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There was a time, Finn thought, when he could have spent whole days like this on reconnaissance, camped on a hillside staking out an enemy base. Two years after the end of the war, though, he felt like he wasn't as tough as he once was. They were only mere hours into the second day of this stake out and he was already getting impatient. His partner's attitude wasn't helping, either.
"I'm tired," Poe complained, lowering his binoculars.
"You were the one who wanted to go to bed early and then kept wanting to have sex."
"That's what I meant by 'going to bed early', Finn."
"I’m not complaining, just saying you have choices."
"After the war," Poe said, "We are going on a weekend away to the pleasure gardens on Naboo, no, a whole week, and when we're done boning I can soak in the hot springs to help my poor muscles recover."
"After after the war," said Finn, with a fond smile.
Poe pressed a quick kiss to his lips and echoed, "After after the war."
Poe and Finn had first kissed in a heated moment in the aftermath of battle, clinging to each other in another overcrowded Resistance base that this time, at least, they wouldn't be forced to abandon. In many ways it was the easiest thing. They embraced like they often did after a sortie, with Finn searching out the most direct route to Poe's X-wing and Poe leaping out of the cockpit and going in search of Finn, and they hugged tightly with no regard for anything else going on around them. In many ways the kiss wasn't a shift at all, just an extension of what they always did. In other ways, it shook the ground under their feet.
"Are you going to say it?" Poe jad asked, when they were finally alone.
"Say what? I love you? Because I do."
Poe had to draw in a deep breath. "Woah. Yeah, buddy, I love you too."
"Good. Because I meant it, and I thought you knew that, and… yeah."
Poe had to kiss him again, so hard he almost forgot what he'd really been talking about.
"Okay, but what I actually thought you were going to say was 'Why didn't we do this earlier?'"
"Oh. I don't know. Lots of reasons. I wasn't sure I wanted to do this when I could lose you. But every time you go out I worry about it, and I guess I finally realised that I could lose you anyway and it would suck just as bad if I'd never, so I finally did."
Poe laughed. "I wanted you from the first time we flew that TIE fighter together, only at first I didn't want to push you, and then four years went by."
"Well, we both got here. That's what matters."
They didn't talk much after that, just lay in the grass outside the base until the sun went down and the stars came out. They were almost asleep when the final call went out to come inside before the base locked down.
"Hey," Poe said, stopping Finn as he tried to get up. "Just… one more moment?"
"You want to get locked out for the night?"
“No, just a moment.” Poe pulled him close and kissed him again, long and hard. "I know we might not make it through the war. But this isn't just having fun because we might die tomorrow. If we survive this, after the war, I want to settle down somewhere with you."
"I don't even know what that looks like," Finn said. "But it sounds great. Yeah, Poe. I want to do that, too."
Neither Poe nor Finn has seen the end of a war before, though. Poe had some vague idea from his parents of what it would look like; still keeping up your flying skills outside of combat but otherwise living quietly, getting comfortable, making a home and sometimes catching up with your old army friends.
What he hadn't realised before was that the end of a war wasn't as neat as declaring victory and going home, that there were always more things that needed to be done. Finn didn't even know how to imagine what a life without war would look like, since training for it was all he had ever known. Their fond musings about what they would do after the war quickly turned into 'after after the war', the certainty that one day there would come a mission that was the last one. One day.
"You would think that in two years we would have managed to stamp them out," Finn grumbled, back on the hillside.
"They tried to stamp us out and they didn’t. War makes you resilient."
"Ugh."
"Although they might not even be here," Poe added. He handed the binoculars to Finn, who trained them on the First Order base in the valley below. "We didn't see any signs of movement last night - the whole base could be abandoned for all we know."
The long drudgery of these missions had taught Finn that there were two things almost guaranteed to draw out your stake-out target: serving up a meal, and stating that there probably wasn't anyone there anyway. True to form, as Finn was watching, a door opened and he saw the gleaming white of stormtrooper helmets emerge.
"Look." He thrust the binoculars at Poe again.
"Bingo," Poe said, after only a second's glance. "Looks like they're running drills. Probably a standard barracks base, then."
"That's what they send me for, right?" Finn said, with a wry smile. The reason they got sent on so many of these missions was for occasions just like this, to find outposts of stormtroopers and see whether FN-2187 could persuade them to turn against their commanding officers.
But there was worried edge to Poe's voice as he kept watching. "Finn?"
"What's up?"
"I think we're gonna need a different approach for this one."
"What are you talking about?"
Poe lowered the binoculars again and looked at Finn carefully. "They're trainees, Finn. Cadets."
"So they're sloppy? That's even easier."
"No, Finn, they're… small. I think they're all kids."
Finn grabbed the viewer straight from Poe. hey were tiny; most didn't even fit into their armour properly. And worse, he recognised the drills. This wasn't a group of hold outs.
He was so overwhelmed with fury that it took him a moment to realise Poe was shaking his shoulder. "What?"
"Finn, are you okay? We don't have to go down there right away if you -"
"Yes, we do," Finn said, surprised by the cold in his voice. "Those are really basic training drills, Poe, they're level one, they're… they're new recruits. They're kidnapping new children to train, we haven't stopped this at all, they're taking more kids, they're…"
He trailed off and pushed up onto his feet, grabbed a blaster and started jogging down the slope.
"Finn, wait…"
"I can't," was all Finn said in reply. He didn't care whether Poe followed him. As long as the First Order was still recruiting, his war wasn't over.
In six years together, Poe had stopped thinking about where Finn came from. Not the facts, of course; it was impossible to forget how they met. But he'd forgotten what it meant about Finn beyond his bravery – that the First Order had changed him in ways that would never disappear, no matter how long he spent in Resistance bases or receiving New Republic honours or in Poe's loving arms.
It all came back too easily, though, when Poe saw Finn at work. While Poe took out the adult officers with a few choice blaster shots, Finn was gently but ruthlessly disarming children. He didn't stop to reason with them, or reassure them, as Poe would have, and he knew their every weakness, the ways the armour restricted the movement of their too-small bodies, and where their early training had taught them to aim.
The battle was brief, and apart from Poe's sniping of the officers, relatively bloodless. The twenty or so children had scattered, mostly to designated shelters at the edge of the parade ground. A few had tried to stand their ground and were quickly relieved of their weapons by Finn, who hurled them over the fence of the compound. A few tried to pursue him but he quickly outpaced them as he ran for the shelter the others had taken.
By this time Poe was done taking out the adult officers and was sprinting in Finn's wake, but wound up having to take shelter himself as one of the tiny cadets began firing from behind the lean-to in the corner of the grounds.
"Finn!" he yelled, seeing his boyfriend run straight towards the blaster fire. "Finn, come on, buddy, you're going to get shot!"
It was as if Finn didn't hear him, though. Poe was suddenly, horribly reminded of that awful day on Crait and watching Finn drive his skimmer straight into canon fire, as if his life was nothing compared to the need to fight. But he got lucky - or perhaps knew how to dodge every one of the kid's wavering shots - and moments later he'd disappeared behind their barricade. When the blaster fire stopped and Poe joined them, he found a huddled group of children - some crying, some confused - staring at Finn as he restrained the tallest of them, a girl about seven years old whose helmet had come off to reveal dark skin and completely shorn-off hair. She was writhing in his arms, doing her very best to bite him even with all her other weapons gone.
"Nice work," Poe said. It was not the only thing he wanted to say, but it didn't seem like a good time for 'you scared me, bud'.
"Thanks." Finn craned his neck back to easily avoid a headbutt from the child in his arms.
"Do you think there's anyone else inside?"
Finn turns to one of the other young troopers. "Soldier, report. Are there any other senior commanders inside?"
"Don't talk to them!" snappend the child in Finn's arms. "They're rebel scum. We have to resist and reestablish contact with the First Order."
