Chapter Text
It started off innocently enough.
“Isn’t that the girl from Starkiller?” Pava asked, craning her neck so she could see over Poe’s shoulder.
He turned to see where she was looking. “Looks like it,” he answered hesitantly, not out of any confusion as to her identity—the gleaming hilt of the lightsaber on her hip was easy enough to pick out, even at a distance—but more out of curiosity as to what she was doing. The girl was on her hands and knees, face inches from the ground. If Poe had to put actual words to it, he’d say it looked like she was doing nothing more than conducting a staring match with the grass beside the auxiliary runway.
“You…think she’s all right?” Pava asked, voice dubious. She raised one eyebrow when Poe looked back at her and tapped the side of her head.
Poe spread his hands. “As far as I know.” They regarded the girl together for a long moment. She didn’t appear to move.
Jessika cleared her throat meaningfully. “Don’t you think we should, I dunno, check if she’s still breathing?” she asked when Poe glanced at her.
“And by we, you mean me,” Poe guessed when she made no move to follow through on her question.
Pava shrugged. “You’re the one who knows her.”
Poe snorted. “I think we’ve spoken a grand total of ten words to each other.”
Pava frowned at him. “I thought you said she checks in on that friend of yours.”
“Well, yeah, but we don’t talk,” Poe tried to explain. “I say hello; she looks up, maybe says hello back, then the next thing I know, she’s gone.” He shook his head. “She’s like a ghost or something the way she can just disappear.”
“Well, she’s here now,” Pava said, spinning him around and giving him a shove for good measure, “So you should go check on her.”
“You’re scared of her,” Poe realized with dawning betrayal on his face as he stumbled forwards.
“Mildly terrified,” Pava agreed cheerfully, “Have you seen her pacing around the base? You do not want to get in her way, believe me.” She shuddered for effect before making a shooing motion with her hands. “So put your charmingly awkward self to good use, Commander.” She shot him a mock salute and turned back to her x-wing to continue post-flight checks.
“You’ve been spending too much time with Karé,” Poe grumbled. “There is such a thing as respect for authority, you know!” he called back over his shoulder, receiving nothing but a lazy wave in return. He shook his head and trudged over to where Rey was still kneeling in the grass by the runway.
Well, at least she was still breathing, but he couldn’t see what had managed to catch her attention so intently that she didn’t notice his approach.
“What are you doing?” he asked, peering over her shoulder to try to see what she was looking at.
Rey startled visibly and immediately lashed out, spinning on one knee with the other leg extended and sweeping Poe’s legs out from under him. Poe only had a moment to register his surprise before he found himself on his back with Rey’s fist an inch from his face. In that moment, as he stared up into her snarling visage, he gave some credence to the whispers floating around base about the half-feral girl who stalked the halls of the base like a caged sand-panther. She had always seemed calm, subdued even, the few times he’d seen her since their brief introduction during the briefing on Skywalker’s location, but that might have been more circumstance than personality. The med droids in Finn’s room were quick to voice their disapproval of potentially disruptive actions, and he couldn’t blame the girl for being loathe to attract their attention. Looking up at her now though, he could see how the stories had started.
But he’d also seen Finn positively glow when he spoke of her, and while he might not have known the former Stormtrooper long, he seemed to have good taste in friends.
Exhibit #1: Himself, excellent choices all around so far.
Exhibit #2: Chewbacca, and if you couldn’t trust a Wookiee to be a good judge of character, then who could you trust?
Exhibit #3: …Well he hadn’t really had a lot of time to make new friends before Starkiller and landing himself in a coma in the medical wing, but BB-8 liked him well enough. That had to count for something, right?
And if he was going to take his droid friend’s opinion into account, it absolutely adored the girl who was currently staring down at him with an expression that wasn’t quite all there, confusion and a hint of fear plain on her face.
So Poe just lay still and held up his empty hands. “Easy now,” he said with a smile he hoped was more reassuring than strained. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Rey shook her head slightly and her expression cleared. She flushed a deep red and rolled off him immediately. “Sorry,” she muttered as she stood, rubbing one arm self-consciously and radiating embarrassment. She took a swift step back as Poe gingerly regained his feet.
He waved her apology off with a small laugh. “No serious harm done.” He patted himself down to demonstrate. “Although I think you might have bruised my ego a bit.” He looked up to find Rey staring at him with an odd expression on her face and wariness in her stance as she regarded him like the piece of a puzzle that didn’t quite fit in the picture she’d been building. Poe grinned reassuringly. “Do you always go around attacking random people who ask you questions?”
Rey shrugged one shoulder and looked away as she shifted her weight from foot to foot. “People don’t ask questions for no good reason,” she stated firmly. “Well, here they do,” she amended, a bemused look on her face, as if she couldn’t imagine why anyone might take an interest in her.
“You’ve noticed that, have you?” Poe laughed, “Us Resistance folks can be a nosy bunch.” He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Don’t let Karé and Iolo get ahold of you. They’re the worst of the lot. They wouldn’t let you get away until they got your whole life story.”
