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“So,” Poe says, dropping down to sit criss-cross next to Finn in the tall grass, “what do you think of this one?”
“It’s pretty,” Finn allows, and it is: the pastel grasslands that were all he could see through the viewport on descent are even more beautiful up close. The grass is high enough to reach his face, sitting down, and wispy and light enough that the whole world looks a soft, blurry blend of dreamy pinks and purples until it meets the clear blue sky above them. Finn can’t see a single cloud, but the sunlight is gentle, not glaring, and he can feel the inescapable chill of space travel seeping out of him to be replaced with a bone-deep warmth.
“But?” Poe prompts when he falls silent again, and Finn’s still getting used to that, to the way he listens to Finn, not just his words but Finn himself, somehow always knows exactly what’s going on with him even when Finn’s mouth won’t cooperate with his brain and let the words out right. It makes his breath catch, a little, if he thinks about it too long.
“But it’s really… I don’t know,” Finn says. “Flat?” He winces.
Poe, thankfully, just laughs. They’re here just as a detour, a short stop in between a long spacetrip, to get some air that isn’t recycled and some solid ground beneath their feet—a concession Poe’s made for Finn, he knows, one that he always makes when he can, because Finn is a decent co-pilot but he gets antsy when he’s been in space for too long. Finn’s stopped protesting, because Poe will never concede that these stops are unnecessary, a waste of precious Resistance time, and because he likes seeing Poe like this, framed by a beautiful landscape, gentle breeze running through his hair, face upturned and radiant in the warm sunlight.
“I’ll remind you of that next time we have to scale some cliffs,” Poe tells him, and Finn groans just to hear more of his laughter, breaking into his own grin at the sound.
“As long as you’re there to distract me, I’m sure I’ll be fine,” Finn says, and delights in watching Poe—Poe Dameron, hotshot Resistance pilot and war hero—duck his head, bashful. That’s just Poe, though; he’s free with his kindness and warmth, and always so delighted when someone gives it back. Finn takes mercy on him and turns his head back to look at the horizon. “I bet the sunsets here are gorgeous.”
Poe hums his agreement. “Don’t know that we’ve got enough time to stay and find out,” he says, apologetic.
Finn takes one last deep breath of fresh air before standing. He turns to face Poe where he’s turned his attention to the tall grass. “There’ll be other sunsets,” he says, and it’s a question and a promise all in one.
“That’s true.” Poe turns to look at him, then gifts him a small smile. “Maybe we’ll come back and see this one, sometime, too.”
Finn reaches out a hand to help Poe up. His grip is warm and solid, the line of his body steady next to Finn’s when he stands. “I’ll put it on the list.”
Finn is so not a fan of ice planets. He could go the rest of his life without feeling the bite of wind chill across his face, cold and damp and shivering, ice freezing in his Force-damned eyelashes and be more than happy, he thinks. He’ll take a desert planet over an ice planet any day of the week.
“I don’t think I like this one,” he tells Poe, shouting to be heard over the howling wind.
Poe barks a laugh. “Me neither, buddy!” he shouts back. “It’ll be better once we set up camp!”
Finn highly doubts that, but trudges along behind him as well as he can. At least they’d had the sense to break out their high-vis gear before heading out on their search; he probably won’t lose sight of Poe, even if the wind picks up into a full-on blizzard.
This isn’t even a snowstorm; the entire planet is just like this. Why anyone had decided to build a Jedi temple here, Finn couldn’t say. He hopes whatever they find here is worth it. If there’s anything left to find, of course.
Right on cue, he makes out something looming out in the distance. He’s not certain, won’t be unless the wind slows down enough he can stop and consult a map, but the shape is certainly close enough to the direction they’re meant to be heading that he stops, tugging at the lead connecting him to Poe to get his attention.
“Found it?” Poe asks, and when Finn points in the direction of the formation, he grins. “Nice! I should’ve known you’d figure it out once we got close enough.”
Finn frowns, confused, but Poe’s already headed off towards the structure. He shrugs and follows, stepping carefully in the snow where Poe’s footsteps have already carved out a path.