"Stand down," Finn barked at her.
She looked mutinous, but Finn must have sounded enough like a commander that her training kicked in. When Finn put her down and ordered her to hold position, she stayed still - although she crossed her arms in a not-at-all-military way. Apart from the girl's shorn-off hair, she and Finn looked like mirror images of each other, wearing the same stubborn glare.
One of the other, smaller children stepped forward. He hesitated for a moment, then took off his helmet to reveal cropped red hair, pale white skin and freckles. He glared at the girl for a moment, then turned to Finn. "I'll report to you, sir."
"Not sir, just Finn," he said. "But go on, soldier. Report."
The kid looked confused, but undeterred. "All base staff present for morning parade, Finn. Senior command officers are…" he trailed off.
"Understood. Thank you."
Poe crouched down to the kid's level. "What's your name?"
"Uh, JX-4564."
We'll work on that, Poe thought to himself. "Well, thank you, JX-4564. Are all the cadets present in this group?"
"Yes, sir." He looked between Poe and Finn with some trepidation. "What happens now?"
"They're the enemy!" the girl burst out. "What do you think is going to happen? They'll either kill us or try to re-educate us when we should be…"
"That's enough," Finn said. He handed her helmet back and she jammed it back on her head forcefully.
"What's your name, soldier?" Poe asked her.
"My designation is JV-3350."
"Well, JV-3350, you're right that we're enemies of the First Order. But we're not here to kill anyone, or force you to work for us. We're not going to abandon you either. We're going to get you back to your families, make sure you have a safe place to live and that you don't have to fight any more."
"Boring," she muttered, but it was buried under a wave of shrieks from the other children. JX-4564 looked, unsteady, like he was going to cry. A few of the children really were crying now, taking their helmets off, some of them sitting down in the dirt. Others were jumping up and down. Two of them had walked up to Finn and were clinging to his legs.
"What do we do now?" Finn asked, patting helplessly at a child's head. Nothing prepared him for this.
Poe looked thoughtfully at the huddled mass of children, some crying, some glaring, and some watching them with hope.
"For starters, I think we're going to need a bigger ship."
The first night, they just focused on rounding all the children up and getting them out of the barracks. BB-8 led two of the kids back to loot the base for rations while Poe and Finn tried to usher the rest of them back to their camp where they could call for backup. It sounded easy enough - take the children to camp, feed them, and get Rey and Chewie to come and pick them up in the morning.
In reality, the night was absolute chaos. They did manage to get the kids all fed, at least, and all in one place, and they got their call for help out. The rest was madness. Half the children were silent with fear, and they couldn't figure out whether it was fear of getting in trouble with the First Order, or fear of being taken away. A second group had gone absolutely feral the realisation that they were free for the first time and were climbing trees, jumping on each other and chasing through the forest after BB-8, who sounded suspiciously like he was having a lot of fun.
JX-4564, the small, serious boy who had answered Finn's questions earlier, had decided his new loyalty was to Finn and tried to lead the other children to some sort of order. A girl who went by Flip initially tried to help him, but it was soon clear that she did so out of loyalty to JX rather than to grown up authority, as she became increasingly tempted to join in chasing after BB-8.
When Poe finally got BB-8 to at least come back to camp and stay put while the kids swarmed over him, it became clear that JV-3350 had seized on the wild faction as a way to get back at them. Before they could separate her from the others, though, JX had pounced on her in a full-blown fistfight and they had to pry the two of them off each other.
When the Millennium Falcon arrived in the morning, Poe and Finn had barely slept. The best thing they could say about the night was that they hadn't lost anyone.
"Well, that's a start," Rey said, cheerfully.
Poe rubbed his face. "I had plans! I was going to start talking to them, find out if any of them knew where they were from, so we could at least chart a first destination."
"Don't worry about it too much," Rey said to Poe. "We can figure out our next move once we put some distance between us and this planet. Let's get everyone on board."
"Right. Troopers! Finn shouted. "Board the Falcon and prepare for departure!"
The knot of scared children didn't move. The kids who were playing paused for a moment, and JX stepped forward to try to echo Finn's authority and usher them into the ship, but only Flip and one other child followed him.
JV-3350 marched up to Finn, saluted, then kicked him in the shins and ran away.
"Hmm." Rey hefted her quarterstaff. "Want me to round them up for you?"
"With a stick?" Poe stared blankly. "That seems like a bad idea. But I don't know what else to do."
"You're all idiots," Chewbacca grumbled. "Cubs are really not complicated."
"This is going to be a disaster," Poe muttered, as Chewie crouched down on the ground in front of two children. He then pulled a face that the three adult humans found frankly terrifying. But when one of the children laughed, Chewie slowly, gently reached out to pick her up, and then placed her on top of his head. Moments later he was swarmed by three more kids patting his fur, and then crouched down on all fours to let them climb on his back.
"Come on, cubs, time to go," he growled, when he finally stood up. None of them understood him, but he gently hoisted two youngsters in his arms, with another two clinging to his back, and most of the others happily followed him on board.
JV-3350, of course, remained an exception, but after Rey handed her the staff, offered to fight her and then beat her bare-handed, she sulkily let Rey lead her on board, and all of a sudden they were ready for take off.
"Maybe we should leave Rey and Chewie to it," Finn said.
Poe laughed. "They do have a way."
"No, I'm serious," Finn said. "Maybe they should take the kids. They seem to hit it off better than we did."
"Really? You don't think it would help to have you with them? You're just about the only person we're going to find who knows what they've been through."
"But I don't know kids."
"Neither do I. I'm as hopeless as you are."
"I don't know." Finn shook his head. "Is this the most good we could do, when I don't know how to take care of them? I don't even know what's normal. And there's so much else to do."
Poe knew. He'd already cancelled their next assignment, and he was avoiding looking at the mission postings from the General. It was easier not to think about the work that still needed to be done.
"We can learn. And we can help here. I think some of them are going to need you, even if you don't." Poe kissed his cheek. "Besides, we see things through to the end, right?"
"Right. Until after the war."
The plan was simple in concept - record everything the children could tell them about where they came from, use the Falcon's computer and the data libraries they had available to track down and verify their homes, and then go there to take them back. In practice, of course, it was chaos. Most of the children were seven years old or younger, and even the things they did remember were hard for them to communicate. Then they were charting their destinations as they confirmed each child's origins, which meant they were constantly criss-crossing the galaxy. And they were doing it all while trying to house, feed, and most crucially entertain nearly twenty small children. Chewbacca could only give so many piggyback rides before he lost his temper and started snarling.
The names were the first hurdle. Only a few could remember the names they were given as children. Most of them, like Flip, Two-Fours and Squish, preferred to keep their trooper nicknames. And JX, well, he had neither.
"I wanted a nickname, but nobody ever gave me one," he said, sulkily. "Am I that boring?"
"You are definitely not boring, pal." Poe ruffled his hair. "You can have a new name now. I gave Finn his name - he used to be FN-2187, but I didn't want to call him that, so… Finn."
"Really?" Jaxon stared at him, bright eyed. "Who gave you your name?"
"Well… my parents did. Like with Astarnn and Kleth." The children all had trouble remembering the names of the kids who were going back to using birth names, but the adults on the ship tried to be scrupulous about naming them correctly.
"Why?"
"Why did they give me a name?"
"Why did they name you Poe?"
"Oh, I think I was named after my great-uncle. I never met him, but his daughter, my aunt, had a farm on Yavin IV that we used to visit in the summer. I think I stayed there when I was very small and my parents were fighting in the war against the Empire."
"Did you work hard?"
"Did I… well later, yeah, but as a child I didn't work on the farm. Children don't work. Mostly they play."