“There’s really not much to tell,” Rey replied with some trepidation in her voice at the prospect, “but thanks for the warning.”
Poe nodded. “Speaking of nosy, what were you doing?” he asked, still curious despite himself.
Rey’s face cleared and she immediately began casting around in the grass, ignoring Poe’s mystified expression, even going so far as to order him to move in a terse voice as she searched for…whatever it was she was searching for. She dropped to one knee suddenly and reached down. When Poe craned his head around to see what had caught her attention, he saw a small white flower cradled in her palm.
“Snowcap?” he asked, unsure why she looked so dejected.
“It’s crushed,” Rey murmured, touching the petals of the limp plant gently. “Wait,” she rounded on him, “you know what it is?”
Poe shrugged. “Sure, it’s just a local weed. You can find fields of it all over the place. Seems to attract the local flocks of flying lizards during breeding season. No one's quite figured out why, I don't think, but it drives the ground crew crazy." He grinned crookedly. "Makes for interesting takeoffs and landings too, if you get a patch too close to the runway."
Rey’s face lit up. “Show me,” she ordered, standing abruptly and stashing the crushed flower in the pouch at her side.
"The lizards?" Poe asked.
"The flowers," Rey answered, shaking her head a little, as if she found him particularly daft.
“Uh, sure,” Poe answered, confused but willing to go along with it. “I think the ground crew was complaining about a big patch behind the hangar.” He led the way around the building and gestured. “See?” He turned to see Rey standing there with a look of wonder on her face. “There’s so many,” she whispered. She brushed past Poe as if he wasn’t even there, sinking to her knees at the edge of the patch and running her fingers lightly over the tops of the flowers.
“Yeah,” Poe shrugged. “They might be troublesome, but they’re pretty little things. Easy to grow too. Quite a few people on base keep them around for a splash of color.” He chuckled. “Bare duracrete gets a little depressing after a while.” He glanced down and an idea struck him. “Be right back.”
Rey nodded mutely, still lost in the moment, as Poe strode off with a purpose. He was back a few minutes later, and Rey jumped slightly as a small bucket thumped to the ground beside her. She looked up to see Poe grinning down at her. She glanced at the bucket in confusion, eyeing the stains and flecks of metal in it. “What was in this?” she asked with a slight frown.
“Nothing important, I hope,” Poe answered, running a hand through his hair with a rueful laugh. “I thought you could use it to take some flowers back with you if you wanted.”
Rey reached for the bucket with a hopeful expression on her face before hesitating. She pulled her hand back, face back to its normal guarded wariness as she looked up. “What do I owe you for this?”
“Owe?” Poe frowned.
Rey looked at him like he was dense. “Everything has a price,” she explained slowly, “and I’m not about to accept this without knowing what it is.”
“It’s just a bucket,” Poe protested. “It’s not even mine.”
Rey frowned. “You found it?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t belong to anyone?”
“Well, the Resistance maybe—“
“But it wasn’t marked?”
“Well, no, it’s a bucket—“
“And no one saw you take it and it won’t be missed?”
“I don’t think so?” Poe was confused.
“Then it’s yours,” Rey stated as if it were an obvious fact. “So what are you asking for it?”
“That’s not—“ Poe wasn't even sure where to start picking apart that tricky bit of logic, so he gave up and caved in the face of Rey’s expectant look.“How about you just give me a flower here and there if you want.” He gestured to the patch. “Provided you can keep them alive, that is. It’d be nice to have a some color around once in a while.”
“You…want me to trade you flowers?” Rey asked dubiously.
Poe shrugged.
Rey remained silent for a long moment, as if weighing her decision, before nodding. “I can do that,” she said with a bright smile, the first real one Poe had seen on her face since the briefing. He responded with a grin of his own and helped her dig out a good size chunk of blossoms to fill the bucket. Rey sat back on her heels once they were done and wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, leaving a streak of dirt as she surveyed their work with satisfaction.
“So what do you think?” Poe asked.
“It’s perfect,” Rey whispered, reaching out to touch a snowcap trailing over the side. She regarded the flower pot in silence for a moment before she spoke almost hesitantly. “Do you think Finn would like some too?”
Poe grinned widely. “Of course he would. Good idea. I’ll go find us another container.”
“Thank you,” Rey said quietly, later, as they sat beside Finn. It’d taken a little arguing with the medical staff, but Poe discovered that Rey could be as immovable as a mountain when she decided to be stubborn. When the med droid had turned to him with a beseeching beep, he’d merely spread his hands helplessly. So now one of the flower containers sat on the stand beside Finn’s bed, and Poe thought the room already looked more cheerful for it.
Rey held the other pot in her lap, periodically touching the blossoms with something like reverence in her face. She picked an especially fine specimen and held it out to him.
Poe took it with all due gravity before promptly ruining the moment when he placed the flower behind his ear and asked her how it suited him. She’d straight out giggled at the ridiculous image he presented before beginning to tell Finn all about the flowers they’d brought, and Poe thought that easing the feral gleam in the girl’s eyes, if only for a moment, was all the thanks he needed.