In the hangar bay.”

“Figures.” Poe pulled his blaster. “Drop quick, start running, and don’t stop until you’re on board the shuttle?”

“Sounds good.”

Finn went first, landing hard on his feet three meters below and ducking behind a cargo pallet. Poe landed less gracefully, and Rey reached out with the Force to steady him as he staggered. Her control was shaky, and each brush of the Force took more and more of her energy, but none of it would matter unless they could get to that shuttle.

Finn and Poe, selfless idiots that they were, hadn’t started running as agreed; they’d waited for her. Well, it wasn’t as if she hadn’t done the same thing earlier. When she jumped down and the impact sent fire streaking up her leg, Finn’s arm locked around her waist before she could collapse.

Between them and the shuttle lay chaos—but it was a controlled chaos. Troopers were hustling back and forth to form up with their squads; pilots were moving to their ships and beginning preflight checks. Very few heads turned toward the three ‘officers’ who looked like they’d just escaped a cantina brawl. Rey projected what little focus she had left into a veneer of calm over her trio, nudging everyone within sight toward worrying about their own mission.

That effort distracted her until she found herself being guided into a seat on the shuttle, Poe racing past them toward the cockpit. “That actually worked?” she said, mustering a hint of a disbelieving smile for Finn’s benefit.

“I wouldn’t declare victory just yet.” Finn fastened her straps and knelt in front of her, studying her critically. “You okay if I go up to the weapons station?”

“I’m fine.”

“Like hell you are. I may not be able to see all the Force stuff you were doing to help us get here, but I know you were doing it.”

On impulse, Rey leaned forward and pressed a quick, firm kiss to his forehead. “You’re wonderful. Go help Poe get us out of here.”

“Yes, please,” called Poe over his shoulder. “I’m gonna need my gunner in a minute here.” His fingers danced over the control console, bringing the engines to life. “On the plus side, this one doesn’t have a ground-power umbilical to release.”

Since that statement meant nothing to her, Rey closed her eyes and let herself drift in the grey as the craft rose into the air.

*************

“Shuttle 623, hold for sequencing. Troop transports have priority at this time.”

“Here’s my priority,” Poe muttered, jamming the throttles forward. The resulting acceleration slammed him back into his seat, and a swell of nausea forced him to swallow hard. A couple of those ribs he’d thought were bruised might in fact have been broken. This was really turning into a hell of a day.

“Unauthorized departure!” blared the com system.

“Finn, you up?”

“Still charging.” Next to him, Finn had his hands on the armament controls, primed to start firing as soon as he had a ready weapon and a target. Poe swung the shuttle out of the bay and into a wide spiral of a climb.

There were no further warnings from the com; the next reply from the base was a volley of blasts from the ground-based turbocannons. Poe yawed abruptly left and dipped down to confuse the tracking system, but the radar screen soon showed a pair of “friendly” TIEs converging on their position.

“Here they come, Finn!”

“On it,” Finn answered, bringing their own cannons to bear and firing a short burst. “Minor hit. Roll right.”

Poe obeyed, giving Finn a clearer shot at the one approaching from his port side. A more direct hit took out one wing of the TIE, sending it cartwheeling. “Nice!”

The shot that struck the shuttle threw them both to the side, and Poe’s head bounced off the bulkhead. Fireworks detonated behind his eyes, and everything whited out for an instant. Quickly, though, he blinked his vision clear. “You guys okay?”

“Well enough,” Rey called back, but her voice was tight with pain.

“I think I can make the jump to hyperspace as soon as I can stabilize our flight path long enough for the navicomputer to lock our track. I just need a couple of seconds without getting hit.”

“You don’t ask much, do you?” Finn fired back at the ground cannons, disabling one.

“Coming in from above!”

Finn swiveled his cannon and loosed a barrage of bolts across the TIE’s path. One or two found their mark, giving them just enough of a window. “Now!”

Poe leveled the shuttle out, smacked the navigation console, and shoved the hyperspace lever to the firewall. The stars stretched out, leaving them for a moment on the precipice, then snapped into the familiar, blessedly silent tunnel of whirling light.

No sooner had the guns stilled than Finn vaulted out of his seat, heading for Rey’s. “There’s a first aid kit back here somewhere, right?”

Poe recalled studying the provisions available before the mission, but his adrenaline was beginning to wear off, and he couldn’t quite get his scattered wits to lock in. “Try the… locker by the hatch?”

A moment later, he could hear shuffling behind him. “Are we damaged?” Rey wanted to know. “I can—”

“Sit down, crazy person.” Finn’s voice was both tense and fond. “We made it to hyperspace, so we can’t be that banged up. You, on the other hand, are bleeding all over the place.”

“I tried to slow it down, but I have to slow down my pulse for that, and I was…having trouble.”

“I bet.” There was a pause. “You were incredible back there.”

“I’m not the one who had to give the speech of his life with a chrono ticking,” Rey deflected. “What you said—it was amazing. You reached people. I know it.”

Feeling a little like an interloper, Poe did his best to ignore their conversation and tuned the com to a common Resistance frequency. Maybe they’d pick up some combat chatter when they dropped out of hyperspace, find out how things were going. Until then… He leaned back against his headrest and closed his eyes.

The navicomputer signaled, bringing him upright with a start. Nearly back to base already. When had that happened? On instinct he toggled the switch that would broadcast their identification code, hoping he hadn’t been too slow to prevent the alert fighters from scrambling.

“Good timing, Shuttle Six-Two-Three,” greeted Lieutenant Connix’s voice. “We were just starting to wonder about you.”

“People have been wondering about me my whole life,” Poe tossed back. “Requesting permission to land.”

“Permission granted. Be aware that the mountain waves are especially strong today. Wind speed is fifty-one knots with peak gusts at seventy-three.”

“Noted. Beginning atmospheric entry.”

He found he had to work harder than usual; he was no stranger to high winds, but the shuttle must have picked up some damage to some of its control surfaces, which were sluggish in the thickening air. Instead of smooth control inputs, he had to wrench the yoke back and forth to stay stable. Each movement tugged at bruises he hadn’t even realized he’d earned.

At last the shuttle’s skids slammed down on the tarmac, the impact sending a flare of pain up the left side of his body. He clamped his jaw shut on a cry and began the checklist to shut down the engines and power systems. They’d made it. All downhill from here.

“Nice work, man.” With a smile that nearly masked his tension, Finn clapped a heavy hand onto his shoulder. Which didn’t help with his aching ribs, but Poe wasn’t going to say so. “So even the best pilot in the Resistance has a rough landing once in a while, huh? Glad to know you’re human.”

“Everybody’s a critic,” Poe groused, keeping his seat until after Finn had returned to Rey. Standing was harder than expected; he levered himself up and pressed his arm tight to his side, feeling cold sweat trickle into his hair.

BB-8 whizzed up to his side as he stepped down from the boarding ramp, beeping excitedly. “Hey, buddy,” Poe said, forcing a smile. “You come from the command center? How are the ops going in the Miraksan system?” The multitoned response was almost too fast for him to translate. “Okay, that’ll work. Any reports of casualties yet?” A negative. He still worried for his squadrons, had hated all along the idea that they’d be flying into a battle without him. “Good. Can you go keep an eye on things?”

Finn was already transferring Rey to the medics’ care, and one look at her pinched, white face drew Poe along in their wake. His thought process didn’t extend terribly far at that moment: he hurt, but she hurt more, and if he could just find a place to rest for a while…

He lost a little time in there, because suddenly a med-droid was blocking the entrance to the medbay’s triage room. “Please wait outside to allow the staff maximum effectiveness of treatment. You will be seen in order of injury priority.”

“Like hell.” Finn shouldered past it, not about to abandon his post at Rey’s side. “C’mon, Poe.”

Poe stood there for a moment, unsteadily, and tried to force his clouded brain to work through his options. A haze of grey was encroaching on the edges of his vision, and it felt like maybe he should stay—or ask someone for help—but Rey. Rey was important. And he was so tired.

“I’ll…wait out here,” he said, and no one seemed to hear. He stepped back, stumbling a little as he rounded the corner.

There—a supply crate. He could rest there. Poe’s attempt to sit down was more like a barely-controlled collapse, and when he coughed, weak and wet, his entire body sparked with pain. Instinctively he wrapped an arm around his ribcage, leaning his head back against the wall.

Thoughts gave way to disconnected sensations: the cool wall, the hard pallet, the warm, tacky blood that now painted his hand an angry red.

Blood. Huh. Where had—?

…Maybe he should have stayed closer to the medics.

But it was okay. Rey and Finn were safe. They would be all right. They would be happy. Nothing else mattered.

Nothing…

******************

Rey let herself sag back against the bed as Kalonia efficiently stripped the field bandage away from her thigh. “You did a good job with this,” the doctor told Finn, examining the wound. “It would have bled much more had the binding been looser. Mostly muscle damage—bacta will take care of it in a couple of days.” She lifted her head and addressed her patient. “How’s the pain? We can give you something for it.”

Apparently Rey had been gritting her teeth hard enough to make her jaw ache, so that seemed to be a sign. “Please,” she managed. The wound wasn’t that bad; she was sure of it. Why did she feel so sick? “My left side…hurts too.”

Finn frowned, tightening his grip on her hand. “Did you take a hit there? I didn’t see.”

“I don’t remember it, but…” She shut her eyes against a wave of nausea and hopelessness. Which made no sense. They’d accomplished their mission. Nothing had been lost. Why did everything feel so bleak?