JX kept asking questions in rapt fascination, and Poe kept up as best he could, recounting summers on the farm, riding nerfs and eating fresh snapberries, and then later stories about his parents and his school and climbing the big tree in their yard to watch the world from high up. At one point he looked up and noticed JV-3350 lurking by the door. She spent most of the time glaring at the wall, but Poe caught her looking at him curiously once. She looked away immediately, scowling, but she didn't leave.
"Do you have any good memories of your family from before you were a stormtrooper?" Poe asked, at last.
"No."
"What, nothing? There must be something good you remember."
"I mean, I don't remember anything before I was a stormtrooper. Maybe I didn't have parents."
"I'm sure you had a family. There must have been someone who brought you into the world and looked after you when you were a baby."
JX shrugged; he seemed more bored than upset.
"Well hey, buddy, if nobody ever gave you a name except JX, I can give you one."
That got a reaction. He leapt over and clutched Poe's arm, almost tipping him over. "Really? Like Finn?"
"Sure, it can be like Finn's if you want. I based his on the letters in his designation, so how about… Jax? Jaxon?"
"JAXON!" he yelled, and hugged Poe so hard they did roll over onto the floor. "My name is JAXON!"
When they'd stopped hugging and laughing, Poe realised that JV-3350 was still there, and glaring at them openly now.
"Hey," he said, trying to sound casual. "I could give you a name too, if you want."
She bristled in response. "I have a name, it's JV-3350, and I'm proud of it! It's the only name I'll ever want. I'm not a traitor like the rest of these scum."
Poe could have shrugged and let her go - it seemed to be the best way to deal with her. Unfortunately that wasn't really in Jaxon's nature, and he stood up to yell "You take that back!" Before Poe could do anything, they were on the ground and wrestling.
He stood up with a sigh. It had been a nice moment while it lasted.
Jaxon and JV-3350's fighting was the biggest problem they had to deal with on board. The others had occasional disagreements - even best friends like Flip and Jaxon fought sometimes, especially when crammed in close proximity - but they usually forgot about it and made up in a matter of minutes. The grudge between Jaxon and JV-3350 seemed to be a deeply held one, though - they always had an eye on each other whenever they were in the same room, and frequently erupted into shouts of 'traitor' and 'bully', followed by scuffles that the adults had to step in and break up.
Finn called a conference about it one evening after they'd gotten the children to sleep, but they didn't get very far.
"I just think we could confine them to separate rooms pretty easily, and then there wouldn't be any fighting," he said, as if this were a reasonable suggestion.
"Finn, no. You can't just keep kids locked up in solitary rooms until… when would you let them out?"
"When we find their homes."
"No. Absolutely not."
"Why, though?" Finn asked, puzzled. "It's not like I'm going to taze them, I'm not a monster."
Poe kissed his forehead. "Finn, I love you, but I don't think your childhood gives us any good leads on this one."
"Exactly," Rey agreed, briskly. "We should arm them and have them settle it in a final duel."
"No!" Poe threw his hands up. "We can't do that either!"
"What do you suggest, then?"
"I don't know," Poe put his head in his hands. "I just know they fight all the time and we have to make them get along somehow."
Chewbacca shook his head at them. "Don't any of you know about cubs? Didn't you fight with others when you were children?"
"If we fought we got punished." Finn said. "I guess these kids probably did too."
"Punished? Like time out, or combing your great-great-grandsire's pelt every day for a week?"
"I don't know what that is. I mean like, tazing or solitary confinement."
"Good grief," Chewie muttered. "What about the rest of you?"
Rey shrugged. "There weren't any other children. Just other scavengers and traders and drifters. Sometimes I had to beat them off with my staff though."
Chewie sighed and turned to Poe.
"I mean, yeah, of course I grew up with other kids and we fought sometimes, but I don't remember what it was like. I fought a war since then, and that was thirty years ago!"
"Is that a long time?" Chewbacca asked.
"Yes!"
"I never got the hang of human years." He shook his head. "They're cubs. They don't know what anything is and this is the second time they've been ripped away from their homes. You can't stop them doing stupid things. Just interrupt it when you catch them, and remember to be kind."
There is, of course, no night and day on a spaceship in transit. As seasoned space travellers, the adults on the Falcon just dealt with it. They slept when they really had to, or they arranged to sleep in shifts on longer journeys. They quickly found that children didn't know how to do that - especially children who had been told when to wake up, go to sleep, eat and scratch themselves for much of their short lives. So the Falcon had 'nights' now - Poe and Finn would feed everyone, then Rey would dim the lights and they would all get in their sleeping mats on the various bits of floor - except for Chewbacca staying up in the cockpit alone.
It was during one such sleep time that the whole ship was suddenly woken by loud shouts echoing down the corridor. Finn snapped awake as Rey flicked the lights on and he did a quick survey of the empty sleeping spaces. Before he really registered who was missing, Finn was scrambling down the hallway.
He found Flip lingering nervously at the door to one of the back control rooms. She called out a tentative warning as he opened the door, but he was already in. And predictably, what he found was Jaxon and JV-3350 on the floor, trying their best to pummel each other. He tried to pull them apart, but as soon as he picked one up, the other would throw another punch and he'd lose control of the whole situation again. It wasn't until Poe arrived that they finally managed to separate them, with Jaxon thrashing in Poe's arms and JV-3350 in Finn's.
"What the… what… what are you doing?" Poe demanded, in a concerted effort to keep from swearing. "You woke me up."
"Also, you shouldn't be fighting," Finn said, shooting Poe a look.
"Yeah, that."
"She was trying to rat us out!" Jaxon said, furiously. "She's sending messages to the First order!"
"I'm trying to get rescued," JV-3350 snapped. "If they happen to kill some rebel scum in the process…"
"We are rescued!"
"I never asked for this! I was going to get home, except your creepy friend told on me…"
"QUIET," Poe bellowed.
Finn glanced towards the door, where a crowd was gathering. "Rey, can you check the console? Did she get any messages sent out?"
After a long moment of tinkering, Rey said, "No, message was composed, not sent. But Finn, she was going to tell them our co-ordinates as well as our next two destinations."
Poe looked down at Jaxon. "How did you know? Nobody else woke up."
"Flip told me."
"But how did Flip know?"
None of them got to hear his answer, because that was when JV-3350 started struggling and said, "You were always a snitch!"
"I was a snitch?" Jaxon yelled back. "You were a… an officers pet!"
"They looked after us!"
"They were mean, and you helped them!"
"You told people to disobey and they got hurt!"
"Enough!" Poe yelled. He hoisted Jaxon over his shoulder and then handed him to Chewbacca. "Jaxon, we'll talk later. Next time there’s a problem, you tell us, don’t just go punching people. Chewie, Rey, can you get the other kids back to bed?"
They were left with JV-3350, still in Finn's arms. She'd stopped struggling but she was glaring murderously at them.
"So we need to talk," Finn said, grimly. "If I put you down will you stay put?"
"Fine."
She stood there, with her arms crossed, and the two of them watched her warily.
"You can't go telling the First Order where we are," Poe began.
"Yes I can. And I'm going to."
"No, you can't. Do you realise they'll kill us all?"
She shrugged.
Finn chewed his lip. "Listen, JV-3350, you know I was trained like you. I know what it was like. Why do you want to go back?"
"It's home. I want to."
"But things can be so much better. I know it seems safe, but the First Order will get you killed and they don’t even care."
"I want to go home. If you won't let me I have to get someone who will."
"No, you won't. You can't."
"Try to stop me," she hissed, and that's when she leapt for the blaster at Finn's hip.
Several things happened at once. Finn leapt back, but not fast enough. JV-3350 got a hold of the blaster and pointed it at him. Poe reached for his blaster but couldn't bring himself to point it at JV-3350. And then Finn, in a voice Poe had never heard before, said "JV-3350, stand down."
Her posture changed at once. She straightened up, her shoulders back, and lowered the blaster to her side. She was standing perfectly to attention, but her expression was still furious.
