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She learns to dance under the branches of the Force Tree.
The day they arrive, Kes plays some old, jaunty tune on the radio. BB-8 hums merrily along as Finn taps out a beat on the old picnic table as he talks with Rose, when Poe offers her his hand.
He spins her around as she laughs, the dappled sunlight streaming through the branches creating a dizzying constellation behind her eyelids. She feels light, happy.
She feels free.
That day was the first time she had seen the Force Tree, felt its soil and roots beneath her feet, saw its limbs stretching for the sky.
But it was not the last.
She returns, often.
It tells her things, whispers its secrets to her, her hand resting on its rough bark, its shining, glowing, incandescent energy reaching back for her, its soft, blue-green glow enveloping her in its cocoon.
It tells her of the Force, the people who came long before her, the ones who will come long after.
It tells her of Yavin IV, the Sith and the Massassi, the Rebellion and its soldiers, those who gave everything just to give the Galaxy a chance.
(Shara Bey, it had whispered once, like something precious, something holy, but she senses that maybe it wasn’t its story to tell. That’s okay. She can wait for it.)
And wait she does, but not for long, Poe once more taking her hand and leading her to the Force Tree. This time he tells her about Shara Bey, soldier, hero, mother.
He tells her she was the best. He tells her that he loved her dearly, that she was his hero, always has been and always will be.
He tells her that Shara Bey had died much, much too young, leaving him lost and heartbroken in her wake.
Another time he tells her about his nightmares, the ones where he’s bound and tortured in Kylo Ren’s interrogation chamber, screaming screaming screaming, all the while hoping he wouldn’t give up the Resistance —
Knowing that, in the end, the endless hours of pain and torture didn’t matter, not when that gloved hand had stretched towards him, and nothing Poe could do would stop Kylo Ren from taking what he wanted.
He tells her his story, tells her of it all, the dreadnought, the mutiny, those friends and fellow beings that he couldn’t save, tells her of all those moments of pain and agony and terror —
She’s seen people fall, break for less.
She thinks she wouldn’t blame him if he was only a shadow of himself, no more than flesh and bone, his sweet soul snuffed out.
But no.
He smiles brightly, laughs easily, trusts freely. He’s warm and good and so incredibly kind that he practically glows with it, that same incandescent blue-green glow that surrounds the Force Tree. There’s a connection there, she knows, some unbreakable bond between the two, someway, somehow.
(Like before, the Tree simply whispers his name but won’t tell her its secrets.)
Poe may be warm and good and kind, but he’s also home and safety and family —
And, oh.
Love. Especially love.
Last time she had waited for the secret to be revealed, for the story to be told, but she thinks this time she’s the one with the answer.
In the months after the war ended, after they had returned to Yavin IV together, after she had learned to dance under the branches of the Force Tree —
She takes Poe’s hand and in the fading summer sunlight she leads him to the Force Tree, where she had felt her soul fly free despite everything, despite it all.
She brings him there and kisses him and she feels like dancing.