Kalonia accepted a syringe from the med-tech and slid the needle into the IV. Within seconds Rey felt the cool liquid smooth out the throbbing pulse in her leg. “That ought to help with your side, too,” the doctor said, gentle fingers prodding around her hip bones and ribs. “Scan didn’t show any significant internal damage, but let’s be sure. Tell me when something I touch makes it worse.”

Rey kept her breathing even, waiting for that pain to subside as well. It didn’t, exactly; it might have blurred, a little, but not because of the medication. This was something different…and wrong.

“No change?” Kalonia’s brow furrowed. “I’ve palpated everywhere.”

“I barely felt you. But there’s still pain. It’s like it’s not even…” A spark of something else flitted across Rey’s consciousness. Emotion—someone else’s emotion. A sense of surrender. She hadn’t intentionally been reaching out with the Force, but something had broken through all the same.

And suddenly, with chilling clarity, she knew.

“It’s not my pain,” she whispered, looking up. “Finn—where is Poe?”

Finn blinked. “Med-droid tried to keep us both out. I wouldn’t go, but I guess he stayed back… But he wasn’t hurt. Was he?”

She was terrified of the answer to that question. “Go find him. Now. ”

With dawning horror, Finn scrambled out of the room and hit the main medbay door at a dead sprint.

Kalonia snapped her fingers at the nearest med-tech. “Grab a gurney and follow him.”

Rey closed her eyes again and did her best to project reassurance through whatever link she shared with the pilot. Hang on, Poe. We’re coming.

*****************

Finn came around the corner and nearly got his legs taken out from under him by a rolling streak of panic. “Bee, where’d Poe go?”

BB-8 trilled a string of alarmed beeps and reversed course. Finn followed him around the next two corners and skidded to a stop in the wide hallway used for medical supply storage, his heart stuttering in his chest.

Sitting on a long crate, Poe was slumped back against the wall, his head lolling limply. A thin trail of blood had collected at the corner of his lips. Finn fell to his knees in front of his friend, yanking open Poe’s black tunic to find the entire left side of his ribcage and abdomen consumed by a mass of bruising. No, worse than bruising. Internal injuries, the kind the First Order wouldn’t have even bothered to try to heal.

“Force be with us,” Finn breathed, cursing himself. How had he missed this? “Poe, come on back to me, buddy. Come on.”

Poe stirred and attempted to lift his head. “That’s it,” Finn said, keeping a tight rein on his worry. “Eyes on me, all right? We need to get you into the medbay.”

“S’okay,” Poe murmured, his unfocused gaze sliding off to the side. “Doesn’t really hurt now.”

“Yeah, that’s because you’re in shock,” Finn answered as patiently as he could manage. “Stars and skies, why didn’t you say something?”

“Told us to leave…”

“I’m pretty sure they didn’t know you were bleeding out!”

Two med-techs found them then, dragging a gurney between them. As they gently lowered their patient’s head and lifted him onto the gurney, Poe at last seemed to meet Finn’s gaze. “Finn…really,” he said, with the barest hint of a smile. His fingers faltered, as if he meant to reach out but lacked the strength. “S’okay. ‘m not…important.”

And then he was gone, hustled off to the medbay, leaving a stunned Finn kneeling alone in the middle of the hallway.

“How could you think that?” he whispered.

By the time he’d collected enough of his composure to follow, Kalonia was sharply directing a squad of medics and droids toward the surgical room. Dazed, Finn sank into a chair next to Rey’s bed.

“I don’t understand.”

Some of the color had returned to Rey’s features, but her misery was no longer physical. “I should have sensed it earlier.”

“You were hurt yourself. I should have—I don’t even know when it happened! Why didn’t he say something? Why did he leave?”

“He was just trying to get us home. By the time he did, he was hurting so badly he wasn’t thinking straight.”

Finn shook his head, unable to make sense of what had just happened. “He said he wasn’t important,” he murmured, disbelieving.

Rey reached for his hand. “Don’t,” she said softly, her voice weary but unwavering. “When he’s well, you can talk to him. Or even shout at him. You’ll have that chance. I promise.”

If there was anyone in the galaxy who could make such things true by sheer force of will, it was likely the woman in front of him. Still, he sank back into the chair, wishing he could ignore the desperate battle taking place in the next room for Poe’s life, paralyzed by the bleak acceptance he’d heard in his dear friend’s voice.

Chapter Text

Karé strode down the Red Squadron corridor of the pilots’ barracks, headed for the medbay. They’d cut the mission debrief as short as possible; no one had been in any mood to talk once Ops had relayed the news about Black Leader. When she passed Poe’s quarters, she drew up short, seeing the open door.

Inside, Finn stood next to the half-made bed, looking exhausted and utterly lost. A cold surge washed through Karé’s veins. “Don’t you dare tell me he’s dead,” she demanded, her voice low and desperate.

His head jerked up. “No. Force, no. I—just came to get… He hates the pillows in the medbay, and if—when he wakes up, he’ll probably want his own.”

A little wobbly with relief, she stepped into the room. “Still in surgery?”

Finn nodded. “It’s…They’re pretty sure he’s gonna make it.”

‘Pretty sure’ wasn’t terribly comforting, but Karé had been patched up by Kalonia’s team more than once herself. She took another step forward and shut the door behind her. “Poe’s tough, and the docs here are good. He’ll be all right.”

“I believe that. I do.” He sounded certain at first, until he looked down at the pillow in his hand and his face seemed to crumple. “I just don’t understand him sometimes,” he said. “I mean, there are a lot of things I’m still figuring out about life out here, but I feel like I’ve been with him so much and still don’t get it. It’s like he thinks he’s worth less than other people, when none of us would be here if it weren’t for him.”

So the rumor about their return was true—or Poe had done something hopelessly self-sacrificing, at least. The image of her friend crawling off to collapse in a corner like a wounded morak was distressing.

“I don’t think he truly believes that,” Karé said carefully, unsure how best to explain. “He’s…It’s been hard on him. What happened on Jakku, everyone we lost at Starkiller—and I think everything is stained, somehow, by what Ren did to him. The doubts we all have sometimes, they’re harder for him to ignore now. You being here, though—I’m pretty sure that helps. A lot.” Except when he uses you to break his own heart.

Finn released his bottom lip from between his teeth. “He’s so invested in me being happy. How can I be happy when my best friend obviously isn’t?”

“He doesn’t think he can be what you need.” She hadn’t meant to say that, but there it was. At his mystified look, she forged ahead. “Finn, this is none of my business, so cut me off whenever you want to—I just feel like it might clear some things up. You know how relationships work around here, right? I mean, nobody really knows how they work, because everybody handles them differently, but in general?”

He nodded. “Typically two people decide they want to spend their time together, or have sex, or both, and do that just with each other. Maybe they stay together for a long time, and live together, and even join legally, or maybe they realize they don’t fit well and separate. But there aren’t any regulations about how to do it, other than to respect the other person’s rights and feelings.”

“That’s probably a better explanation than most of us here could give.” Karé offered a wry smile. “Is that something you’re interested in for yourself? Not necessarily right now, but someday?”

“I think—it could be. I haven’t focused on it much, because there’s been so much else to catch up on. If I’m going to be an equal partner to anybody, I don’t want to still be a clueless ‘trooper—I feel like that would make it harder.”

“That makes sense. But trust me, Finn, nobody sees you that way. If they ever did, they know better now. You’re one of us.” Gratitude flickered in his eyes, and she steadied herself to continue. She had to be careful here. She’d already skirted too close to an important truth. If she betrayed Poe’s confidence, he’d never forgive her.

Well, no, that wasn’t true. He likely would; that was part of what made him Poe. But he would be hurt, and she’d be damned if she let that happen.

“I won’t ask you how you see your relationship with Rey,” she said, “whether you think she could be that kind of partner for you. You don’t have to know that right now, and you sure as hell don’t have to tell anyone else. I mention it because Poe is convinced that you and Rey will end up together, and that he won’t really fit in that equation. And he cares about you—and her—enough to go to some pretty dramatic lengths to protect you and your future, whatever you want that future to be. Even if it doesn’t include him.”

Finn stared at her, uncomprehending. “You think Poe nearly killed himself to bring me and Rey home so we could fall in love?”

Force, I hope not. “Nothing that deliberate. And of course completing the mission was the main factor. Just—he’s a little dumb this way. He focuses on other people’s happiness because it’s easier than trying to pursue his own.”

“And now we’re back around to me not knowing what would make him happy.” The expression of unadulterated yearning on his earnest features gave Karé a measure of hope.

“You really want that?”

“I really do. I’m still working on the concept of being allowed to want things, let alone articulate them, but that…it’s near the top of the list.”

Feeling buoyed, Karé poked a finger into the pillow in his arms. “Well, you know that having his own pillow will help. That’s already more than most people. I’ve known him for twelve years and didn’t know that. I bet you’ve figured out a lot of those little things. As for the big things…when he’s healed, ask him. Make him tell you.”

**************

Rey stirred awake at the tingle of energy that often signaled the approach of her teacher. When she opened her eyes, Master Skywalker was sitting in a chair against the medbay wall, looking as though he’d been settled there a while.

“It’s night,” he greeted her, apparently sensing her disorientation. “I may have…assisted your healing trance. If only to make sure you actually rested.”

She couldn’t fault his reasoning. And she did feel considerably better.