As they get closer, the shape solidifies into what are clearly crumbling ruins. Poe leads them towards an area that’s mostly intact, walls high enough to grant them a reprieve from the blustery wind. Once they’re relatively safe, he pulls his goggles down and reaches to clap Finn on the shoulder.
“Alright, buddy,” he says, “got any ideas about where the artifact might be?”
Finn pulls his own gear down just so Poe can get a good look at his unimpressed face. “Why would I know anything?” he asks. “I’m pretty sure we got the same briefing.”
Poe just gives him a smile. “This used to be a Jedi temple, right?” he says. “You know more about the Force than I do.”
That’s… probably true. Finn read everything the General let him get his hands on when he was recovering from his injury, including what little survives of Master Skywalker’s treatises on the Force and Kenobi’s journals from Tatooine. And if he’d figured out that he was probably, maybe, at least a little bit Force-sensitive from those texts… well, Rey was already out looking for Skywalker.
“Well, nothing’s calling out to me,” Finn tells him. “Besides, I don’t think that’s how the Force works.”
Poe shrugs. “Worth a try,” he says, and Finn has to blink.
“Wait,” he starts, “did we come all the way out here on a hunch?”
“A little,” Poe tells him, and his grin has no right to be that charming when he’s admitting that he just made Finn trek across however many klicks in the snow and wind for essentially no reason. Poe must read some of that on his face, because he’s quick to add, “But if you’re not having any luck that way, we’ll just have to search the way we always do.”
“We don’t even know if I have the Force!” Finn says, incredulous, and Poe looks away.
“The General had some theories,” he says. “I don’t know what, exactly, but… she recommended you for this mission specifically.”
Oh. Finn didn’t know that. He’d thought he was tagging along on this mission as the base’s resident rookie and a defector besides, getting his feet wet and proving his trustworthiness before being assigned more important missions, but if General Organa sent him to retrieve an artifact from an old, crumbling Jedi temple because she thought he had the Force… well, that was. Something.
He huffs out a breath that’s more a barely-covered sigh of relief. He’s useful to the Resistance, he knows he’s useful and that they would have helped him even if he wasn’t, but he feels ten kilos lighter with the knowledge that he’s being sent out for his skills that don’t involve fighting, or killing. Eventually, there will be a time when they need every able fighter they have, but for now he doesn’t have to go back to doing the things that make him feel like he’s still FN-2187, going through the motions even when they hurt his soul.
“This should be a good spot for a break,” Poe tells him, totally casual like he hasn’t just blown Finn’s mind. “We should eat something before we move on.”
“Yeah, okay,” Finn mutters, still caught up in his thoughts. He shakes himself enough to help Poe set up their gear, but as soon as they’re safe to settle in he plops himself down, cross-legged, on the frozen ground.
“Easy,” Poe says, folding himself up next to Finn. “Water?”
Finn shakes his own thermos at Poe. “Still full up,” he confirms, and Poe nods as he takes his own drink. “I’m guessing you have the same rations I do,” he says, and Poe reaches back into his own pack, pulling out the same field ration bar that seems to be Galactic standard without looking. Finn sighs and unwraps his own bar, looking out across the ruins.
He hesitates, trying to figure out how to ask even one of the questions running through his mind at light speed. “Did… General Organa,” he starts. “Did she have any ideas? About what the artifact might be? Or how I could use the Force to find it?”
Poe snorts, amused. “From what I heard, it sounded like she thought you’d just… know, when you found it.”
Finn turns to look at him, wide-eyed. “That’s not helpful,” he says. “We don’t even know if it’s here!”
Poe shrugs. “Maybe if you think really hard about it? Maybe the Force can tell you if it is, or if someone else has been here.”
Finn vehemently resists the urge to bury his head in his hands. “Somehow,” he mutters, “I don’t think Master Skywalker killed Vader by thinking really hard about it.”
Poe gives him a mischievous grin. “I think the lightsaber probably helped,” he agrees. “You read his stuff, right?”
Finn nods. “And whatever things the General had left over from other Jedi.”
“So what did they have to say?” Poe asks, leaning in. There’s a spark of interest in his eyes, bright, and it’s enticing, but Finn really doesn’t want to sit here on this ice planet talking about Force philosophy. Especially not when he read most of it still under the influence of painkillers, most of his energy diverted to healing the lightsaber gash on his back.