Finn's voice stayed firm as he said, "Place the blaster on the ground and step back two paces."
She obeyed, her body snapping back to attention.
Poe and Finn glanced at each other, and for the first time Poe saw how sick Finn looked.
"Well done, JV-3350," he said. "You have served well. However, you are forbidden to make any further contact with the First Order. That's an order. Return to your quarters for the remainder of the rest period."
JV-3350's demeanour was a disturbing mix of anger and puffing up with the praise. She left with a furious look at Poe and a blank salute to Finn, who saluted back. He waited until she had gone before he sat down on the floor.
"Hey. Are you okay?"
"I didn't think that would work."
"I didn't think she'd go as far as to pull a blaster on you."
Finn put his head in his hands. "I can't believe I did that to her."
"You did it to protect yourself. And everyone else on this ship, I should add."
"We're trying to free them from that life, though. What am I doing talking to her like I'm her captain? What am I doing?"
Poe just held him. "You're getting through to her the only way anyone can, I guess. She loves being a stormtrooper. You're the only one who knows how to treat her like one."
"This isn't any way to treat kids. I shouldn't be doing this."
"I know, buddy," Poe said, and stroked his hair. "I know. I just don't know anyone else who can."
Poe traced Flip's parents to a mining colony on Estavar. They were quiet on the holocall when Poe first spoke to them, but he could see the emotion and desperation on their faces the moment he mentioned their daughter.
It was funny how often your heart could break doing this, Poe thought, and yet you could still keep going. War had been hard in different ways, but it wasn't hard like hearing a girl's parents ask how much they had to pay to get their lost daughter back.
"You don't have to pay. We just want you back together."
"We can find the money. It will be hard but we can do it," Solnit said, while his husband nodded beside him.
"No, I mean, there's no charge. There's no… I would never charge you for that. You shouldn't have to pay to be with your daughter."
Xerxes had cried a little at that, and Solnit held him while he looked at Poe and said "You are a wonderful man."
They hadn't sold her, they said, it was important that Poe knew that. The First Order had just starved them of their food and income when they wouldn't give up their daughter, and even after the war they had struggled to feed her until the First Order came back a year ago and said unless they gave them Flip, all three of them would be starved to death.
"We're doing better now. We've fought them back," Solmit said, fiercely. "We don't have much but if we don't have to pay you then we can afford to feed her better, and… and…"
"You don't have to say any more," Poe assured him. "We'll be there in two days."
"Please don't tell her why we let her go."
"Of course not. That's between the three of you. All I'm going to tell her is that she's going home."
Poe left it to Rey to tell Flip the news. They'd learned early on that the way these kids reacted to news of their families was unpredictable at best; they were small and vulnerable and had been through hell, and even the healthiest five-year-olds don't know what to do with their emotions. Rey and Flip seemed to have a bond. He hadn't realised what it would mean for Rey - he watched her getting choked up as she explained, while Flip watched with passive stillness.
"Is she okay?"
"She's great." Rey said, afterwards.
"She didn't look like… anything."
"When you lose that much, you don't trust grown ups when they tell you something good is going to happen," she said, and Poe felt that familiar pang for Rey and Finn and all these children who had been cheated by the First Order out of the happiness they should have had.
"This is real. I spoke to them. She's really going home."
"I know. And she wants to. She just doesn't believe it yet."
"She will."
"Yes," Rey agreed. "When she can prove it."
If Flip seemed unmoved by the news that she would be home, then Jaxon was having enough feeling for both of them. The news that Flip was leaving set off the kind of fury he usually only had for the First Order. There was storming around and crying and then finally, heartbreakingly, begging Finn and Poe to let him go with Flip, too.
"What are we supposed to do?" Poe asked Chewbacca on the second night, when they'd finally gotten the distraught Jaxon to bed.
Chewie just shrugged.
"What, that's it? You're supposed to have all the answers about kids."
"What do you want from me? His best friend is leaving. He's sad. Let him be sad."
"But he's so…" Poe waved his hands. "So big about it!"
"Yes."
"Can't I tell him something to…"
"What? Make him quiet? Make him happy? The only thing that would make him happy is going with the girl, or time to get over it. You think you can send him off with the girl?"
Poe had thought about it. He'd thought about buzzing Flip's parents again and telling them that her best friend really wanted to come with her, that as far as they knew he was homeless now, and couldn't they take him too? But it wasn't so much the fact that Jaxon's parents must be out there somewhere that stopped him, as the way Solnit and Xerxes had looked when they talked about money, and the gratitude that they would have enough to feed just one child. He couldn't put them in a position to break Jaxon's heart too.
"What am I going to tell him?" Poe sighed.
"You tell him the truth, and he'll be sad."
"It won't last forever. He'll make new friends. He'll get over it."
"Yes, but he doens't know that," Chewie said, slowly, like he was talking to one of the younger children. "He's a cub."
When the day came for Flip's goodbye, Finn and Poe had to coax Jaxon out of the smuggling hold where he and Flip used to hide - or at least, where they used to think they were hiding.
"I don't care," Jaxon said, with the insistence of someone who cared incredibly deeply.
"Okay," Finn said, and went to walk away before Poe caught his sleeve.
"This is the last chance you'll have to say goodbye to Flip for a while. We can help you holocall her, you can still talk, but you won't see her again for a while. You don't want that chance?"
"I don't care," Jaxon repeated, and pulled the cover of the smuggling hold shut.
The next worst part of the day, after Jaxon's sulking, was Flip's face when they landed and told her that Jaxon wasn't coming to say goodbye.
"That's okay," she said, stoically. "I told him I love him and I'll miss him even though he kept hiding from me all week."
"Flip…" Poe said, helplessly.
"Come on," Rey said, with a hand on Flip's shoulder. "Let's go meet your parents."
When set off on foot to Flip’s home, Poe started to understand what Chewie and Rey had been trying to tell him. It was so clear that Flip was home, and that she didn't want to be too excited; the way she lit up when she saw a familiar landmark, started towards it, and then reined herself in, back to her usual reserve, the pose of the girl who wanted nothing and expected nothing. But it all fell away when they finally reached the clearing at the base of the cliff and saw Solnit and Xerxes in flesh; when Flip let out a raw, wordless noise and ripped her hand from Rey's as she ran towards her parents.
There was a sob from Rey, too, and Poe reached out a hand to her. She squeezed his hand for a moment, and then dropped it.
"I'll be okay," she said, with a smile. Then she took a deep breath. "I wanted this so much. Fifteen years waiting."
"Yeah," Poe agreed. He didn't understand Rey's life, or these kids, not the way they understood each other. But he could be there.
After Flip and her parents had had some time together, the rest of them stepped forwards to introduce themselves. There were hugs and tears and well wishes all around. Poe did see Rey kneel down and press something into Flip's hand, something he'd have to ask her about later, but there was no time to snoop now, not with the chaos of everyone talking at once.
They were just getting ready to leave when they heard a loud "Excuse me!" and turned to see Jaxon standing behind them, with his head held high.
Flip let out an exclamation, and smiled like they'd never seen her smile before. "Jaxon! Dads, this is my best friend, Jaxon. And these are my dads!"
"Hi," Jaxon said, stiffly.
"I'm glad you came," Flip said, and hugged him. "I wanted to say goodbye. I would have missed you."
"Me too." Jaxon took a deep breath. "I want to come with you."
Flip looked hopeful, and her parents stricken. It was okay, though. Poe was learning to be the bearer of bad news. He crouched down to Jaxon's level and put an arm around his shoulders. "I'm afraid you can't, buddy. Not right now. But you can call Flip whenever you can, and we're going to take good care of you. Okay?"