“My sister all but ordered Finn to his bunk,” Skywalker continued. “I imagine that will only last another hour or so.”

“How’s Poe?”

In response, Skywalker gestured to her other side, and Rey shifted to turn her head. In the neighboring bed, Poe Dameron lay motionless, the rhythmic flashing of the med-monitor the only break in the utter stillness. Instinctively she reached out with the Force: he was deeply unconscious, but healing.

“As I said, I expect Finn back soon.” Skywalker’s tone was dry. “Doctor Kalonia says your leg can bear weight already, but that your blood chemistry could still use a while to stabilize. I take it you had no shortage of opportunities to test your training on the mission?”

“You could say that.” Rey carefully pushed herself into a sitting position. “It’s exhausting. Trying to shift so many things, so many people. Even by a small amount.”

“You did well. Very well, to hear Finn tell it. And in fact we have a demonstrated impact to prove it.” Skywalker leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I’ll let Leia give you the specifics in the morning, but suffice it to say that the message was received by a great number of trooper trainees. Whether they fully believed it, and whether they can be trusted, is another matter, and one that you and I may be called upon to investigate further at some point. But the goal was achieved. For the first time, the Resistance has willing surrenders.”

It was exactly the result they’d risked so much to make possible. It opened up the chance to turn the loyalties of the very bedrock of the First Order’s forces. Rey felt immense gratitude, but not satisfaction. Not really. Would she have to gauge the sincerity of the trooper prisoners? Was that really why she had these skills—to interrogate and manipulate?

“You’re still conflicted about the power you wield over the minds of others,” Skywalker observed, his tone betraying no censure.

Of course, his ability to pinpoint her unease only served to highlight the reasons for it. “Yes,” she replied. “I do see its benefits, but I still find it hard to control—and I’m not convinced that a noble goal is enough to separate us from…” She chose not to speak the name; she still wasn’t certain of his feelings on the matter, but they could hardly be simple or good. “…those who use it to advance bad ends, or to cause pain.”

Even as the words left her mouth, she tensed; she hadn’t really intended to go down this road. The Jedi Master, though, merely nodded, his expression pensive. “Your empathy and your courage to question are a credit to you,” he said. “A large part of the reason I took myself out of the equation for so long was the fact that I could no longer have confidence in the distinctions between the Light and the Dark. In individual actions, frequently, but less clearly in people. The Jedi and Sith had different beliefs about how the Force should and shouldn’t be used—but in the end, only those beliefs, and the actions taken in service of them, set the two apart. Oddly enough, they both possessed a similar unshakable insistence on a black-and-white view of the galaxy.” He shook his head, with the ghost of a humorless smile. “No one is marked by the Light or the Dark for all time. My father demonstrated that, if only to me. All we can do is listen to the Force when it guides us, rather than try to bend it to our will.”

It was a relief to know that her teacher didn’t find her heretical, but Rey still wasn’t sure where that left her. “Letting the Force move us, rather than us moving the Force,” she said, testing out the concept. “Is that what we’ve been doing? Did you agree to come back because you felt the Force supported it?”

“That’s as good an explanation as I’m likely to be able to give."

“Will it guide you to understand how to end this war? To stop the Knights of Ren?”

Skywalker exhaled, his lips pressed together. “All I know for sure is that it hasn’t yet,” he said finally. “I want to believe that my nephew has the capacity to turn away from his current path. I will do whatever I can to aid that.” His features suddenly appeared to be carved from stone. “However, I let my biases color my judgement once before, and we all have paid the price for that hubris. If we must destroy him, I will not hesitate. And I know you won’t either.”

Rey had nothing to offer in reply. Her gaze strayed back to Poe, recalling the price he had paid at the hands of Kylo Ren.

Skywalker regarded them both silently for a moment. Then he rose from his chair. “Rest some more. As you do, consider this. Without your help, when Commander Dameron collapsed outside in the corridor, someone might have found him within a few minutes, or not. And even those few minutes might very well have made the difference. Whatever else you believe about your abilities, be assured that they almost certainly saved his life.”

She did think on that for some time after the older man left, as the tingling coolness of the bacta bandage around her thigh seemed to seep into her bones. Before long, though, her contemplation drifted back to Poe himself, unnervingly still and pale beside her. He looked older like this, she realized. She didn’t often consider the ages of the people around her, but now she was reminded that he was half again as old as her, had well earned his place at the head of the starfighter corps. At the same time, he wasn’t a grim veteran as so many of the senior officers seemed to be. He fought because he believed he could make a difference, not because there was nothing else left to do. He was a good man, and the galaxy was doing its best to make him suffer for it.

“You’re awake!” Finn crossed the room in three long strides to draw her into a careful embrace. “You feeling better?”

“Yes, thank you.” Rey shifted her elevated leg slightly, trying to get comfortable. “Just tired, still.”

“I imagine.” Finn smiled at her as he drew back, although his body language was tense, his focus torn.

“He’s healing,” Rey assured him, casting a glance toward Poe. “I can feel it. He’ll be all right.”

Finn nodded, looking unconvinced. He stepped closer to Poe’s bed, his gaze trained on the slight rise and fall of the pilot’s chest. “I don’t really know what to do with myself right now,” he confessed. “I need to be here, but what do I do?”

“You could hold his hand,” she suggested. “It’s what he did for you. At least that’s what the med-droid said.”

Sliding into the chair by the bed, Finn reached out and wrapped his fingers around Poe’s limp hand. “Before the general chased me out of here earlier, the doctor said his injuries were consistent with blunt force trauma. All I can come up with is the officer he had to fight off while we were broadcasting the message. He must have been hurt then, and just kept going.”

“He did what he had to. We all did.” Rey tugged her fingers through tangled hair, set loose from its braid. “The irony is that I realized he was injured because I connected to him through the Force by accident. Which is something he can’t bear.”

“Major Kun thinks what Kylo Ren did to him is still affecting him. How he sees things.”

Rey considered that. “In more ways than just how he interacts with the Force,” she said. “He’s…not meant to be quite like he is now. His natural state should be happier. I think Ren took that from him. I wish I knew how to give it back.”

Finn looked over at her with a trace of a smile. “He gets to people like that. I think everyone on this base either considers him a friend or carries that as a goal.”

“I’d very much like to be his friend. I’m just not sure he’ll let me, and I can’t fault him for it.”

“I don’t think he distrusts you,” Finn pointed out. “Not after the mission.” He seemed to hesitate, looking down at their entwined hands. “Major Kun has a theory about that, too, and I’m not sure what I think of it. She thinks that Poe thinks that you and I are…meant to be a couple, or want to be, and so he’s trying to stay out of our way.”

That was unexpected. “Oh.” An interesting concept, from a certain point of view. To be frank, though, Rey didn’t need any more interesting concepts in her life. Since Finn deserved honesty, and could handle it, she spoke without concern for how unpolished she might sound. “I…don’t know anything about being part of a couple. On Jakku it was usually a rather transactional affair, based on mutual benefit. But here I get the sense that it doesn’t matter what a partner can do for you, only that you care for them.”

“I’m not what you’d call an expert either. Relationships of any sort were considered a weakness in the Order.” Finn’s jaw tightened. “Here, though…I think I like the idea of it. Having someone you can always depend on, someone close—it sounds nice.”

For a brief moment, Rey was seized by the fear that Finn might want something from her—with her. To shift their particular kind of closeness into something more intimate. While she didn’t know for sure whether or not that was something she was capable of, she was certain that she wasn’t capable of it right then. Finn was accustomed to companionship: a squad of brothers rather than a partner, but companionship nonetheless. Rey was accustomed to solitude. She didn’t prefer it, at least not always, but even this sprawling base often felt confining. And even beyond that, the idea of being responsible in some manner for another person’s happiness…it was daunting, in an entirely different way from everything else that rested on her shoulders.

As quickly as the panic rose, though, it dimmed. The energy that she associated with Finn wasn’t calling to her, reaching for a deeper connection. Instead, it reached elsewhere—toward what, or whom, she couldn’t tell.

“I don’t know that I’d be able to recognize love,” she said, feeling a bit like she was navigating blind. “Not romantic love, at least. I do love you, somehow—your life means more to me than my own, and I can’t imagine not being able to share things with you, knowing you’ll understand. Even this conversation would be a painful mess if we were anything less than what we are. But I think that makes us more like what a brother and sister should be, if there’s no…”

“Desire?” The corner of Finn’s mouth quirked up, acknowledging the surreal nature of the discussion. Soon, though, his gaze fell once more to the man whose hand he held. “I think you’re right. I’m not sure why Poe would make that assumption without at least asking one of us about it first.”

“Poe has always had a bit of an overdeveloped sense of duty and self-sacrifice.” The new voice belonged to General Organa, standing in the doorway with her arms folded. Before Rey could puzzle out the meaning of her comment, she fixed a piercing stare on Finn. “You were told to get a solid six hour rest period.”

“Staring at the ceiling of my quarters isn’t significantly more restful than being here, ma’am,” Finn replied, unlacing his fingers from Poe’s.

“More like Dameron every day,” Organa muttered to no one, stepping into the room. “Since it doesn’t exactly shock me to find you here, I have a new assignment for you, in a day or two. We need to develop a protocol for our interactions with First Order prisoners of war. As of today there are twenty-three troopers and officers in temporary holding cells at our staging base. We need to figure out what we can do for them and what they can do for us.”