He shrugs, awkward. “A lot of it went over my head,” he deflects. “I think they were trying to be as vague and obtuse as possible, sometimes.”
Poe shakes his head, laughing. “I believe that,” he says.
“So you know what I’m working with,” Finn tells him, dust-dry. “Real helpful stuff.”
“Still,” Poe says, taking a bite of his ration bar, “there must have been something.”
Finn pauses, thinking. Poe lets him take his time, gather his thoughts, turning his focus towards finishing his bar.
There was something in those texts; there were in fact a lot of somethings, scattered throughout the salvaged writings of Jedi and other Force users long-dead, but Finn hasn’t really sat down and taken the time to work through them. It’s still something he shies away from, the idea that he might be able to use the Force—he’s just Finn, a former Stormtrooper, just another face in the crowd, nothing special. So what, if intuition sometimes strikes him hard in the gut right before things go to shit, if he knows where a blaster bolt is going to land before it’s even fired, if he can feel the emotions of the people around him if he needs to. That’s all instinct, carefully and meticulously honed in the name of survival.
Except all of that and more are exactly the sorts of things he read about, in those texts written by people who had the Force.
“I think,” Finn says, something like acceptance, like conviction, rising in his chest. Poe makes an encouraging noise next to him, fingers still drawing patterns in the snow. “I think it’s like… an instinct. Like when you know something but you don’t know how you know it,” he tries to explain.
“Huh,” Poe says, considering. “You think that’s why all those texts are so vague?”
“Maybe,” Finn allows. He’s certainly having trouble trying to define what, exactly, he feels, and why those opaque texts seemed to resonate within his bones even as he recognized that they were almost impressive in using a lot of words to talk about seemingly nothing at all.
They ponder in silence, for a bit, sitting together comfortably as they think. Eventually, though, Poe moves to get up, clapping a hand against Finn’s shoulder. “Well,” he says, decisive, “don’t push yourself too hard. We should probably get a move on.”
Finn hums an agreement, moving to pack up their little camp even as part of his concentration stays on that little thread of something that he’s recognized as the common denominator in all those times he chalked up to intuition, before.
“Right or left?” Poe asks when they’ve stowed everything away.
Finn stops, and listens to that thread, and now that he’s paying attention he can feel something pulling at it. “Right,” he says, confident, and Poe blinks at him before gesturing for him to take the lead.
It’s not a perfect system, but it’s the first time Finn’s ever actively tried to channel that uncanny intuition, and he leads them on a meandering path through the snow, grateful that the planet’s day cycle is much, much longer than the galactic standard. They’ll have hours of daylight, yet.
Finally, he comes to a stop, feeling Poe come up next to him. Finn opens his eyes, realizes he’s not sure when, exactly, he closed them, and looks at…
An unassuming pile of snow in the stone ruins, identical to the landscape all around them. Beside him, Poe is bursting at the seams with his curiosity, but he stays quiet, content to let Finn figure things out.
“Well,” Finn says finally, when he’s certain he’s not getting any more feelings, “I hope you brought a shovel.”
Poe huffs a disbelieving laugh. “You… really?” he asks, but he’s already sorting through their supplies.
Finn reaches down to start brushing snow off the stone, the white dusting against his gloves. He circles around as Poe starts to dig, sifting through the snow he removes to make sure they haven’t missed anything, and has to stop when something in the rubble where Poe is digging glows bright lilac.
“Uh,” Poe says, pausing in his shoveling to look back at Finn. “You’re seeing that too, right?”
“Uh-huh,” Finn agrees, moving closer. He crouches down to examine the spot with his hands, and Poe makes an aborted little alarmed noise, leaning down next to him.
As he brushes snow and dirt away from the source of the glowing light, it brightens until eventually they can clearly see the little sphere, about ten centimeters in diameter, surrounded by some sort of force field. Or, Finn thinks ruefully, probably some sort of Force field.