Jaxon nodded, and stepped forward to hold Flip in one last, long hug. Once he'd said goodbye, he kept his head high and his face solemn, and walked back towards the Falcon without even looking at Poe. Finn fell into step beside him, and after a moment, Jaxon reached up and took Finn's hand.
Poe and Rey followed at a distance, but they could still hear snatches of the conversation.
"It's not fair. I don't have a family and she does."
"Yeah, I know," Finn agreed. "It's not fair."
"Why can't I have someone else's family then? Don't I get one?"
"You do. Just not like that. I don't have a family either."
Jaxon looked at Finn like he was stupid. "Yes you do."
"What?"
"Poe and BB-8 and Rey and Chewie."
"Yeah, okay. I guess I do. But when I was little I was like you. I don't have parents, not that I can find."
"It sucks. Doesn't it suck?"
"Yes, it sucks," Finn agreed. "But it can still be okay one day. It means you get to pick… I mean, find your own family."
"Then why can't I pick Flip and Solit and Xerxes?"
Finn thought about it. "I guess sometimes you can't have the family you want. But you'll find people to be your family one day, and you'll know when you do. And everyone will be able to see. Like you can tell that Poe and BB-8 and Rey and Chewie are my family."
Poe couldn't help thinking of the first day they found these kids, when Finn held a crying child and looked helplessly at Poe asking what they were supposed to do. He learned so fast, and so well, and it was making Poe's heart hurt a little.
"You hear that?" Rey said, amused. "We're family."
"He's not wrong. We are." Poe sighed, and decided it was time to change the subject before he got any more emotional about it. "Hey, I saw you give something to Flip. What was that?"
Rey gave him a small smile, the mysterious one he was beginning to recognise as the 'annoying Jedi face' that Luke used to have.
"It's a clue."
"A clue?"
"A way to find me, later, if she wants to. When she's ready."
Poe looked at her, calculating. "She's… Jedi?"
"She has the Force. Whether she wants to be Jedi is up to her. She can find me if she wants to. Right now she needs her family."
Poe hesitated, then said, "I wanted to be a Jedi when I was a kid."
Rey cocked her head, curiously.
"I begged Uncle Luke to take me. Like he took Ben. He tried to train children, take people when they were children, to train them young. He said that's what the Jedi always did."
"The Jedi did a lot of good things, but they were wrong about a lot." She shrugged. "I grew up without parents. It made be strong. Doesn't mean it was good."
No, Poe thought. Rey was proof of that, and Finn, and all of these kids. Even if you weren't the First Order, if you weren't setting out to do evil, taking kids away from their families wasn't good.
"You're really good with kids, you know," Poe whispered to Finn, in bed that night.
Finn looked at him as though he'd grown another head.
"I saw you with Jaxon, before. You helped him a lot."
"I was just telling the truth," he said, and then paused. "Maybe that's all it is sometimes?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I think it's something you learn, and you're learning."
Finn stared up at the ceiling, like he hadn't considered it. "I think I like children."
Poe could see it, Finn with children of his own, peaceful and happy. He'd never thought of that before, but he could imagine it after today. "You could have kids."
Finn looked at him oddly. "Me? Not without you."
"No. Of course, buddy. Of course I'd be there."
Of course. Of course Poe would be with him. But try as he might, Poe couldn't see himself in that picture. When he tried to imagine it, he just saw the list of pending mission assignments from the General, all the work that still had to be done before the war was really over, and the shrinking list of people willing to do it as they burned out and dropped off to start living their lives.
Poe had been fantasising about life after the war ever since he met Finn, but right now, he couldn't even imagine himself living it.
"Pity we have to see this through, huh?" Finn said, ruefully. "After after the war, right?"
"Right," Poe said. He just couldn't quite bring himself to echo it back.
Jaxon's sombre mood hung around, casting an air of quiet over the ship, until Poe came back from a trip to the markets with an extra bag in tow - and a grumbling Chewbacca.
"This is a terrible idea," Chewie was saying. "It's going to be a mess. And when it is I'm holding you personally responsible for scrubbing out my lounge, Commander."
"No problem," Poe said, cheerfully. "Who wants to help me do some painting?"
Zapper, a very young cadet who they were taking home next, was the only child to immediately join him. Jaxon looked up from the corner where he was halfheartedly polishing a helmet, but he didn't move. Finn sat down too when Poe began pulling paints and brushes and huge pieces of paper out of the bag.
"What painting? Are we re-painting the Falcon?" Finn looked at the hallways. "It does need it, huh."
Chewbacca let out a warning bellow and Finn jumped as the Wookie shuffled out of the room, shaking his head. Zapper giggled softly as he went.
"We're painting pictures. Like, art," Poe said, firmly.
"We can do that?" Finn asked.
"Sure. You just take some paint and put it on the paper."
"I thought artists made art. Don't we have to learn anything?"
Poe smiled fondly at Finn. He was looking slightly worried while Zapper was already reaching for a tube of paint. "It takes lots of practice to make the best art, but this is just for fun. I thought the kids needed some fun."
"Right. So this is a thing normal kids do." Finn was examining all the art supplies carefully, as though he expected to be tested later.
"Yes. Generally speaking. Probably not all of them. Look, you just squirt out some paint onto the plate here, and then you take a brush and… oh. Yes, you could do that too…"
Zapper had grabbed a tube of green paint and squeezed it in the middle, leaving a huge blob of paint sitting on a piece of cardboard. Then he ran his fingers through it, smearing it across the paper in a huge streak. Then he looked up at Poe as if not sure he was doing it right.
"Yeah, that's fine, buddy." Poe smiled. "No wrong way to do it. You just have to do whatever you think will look good. If you want to, you can… oh, okay, sure."
Finn had followed Zapper's example by picking up two tubes of paint, squeezing them out and using his fingers to swirl them together. "Hey, this is fun."
Poe looked at the brush in his hand. He figured he may as well use it if nobody else was, but he had a feeling whatever he tried to paint was going to look even more amateurish than Finn and Zappers' finger paintings.
By the time JV-3350 found them, Finn and Zapper had covered several pieces of paper with paint, Poe had done a passable line painting of BB-8, and BB-8 was using his grabber to carefully paint thin, parallel blue lines on everything. Poe tensed up as JV-3350 approached the table, but he tried to put on a pleasant smile anyway.
"Hello. Would you like to join us?"
She looked at Finn's latest piece and scoffed. "No way. This is stupid. That's not art."
That was when Jaxon roused himself from his corner and crossed the few steps to meet her, puffing out his chest.
"Oh, and you could do better?"
"No, I just realise that art is a waste of time. Especially when you're not even good at it."
"I think all their paintings are great," Jaxon said, after a quick glance across the table.
"Oh, and what would you know?"
Poe was about to intervene when Jaxon reached for a tube of paint. Without warning, he squirted a handful of yellow on his hand and slapped it against JV-3350's chest.
They all looked at her in stunned silence as she stared at the yellow handprint on her chest. Then she grabbed a tube of purple and squeezed it over Jaxon's hair. It dribbled down his side and onto the floor as he dodged away, and got all over JV-3350's hands. That was when Zapper laughed, breaking the tension, and pressed his green-covered hands onto Jaxon's cheeks. Jaxon laughed and smeared paint on Zapper's face too, and then they both turned to JV-3350 with their hands outstretched.
Poe was standing by ready to break up a fight, but there was something like a gleam of joy in JV-3350's eyes as she held out her hands and smeared purple paint in both their hair. A few minutes later, all three of them were covered in paint and JV-3350 was laughing almost as hard as Zapper and Jaxon.
Chewbacca walked by the doorway and did a double take as he saw the three children on the floor, covered in paint, now joined by BB-8 tracking paint around them in a circle while chirping happily.
"I told you, Dameron," he growled.
Poe sat back, smirking. "I told you, too."