Finn’s brow furrowed. “Officers as well?”

“Two lieutenants. We’re theorizing that they were training instructors and were in the barracks when your message went out. One of them brought us his entire squad, down to the last person.” The general raised a disbelieving eyebrow, a smile playing at her lips.

“Twenty-three,” Rey repeated, turning the number over in her mind. “How many troops participated in the battle altogether?”

“Our tacticians estimated the ground forces at just over eleven hundred.”

Finn shook his head. “It doesn’t feel like enough.”

“It doesn’t have to be. Not by itself.” Organa moved to stand next to his chair at Poe’s bedside. “But it’s a crack in the dam. Thanks to some of them, we know now that at least some of the Outer Rim garrisons haven’t bought into the more extreme goals that Hux is advancing. They’ve had no contact at all with Snoke. We know he won’t negotiate, but if they will, entire bases, thousands of troops, could be removed from the equation. They can have lives, and choices, like you. And we can focus our efforts on only the battles we can’t avoid.” She reached out to brush a gentle hand through Poe’s hair. “And maybe, someday, this one will be able to stop running from himself.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever known him when he wasn’t hurting somehow,” Finn said quietly. “I want to. Very badly.”

“Poe’s faith in the Light’s ability to prevail is all the more impressive after what my son did to him.” For a moment, Rey saw her as the heartbroken wife and mother that she was. Only for an instant, and then it was gone. “But you’re right. His pain is…layered, tangled. Some of it we can bend, some perhaps not.”

“And some of it we can bend for the worse.” Rey drew her uninjured knee up to her chest. “I hurt him. I didn’t mean to do it, but I did.”

“So did I,” said Finn. “Not by going into his mind, but when I told him about what Rey did, I—reminded him, somehow, that there are things he can’t do, and that was more upsetting than I realized. Ma’am, do you understand—does he blame himself for not being a Jedi, or something?”

Organa looked thoughtful. “In a way, maybe so. Do you have any memories of your parents, Finn?”

Finn took a moment to consider the question carefully. “I’m not sure,” he said at last. “If I did, I wouldn’t know if they were even real.”

“It’s the same for me, trying to remember my birth mother.”

Rey steeled herself for the same question. “My memories are real,” she said softly when their gazes turned to her. “But they’re…faded.”

“What a group we are. Let me tell you a story about another family, a good one.” The older woman pulled a second chair over and took a seat. “A long time ago, when we were fighting the Empire, I knew a couple, a husband and wife. He was a scout team leader, and she was one of the best pilots in the Alliance. They were brave, and loyal, and they did as much as anyone to ensure the survival of the New Republic. And then they left—because they were loyal to each other as well, and to their little boy, who worshipped them. So they made a home, and she taught her son to fly, and they were very happy. And then she fell ill, and before two seasons had passed, she was gone.

“You and I, we remember our mothers as a ghost of an image, if that. Not as real people that we can comprehend. Poe remembers his mother as a person, but as a perfect one, because he was too young to truly see her faults and fears. He remembers her as a hero—and she was. But that’s a difficult standard to live up to.”

“But Poe is a hero too,” Rey objected.

Organa gave a sharp nod. “He absolutely is. He served the New Republic faithfully, and when he felt he couldn’t stand by and watch it wither and die, he joined the Resistance without hesitation. And I know his father supported that choice, because I asked him. Poe’s entire life has been guiding him to this cause. So I’m sure you can understand how crushing it would be to feel as though he failed.”

Finn drew himself up, anger flashing in his eyes. “He didn’t fail. He never failed. He fought back, and he was tortured, and that—Ren took the information out of his head by force, and he still managed to fly us out of there.”

“Also true,” Organa allowed. “But here’s the thing, and I don’t want you to blame yourself for this, because you couldn’t have known. When someone speaks of Rey fighting back, beating a Dark Jedi at his own game, wouldn’t Poe be likely to think about how he wasn’t able to do the same? And how he wasn’t able to uphold his parents’ legacy when it mattered the most?”

Finn sat back in his chair, bewildered. “That’s …not rational at all.”

“It’s human, though. And it’s very much Poe Dameron.”

“We can’t let him think that!”

“I agree. But so far this has proved to be the one topic where he doesn’t listen to me worth a damn. I’m hoping one or both of you will have better success.” The general stood up and pressed a firm kiss to Poe’s forehead. “In the meantime, start thinking about how to handle our prisoners,” she told Finn. “And as soon as he wakes up and you can exchange two words with him, go get some genuine sleep in a genuine bed.”

Both Rey and Finn sat in silence for a minute after the general’s departure. “We’re never going to completely understand things around here, are we?” Rey asked.

“Probably not.” Finn’s gaze fell to Poe again, and Rey could almost feel how his entire being thrummed with the urge to take his friend’s hand once more. A simple desire, and yet he seemed mired in conflict.

…oh.

An idea took shape in her mind. “What we were talking about before,” she began. “Attraction, romantic love. And how to recognize them.”

Finn cocked an eyebrow. “If the pilots and those weird holodramas are to be believed, people mix those things up a lot.”

Rey pursed her lips, hesitant. “Do you think you’d be able to recognize them? If it’s not too awkward a question.”

“I don’t mind. I’ve experienced attraction, I’m sure. Whether or not that attraction could be something deeper…” He shook his head, at a loss. “I wish I could say. But—I think so. I think I know what love might feel like to me.”

Rey studied his features for a moment and came to a decision. “May I ask something of you? By all means say no if it’s too much, but—if I touched your mind through the Force, you might be able to show me that feeling.”

To his credit, Finn didn’t dismiss the idea. “I don’t have any secrets from you,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m not afraid of you seeing anything you shouldn’t.”

“I’ve been working on my control. I should be able to stay focused on just what you choose to show me.”

With a nod, he moved to sit on the side of her bed. “Okay. What do I do?”

Rey had to take a moment to process her gratitude that this incredible person had fallen into her life. She took both his hands in hers, pressing a brief kiss to one of them before holding them in her lap and closing her eyes. All around her, beams of energy swirled, and she concentrated on the glow that emanated from her dear friend. It welcomed her, opening to her touch.

It was as if she’d landed on Takodana all over again. Bursts of color like she’d never seen, such vibrant life, clearly all the more precious to him for how new it still felt after a lifetime of stark black and white. There were corners of his mind that were cloudy and dark, but they were only the fringes, while the core was radiantly bright. It pulsed with the need to connect, to belong.

She sensed his adoration of her, his admiration of the general…and then there it was, a silvery tendril that reached out with exquisite longing to the man who lay beside them.

She could feel the possibilities, what could be if these two lives were joined. It felt so right that she wondered if part of her had known it all along. She felt the joy of shared smiles and brief touches, the strain of being apart, the sorrow of being helpless to ease each other’s pain. She understood it all in an instant—and she sat back in wonderment.

“I—sort of felt you in there.” Finn offered a lopsided smile. “It was nice, in a way. What did you see?”

Rey blinked her eyes clear and stared at him. “Finn,” she breathed. “You have to tell him.”

He dropped his gaze. “I doubt he sees us quite the same way I do.”

“He should. It’s beautiful in your mind, the way the two of you fit together. And he nearly died without ever knowing how he could have been loved. How he is loved. That’s wrong, and we can fix it.” She tightened her fingers when Finn moved to pull his hands away. “What if this is part of why he’s hurting so much? He thought you wanted to be with me, right? If it were the other way around, if you thought someone else was more worthy of him, wouldn’t you be upset too?”

Finn’s expression was troubled, but he set his jaw. “That is the part I can’t let stand—the idea that he’s not worthy of anything. We have got to convince him that he deserves to be happy. Whether it involves me or not.”

“We will.” Rey met his gaze squarely, determined. “You both deserve happiness. We all do, but yours is what we can reach for right now, and so we’re going to get it for you.”

Chapter Text

He felt as though he were surfacing from underwater. He ached, but in a vague, disconnected sense that he couldn’t pin down to a particular body part. He’d had enough medical misadventures to recognize some of the sensations; he’d been sedated, and fairly heavily.

“Hey, Poe. It’s okay. You can wake up if you’re ready.”

Finn. Finn was all right. Why had he been worried about Finn? There’d been a mission—the training base. Rey. Rey was hurt.

An insistent beeping sounded in the background, followed by another voice. “Relax, Commander. There’s nothing going on that won’t keep a while longer.”

Doctor Kalonia. Another sign that he’d wrecked himself up in spectacular fashion.

He wanted to ask why everyone seemed to be trying to calm him down. He wanted to ask about Rey. Either way, forming words or even a coherent thought was beyond his capabilities. He drifted in semi-consciousness for a while, until he felt someone’s hand close around his.

“There you are,” Kalonia said kindly when he dragged his eyes open at last. “Squeeze Finn’s hand if you can understand me.”

Finn was holding his hand. That was nice. Poe tightened his fingers, but couldn’t be sure they’d actually responded to his intent. “Hi,” he tried to say, resulting in a painful rasp and the appearance of a straw, delivering a blissful sip of cool water. “Okay?”

“We both are, thank you.” That was Rey, interpreting him correctly. “And you soon will be.”

“To be more specific, you broke or cracked five ribs, perforated your liver and a kidney, bruised a lung, and lacerated a major artery, which of course was the deal-breaker.” Kalonia was scanning the monitors beside his bed with her usual brisk efficiency, so he couldn’t be in too much trouble. “Those are not parts you can afford to heal halfway, so I’m going to need you to stay quite still for another day or so, and you’ll be my guest for a few days past that. But you shouldn’t end up with any permanent restrictions.”

