Poe did have blankets, sheets, and pillows tucked away in the closet. They splayed the mattress over the narrow space between the bed and desk, and Finn fell into familiar movements as he made the bed, no wrinkles or untucked corners left roaming free. The mattress wasn't as soft as Poe's, yet the bed lulled Finn asleep with an ease that the barracks never had.

When Finn woke up, he laid frozen in bed, disorientated at the unfamiliar sight in front of him. Then he remembered Rey and the Millennium Falcon, blinking as the frame of Poe's bed and the storage boxes tucked beneath it came into focus. He heard light rustling, zips, and Poe whispering, "Shh, I'm gonna pick you up." The hushed movement made Finn's eyes grow heavy, his brain fuzzy. The doorknob turned, the door creaking open, and BB-8 rolled out. Poe went to the desk, papers rustling and a pen scratching across it. Poe walked out so quietly, Finn hadn't realized he was gone until the door clicked shut and locked.

Finn sat up, head woozy. His eyes roamed the walls, taking in the miniature aircrafts hanging from the ceiling that he hadn't noticed last night when it'd been so dark. Twisting around, Finn saw clouds outside the viewport, white puffs billowing into soft shapes. On the desk was a paper folded in half, sitting upright in a triangle. Scrawled in jagged edges, the paper read, Finn.

Guilt pooled in Finn's stomach as he got out of bed and went for the note. Poe had been so careful to keep the noise down. No one on the Finalizer would have done that. In fact, troopers typically woke up to a siren blaring into the barrack, terrifying them into forgetting their nightmares.

Finn unfolded the note, and bit his lip as his eyes skittered across the page, grinning at the first two words.

Good morning! I couldn't stay but had to report for duty at promptly 0700. There's clothes in the closet, take anything that fits. It's yours. I left my jacket. Take it and keep it. It'll get cold today. I left a map under this note. Explore around. Not all of us bite. — Poe

Finn peered down at the map. Red ink outlined specific areas on the map, with jagged words providing location names and commentary.

Canteen, Poe wrote. Fresh caf at 0800, but hurry up. No one's there for the first ten minutes. Then it's essentially bartering.

Finn went to the closet and opened it, taking in the neutral toned clothes and the brown leather jacket that roughed up Poe. He unhooked the jacket from the hanger, slipping his arms through the sleeves and tugging the collar. It stretched across his back, impossible to zip closed, and smelled like a combination of leather and soap.

After a shower that went on for ages, Finn took his medication and left the room, map in hand and wearing clothes that looked a bit small in the bathroom mirror. He elected to wear the trousers from his body suit, as Poe's legs might have been as long as Finn's, yet they were certainly slimmer. Finn tried to recall last night, when he held Poe's knee in his palm. Poe's knee hadn't felt different, yet the clothing phenomenon did raise more questions than it satisfied. Perhaps he might attempt to find out again tonight.

He arrived at the canteen at 0801. It was so utterly different compared to the canteen on the Finalizer that Finn wouldn't have recognized it as one without the map and the undeniable reality of people dining. He walked past tables of people bent over datapads and foods that Finn had never seen before. One woman tapped absently on her datapad, raising a pastry slowly to her lips. The pastry had a golden brown, flaky crust and a maroon cream that dripped onto her plate.

He followed the trail of people holding cups of steaming caf. He never had caf before, only caffeine pills, as there had never been enough time to down a cup of the steaming hot drink when troopers could have been doing something more productive with their time. He quickened his pace when he caught sight of a man behind a counter handing out cups of caf. Finn watched the back of the person in front of him as he took his place in line.

When he reached the counter, the smells hit him—indescribable, he thought, was a word befitting the Resistance.

The man behind the counter beamed as soon as Finn walked up, eyes crinkling. His eyes were shut, yet he fixed Finn's cup without fault. "Mr. Dameron! Not your usual—oh," said the man, quieting as soon as he saw that Finn stood before him. He absently set the caf on the counter. "You must be Finn." He smiled, eyes crinkling once more, yet he still looked at Finn, gaze full of warmth. "Are you from Yavin IV? Poe would never say."

Finn grabbed his caf, eyebrows darting up at the unexpected heat, and took a sip. His eyes bulged as soon as he tasted the caf. Bitter did not even begin to describe it.