“Hey there, little guy,” he murmurs, reaching down to it. Next to him, Poe radiates disbelief tinged with awe. There’s a brush against his mind, questioning and wary, suspicious, and Finn tries to project the same welcoming calm and warmth he used when he was on rotation with new recruits. The presence pauses, startled, before reaching out to him again, this time with a muted joy and quiet relief, and when Finn reaches further down his hand passes through the invisible barrier without issue.
He picks up the artifact, pristine and humming with energy even after who knew how many centuries lost in the snow, and when they straighten back up, Poe’s giving him this look that warms Finn to his core.
“Hey, Poe,” Finn says, cradling the still-glowing sphere between his gloves and grinning giddily, “I think I have the Force,” and something in him sings.
Finn doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to this, the communal joy and relief that come with celebrating victory, freedom fighters and civilians and members of the Resistance all intermingling in the aftermath of battles hard-won, their emotions building and reinforcing and swirling through the Force as the night wears on.
It’s almost overwhelming, every time, but by now Finn has enough of a grasp on his limits that he can figure out when he’s reaching them, remove himself from the heart of the party and settle in at the edges instead. The air outside is muggy and warm, humid but not oppressively so, and the light breeze that rustles through the rainforest is a cool touch against his skin.
Inside, Poe is in his element, bright and warm as he’s drawn into another group, trading compliments and making sure every person knows their contributions during the fighting are seen and valued. They go out on missions together less frequently, now, Poe flying more missions as Field Commander and Finn out on diplomatic missions, charming alliances into being in between studying and training in the Force, but Poe’s presence is still unmistakable in its familiarity, and Finn basks in it even from afar.
Eventually, though, Poe does as he’s wont to do, meets Finn’s eyes from across the room and sends him a thread of anticipation the way they’ve practiced. Finn grins back at him, message received, and goes back to people-watching.
“Finn, buddy, how are you?” Poe asks, coming up next to him, holding a drink in each of his hands. He passes one to Finn and leans against the railing, facing the jungle while Finn looks back inside.
“Good,” Finn says, leaning back against the railing to match Poe. “Better now the fighting’s done. I’ve never had to pull maneuvers like that in a jungle.”
“Mm,” Poe says, reaching down to pull a flower from the vine twining through the railing, “reminds me of home.” He twirls the flower in his free hand before gently knocking his elbow into Finn’s. “Here,” he says, handing him the white-and-orange bloom, “for you.” He’s still looking out into the jungle, but the smile on his face is easy, boyish. Finn takes the flower from him, twirls it gently in his fingers before nudging Poe’s shoulder with his own, guiding him to look at Finn.
“Think it’s more your color,” he says, reaching up to tuck the stem in Poe’s curls. Poe’s smile widens, sweet, and the faint misting rain that started falling at some point only highlights his pleased flush. He’s beautiful, Finn thinks, and he doesn’t forget it when they’re apart so much as he’s always startled by just how breathtaking Poe is whenever they’re together again. “It’s been a while,” Finn says, pulling back enough to look at where the rainfall is steadily picking up.
Poe hums an agreement, sipping his drink. “I think we’ve covered most of the known Galaxy, between us.”
“Probably,” Finn says, running a finger along the railing where it’s wet with rain. “See anything interesting, out there?” he asks.
Poe elbows him lightly. “Pretty sure that’s my line,” he says, mock offended, but his smile is contemplative. “Some planets I wouldn’t mind going back to,” he allows, casting a lingering look at Finn. “Maybe with better company, next time.”
The rain is cool on Finn’s face, as it’s picked up to almost a full downpour. He’s grateful; it soothes the heat of his blush, even though he knows Poe knows him well enough to read it on his face regardless. “I’ll let your squadron know what you really think of them,” he says, teasing, and Poe laughs.
“Even they couldn’t make a full-day trek across a desert fun,” he says. “I’ll take hot and rainy over hot and dry any time.”
“This isn’t so bad,” Finn agrees, tilting his head up to take in the way the canopy dissipates into the clouds, lines blurred together in the rain. It’s a steady drizzle, now, slow enough that the revelers have moved outside, the blessing of a gentle storm yet another cause for celebration.
“Another successful adventure,” Poe murmurs, looking at Finn with half a question in his eyes. His hand is outstretched just enough for Finn to take it, and he does, tangling their fingers together and letting Poe lead them out, together, into something new.