Before Poe could feel more than a brief flare of relief at not losing his flight status, the doctor nodded to Finn and Rey. “He’s all yours. Don’t be too rough on him, but don’t be too gentle, either.”

Poe frowned in sudden concern. So much for not being in trouble. Why was he in trouble?

When Kalonia was gone, Finn moved closer to the bed, vacating the nearby chair and allowing Rey to slide into it. “What did I do?” Poe asked hoarsely, earning another sip of water. “You’re…mad?”

“We’re not angry,” Rey said, then nudged Finn when he didn’t respond. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

Poe had to think about it. “Landing, maybe.”

“Did you know you were hurt?” Finn asked.

“I guess, yeah—but Rey…”

Rey gave him a small, almost sad smile. “I was hurt, yes, but I wasn’t in danger. You were, and no one knew until you collapsed.”

Huh. Scraps of memory were returning, but he still couldn’t quite figure out what had Finn looking so dismayed. “I’m…sorry?”

Finn’s gaze was intent, discomfiting. “Are you really?”

Poe felt lost. “Doc K said I’d be all right. We all made it back.” Why wasn’t that enough? What would it take to erase that worry from Finn’s face?

After a long moment, Finn spoke again. “You said… When I found you, and we realized how bad it was—you said it was okay because you weren’t important.”

Ah.

“I don’t—remember that,” Poe said, and it was the truth, more or less.

“But I do, and I don’t want to. I don’t want to think that you might not care if you die, because that is terrifying to me, Poe.” Finn stepped away to pace across the room, and Poe felt the loss keenly when his hand fell away. “I know it’s been tough, but just—please tell me that you’re living and fighting for yourself, not just going through the motions out of, I don’t know, obligation, or some kind of self-sacrifice.”

It was too much for Poe to process, his thoughts spinning without finding purchase. “I’m not trying to die,” he protested weakly.

“That isn’t the same thing.”

He wanted to reassure his friend, to say that he valued his life, his time with his comrades, his home. But the words seemed to be swallowed up by the chasm between him and everything he held dear, the rift that had been widening every day since Jakku.

“Please,” he found himself saying softly. “I can’t—I’m just really tired.”

“Let him be, Finn,” he heard Rey murmuring. When had he closed his eyes? “We’ll be back, Poe. Get some rest. Just, please, know that we’re very, very glad you’re still here.”

He wanted to sleep. If he slept, he wouldn’t have to think or feel for a while longer, wouldn’t have to hear the unceasing whispers in the corners of his mind. He’d been operating on near-autopilot for some time now, doing his best not to contemplate everything that Finn had just asked of him, because if he stopped to consider his own mental state too carefully he wasn’t sure he’d ever get up from his bunk again.

He heard Finn and Rey leave, but sleep wouldn’t come. Maybe he could ask Kalonia for some more meds. That would probably keep the nightmares out, too. Even better.

When he opened his eyes, he was only a little surprised to see the doctor standing quietly in the doorway, observing him. “Can you read minds, too?” he asked, the question coming out far less flippant than he’d intended.

The earlier kindness wasn’t gone, exactly, but it had firmed. “No, I just monitor your vitals. Which were decidedly not going in the direction of someone too exhausted to finish a conversation.” Kalonia stepped into the room. “I wonder if you fooled Rey. It’d be rather impressive if you did.”

“If I did, it’s only because she steers as clear of my head as she can. She’s painfully aware of how messed up I am about that kind of thing.” Poe started to push himself into a sitting position but was quickly halted by Kalonia’s restraining hand.

“Not a chance, Commander. Not yet.” Instead she raised the head of the bed for him. “You’ve only just begun a long recovery, so I’m giving you a free pass this time. Let me be clear, though: the next time I see you try to evade a conversation like that, I’m going to call you on it.”

That was unexpected, and for a moment he just stared at her, feeling a little betrayed. “Wow,” he said quietly. “I don’t even get a few minutes to adjust to being conscious?”

“You always come out of sedation like you’re breaking atmo, and you know it.” Kalonia folded her arms. “And you would resent me even more if I treated you like you were fragile, so I’m not going to do that. What I’m going to do is point out that the galaxy appears to be fed up with giving you subtle hints and has graduated to bashing you over the head. You can’t keep going like this.”

“Like what?” he said, almost reflexively.

“Like it’ll all eventually go away if you just keep moving. I know you know better. But I also know I can’t possibly imagine what it’s like to be in your place right now. So I see two options. You can start talking to your friends—really talking to them—or you can talk to Doctor T’lanna in a formal session.”

Poe chose not to repress a snort of contempt, then regretted it as his ribs dimly protested. “Like I haven’t had a few of those sessions already?”

“Then that makes the decision simple, doesn’t it?”

He dropped his gaze, genuine weariness beginning to creep in. “I can’t drag them down into the mess that is my psyche these days. Either of them. They don’t deserve that—they’ve both been through worse and come out better.”

“I don’t believe ‘better’ and ‘worse’ are useful terms in this context, and I don’t imagine either Finn or Rey gives a damn whether they ‘deserve’ to see your pain or not.” Kalonia leaned forward over the bed and grasped his arm. “Those two kids care about you. Both of them, deeply, each in their own way. Let them.”

At a loss, he could only nod. The older woman squeezed his arm and stepped back, adjusting his medication line. “Now you can sleep.”

And he did.

************

The trooper leapt to his feet as soon as the door opened. “KD-3624, assigned to Mech Division K,” he recited, his gaze fixed on the wall in front of him.

Finn watched him for a moment, then waved off the guard at the door. The woman opened her mouth to object, but apparently reconsidered, stepping just outside the doorframe and keeping her blaster rifle at her side.

The young trooper didn’t react, still locked in at attention. His features were frozen, but his eyes held confusion and dread that he’d never been trained to conceal. His helmet and armor had been taken from him, and Finn knew damned well how vulnerable he felt.

“I would tell you to relax, but if I were in your place, I wouldn’t trust me either.” Finn spread his hands, trying to appear open. “All I want is to talk.”

“I have no classified intelligence.”

“I’m not looking for any. I’d rather talk about why you’re here.” Finn made a point of taking a seat in one of the room’s chairs. First Order interrogation rooms never had extraneous furniture. “You gave up your weapon when our ground troops overran your position. This is the first time we’ve had troopers do that. You weren’t afraid you’d be tortured or humiliated?”

“I’m still afraid of those things, s-sir.” KD-3624 stumbled over the word, as if unsure how to interact with someone outside his chain of command. “But I’m not—expecting them now, I guess.”

“You’ve gotten some food, and someplace to sleep?” At his nod, Finn smiled. “It’s a long way from the synthesust we used to get, huh? Trust me, there are even more options out there for you to try.”

The boy—no older than twenty, clearly still in specialization training—broke his stare to blink in surprise. “We?”

“I was a trooper, too. Sanitation. You must have tested better, if you ended up in Mech.”

“I—uh, I’m Vehicle Maintenance.” KD shook his head, trying to get his bearings. “You’re the one,” he said quietly. “There have been rumors for a while now, but nobody knew whether to believe them.”

“I’m real,” Finn replied. “My designation was FN-2187. Now I call myself Finn. I came to the Resistance by accident, and they accepted me. More than that, they offered me a purpose, and the freedom to choose my actions. I believe everyone should have that choice.”

“Does the guard outside agree with you?” Even as the words left his mouth, KD looked frightened of Finn’s reaction, anticipating discipline.

“I could’ve killed you three times already today,” the guard called back, sounding more annoyed than angry. “Don’t insult me by suggesting I only care about my side. But don’t try anything either.”

Swallowing a huff of amusement, Finn answered, “A lot of people around here operate on a principle of ‘trust but verify.’ They’ve lost a lot to the First Order. But most of them are starting to realize that we have, too.” He gestured to the boy’s wrists. “You’re not restrained. I’m not armed.”

“I am,” interjected the guard.

“Noted, Dzina. Now shut it,” Finn told her before turning back to KD. “We’re at a remote location, in case you decide you don’t want to join us. If you decide you do, you’ll be allowed to travel to our main base, and given a place to live and duties to perform. Hard work will be rewarded, like in your training; unlike in your training, undercutting your comrades will not. You’ll be allowed to associate with the other troopers, so you won’t be alone. And I’ll be available to be your advocate to anyone if you need it. I appreciate the magnitude of the culture shock, believe me. You don’t have to decide right away.”

The trooper considered for a moment. “If I do decide to stay, but later on I change my mind, what happens then?”

“Then we do our best to make sure you don’t have any information that could be used against us,” Finn said truthfully, “and point you toward the nearest transport. The Resistance doesn’t conscript. You won’t be forced to stay any longer than you want to.”

“I could go right back to the Order with everything I’ve learned.”

“Yes. We’re taking a risk on the faith that you won’t. For each one of you. Just like they did for me.”

KD watched Finn with careful eyes, not quite comprehending. “We’re worth that risk to you?”

“It’s not benevolence alone. You’d be incredibly useful in helping us figure out how to reach other troopers, maybe convince more to join us. If we can get the word out to show them we’re not anarchist monsters, give as many as possible a real choice, the manpower advantage will start to disappear. At that point, anything is possible.” Finn tried to keep the hope out of his voice as he continued. He didn’t dare push too hard, but there was so much they could do if they could just take these first steps. “Listen, it’s okay if you don’t want to answer, or if you don’t really know. But—can you tell me why you surrendered? Did you have doubts about the Order before a few days ago?”