"Get some milk, son!" said the man, grinning as he slid a pitcher to him.

Finn filled his cup with milk until it skirted overflowing. The next sip was beyond pleasant. The milk softened the bitter flavor, bringing forth a tart nuttiness. He doubted the First Order gave troopers pills for time concerns, but rather they knew insubordination was inevitable if troopers didn't get their caf fix. "Thanks," he mumbled.

"No, thank you. I'd never seen Poe so eager to leave his starfighter 'till he met you."

Finn took a swig of caf, looking away from the man and at the tan liquid. The back of his neck prickled, and he rubbed the edge of Poe's jacket with his free hand. "Thanks for the caf," he said, then walked away, eager to flee yet not so willing to draw excessive attention to himself.

He headed straight for the exit, his steady pace challenged by the glances directed his way, people once reading their datapads now watching him, eyes flicking to the jacket, then to his face.

Poe knew him. It was official.

The concept was absurd, as only a miracle could have connected a trooper and a starfighter pilot, but the odds tipped ever so toward this impossibility the further Finn ventured out of the canteen. Senses heightened, Finn noticed that even after he got outside and walked aimlessly through the base, people looked in his direction, first at the jacket, then at him. It was cold out, grey clouds blanketing the base in overcast skies, and Poe had been so kind that morning. Still, he didn't know Poe. Perhaps he was like the troopers on the Finalizer, cruel and creative in his tactics.

X-Wings flew overhead, the roar from the engines thunder in the cloudy sky.

Finn stole the map out of his pocket, hunting down the command center. He wanted to thank General Organa for staging his rescue, who was the leader according to random notes Poe scrawled on the margins of the map. He blanched at the thought of needling his way into the command center and imposing himself, but logistically, Finn must have been their inside man, the rogue trooper that joined the Resistance and led to the invasion of the Finalizer. But if that rogue trooper was indeed him, he wanted to further aide the Resistance, no matter the cost.

The command center was positioned near the landing zone that the Millennium Falcon occupied yesterday. As Finn trekked through the area, his eyes drank in the sights that struck him as familiar yet part of a distant memory. Yesterday he'd been too stunned to appreciate the droids rattling off binary to tacticians and soldiers, or the organized chaos of people rushing into the hangar. Finn clutched the map as he walked past all that activity and ducked into a stairway leading into the command room. Whenever someone looked his way, Finn had a litany of excuses for his presence on the tip of his tongue, but they always glanced down at the jacket, then smiled and nodded, leaving him be.

Once he arrived inside, however, the jacket was the last thing on his mind.

Shouting, frantic beeping, expletives hurled across the room—he heard the chaos before he saw the crowds gathered around a center table, holograms flashing data and depictions of a simulated X-Wing rocketing through an unknown atmosphere. He spotted a thick beard, tan robes, and tried to discern whether or not his eyes merely tricked him into believing he saw a familiar face.

A hand clamped on his shoulder. Finn swerved around, stunned to find Han glaring at him. "Good thing you're here, kid. We could use you," said Han, and he dragged Finn toward the center table. "Our routine supply check got intercepted by your old acquaintances in the First Order."

A woman with braids crowning her head bounded toward them, her expression as grim as Han's. "Finn," she said, firm yet gentle. "We believe they let us win the battle on the Finalizer yesterday in order to learn our battle tactics. We're indebted to you, but if there's anything you can tell us…."

"I'll tell you anything you need to know," Finn said. With the way her eyes hardened in resilience, Finn knew immediately who this woman was. "Thank you, General, for saving me."

She nodded. "We do what we can."

Han and General Organa led him to the center table, the heart of the command center and the first source of all new information transmitted from the epicenter of the action. Officers shifted to allow the three of them space around the table, and a blue humanoid alien gestured to Finn to regard his datapad containing a brief memo of the current status of the pilots. Finn froze as a rickety voice spoke through a comlink transmitted to the entire room. It was Poe.

"Cut off a TIE fighter. Shot two others that were hugging our rears," said Poe.

General Organa leaned into the table. "Have you discerned their intent?"

