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Poe gingerly flexed the knuckles on both hands. They were red and chapped; it was probably the harsh soap he used to get the grease off after he’d been tinkering with his X-wing, and it’d been cold and dry on D’Qar, too. A chilly snap in the air that the heaters couldn’t quite compensate for. He thought idly about getting some kind of salve for his hands, and he wondered if everyone else on base felt like they were waiting for something to happen, or if it was just him.
There were patrols, even a few skirmishes and close calls, and, okay, one call so close that Poe had barely limped back to base in one piece, nearly as banged up as his ship. General Organa had told him she hoped he knew he was damned lucky, and when he’d protested that he was just doing his job, Leia had said, slowly, like he was being particularly dense, “Yes, and we need you around to keep doing it.” He hadn’t really felt chastened, and he figured she could probably tell, but he was stuck on the ground for a while anyway. There was a constant low hum of activity in the corridors and meeting rooms—strategy sessions, discussions, arguments. Anticipation crackled along his nerves like static electricity. “Poe. I feel . . . something’s coming, soon. And I think you feel it, too,” Leia had said, serious and kind. “I know you’re restless, but this is temporary. Why not use it as an opportunity to catch your breath?”
So when he felt like maybe he’d better get out of the mechanics’ way if he was going to stay in their good graces, he scrubbed his hands and shrugged on his jacket and headed off the tarmac and into the forest. He walked until his heart rate was up, until he could see his breath puff out and hang in the air a moment before it dissipated. There was a carpet of fallen pine needles on the forest floor, thick and spongy, and they muffled his footsteps; it was quiet, and then it wasn’t.
On the trunk of a tall old tree, a bird with a bright red head was drilling symmetrical little holes, one after the other. The sound echoed through the forest, a steady drumming, and to Poe, it sounded strong and insistent, a clarion call to action. He shoved his hands in his pockets and watched the bird at its work for a long time, willing the itch under his skin to go away.
It wasn’t until he was walking back in the blue twilight that he realized how late it had gotten, and his stomach told him it was mealtime. He headed straight for the mess and was glad to sit down next to Jess with a bowl of spiced root vegetable stew, which, after a few spoonfuls, started to warm him from the inside out. His knuckles hurt again, and it was deeper, down in the joints between the bones. Jess caught him stretching out his fingers and squeezing them into fists, and she fished a little jar of something out of one of her pockets and handed it to him and said, “Here, this is the good stuff.” He looked around at all the heads bent together in conversation or over their meals, and at Jess, loose and relaxed next to him, sitting too close and jostling him with her elbow every so often. Jess caught his gaze, and Poe watched her eyes widen before she yelped, “Don’t you do it, Dameron!” But she leaned into him when he hugged her and thumped his arm and said, fondly, he hoped, “You’re so weird.”
Back in his quarters, he kicked off his boots and threw his jacket over a chair and greeted BB-8, who seemed a little put out that Poe had gone off without him. The salve smelled green and resinous and reminded him of the forest, but it soothed and warmed as he rubbed it into his skin. It also reminded him, of all things, of his mother’s flight jacket, green leather that was soft and creased and that she always wore when she took him flying. His mother’s favorite color was green, or at least that’s what she always told Poe when he wound his little fingers around her sleeve. Green was lucky. It was the color of new growth, of things that were rooted in the earth and that grew strong and tall. Things to come home to. To Poe as a boy, though, it had always signified the opposite—the color of Shara’s flight jacket was the color of adventure.
Thinking about home made him miss it, and on a whim, he asked BB-8 to record a quick message for his father, something that would go out the next time the Resistance sent an encrypted blast. It was probably overdue; he wasn’t as good as he should be about keeping in touch, though he knew his father understood what it was like. He turned the little jar of salve over and over in his hands, and he finished the message by saying, “I’m counting all my lucky stars, and yours, too.” It’s what his mother used to say when she took him up in her ship, when the canopy of stars was spread out above them, stretching all around them, when he’d felt small and safe and sure.
Poe sighed and scrubbed his hands through his hair and patted BB-8’s dome. “Thanks, buddy.” He was drowsy now, and while he splashed water on his face and shed the rest of his clothes and crawled into bed, he did his best to describe the forest and the bird he’d seen to BB-8, who beeped curious queries. The bird had finally flown away, a sudden flash of black and white wing feathers and then gone, faster than Poe could track it. BB-8 whirred quietly, processing, and Poe drifted off, and he knew he’d dream of flying.