KD glanced down at the floor. “I mean, no one’s totally sure of themselves, are they? I guess I didn’t give it a lot of thought until pretty recently. I’d only been on a couple of field exercises before, and they weren’t anything like this. I just started thinking about—I don’t know, maybe whether everything really was the way I thought it was. What made me actually choose, though…” He hesitated for a moment, then forged ahead. “I have—had a squadmate. She’s here too, because she got hit in the battle.”

“Is she all right?”

“Now, yes, sir. They—you—got her all healed up without a second thought. Which I guess ought to tell me something.” The trooper shook his head. “Anyway, we’ve always looked out for each other, and when she went down, I knew I’d never see her again if…” He lifted his head. “So that’s when I knew there was no going back, I suppose. Does that make sense?”

In his memory, Finn saw a battered, bloodied starfighter pilot, with both purpose and compassion burning in his eyes. “You have no idea how much.” He gave the younger man a once-over. “KD-3624, you said?” Receving a nod, he asked, “What if we called you Kade?”

“Kade.” The trooper tested it out. “The only thing is, my squadmate is KD-3652. If I’m Kade, who is she?”

“Anyone she wants to be. How about Dee?”

“If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’d just as soon ask her. You said I’ll be allowed to see her?”

Finn smiled. “Tell you what. Let’s take a walk.”

Chapter Text

Rey stepped into the outer room of the suite Master Skywalker had taken as his quarters and closed the door behind her, eyes adjusting to the dim light. The room was small, with barely enough room for a desk and a meditation mat, but the Jedi master seemed to inhabit it as if were perfectly sized, moving within the confined space without ever knocking an elbow or shin.

At the moment, he sat cross-legged on the mat, eyes closed but not quite meditating. She could feel his silent acknowledgment of her arrival.

“Feel free to sit on the desk,” he said after a moment. Rey eyed it and interpreted the invitation as a challenge; the uncluttered portion wasn’t wide enough for her to sit securely without some balancing assistance from the Force.

“Not everything needs to be a lesson, you know,” she pointed out.

“Just trying to be hospitable,” Skywalker said blithely.

Rey rolled her eyes, knowing he’d sense her response even without looking, and took up a perch atop the desk.

Once she’d settled, she began. “You wanted me to think about the good ends that can be served by using our powers. I have, and I believe there’s something purely good we could do right now.”

His head inclined ever so slightly. “I’m listening.”

“Yesterday, Finn allowed me to touch his mind, and I learned some things. Greater control, to be sure, but also more about how our abilities can interact with other minds.” She opened her own mental shields a bit, allowing him to explore her intentions. She felt only the lightest brush from his mind, and it served to cement her resolve. “What the Dark did to Poe—I think you could heal it, if he’s willing to let you in. Not erase it, but dim it, keep it from haunting so many of his thoughts.”

“You may be right,” Skywalker allowed.

A flicker of triumph flared up, and she tamped it down. “Then you’ll try?”

“No, I think you should.”

He must have felt her flinch; she might have recoiled physically if her precarious position on the desk had permitted it. “He won’t let me,” she said quietly. “There’s no reason he should. I’ve already hurt him once.”

“All the more reason.” At last, the Jedi opened his eyes and regarded her with ever-present calm. “Much has changed between you since that misstep. You’re certainly closer to him than I am, and you know better than anyone what he’s experienced. It would do you both good to trust yourselves and each other.”

Rey chewed on her lip, torn. If she was being honest with herself, she did want to be the one to help Poe, to understand what he felt and search for a common thread with her own thoughts. But how much of that instinct was wrapped up in a desire to destroy the splinter of Darkness that Kylo Ren had driven in, to defeat him by defeating his instruments? Was that noble, or self-serving? And even if it were both—

“What if I put a foot wrong again?” she whispered.

Skywalker lifted an eyebrow. “Do you think you will?”

“No, but—”

“Then I wish you luck and look forward to hearing about it tomorrow.” Skywalker closed his eyes again and took up a position more suited to formal meditation, a non-too-subtle signal that the conversation was over.

Suppressing another eye-roll, Rey eased herself to the floor and stepped out into the corridor, heading for the med bay. Maybe she didn’t have a strategy exactly mapped out, but sometimes strategies were overrated.

When she arrived, Doctor Kalonia was finishing up with an embarrassed maintenance officer who appeared to have singed his eyebrows. “How’s the leg?” the doctor inquired as the young man made his escape.

“Healing well, thanks. Is Poe up for a visitor?”

“I expect so. He’s recovered just enough to start resenting being stuck in here, so whatever variation you bring to his day will be welcome. To all of us.”

Rey allowed herself a smile. “In that case, might I take him outside for a bit?”

Kalonia pointed a scanner at her for emphasis. “If he stays in a repulsor chair for the entire journey without trying to rewire it for more speed? Then yes, you may.” She lowered her voice. “I’m mostly joking. He’s been rather docile so far, which is uncharacteristic and unsettling. You’ll be doing him a world of good. Thank you.”

With that blessing, Rey crossed the bay toward Poe’s room. She found him sitting up in bed, quietly conversing with BB-8 about what sounded like the starfighter corps’ duty roster.

“You’re looking much better,” she greeted him. It was true; some of the color was returning to his features, and he no longer seemed fragile. Worn down, maybe, but not fragile.

Poe arched an eyebrow. “That wouldn’t be hard. I’ll take it, though. You doing all right?”

She nodded. “I’m told I’m allowed to take you on an excursion, if you’re up for it.”

BB-8 beeped an enthusiastic approval. Poe shot his droid an unimpressed look. “What kind of excursion?”

“A trip outside. Unless you aren’t fond of the weather here? It’s much more humid than I’m used to, I admit.”

Poe shook his head, lips curving into a small smile. “It’s pretty much exactly what I’m used to,” he replied. “And getting outside this room sounds really nice. Let’s do it before Doctor K changes her mind.”

In the doorway, a helpful med-droid directed a repulsor chair over to the bed. Rey offered a steadying arm as Poe gingerly swung his feet to the floor and settled into the chair.

“I think the med staff is sick of me already,” Poe commented as they made their way into the outer corridor. “I haven’t caused any trouble on this stay, but I’m probably getting punished for previous behavior.”

Rey guided them out through the supply warehouse rather than the hangar, hoping to avoid getting distracted by pilot friends or eager crew chiefs. “I expect they’d simply prefer to see you in your natural habitat.”

“Sure, let’s go with that answer.”

The sunlight burst upon their skin immediately after exiting, heat settling like a shroud as they made their way toward the garden. The base wasn’t locked down the way she’d feared when she arrived; personnel were allowed to explore the surrounding area, but one of the loveliest places she’d yet found was a small plot just inside the perimeter fence, where a few stalwart gardeners tended plants that seemed fantastically exotic. Even better, it afforded just the right amount of seclusion just now, in the middle of the duty day.

“Finn’s due back tonight, isn’t he?” Poe asked, directing his chair to stop in the clearing.

“In just a couple of hours, I believe.”

“Good. I don’t want to get my hopes up for mass stormtrooper epiphanies, but if we’ve gotten even a few of them to question their leadership—wow, that’s huge.” Poe rose from the chair before Rey could object and carefully lowered himself to sit on the wild carpet of long grass. His motion hitched ever so slightly—surely this was not medically advisable—but he closed his eyes and breathed in his surroundings like a child of the elements.

“Thank you for this,” he said, looking up at the sky. “I’m sure you could have found plenty of other things to do besides babysit me.”

Rey wandered a few paces away, examining a vibrant blue flower. “Do you realize how often you do that?” she asked, deliberately blunt. “Put yourself down, diminish your own value? I don’t think you do it on purpose, but it’s unnecessary, and it bothers Finn quite a bit.”

“Yeah, I guess I’m realizing that. It’s… I’ll try to work on it.” Poe leaned back against the side of the repulsor chair. “I do recognize my value, but I also feel---I don’t know, old, maybe. You two already made me feel old, but being just barely able to move and only useful for administrative work is really bringing it home.”

“I don’t have much of a frame of reference.” She knew she was still being rather more direct than people around here tended to be, but it felt necessary. “The infirm didn’t last long where I grew up.”

At that, Poe opened his eyes and tipped his head in acknowledgement. “I imagine I sound pretty melodramatic right now.”

“That’s not what—”

“I don’t mean it that way, all ‘poor me.’ I swear.” He waved a listless hand. “Here’s the thing. I more or less accepted, when I joined the Resistance, that getting old was probably not going to happen. It’s simple statistics. But I think Finn is afraid that I—that I want to let that happen. I don’t. I’m just trying to be realistic about the odds.”

It wasn’t a complete explanation, Rey sensed, but it was honest. “I think he’s more concerned that you’re letting those odds affect your decisions and your sense of self-worth,” she replied. “Is he wrong?”

Poe regarded her with raised eyebrows. “You don’t mess around, do you?”

“Never had the luxury.” Rey took a seat near him, leaving him space. “I’d like to talk some more, but I understand if you don’t want to get that introspective with me.”

“No, it’s okay. Probably more effective than talking to the therapists. And we do have one pretty impressively terrible thing in common.” His lips twisted humorlessly. “Before the mission, Finn tried to convince me to swap torture stories with you. That wasn’t your idea, was it?”