"Negative. I believe they are trying to prevent us from landing on the planet. It's nothing but ice. Uninhabitable. Sensors aren't picking up any life signs."

"Ice…" said Finn.

"Was that Finn?"

She ignored Poe, vesting her attention to Finn. "This planet is highly isolated. We went there because it's a rendezvous point for a trade outpost. What would the First Order want with an isolated, uninhabitable planet?"

Finn regarded the holograms, the numbers and letters blurred, recognizable as information only through deductive reasoning. Data he could sparse filled the gaps in his addled mind. Finn concentrated, remembering patches of conversations, diagrams, training sessions, and instances where he had chosen the correct corridor to clean when high ranking officials happened to be exchanging intel. Humorlessly, he relished in the realization that three weeks hadn't been enough to destroy everything Hux sought. "There were rumors about an ice planet, that they were setting it up as another base," said Finn. "There's a weapon, it destroys planets. That's all I know. I'm sorry."

"Checks out with Hosnian Prime," said a man on the other side of the table, tapping away on a datapad. "It could be another laser canon."

Poe cut in, "BB-8's discovered something. Relaying the data."

Within seconds, the data overtook the holograms. A massive planetary figure rotated over the table, a quarter cut out and revealing an intricate, systematic structure beneath the crust.

"I'll be damned," muttered General Organa. Then her voice dictated orders with precision. "Red Squad, Blue Squad. Relaying information to you. We're seeing a repeat of Hosnian Prime. Dameron, your squad will destroy the laser. Red covers you. Blue covers Red. Understood?"

"Understood," said Poe, and presented the orders to his squad in tandem with the leaders of the others.

The command center should have felt helpless in the midst of battle. After all, they were trapped at the base while half their fleet fought to save their necks in a routine supply check gone wrong, yet Poe prevented any of that. He led the squads in a mystifying interconnection of rapid fire decisions and encouraging turns of phrase, the various starfighters joining together in a cohesive whole. When a TIE fighter shot lasers at an X-Wing, another X-Wing swung around and flew beneath the TIE fighter, firing directly at its blind spot. No one got left behind on Poe's watch. Finn rolled back his shoulders, biting the inside of his cheek as the leather jacket stretched to accommodate his broad shoulders. He scanned the room, hunting down anyone who looked at him wearing the jacket, but, understandably, everyone was riveted and gob smacked at the events that unfolded, paying him no heed.

"Poe, it's trailing you," shouted a woman. "I'm going after it."

"Not a problem. Cover Snap. I'm going after the laser."

"But it's closing in!"

"Cover Snap, Lieutenant."

The comm fell back into the familiar rhythm of explosions and cheers, expletives and more explosions. "Closing in," bellowed Poe, voice slicing through the storm of war. "Got it on my crosshairs."

"Fire when ready," said General Organa.

"Firing in three, two—"

"Poe! That—Damn it, Poe's down. The TIE fighter hit his engine."

Finn's heart, once in time with the drums of war, skittered between throbs. He heard General Organa proclaim with utter clarity, "Connect to Beebee-Ate. Assess damage."

BB-8's beeps shrieked throughout the command center, raising the hair on Finn's scalp despite the binary being lost on his ears. There were no pauses between beeps, one beep cutting right into the next.

"Pull the chute once you've cleared the atmosphere," said General Organa. "We've run simulations. Sending our findings to you."

BB-8 stopped beeping as the data was sent. Then he broke out in erratic beeps.

General Organa's eyes softened as she said, "He's special to us, too. Don't worry, Beebee-Ate. It'll work. Don't forget to pull your own chute."

BB-8's beeping cut off abruptly, and despite the explosions, cheers, and expletives, the droid's silence cast the energy in shades of grey. Finn scratched a nail along the edge of the table, and leaned toward General Organa. He asked her in a small voice, "Is he dead?"

She turned to him, lips pursed. "He's alive. For now. He'll survive the crash. But the warmest temperature on the planet is -30 degrees Celsius, and he's wearing a flight suit."

Finn averted his gaze to her shoulder, inspecting the navy blue threadwork.

BB-8 beeped once, curtly.

General Organa turned away from Finn, speaking into the comm. "Blue Squad, gather a landing party. BB-8, send them Poe's coordinates."