It was on Naboo that the team finally split again. They said goodbye to Stix at a lakeside so beautiful that Rey could barely wait until the reunion was over before she leapt in the water. JV-3350, surprisingly, followed soon after her. Once it was done, though, the only children left with them were the two for whom they had absolutely no leads on their parentage: JV-3350 and Jaxon. Without a clear next destination, Rey and Chewbacca said their goodbyes, with fond hugs for everyone (except JV-3350).
"So what do we do next?" Finn asked, with his mouth full of food, a habit that held over from Stormtrooper days when he had to get meals over with as quickly as possible. They'd decamped to a small market nearby after saying their goodbyes, and all four of them were enjoying the fried fish balls from one of the market vendors. Poe almost laughed at the way Finn, Jaxon and JV-3350 looked almost identical with their mouths completely stuffed.
"I don't think we'll be able to find a ship here, it's too small, but we can easily hitch a ride back to the capital - it's not too far away. There are enough New Republic supporters here that it shouldn't be too much trouble to get there."
Poe looked around the marketplace speculatively. "There has to be a trader here who's heading that way. We can probably get a ride in a few hours, find a ship and be out of here before midnight."
"Why do we have to go?" Jaxon grumbled. "Let's stay here."
To their surprise, JV-3350 backed him up. "Yeah, Let's stay. Jaxon and I want to go to the New Horizons park."
"Jaxon and I, huh?" Poe echoed, amused.
"Sometimes she has good ideas," Jaxon said, staring defiantly up at Poe. JV-3350 looked to the side as she said "He's a lousy soldier, but he's funny."
"How do you guys even know about New Horizons?"
"JV told me!" Jaxon piped up.
"JV-3350," she said, automatically.
“I want to ride the Meteor Fall, and the Gauntlet, and JV-3350 said the underwater ride was her favourite so we have to do that too, and I heard you can feed the birds and they sit on your shoulders!”
"How do you know about New Horizons?" Poe turned to her.
She scowled. "Just because I liked being a stormtrooper doesn't mean I've forgotten everything about the rest of my life like he has."
Jaxon kicked her under the table, and JV-3350 stuck her tongue out. Fortunately that was as far as their spat went today, and they both went back to looking imploringly at the adults.
Finn and Poe looked at each other.
"Well, I don't even know what New Horizons is," Finn said, at last. "Is it fun?"
"Yes!" they chorused, before JV-3350 said "How do you know, JX, you've never even been."
"You said it was fun," Jaxon replied.
They could see every thought on her face as she tried to find a way to turn that into an insult back to him, but she finally just sniffed and said "Yeah."
"I guess I don't see why we can't take an extra day," Poe admitted, and anything he was going to say afterwards was drowned out by all three of them cheering.
He waited until later in the day, when they were in the back seats of a freighter back to the capital and the excited chatter had died down, to sidle up to JV-3350.
"You never told us anything about your life before the First Order before."
"It wasn't important before."
"Going home isn't important?"
"I can't go home," she said. Before Poe could try to follow up any further, she stood up and walked away.
They spent the whole of the next day at the New Hprizons theme park, riding on rides and getting high on sugar until all four of them were happy and exhausted. That night they even splashed out and rented two hotel rooms nearby so that they could get some quiet Finn had severe doubts about leaving Jaxon and JV-3350 alone in the room together, but Poe convinced him.
"They've been great together today. I didn't expect it either, but they have. And they used to bunk together all the time."
"Yeah, but with a unit commander doling out punishment if they got in any trouble."
“They’ll listen to you if you give orders.”
“I hate giving orders. It’s so fucked up.” Finn shoved his face into a pillow. “I feel like I’m as bad as the First Order
"Finn. Finn, no." Poe patted his shoulders. "That's why you're doing great. You get through to JV -"
"JV-3350"
"- you get through to her in ways that I couldn't even begin to. Nobody else knows what these kids have been through like you do."
"I know, I know." Finn rolled over. “And I’m getting better. And they’re getting better. Maybe it’ll be fine.”
Poe pulled him close and Finn snuggled his face into the curve of his neck. They were both quiet for a while, just holding each other, feeling the warm, solid anchor of each others' bodies.
"I’m glad we’ve helped all these kids, but I have missed this," Poe said, at last. "I feel like we've barely had a chance to kiss since this mission started."
Finn tilted his head up for a long, deep kiss that left them both a little breathless.
"I guess we better make the most of it, then," he said, against Poe's lips. "Might be a while before we get another chance when we still haven't got a clue where these two are from."
"Yeah, about that. I thought, look, we'll keep searching with the resources we have on board, but I think we should set course for New Alderaan. That way we can get them settled somewhere more permanent before we move on to the next cleanup mission."
"Are you sure that's a good idea? Sending them off with someone else?"
"I think they need the stability. There are going to be people there who are better equipped to help find their parents. And we have a lot of requests for investigation piling up."
"Kriff, I've been so busy looking for parents that I haven't even looked at the pile."
"I know you have," Poe said, fondly.
"Isn't staying with us kind of stability for them, though?"
"We won't just leave them. We'll stay a while and make sure they get comfortable. But I want to get back to work."
"Yeah?" Finn searched his face. "I thought you were getting tired of work."
"I was. But this has been like a break from it, kind of."
"So you miss it?"
"No. But the sooner we get back to the work, the sooner we can get it done and stop doing it."
Finn was quiet for a long moment. Then he shifted to slide his hands under Poe's shirt.
"Come on," he whispered. "Bed to ourselves for a night. Let's make the most of it."
The first time Jaxon dragged Poe off to play while Poe was trying to research, he took it to be all in good fun. By the third time, he was getting frustrated.
"Look, buddy, we've got enough finger paintings to fill the ship now. You make any more and we won't have anywhere to dry them."
"But I want more!"
"Why don't you take BB-8? I'm sure he'd love to play with you."
BB-8 whistled his agreement, and his eagerness to roll in some paint so long as Poe and Jaxon cleaned him afterwards.
"Thanks," said Jaxon, stiffly. "But I want to play with you."
"Well, I'm working. I'm trying to find JV-3350's parents so we can get her home."
Jaxon was a lot of things - solemn, serious, loyal - and as emotional as you'd expect from a kid his age. They'd never seen the kind of darkness in his eyes as when he said "You should stop."
"I'm not going to stop, buddy," Poe said, gently. "I know you don't like her, but JV has as much right to a family as anyone else."
"It's JV-3350," he said, sullenly. "I'm not mad at her. You just don't understand."
Poe thought of his childhood fights with Ben Solo and had to suppress a laugh. "Okay."
"I mean it, you should stop."
Poe sighed and scratched the back of his neck. "Jaxon, is this because you don't remember your parents? Because we're going to find a home for you too, even if it's not with your old family."
Jaxon groaned. "I don't care about that," he said, and that was apparently as far as his attention span went because he wandered off in search of paint, taking BB-8 with him.
Poe just grinned at turned back to his work. Jaxon was just dealing with reality the best way he could, Poe decided. It was a perfectly normal way for a kid to handle what Jaxon had been through. As normal as he could get, anyway.
What did not seem like normal kid stuff was Jaxon and JV-3350 getting up at night and working together to hack into his files and delete all his records.
Finn snapped on the lights in the rec room to reveal both of them bent over the glowing screen, the only point of light in the dark.
"We're not doing anything," Jaxon said, quickly, but nobody was going to be fooled by that.
"Really," Poe said, his voice flat. "Because I heard you were deleting files."
"BB-8, you snitched," Jaxon said, betrayed. The droid just hung by Poe's heels and gave a loyal beep.
"You can't go around messing with our files," Poe said, sharply. "You've got to stop."
"Well you didn't listen!" JV-3350 burst out. "What were we supposed to do?"
"We're trying to help you."
"You're trying to get rid of us!" Jaxon shouted. "We heard you talking in the hotel! You just want to make us go away."