Rey shook her head. “I can see why he would suggest it, though. He cares very deeply for you and wants to help.”

“Finn cares about a lot of things and a lot of people. It’s one of his best qualities.” Poe’s expression softened as he considered his friend. “He’s done so much for us—for the galaxy, really. So have you. The two of you, this mission…I can’t imagine how far that’s going to ripple out.”

“You were there, too,” she reminded him.

He shook his head, not meeting her gaze. “I know. It’s just…”

When he didn’t finish, Rey took the initiative. “May I tell you something?” she asked, choosing her words carefully. “It seems like you think of Finn and me as connected. And while that’s true in a way—I’ve never cared about someone so much in my life—I don’t think that has to exclude you.”

“No, I get it. I won’t make him choose or anything. I’m—” His voice faltered a little, but he pressed on. “I’m glad you have each other.”

It felt like she was watching him surrender his very soul. His barely-disguised anguish was palpable to her, drowning out any other Force echoes she could sense.

“I think you’re trying to be glad,” she replied, “and that’s noble. But we don’t have each other, not in the way you’re thinking. We’re the closest of friends, and we’ll stay that way. We’ve talked about it, and there’s no romantic attachment. I promise you.”

At that, Poe focused on her fully, evaluating her statement. At last he said, “I find it hard to believe that either of you can be sure of that right now.”

Despite herself, she let her voice go sharp. “Why? Because we grew up differently from you and therefore can’t possibly know our own minds?”

His mouth opened, but it took a moment before he found a response. “You’re right,” he said quietly. “That’s unfair. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I know you want to protect him—us—from being hurt by this entirely new life we’ve fallen into. But I think you need to give us both more credit.” She paused, centering herself by reaching out to stroke a wide, velvety blade of grass. “And I also think that what you went through on the Finalizer has colored your outlook.”

Silence followed, as his gaze fell to his hands, fisted in his lap. No going back now, Rey told herself. “You feel it, don’t you?” she said softly. “Things don’t seem the same as they once did.”

Poe’s response was a harsh snort. “Nothing’s the same. Entire planets have been obliterated and a system of government is disintegrating.”

“That’s not what I mean, and I think you know it. Things are certainly different out here, but also inside. What he did to you—it was a brutal assault.”

At that, his head whipped up, and she felt the heat of his wild anger. “Don’t you dare pity me.”

“I don’t. I’m rather in awe of your strength. You withstood it for far longer than I.” Rey took a deep breath and released it slowly, purposefully. “I have nightmares about it sometimes. About being helpless against him.”

His knuckles were white now, tense with the echoes of unmentionable horror. “But you weren’t.”

“I didn’t know that at first. I fought him off, but that doesn’t erase the feeling of—violation. I don’t expect to ever forget that completely.” Taking a risk and feeling raw, she reached out to lay one hand atop his clenched fist. “What helps me, though, is connecting to the Force in better ways, opening myself to the wonders of possibility. Finding places where Darkness cannot live. I think I can share that with you, and I’m hoping that you’ll allow me to try.”

He didn’t pull away, at least. “What are you suggesting?”

“The Force doesn’t have to be…like what you saw. It can give instead of take. I can show you. I talked to Master Skywalker about it, and he thinks it’s a good idea.” She watched his Force presence seem to contract, a hunted expression lurking behind his carefully enforced calm. Every fiber of his being wanted to run, and yet he remained still. “But I know better than anyone that what we’d need to do would run the risk of—opening a wound, so to speak. So I won’t pressure you, but I do believe I can help things not feel so bleak.”

He watched her, bewildered and wary. “You want to go into my head…but nicely?”

“I understand if you can’t trust my ability to do that.”

“It’s not that, exactly. I want to believe that you can help. I’m not—I’m not so messed up that I can’t tell I’m messed up.” Poe drew in an unsteady breath, and she knew what it must be costing him to open himself even this much. “I don’t want this to be my reality for the foreseeable future. It’s just that you’re asking me to go back into the absolute most horrible thing I’ve ever experienced, the thing that made me like this.”

“Only something like it. Right away you’ll see that it’s not the same. You can ask Finn, because I connected with him earlier and it was…amazing. Even so, I’ll make sure you can end it at any time, for any reason.” She inched closer, tightening her hand around his. “There is so much good, so much strength and beauty in the galaxy,” she whispered urgently. “You know it’s there—you’ve seen it, far more than I—but right now you’re watching it through a veil. I can pull that back; I know I can. I give you my solemn vow that I will do whatever it takes to keep from hurting you further. All I ask—and I do understand how difficult it must be—is for you to trust me.”

He held her gaze, silently searching, and she poured every ounce of reassurance she could summon into the link between their hands.

A few long seconds passed before he spoke again.

“I can do that.”

It might have been the greatest single act of faith anyone had ever granted her. The stakes were not life and death, precisely, but that only meant that he’d had every chance to refuse, and he hadn’t.

“Thank you,” she said, though she hadn’t intended to make this about her at all. “That means a great deal to me.”

Another moment passed, as they fumbled for their next step. “Okay,” Poe said finally, steeling himself. “Any reason why we can’t just…go ahead? I’d rather not give myself too much time to imagine what it’ll be like.”

“No, I think this is a rather good place. Are you feeling well enough?”

“Yeah, but sitting on the ground was probably not one of my better decisions.” He drew his lip between his teeth, looking self-conscious. “Could you help me get back into the chair? It’s not that I expect to want to make a break for it or anything, but…”

“Of course.” The last thing she wanted was for him to feel trapped. She moved closer and locked her arms under his, supporting his weight as he got his feet under him. When he wavered, she instinctively caught him with a light brush of the Force. She felt him tense, but he didn’t flinch away.

“Thanks,” he said with a hint of a smile, pushing a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. “That’s a pretty good party trick.”

“It does have its benefits.” Rey knelt in front of him and reached out, waiting for him to make the choice. After only a moment, he grasped her hands.

******************

Instantly the riot of colors around them dimmed, and a dull murmuring sound became a constant presence in the back of her mind. Rey looked around, finding herself alone among the foliage, no longer half as vibrant as before. In her periphery, a bright flare startled her, then vanished, leaving behind only a wisp of smoke. The air felt thick, heavy, the voices never becoming distinct enough to comprehend.

She took a step forward, and then another. She knew this was Poe’s mind, but he wasn’t here. Or—? After a few steps, she found him, sitting on a fallen tree with his face downcast and his arms wrapped tightly around himself. In his own mind he was smaller, younger, more hesitant than she had ever believed him to be.

A snap sounded nearby, a spindly tree smoldering and withering. Poe lifted his head and fixed her with a silent, resigned gaze. So. Now you know.

She did, and yet she also knew just how warped this perception was. Deliberately, Rey knelt down and raked her hand through the soil. It was rich, not hardened or cracked, and she sensed what was necessary. Even as she reached out, one of the murmurs coalesced into the ugly, filtered voice of Kylo Ren, and she flinched—but only for a moment. Ren’s power here was little more than a ghost tale. She was here, not he.

Holding out one hand, she focused on the spark of purpose that still lived somewhere within this realm, until a tiny, shimmering seed appeared in her hand. With her fingers, she dug a small hole in the soil, placed the seed inside, and gently covered it.

Almost immediately a blue-green tendril sprang up, becoming a sapling before her eyes. With exquisite care, Rey brushed against each memory and impression she encountered and lit it with her own understanding. The heavy expectations he felt became tinged with pride and admiration; the ache of unending losses was framed by the remembered warmth of fraternal bonds well tended.

The tree grew, its luminous branches extending over their heads and its roots brightening the ground under their feet. Rey softened the murmurs and stepped closer to the now-sturdy trunk, where an ember had settled and threatened to set the tree alight. She pressed her hand over it to douse the searing pain of Dark assault. It cannot take this, she vowed. It cannot break you. You are so much more than your fears and regrets.

As if in response, a memory unfolded before her, the most precious of his thoughts. She heard the echoes of laughter, felt the all-encompassing comfort of an embrace as experienced by a young child. This, the reflected love of what must surely have been Poe’s mother and father, was powerful enough to nearly undo her.

When she lifted that emotion toward the tree, its leaves burst into glorious iridescence.

You are good. You are cherished. You are worthy. You are loved.

Poe rose and took an unconscious step toward the tree, a look of recognition and awe spreading across his features.

Now, Rey thought. Now you will believe.

She drew one of the indistinct voices out of the haze and called to its owner. Finn appeared under the canopy of branches, looking almost unnaturally perfect—but distant, regarding Poe with little more than politeness, even…pity? No, that was wrong. Rey reached out to touch a nearby leaf and brightened the area around the two of them, encouraging Poe’s viewpoint to shift. You need to see him as he is. As he sees you.

As the glow of the tree enveloped them, Force-Finn smiled, and it seemed to transform his entire bearing. He looked as though he could scarcely believe his good fortune at simply being near the other man. Rey weaved together all the admiration, concern, and yes, attraction she’d felt from the true Finn the day before and pushed it toward Poe—and watched the dawn break over his face.

You are cherished. You are worthy.

**************

Finn had just stepped off the boarding ramp of the shuttle when he was ambushed by a powerful rush of inexplicable emotion. No one was in danger, and yet he felt absolutely compelled to find Poe and Rey that instant.

