Author's Note:

This is my first try on writing an english story. It is a translation of a WIP story I am currently writing in german. So I'd already like to apologize for spelling or grammar mistakes and happily invite you to comment if something is weird. And even if there is nothing wrong, you are of course also invited to leave a comment.

So, here is the story:

When Poe Dameron climbed into his X-Wing fighter on the green planet that was home to the Resistance base, he took the opportunity to have short a look around. The sun was shining down from a clear blue sky onto the green, forested and peaceful looking planet. He was waiting for the mechanics to finally finish positioning his co-pilot in the back of his fighter plane.

During the last weeks, the fighting with the First Order had clearly intensified. By now it was usual that any even small transport flight of the resistance had to be accompanied by at least five fighter planes for protection. So far, the day had been a pretty usual one with the one exception that his beloved friend BB-8 was not his partner for today. As the orange and white droid had taken a slight hit by some debris of a TIE fighter exploding in front of them the day before, it was still with the technical department to have the minor damage to its left side repaired. This however meant for Poe that today he had an unknown R2-unit behind him. It was nothing to really worry about as he wasn't considered to be the best pilot of the resistance without a reason, but you never knew for sure how the droid would act. BB-8 was used to his style of flying, but the R2-Unit behind him was not.

A few hours later, the transport had successfully landed on a rocky, red planet in the Luiisaa-System and was fully loaded with the spare parts, fuel, food and everything else that had been on the Resistance's list. On Poe's opinion, the flight had been suspiciously eventless. It was unusual for everything to go this well. The convoy's participants found out that this feeling was correct when they left the planet. They had just successfully passed a nearby asteroid field in the area and were preparing for stardust, when behind a white glowing planet a middle sized First Order ship appeared with a squadron of TIE fighters in tow. Poe, as the commander of the Resistance squadron, instantly ordered his own squadron into fighting position to protect the transporter so it could jump to light speed quickly and get away. And then hell broke loose.

The dark haired pilot loved the thrill of a good fight. Maybe that was why he was such a successful and well respected pilot in the Resistance. On his opinion you could not exceed the expectations put into you if you did not love what you did. So Poe did not hesitate a second to enter the battle, although his squadron was clearly outnumbered. He could be proud of his companions as they delivered a hell of a fight and had quickly taken out several of the opponent's fighters. His count was currently standing at six with the seventh opponent in clear sight. He took a sharp turn to the left, rolled his X-Wing over and put himself behind his prey with another skilled move.

Thank god, the droid in the back had not yet tried to protest or worse interfere with his movements that always were close to the limit of the ships physical capabilities. With the sleek black ship right in front of him and just inside his cross fires it was an easy target for the 33 year old man. So it took him only one shot to destroy the ship. When the TIE-fighter blew off just in front of him, Poe made another sharp movement to the left to turn and help one of his other pilots who had a TIE fighter right on his tail.

But before the Black Squadron leader was able to intervene, Black Five had disappeared in a fireball. The man was only able to stare in horror as he followed the delicate movements of that TIE Fighter in front of him. The ship not went for Black Three and started to follow him. That was for sure a skilled pilot aboard. As he had always loved a challenge and it was out of question that the TIE-fighter should not be able to kill another one of his companions, he went on in pursuit of the TIE fighter. He steered his X-Wing right behind the TIE Fighter still following Black Three, trying to destroy it quickly with a set of well-aimed shots.

Unfortunately his opponent was able to evade the hit rather easily. But at least his action had the immediate effect that the fighter stopped to follow Black Three and turned sharply to face Poe instead of Black Three in a fight. The pilot couldn't help but grin. "Hello then, you son of a bitch. May the best one win." So while the others were still busy with the other TIE fighters, the leader of the squadron got involved in a personal fight with the one TIE fighter right in front of him. The protests of the droid behind him got louder any minute as Poe had to take the ship even closer to its physical borders. He had to admit that the First Order pilot was rather good. Poe had seen a fair share of good pilots for the First Order in his numerous battles but never one like that.

Poe knew that this battle would not be ending any time soon as both of them were very capable of avoiding each other's shots. On the intercom Black Two gave a last cry before he was blasted into oblivion by a TIE-Fighter right behind him. That made Poe lose his concentration for a split second. Unforgiving as the First Order was, that mere second was enough to get hit. Poe had been able to make an evasive action so the important parts of the ship were not hit. Instead it had directly taken out the droid behind him. Poe thanked all higher spirits that BB-8 had not been with him today. He would never have forgiven himself if his friend had been destroyed by that shot. Being co-pilotless made it even more difficult for him, because now all the stabilizing action in the background was off which made his ship be less manoeuvrable.

The fighting took on for quite a while and the resistance pilot was starting to get annoyed. This was impossible. He was Poe Dameron, resistance fighter pilot number one and he had been involved in a cat fight with a single TIE fighter for incredible ten minutes now. And he did not even hit that stupid fighter even once. As there was no end of this in sight he had to step up again. So he decided to try a new manoeuvre to get behind the opponent's ship. He turned right and then into an collision course with the other ship to turn right behind it again. Unfortunately for him, the other pilot was either not afraid of anything or thinking that he was bluffing, because the sudden change of direction did not interest it the slightest. Instead it was firing all available weapons. In the last second before the impact Poe turned left with what he supposed to be only centimetres between both ships. His bad luck did not end there as he had miscalculated the distance and hit the TIE-Fighter with his wing. Much to his surprise and relief that did not make the ships explode. Instead both ships lost a part of their wings and span of control.