"Oh no, buddy, that's not true," Poe said. Finn nodded along as Poe knelt down in front of him. "We want to find good places for you to live, that's all. We like you, but this isn't a good place to grow up. We're just trying to find the best place for you both. So can you promise me to stop interfering?
Jaxon was clearly torn, but that was okay. Poe knew he was loyal, and that now Poe had asked, Jaxon was going to be good when it came down to it. But JV-3350 looked over at Jaxon's wavering face and scowled in disgust.
"It doesn't matter what he does. If you don't stop looking for my family I'm just gonna keep deleting everything you find."
Poe gave Finn and meaningful look, and Finn nodded, trying not to show any of the resignation he felt. He hated this, but it was the only way they'd found to stop JV-3350 from constantly upending their lives and trying to turn them in. He sighed, and said "JV-3350, I order you to cease interfering with our records.”
He could see the familiar shift in how she held herself as she prepared to report, and he hate himself for inducing it. But this time she stopped herself. She stooped over, hugging her arms to her body, and said "No."
"Look, JV, I know you'd rather be with the First Order but we can't…"
"It's JV-3350!" She yelled, her hands balled into fists. "You don't even care."
"Of course I care, I…"
"No you don't. I didn't want to leave, you took me away from my home and now you're trying to get rid of me!"
"We're not."
"You are," she said, darkly. "You're as bad as the First Order."
And with that parting shot, she stormed back to bed, leaving a shellshocked Finn in her wake.
Poe settled Jaxon back to bed, and when he was done, he found Finn still in the rec room, scrolling listlessly through the information they had left.
"They got rid of a lot," he said, dully. "They really don't want us to find out where she's from."
"Nah, they're kids. They probably just deleted everything on sight."
Finn didn't say anything.
"Buddy, I know it seems bad, but we've had fights with her before. It'll be okay."
It was easy for Poe to say, though. He didn't know what it took to instil the stormtrooper's internal discipline, the snapping to attention that JV-3350 did every time Finn used a command. Poe didn't understand how much it took to break that conditioning, especially from someone who was loyal, who liked it.
"I always said I shouldn't be looking after kids, Poe. I don't know how. And I really screwed it up tonight."
"You didn't. I'm sure it'll be okay."
Finn shook his head. There was no point arguing about it. But he was pretty sure things were not going to be okay.
"Hey, there's one bright side," Poe said. "At least she thinks the First Order is bad now."
It shouldn't have been a comfort. It wasn't, exactly. But something about it made Finn laugh, and he couldn't stop, and then Poe was laughing, too, and they were holding each other in a pile on the sofa, giggling their hearts out.
Finn's laughter was all forgotten the next morning. JV-3350 barricaded herself in her room and only emerged to conspicuously steal things from the pantry. Jaxon was subdued, not talking to either of them, only occasionally talking to BB-8. And they had nowhere to go - they had been headed to Coruscant to try to access further records for their search, but given how much the kids hated them searching, Poe and Finn had quietly agreed to put that plan on hold. The problem was, this gave them nothing to do except stew there in the grim atmosphere they'd created, the four of them trapped in there together.
"We have to find someone else to look after them," Finn said. "Someone who knows what they're doing, who knows how to care for them, who knows… kriff, Poe, how to not hurt them. I know you thought I could do this but I'm too messed up, the way I grew up, and I'm just going to pass it on to them."
They'd had versions of this conversation nearly every week since they'd freed the whole cadet troupe, and Poe knew his part. He was supposed to tell Finn that no, he was doing great, and nobody else understood what they'd been through like Finn did. But this wasn't just Finn, it wasn't just giving JV-3350 orders that she didn't want to follow. It was the whole way they'd just decided to take them to New Alderaan, and the fact that that scared them. They'd obviously screwed this up. Even Poe wasn't as good at this as he thought he was. He was a soldier. The whole time he'd had his mind on getting back to the fight. He couldn't take the kids there with him, and he wasn't thinking about what was best for them even when he thought he was.
"Yeah. So. We need to find somewhere good to take them, someone who can look after them properly. I just don't know who." Poe rubbed his chin. "Maybe my dad could take them? He raised me okay, and Jaxon likes hearing about Yavin, at least."
"Both of them, though? Or do we split them up? And then what do we do with JV-3350?"
"Republic cadets? I don't know, what would have helped you, when you were their age?"
Finn was quiet for a long time, tapping his fingers. "I don't think this will fix things, but I think I know the right thing to do next."
He might have preferred to do this alone with JV-3350 instead of in front of Poe and Jaxon. Finn was nervous about being alone with her right now, though, with how much she seemed to hate him, and maybe it was important for Jaxon to see, too. So they called them into the rec space on the ship and all sat around the table, the kids looking wary and grumpy.
Finn cleared his throat. "JV-3350, I would like to apologise. I am sorry."
For once, she was at a loss. The girl who had always had a retort about traitors and liars stared at him with blank surprise, her mouth hanging open. It was the first time Finn had seen her without even a hint of a scowl. She tried to start talking and trailed off twice before she managed to squeak out, "What?"
"I'm sorry for pursuing a course of action for you that went against your wishes, and I'm especially sorry for ordering you to comply. That was wrong."
"Officers don't apologise to cadets," she said, weakly.
"I'm not really an officer. Wait, no, that's not the point." He shook his head slightly. "This isn't the First Order, and we try to be better. We apologise to anyone when we've done the wrong thing and we want to make things right. Including cadets."
Poe cleared his throat. "I know it seems like adults know everything, but Finn and I really don't know much about what it's like being a kid. And I know nothing about what it's like being a stormtrooper cadet. I really don't understand what it's like for you guys. So I'm sorry too, to both of you."
Jaxon was puzzled. "Why me?"
"Because we never asked you what you wanted. Everyone else was happy to go to their homes so we just kept looking for yours. I just assumed that if we found your families you'd be happy."
A little of JV-3350's old self was coming back now. "That's stupid."
"I know. It's just how my childhood was."
"And how I wish mine was," Finn added.
"Well, some people's families suck," JV-3350 looked at Finn. "Maybe your parents sucked too. Maybe the First Order did you a favour."
Finn had so many retorts to that, but he took a deep breath and pushed them down. "Maybe. I don't know. I'm like Jaxon, I don't remember. But that's not the point." He leaned forwards, elbows on his knees. "Now, we still think it's best if we find somewhere more stable for you to stay, somewhere planetside. There are a couple of options - we can talk to some of our friends, or Poe's dad, and see if you can live with them. Or we can go to one of the New Republic planets and ask them to find a place for you to stay." He could see them both tensing up, and tried to look more friendly. "Okay, but here's what we should have done in the first place. We want to ask what you want to do. So we'll figure out what the options are a bit more, and we'll tell you all about them, and you can take as long as you need to decide -"
Jaxon interrupted him. "We want to live with you."
Poe smiled. "Buddy, we just said, Finn and I travel all over the place and some of what we do is really dangerous. It's not the best place for you to be."
"But I'm like Finn, I don't remember my family, and he says that means you get to find your own family and we want you."
"But…"
"We can all stay with your dad, right?" Jaxon said, his voice more urgent now. "He's nice. You don't have to keep travelling."
Poe was speechless. Finn glanced at him, and then back at Jaxon. "We did just say we don't know how to look after kids. We're not very good at this."
"We want you," Jaxon said, crossing his arms, and that seemed to be the final word on the subject.
Poe was quiet, now. Finn chanced a look on his face - stony, impassive, and then looked away. Later. They'd talk about it later. For now, he turned to the equally quiet JV-3350 and said, "We?"
She was clearly wrestling with herself; it looked like it was a struggle to even meet Finn's eyes. But finally, she glared at him and said "Yeah. I want to live with you too," as if she was daring him to laugh at her.