“You’re due in debrief, aren’t you?” reminded the transport pilot, performing postflight checks.

“Stall for me,” Finn tossed over his shoulder, executing a right-face and heading straight down the base flightline, his thoughts consumed by an image of his dear friends standing under a brilliant tree.

**************

When Poe came back to himself with a shuddering start, Rey’s forehead was bent close to his, their arms grasping each other’s. He could feel the coolness of wind-dried tears on his cheeks, the faintest echo of a headache lingering behind his eyes. He felt utterly drained, and also better than he had in recent memory.

For a moment he forgot how to form words. Surprisingly, Rey seemed affected as well, staring up at him with wide, liquid eyes. After a moment, she offered a watery, hopeful smile.

“I didn’t break my promise, right?” she asked tentatively. “I didn’t cause you pain?”

Still searching for equilibrium, he settled for a shake of his head, tightening his grip on her forearms. Comprehending, she leaned into his embrace.

“I didn’t know it could be like that,” he breathed.

“Neither did I, exactly. But I’m glad to know now.”

The release of so many different strands of long-held tension left him a little shaky and unmoored. He laughed a little, and her expression grew bemused. “Are you all right?”

“I really am,” he assured her, shaking his head. “You know how some things look entirely different when you look at them from a different angle? I’m seeing the last few months of my life like that. I don’t—it doesn’t seem like nearly enough to just say thank you.”

“I didn’t change anything,” Rey said, a little uncomfortably. “I just wanted you to see what I see.”

“It’s the most incredible gift I’ve ever gotten,” Poe told her honestly, squeezing her hand with what little strength he could muster. “Somehow I’m going to repay you, even if it takes a lifetime.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“I’m being dramatic,” he agreed. “I do that kind of a lot. Doesn’t make it less true.”

She was blushing now, but the newfound gravity to her presence remained. “It meant a great deal to me as well,” she said quietly. “Through you, I could see what it means to have a family, and—in a way it gives me hope. Even if I don’t find the family I once had… I can have something like it, with people here. With Finn, and Luke, and you.”

Surprised and touched, Poe swallowed hard before responding. “It would be an honor.”

Another voice broke in from the direction of the hangars. “Poe? Are you out here?”

His aura in the Force must have given him away—or possibly it was just his face—because Rey’s gaze turned knowing. “This is the conversation you need to have,” she said gently. “I’ll make myself scarce, shall I?”

It was hard to tell whether the sudden jump in his pulse was due to Finn’s arrival or just a sign that he was overexerting himself.

…no, that was actually rather easy to tell. “Over here,” he called, impatient with how brittle his voice sounded.

Finn stepped into the clearing, and in a sense it was like seeing him anew. The sun lit him in brilliant gold, all his youthful vitality and zeal thrumming just under the surface. And he was moving toward Poe with such determination and compassion in his expressive eyes that Poe forgot where he was and stood up to meet him.

One step and reality reasserted itself, with dark spots swirling through Poe’s field of view. Before he could list too far toward an embarrassing collapse, Finn’s hands steadied him, one at his shoulder and the other at his waist. Poe blinked hard and raised his gaze to meet his friend’s. “Hi,” he said simply, still getting his bearings. “You’re back.”

“I am, Finn replied, ever tolerant. “And I’m supposed to be in a debrief, but something told me I needed to come find you two.”

Poe glanced toward Rey and found only empty space. Sneaky. “Well, we were both here a minute ago, but…”

“Yeah, I can’t say I’m surprised.” As if realizing then just how close they stood, Finn drew back slightly to study Poe. “You look better and worse at the same time. How is that possible?”

“I’m better. In more ways than one. I’m just really, really tired.” Before Poe could think through the mechanics of sitting down, Finn had already guided him back into the chair. “Thanks. Your trip went okay?”

“It did, yeah.” Finn smiled. “The troopers are all over the place in terms of motivations and future plans, but most of them want to help us, and it’s all but confirmed that our broadcast gave them the push they needed.”

Your broadcast, Poe almost said, but stopped himself. He didn’t have to diminish his own role in order to take pride in his friend. “Outstanding.” he said, returning the smile. “We’re really getting somewhere.”

Finn settled onto a knee beside the chair, still assessing Poe. “I’d like to stay out here and talk for a while, but if you need to get back—”

“I don’t.” Belatedly, Poe took stock of the muted ache under the wrap bracing his ribs and the growing throb at his temples, and reconsidered. “I mean, I might pass out in this stupid chair if we stay too long, but I want to talk too. About a lot of things. Mainly one sort of complicated thing.”

Finn propped his forearms on his bent knee. “I’m listening.”

And he really was. Just like always. Poe stared at him for a moment, thanking the Force for whatever planetary alignment had catapulted this man into his life. “Okay. Rey offered to, uh, look into my head a little. She thought it would help me, I don’t know, put things into better context, maybe.”

Finn’s eyes widened. “And you let her,” he realized. “That’s what’s different about you. Stars, Poe, that’s just about the bravest—well, okay, you do a lot of brave stuff, but wow. ”

“I almost said no,” Poe confessed. “But in the back of my mind, I knew something had to change, and—hell, maybe it’s like the troopers. Just needed somebody to show the way.”

“So it helped?”

“I can’t even explain how much. I feel like I’ve been underwater for ages and I’m finally coming up for air. And—I don’t think I’ve been fair to you, or Rey, really this whole time.” Finn opened his mouth, but Poe shook his head. “It wasn’t intentional, but I made some assumptions, and I kept more distance than I should have, and I’m sorry.”

Finn’s forehead creased. “I don’t really want to accept an apology for that, but I will if it helps close that distance. I don’t want there to be distance between us. In any sense.”

“Same here,” Poe said softly, feeling even less steady than before. “I held back because I felt like I didn’t deserve you, to be honest. I’m still not completely sure I do, but I think now you should get a say, and I’m done lying by omission.” He took as deep a breath as he could manage. “Finn, every moment that you’re a part of my life makes me a better and happier person, and there is nothing I want more in this galaxy than to kiss you right now.”

Finn’s handsome features took on an expression of pure wonder. He lifted a hand to Poe’s cheek, and Poe reveled in the faint brush of his thumb. “I was afraid you didn’t feel the same,” Finn breathed. “Rey asked me if I knew what love felt like. I showed her the best I could, but I don’t know if it’s the same for you as it is for me.”

Poe bit his lip and offered a smile. “Want to try to figure it out together?”

In response, Finn leaned in and captured his lips with the most tender, perfect kiss he could have imagined.

When they at last broke apart, Poe pressed his cheek to Finn’s, wanting to maintain contact as long as he could. “I don’t know if I can stay upright much longer,” he admitted. “But I can’t let you go now, after all this. Do you think we’d both fit in a medbay bed?”

“I think Doctor Kalonia would kick my ass if we tried.” Finn’s eyes were shining as he looked around the garden. “Do you think a short nap here would be enough to get you back to medbay while I go do the debrief that the General is probably waiting for?”

Possibly exhaustion was clouding his brain, because Poe was having trouble imagining how that would work. “What…on the ground?”

Finn shook his head. “I spent a while in one of these chairs, remember? I know their tricks.” He ran his fingers over the side of the chair until he found the control to recline the back. Poe choked back a startled yelp and let go of the long-held tension keeping him upright as he found himself rapidly becoming horizontal.

Smiling fondly down at him, Finn next released the latches on the armrest and lowered it out of the way. He eased onto the side of the seat and lay down on his side, carefully keeping himself as close to the edge as possible so as not to jostle either of them.

“You’ll fall off,” Poe protested, fighting the instinct to press up against him.

“I have excellent balance. Master Skywalker keeps telling me so by making me do progressively harder stuff. Besides, I’m not the one who needs to sleep.” Finn slid his arm under Poe’s neck, their noses nearly touching. “Let me do this for you,” he said softly. “And for me too.”

Poe pressed another kiss to his cheek and settled back, curling slightly into him. “This will be a lot easier soon.”

“I don’t care if it’s easy. I wouldn’t know how ‘easy’ works.”

“I’ll show you. I promise.” It didn’t make sense, exactly, and he didn’t give a damn.

“I know. Go to sleep.”

Anchored in Finn’s embrace and countless newfound faiths, Poe closed his eyes. And when the dream came as it always did, it was not of a fireswept plain and a dark whisper, but of a gentle smile under the glimmering branches of a tree.

*******************

Finn hadn’t intended to sleep. For one thing, he still had a debrief to attend at some point. For another, he was confident in his ability to stay balanced on the repulsor-chair-turned-bed, but only if he was awake enough to catch himself if he started to roll off the edge.

Waking an indeterminate time later with both arms firmly wrapped around Poe was therefore a surprise. The pilot’s features were still pale, still bruised, but at peace.

Disoriented, Finn tried to puzzle out how he’d gotten comfortable enough to fall asleep. After a moment, he realized that he’d somehow shifted over, and…

…was largely supported by thin air.

Only a fervent desire to avoid jostling Poe kept him from flailing in instant panic. He considered his situation and came to the only conclusion that made even a whisper of sense.

Still not sure if the Force worked this way, he nonetheless focused his thoughts on a clear statement. This feels ridiculous. But thank you.

In response, Finn imagined he heard a silvery chime of laughter in his mind. Deciding that the General could read the after-action report he’d written on the flight back if she really needed an immediate update, he tightened his embrace and laid his head back down next to Poe’s, closing his eyes again.