When Poe woke up, he knew by the ache inside his body that he had crashed on the planet. At least he was not dead. The pilot opened his seatbelt and freed himself from the ship which had almost completely lost its left wing and was lying on its left side. Outside he directly noticed by the temperature that he could have chosen a better place to crash on because the wind was rather cold and there was snow below his feet. Standing in the ankle-deep snow he eyed his damaged ship. It would surely be of no use to leave this planet anymore. Poe removed his helmet and felt a slight, warm, stream of blood flowing down his chin. A quick check with his hand classified this to be only a cut. One of several in his face. Apart from that and being sore he seemed to be fine. The resistance pilot turned to have a look at his surroundings. Apart from some rocks on the horizon there was nothing to see apart from an almost endless, snow covered plain with only a few trees on it. And some smoke? He climbed back into his ship to retrieve his binoculars from a side pocket in the X-Wing and have a closer look. Something seemed to be burning around a kilometre away from him. Logic sense told him that it had to be the TIE-fighter which must have crashed on the planet as well. Without thinking he grabbed his blaster from the cockpit and walked through the snow to the other crash site.

The other ship looked even worse than his own and was almost completely reduced to a pile of junk. He had to admit that he was a bit disappointed by the fact the other pilot had been killed by the crash and not by him. The cockpit of the other ship was the only part that looked kind of intact. In that moment curiosity got ahead of him. Poe walked closer to the ship, bending down to look inside through the windscreen. There he could see the First Order fighter pilot, clearly a Special Forces one by its uniform, still strapped to his seat. He was not moving. The resistance member climbed on top of the ship, opened the hatch and looked inside. The pilot was still not moving meaning he was either unconscious or dead. Strangely the pilot was wearing a uniform of the Special Forces, clearly evident by the red markings on its helmet, but the TIE-fighter lacked a second seat. Normally special forced were flying two seater planes with a pilot and a gunner. The plane had the space for a second seat but it seemed it had been taken out. Poe decided not to care and instead do what he intended to do when he had opened the hatch: See the face of that guy that almost beat him. The interior of the TIE-fighter was despite the missing second seat narrow and small. There were pieces of debris and loose wires everywhere and the smoke form the fire was getting thicker. The ship would surely blow up in the nearer future, so he did not have much time. Without further ado he opened the seatbelt of the other pilot, grabbed him and pulled him, surprised about how light he was, out of the ship into the snow.

Nothing in the universe had prepared Poe Dameron with what he saw when he removed the helmet of the Special Forces pilot in a safe distance of the burning ship. "That's impossible.", he stammered, when instead of looking into the face of an older, battle experienced man or some ugly alien life form like he expected, he looked into the unconscious, bleeding face of an auburn haired woman in her late twenties. With freckles all over her pale nose and cheeks she even looked kind of innocent. Not at all like what you would expect to be a ruthless, killing First Order Special Forces member to look like. But if he gave it a second thought, Finn did not look like how you expect a storm trooper to be either. A quick look at her, showed that apart from the head wound, her wrist seemed to be broken, because the angle her left hand had was kind of strange. Additionally blood was seeping through the uniform on her leg into the snow below her, which surely meant another wound to the leg.

He kneeled down, moved her hair out of the way and touched her neck to check for a pulse. As he immediately found one he concluded that she was only unconscious not dead. Poe contemplated for a second whether to leave her here to freeze to death or end her life right now and shoot her. But then the dark haired man swore. Something inside him made him feel strange. Only the force knew why, but he could not bear to leave the woman behind, even if she was the enemy. In this moment, he blamed his upbringing for his hesitation. Even with both of his parents being part of the rebellion that always told him to respect every other life form in the universe, especially if it was either unarmed or unable to defend itself. What the hell was going on with him and First Order officers? First he met Finn now this woman. He was one of the most loyal resistance fighters, so no one would ever question his allegiance, but he was feeling uneasy. He still did not know what he was doing, when he lifted the still unconscious woman up, threw her over his shoulder and left to search for some shelter.

When AN-3527 woke up, she found herself in some kind of cave. Her head, her wrist and her right leg were hurting like hell. She looked down on herself to see her flight overall and trousers had been cut open right to her knee and a flesh wound on her leg had been provisionally bandaged. Same was for her left wrist that had been put in some kind of makeshift shin made of wood and cloth. And the rest of her uniform leg was bound around her head as a bandage. After contemplating her own situation she took in her surroundings. She really was inside a rather big cave. And she was not alone. A dark haired man was sitting next to a small fire a few meters away. The orange flight suit he was wearing directly identified him as a resistance pilot. Logic sense told her, he must be that suicidal maniac in the black X-Wing that made her crash on the planet. And somehow he seemed familiar.

"You're finally awake," he told her,