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Rey lies on her pallet under a canopy of twinkling stars and clasps her hands over her heart. A soft breeze tickles across her skin—still warm from the sun—and weaves its fingers through her hair. She can hear birdsong in the distance, faint but distinct and unmistakable, like the tug of the Force deep in her heart. Like the feel of Finn beside her on his own pallet.
In the morning, the final battle. But, for now, sleep.
Rey can’t sleep though. A million thoughts race through her brain: will they be victorious? Will they even survive?
Rey sits up slowly and turns until she’s facing Finn. He’s curled up on his pallet under a thin blanket, fast asleep. Rey envies him his sleepfulness.
She really ought to let him sleep through the night. She ought to let him have at least one last night of sleep before the final battle.
But Rey is, deep down inside, too selfish. She’s selfish and a little scared. And, though she’d never admit this to anyone else, least of all Finn, he makes her feel safe. A little more brave.
Rey shakes him gently by the shoulder.
Finn shrugs off his sleep like a robe. “What? What is it?” he asks groggily, rubbing at his eyes.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Rey whispers, flicking her eyes to the other sleeping, blanket-covered lumps. She looks back at Finn. “I dream of General Leia sometimes.”
Finn reaches across the space between them, covering Rey’s trembling hands—when did they begin to tremble?—with his own. “I miss her too,” he murmurs, bringing one of Rey’s palms to his lips. He presses a kiss over her lifeline.
“What if we don’t survive?” she asks.
“We will,” Finn insists.
“How can you be so sure?” Rey fights back a sudden onslaught of tears. “If I lost you… If I never saw you again…”
Finn brushes a thumb across her brow, then down over her cheek, across her lips. “You’ll never lose me.”
“But Finn—” Rey protests, but Finn silences her with a mere shake of his head.
“Our souls are entwined,” Finn says, drawing her hands in his.
Rey stares at him through a sheen of tears. His aura pulses in a swirl of of blue and gold. “If you died, Finn, I wouldn’t be able—”
“We’ll see the First Order burn,” Finn promises.
Rey believes him, she really does. All darkness and doubt she might once have felt ebbs away, until nothing’s left but the Light. Finn’s hands are warm in her own, warm, steadying, comforting.
Still, they won’t all survive. Some of them have been marked for death since birth. Rey scans the sleeping forms and wonders which of her friends won’t be with them after the last bit of blood’s been shed. She turns back to Finn, who’s watching her with an unfamiliar—yet entirely familiar—look in his eyes.
Rey touches his cheek tenderly and Finn goes still under her hand. She leans in and kisses him, sliding an arm around his neck. Finn palms through her hair, pulling it free of her buns so that it tumbles down her back. He pulls her against his chest and they curl around one another on the pallet, kissing, exploring one another with their lips and their tongues and their touch.
Rey pulls back suddenly, palms pressed against his chest. “I wish I’d done this sooner,” she laments. Finn rubs his thumb over her wrist bone.
“All the more incentive to kick First Order ass, huh?” Finn tugs her back against his chest and nibbles on her bottom lip. “So that we can keep doing this.”
Rey cups his face in her hands. “I wish we could just run away. To some far off place,” she says, between breaths, between Finn’s lips on her own, between her lips on Finn’s. “Somewhere in the Outer Rim where nobody, not the First Order, not the Resistance, not the Republic, could find us.”
“It’d be nice,” Finn says, sliding his hands over Rey’s waist. “But you’d want to come back. I know you.”
Rey allows herself a nod. “I would,” she admits. “And so would you.”
“We’re going to survive this.” Finn clasps her hand in his. “When this is all over, I’ll run anywhere with you.”
“Anywhere?” Rey presses her forehead against his chest and closes her eyes. Finn’s heartbeat thumps steadily under her cheek.
Rey feels Finn press his mouth against the top of her head, in her hair. “Wherever you want.”
She drifts off that way, encircled in Finn’s arms, surrounded by birdsong, the promise of a forever with Finn close enough she can feel it.