They needed to talk about this. They really did. This was their future. But hadn't they been talking about their future for a long, long time? Hadn't they just been putting it off?
He meant to wait. But that admission from JV-3350, when ten minutes ago he thought she was going to hate him forever, was just too much for Finn. So he looked her in the eyes, and smiled, and said, "Okay."
He kept his eyes locked with JV-3350's even as Jaxon whooped and threw himself in Finn's lap, hugging him tight. She didn't give much away, but there was something in her eyes that he hadn't seen before. Slowly, she stood up and stepped across the space to them, and gingerly put her arms around Finn, too. He was holding his breath as he felt her let out a sigh and relax her head against his shoulder.
That was when Finn finally met Poe's eyes, over the top of JV-3350's head. They should have talked about this first. It was their future, after all. But Finn knew it was right, and from the look in Poe's eyes, he knew Poe did, too.
The air was crisp and fresh when they stepped out of their ship and looked up at the New Republic military admin headquarters. It wasn't impressive; they had taken over a small, squat government building in New Alderaan's capital, and they were overcrowded before they started work. Boxes were piled up outside the door and could be seen stacked against many of the windows, too. But for all the mess, it was still beautiful, built with the care of all Alderaanian buildings and framed by the enormously tall, thin trees of the diaspora's new home. Poe had reported here plenty of times before. He'd never noticed the beauty before.
He'd also never felt this nervous. He had to pause, looking up at the building's facade, and wiped his palms on his pants.
"Why are we here?" JV-3350 asked, breaking his trance.
Finn squeezed her hand. "Poe's going to meet the General."
"Who's the General?"
"General Organa. Poe's boss, I guess. She was the leader of the Resistance and now she's working with the New Republic army to fix things up after the war."
"I hate her," said JV-3350, immediately.
"I love her," Jaxon snapped back.
"Neither of you have ever even met her!" Finn said, exasperated.
"It's okay," Poe said, with a smile. "You can think whatever you want. The important thing is that we're going home after this."
They all walked into the building together, and Poe was immediately beset by people sticking their heads out of offices and saying hello, shaking hands, wanting to meet the kids. Jaxon was curious, and JV-3350 was now entering her usual mode when meeting new people - struggling between resentment and delight. Finn was holding hands, introducing children, explaining things. He'd already sent in his resignation weeks ago, and more than anything, he seemed at peace.
Poe had seen Finn in so many ways: brave and angry and determined and scared. Exhilerated. Exhausted. Flushed. Moved. Always, always beloved. But he'd never seen Finn at peace the way he had been the last few weeks.
That, more than anything, told Poe they were doing the right thing. It didn't make him any less scared.
General Organa was waiting for them outside her office. Arms crossed, a wry smile on her face.
"Commander Dameron. It's good to see you." He gave a stiff nod, and she clucked her tongue and hugged him.
"And Finn," she said warmly, and embraced him too. "You look wonderful."
He did, Poe thought. He looked radiant.
"And these are the two children I've heard so much about," she said, looking down at them.
"You're the General," Jaxon said, with awe.
"I am." She bent down as much as she could to face him. "You can call me Leia, though."
Jaxon giggled and hugged her. JV-3350, meanwhile, was watching with her arms crossed and her fingers tapping restlessly, a pose that Poe and Finn had come to recognise as one of confused, barely-contained emotion.
"You're really short," she blurted out.
"I am," Leia agreed, cheerfully. She stood up, and wasn't much taller than JV-3350 herself. "But it's fun when people have to bend down to look at you as you boss them around."
JV-3350 let out a small noise of surprise and bounced on her feet. "I guess that sounds cool," she muttered, looking at the floor.
"It's very cool," Leia said, solemnly. "May I shake your hand?"
JV-3350 looked at her warily, and finally extended her hand. "I'm JV-3350 and I'm not a stormtrooper any more and I still don't like the Republic or the Rebellion, so don't shake if you don't like it."
Leia took her hand immediately, and JV-3350's eyes widened in surprise. "It's good to meet you, JV-3350. I'm glad you're here. People like you are very important. Do you know why?"
"Uh," JV-3350 replied.
"We need people like you to look at when the Republic are doing things wrong, and tell us, so we can try to stop making mistakes, and we can be better."
"Oh," JV-3350 said, softly, her eyes shining. She dropped her hand and visibly struggled with herself for a moment. "I guess that could be kinda cool."
Leia nodded, gravely. "I have to talk to Poe now, but you two can go and play with Finn in the gardens and he'll join you very soon, okay?"
She gave Finn a wink before she turned to Poe and beckoned him into her office.
"This feels anticlimatic," Poe said, looking at the paper in front of him. "Feels like all the service I've done should add up to a more grand ending than this."
"Your old squadmates did want to have a huge, drunken goodbye party for you. You're the one who said no."
"I know. I just meant… I don't know." He stared at the form. "I never pictured it ending like this."
"What did you picture? Dying in a blaze of glory?"
"I thought I'd stop when, you know. It was all done. When we'd completely scrubbed the First Order out and there wasn't any more work to do."
He was trying not to look around the office at all the evidence of work left to do. It was immaculate, no clutter in sight, but even in peacetime, the General's office looked like a war room. The walls were covered in maps charting known First Order locations, there were multiple blasters on the wall that were not for decoration, and he could see that the top document on her out tray was a condolence letter, informing some family or friend or lover of a soldier's death.
"It doesn't seem right to leave you with all this," he said, at last. "It's still not over yet. There's still fighting. It doesn't seem fair to me to just… go."
The General leaned back in her chair with a sad smile. "Poe, if there's one thing you still have to learn from me, I hope it's this: the war is only going to end for you when you leave it. There's always going to be more work to do. You have to choose when to stop."
"You didn't."
"I didn't," she agreed. "I'm not going to say I regret it. I've never regretted fighting for the right thing. But if I had stopped earlier, this war could have been very different. I might still have a husband and a son."
He could feel her gaze boring into him.
"I don't have a husband," he said, weakly.
"What are you waiting for? The end of the war?"
"And I don't have a child."
"No, you have two." Leia held up a hand when he protested. "So they don't call you dad, and maybe they never will. But you know that's who they are to you."
"Do I? I'm not so sure. Half the time JV-3350 still hates me."
"No, she wants you to think that she hates you. You do know it, Poe," she said, softly. "Otherwise you wouldn't be here."
"I guess I don't know what I'm supposed to do when I walk out of here," he admitted.
"First you go and play with your boyfriend and your kids. Then you go out and have a nice meal and take them home to bed. Then you can start planning how to marry that man, if you're so inclined," she said, dryly. "And then tomorrow morning you get up and figure out what else you love, and take your family along with you."
He let out a deep breath. "My family."
"Yes."
Poe grudgingly picked up the stylus. "I guess I've wasted enough of your time putting this off."
"It's never a waste." She covered his hand with her own. "My door is always open to you."
"Yeah," Poe said. "Okay. Yeah."
It was a small thing, to sign his name and place his Army ID on top. It was a small thing, and it was everything.
"Thank you, Poe," Leia said, as they both stood up. He offered a hand to shake, and she walked right past it and hugged him. "Don't be a stranger, but don't linger too much, either. You get a life after the war. Enjoy it."
It didn't feel like he was leaving, not with the familiar signs of Army administration, an the familiar faces in the corridor. It didn't feel momentous, at least not until he reached the front door and stepped out into the sunlight to see Jaxon and JV-3350 running across the grass outside, tackling Finn to the ground and climbing on top of him. Finn looked up as Poe approached them, with a smile of pure, absolute joy.
It was terrifying to Poe - life without the military, life devoted to looking after two children who didn't know what normal life was. But Poe had done a lot of terrifying things. He flopped on top of the pile of bodies and the children shrieked with even more laughter, and he thought, with all the certainty of an experienced adrenaline junkie, that fuck it, this did look like fun.