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Evening was descending on the base and the girls were headed to the meadows just over the hill to the southeast. This had become a regular escape from the stress and tedium of base living. After all, they were young, single girls living on a military base in a war. It wasn’t normal. They needed a place to bond and giggle and talk about boys and dream of the future in order to keep it together the rest of the week.
Rose and Rey were trailing behind Jessika, Faida, and Namir as they passed the meeting hall on the way to the edge of the base. Faida was telling a story about the time she unhooked Poe’s fuel injector from a training A-wing during pilot academy so that she could beat him in an exam.
“How did he find out it was you?” Namir asked.
“I told him,” Faida said flatly, kicking off peals of laughter. “I wasn’t ashamed.”
Rose wiped the water from her eyes and clutched her side, glancing at Rey, who was similarly occupied. But out of the corner of her eye she spotted a figure pacing between the meeting hall and the offices. She nudged Rey, who glanced in that direction too.
“Finn?” Rey mouthed silently, swallowing her giggles.
Rose nodded. She raised her voice to the rest of the group. “Go on without me. I’ll catch up with you guys later.”
The girls paused in their laughter to turn and say goodbye to Rose. She waved them off with a smile. Then Rose approached Finn. He had stopped his pacing and was watching her come closer.
“What are you doing?” she asked, stepping to join him between the buildings.
“Thinking,” he replied. “We’re going to start broadcasting counter propaganda tomorrow and I’m trying to nail down what I’m going to say.”
Rose stifled a smile. Finn looked like a nervous mess. In his hand was a crumpled up piece of paper. Rose pointed to it.
“Do you want to run it by me?”
“What, this?” he said, looking at the rumpled paper in his hand as if he had forgotten it was there. He went to lean against the building but awkwardly stumbled as his feet got tied up together. “Yeah, no – no, I don’t think we need to. It’s fine.”
Rose smiled. “I want to hear it.” When a faint blush spread across his dark cheeks, she added, “If the whole galaxy is about to hear it, don’t you think you should test it on someone like me first?”
Finn frowned, temporarily distracted. “Someone like you?”
“Yeah,” she said. “A friend.”
“Oh.”
“Someone who will tell you the truth and support you no matter what.”
“I see.”
Finn straightened and looked down at the paper he now gripped with both hands
“Okay,” he said, looking back up to meet Rose’s eyes. “Well, I was trying to remember how it felt to be a stormtrooper. You know? What are the real pains that they have?”
“Pains?” Rose said. “You mean like when they get shot?”
“Well yeah,” Finn replied, “But more than that. Like what are the issues that matter to them? What are the needs they have that aren’t being met?”
“Okay,” Rose said, smiling encouragingly. “I’m following.”
Finn nodded. His words picked up pace. “So I was thinking something like this:
“Are you tired of wearing armor that doesn’t fit and doesn’t protect your neck or shoulder joints?
“Are you tired of not knowing exactly who is getting chewed out by a superior until they get to the last number in your 6-digit identifier?”
Rose frowned.
“Are you tired of having every minute of your day planned for you, including when you use the restroom?
“Are you tired of living in space?”
Rose felt terror creeping over her. She stopped listening but kept a smile plastered to her face as Finn went on. What could she do? It’s not that his ideas were bad. In fact, some of them were quite clever. They were just … well, this wasn’t a creative writing assignment. This was war.
Suddenly Rose realized that there was silence, so she snapped her attention back. Finn was staring at her expectantly. Then his expression froze.
“You… you think they’re horrible ideas.” He turned from her and threw his hands over his head. “I knew it! I knew Leia was wrong for putting me in charge of this stuff, I have no idea what I’m doing!”
Rose stepped toward him and grabbed his rather muscular forearm, stilling him. “No, Finn, no, that’s not it!”
He paused and looked at her.
“I think they are wonderful ideas!”
He said nothing. He waited for more.
Rose silently cursed. This was the moment of truth. A moment she could not return from. She had two options. She could either tell him the truth like a good friend….
Or she could tell a few white lies like a wanna-be girlfriend.
It was no choice at all, really.
“Finn, d’setto,” she purred, using the endearment popular on her homeplanet, which translated roughly to my muffin. “They are great ideas.”
Now Rose silently cursed herself. She needed help, quickly. Someone had to tell Finn the truth; she couldn’t let him make a fool of himself. But it couldn’t be her. She ran over a list in her head of people who would tell him the truth…
“Poe,” Rose said, smiling up at Finn. “I think you need to show them to Poe. I think he would have some really helpful input.”
Finn gazed down at her skeptically. Then he shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I can show him,” he said.
Rose beamed. “Great, I think he’s over by the hangar working on his X-wing. You should go see him now!”
Finn didn’t move. He fixed his eyes on hers and the smile on her face wilted slowly. Alarm bells were ringing in her mind. She was suddenly very aware of how close they were standing, and his gaze was intense. He was either about to kiss her, or her cover was about to be blown.
Finn tilted his head. His eyes had an odd gleam in them. “I’ll go show him now…”
“Great.”
“… and you’ll go with me.”
“W-what?” she stuttered.
“Won’t you, Rose?” He grinned and ran the back of his knuckles lightly over the side of her face, brushing her hair away from the corner of her mouth.
“Of course,” Rose said.
“You’re such a good friend,” he replied. He spun about and shot off toward the hangar. Rose stared at his retreating back, quickly calculating if there was any way to get out of this. Thinking of nothing, she trotted after him.
“You know, I have to get back to the girls, they’ll be wondering where I am –"
“Nonsense, it will only take a second,” Finn replied over his shoulder.
Seconds later they were standing before Poe, the moonlight streaking through the trees next to his X-wing casting a dappled pattern of light and dark over the scene. He was hanging over the side of the cockpit, fiddling with a panel on the starboard side. When they approached, puffing with exertion, he hopped to the ground.
“Hey, what are you guys up to?”
Finn recited his ideas to Poe. Rose shifted her feet uncomfortably, wishing she could just disappear into the shadows. She winced as Poe’s expression transformed from cheerful to nauseous while listening to Finn.
“So anyways,” Finn said, gesturing toward Rose and then pulling her closer from where she had slunk to the edges of the conversational space. “Rose said she thought these ideas were great, but that I should ask you, Poe. She thought you’d have some good input.”
Poe fixed a rather serious, calculating gaze on Rose, who defiantly met his eyes despite the warmth rushing to her cheeks. He was silent for a moment. Then he raised his brows and laughed. “So you liked what he wrote, Rose?”
She nodded mutely.
Poe winked at her. “Interesting development,” he said, glancing back at Finn.
Finn was suddenly overcome with a fit of coughing.
Rose clenched her fists and glared at Poe. “Tell him what you think, Poe.”
The grin slid from Poe’s face. “Ah, yes. That I will, my dear.”
Poe strode over to Finn and took his arm, steering him away from Rose.
“We’ll see you later, Rose,” he said. Rose heaved a sigh of relief. She was glad to be kicked out of this conversation.
The fact that Poe at least was on to her game was uncomfortable, but she supposed worse things could have happened. At least she didn’t have to be the bad guy here. She should be thanking Poe, really.
She lingered behind for a moment, watching the men walk away in the cover of moonlight. It wasn’t a bad lot to have to watch the two most attractive men in the Resistance walk away and not even have to hide that she was watching. All in all, Rose’s mood was greatly improved.
The last thing she heard as they disappeared into the shadows across the base was Poe trying to steer Finn in another direction.
“Yeah, buddy, they’re not bad, but I’m not sure it’s really the right tone for the job. What if you did something a little more … autobiographical?”
Rose cackled and then ran to the meadow to tell the girls everything.