Note: the is the last chapter with any Rey/Poe content, so if you're not into that, it's all Reylo from here on out.

Ch. 10: Negotiations

Leia wishes that, in the moments before her fate narrowed to the thirty tiny transports tumbling like dice toward that red forgotten planet, she'd thought to grab another coat. Not for the cold. She'd worn this one the day after the galaxy learned her birth-father's name, just to be cheeky, but now the yards of black only hide her face and remind these people, and her, whose child she is.

That day, her friend Varish Vicly had liked her chutzpah but questioned her wisdom. It's a family trait, that—a fair critique of Leia's whole bloodline.

"General Desso," Varish is saying, her shining golden moustaches swaying elegantly as she speaks, "we understand the military concern, but you're talking about a gross, and illegal, expansion of the Senate's powers—"

"I'm aware of that, Senator Varish," Desso replies. "But you were the one who came in here singing the praises of Princess Organa's illegal personal armada and their heroism." Varish's obvious eyeroll buoys Leia's spirits, but they rapidly resume sinking. They've been at it for half an hour and they're all exhausted. "Isn't it about time we all agree that the Senate needs to expand its power?"

"Not at the end of a blaster, General," Varish snaps.

"We don't have a choice," Desso responds. "You want to buy ships? Even if you had two hundred billion credits for a new fleet of T-70s, Incomm-Freitekk's been destroyed, and the First Order controls Kuat-Entralla, so there's no one to build them. A blaster's the only option we have."

It goes on like that for another half an hour, but it's the Senate, so nothing gets done. Leia finally points out that the rest of them are on planetary time, not standard, and need some kriffing sleep. The motion carries. She doesn't ask about sleeping arrangements; as far as she knows the two hundred new people are bedding down in their ships.

She's grateful for her private room, but she ignores the promise of rest in her little bed and heads instead for the freezing, abandoned powerhouse and the small, dusty, but still-functioning console there. It's after one in the morning when she slips her hand into the pocket of her black greatcoat and pulls out the two items inside.

She sets the tiny drive Rey gave her beside the console and flattens out the other object, a stack of smallish hardcopy flexiposters, the kind she used to print by the thousand for political campaigns, the kind you'd see slapped onto every blank plywood or durasteel surface in every city. Someone in the RDF got ahold of a big one with General Hux's face and some slogan, and they tacked it onto the training droid to use as a target down on the firing range. But these are new, picked up by Varish during a brief stop on a First Order-controlled planet after her escape from HosPrime.

Leia thumbs through them, convincing herself she's curious about how the First Order advertises itself but actually procrastinating on the other task in front of her.

The first shows Starkiller spitting out five beams of red light. The Vanguard of a New Order, it reads in a stark red font. Leia rolls her eyes; as though most people on the street know a word like 'vanguard.'

Varish and some of the others reported that the official story from the Order on Starkiller is that it's still out there, either undergoing repairs or fully functional. They're saying that rumors about the Resistance destroying it are nonsense—how could a few dozen X-wings destroy a planet? It's absurd.

Even most of the Senators don't believe Leia. Desso doesn't. It's too far away, and their resources are too precious, to send a ship out to look at the ruins—and even if they did, all they'd see is an asteroid field. No one could verify it had once been a space station, not without running a minute survey of the whole debris field to find the tiny, tiny percentage of manmade material. Official policy in the Senate is to assume Starkiller's still out there, waiting to strike.

Leia glares at the poster, finally allowing herself to process the implications of this. She already knows they're going to vote to surrender. How could they not, if they think Starkiller's waiting in the wings? If not tomorrow, then soon. She's up here looking at posters and holos because she simply can't face that. She can't. And she can't tell Poe, or Chewie, or Connix or Snap or Rey that they're about to be on the run again.

Her jaw clenches as she gets a good look at the second poster. Never Forget, it says, and the image shows a chain-gang in ragged brown jumpsuits, skeletal, bent and haggard from swinging pickaxes, as though anyone would assign workcamp labor to use hand-tools when they could use droids for a tenth of the price. Small, spiky black letters identify the scene: The Graves of Kuat—The Republic's Brutal Legacy.

Leia frowns, but doesn't roll her eyes. There's some truth to it, a fact that fills her with shame, but it was more complicated than that. At the time. She would've never authorized anything like this, ever. And she hadn't known—well. It was complicated. She moves that poster to the bottom of the pile, revealing the third.

She'd glanced at the final poster already. Varish had flashed it with a contemptuous laugh at the stupidity of the First Order. It's red, with a stylized black figure in a mask looking gravely down, haloed in the First Order's bolt-and-wheel like he's thinking deep and patriotic thoughts. As if he weren't instantly recognizable from the mask, the figure holds a cross-shaped, fiery red blade. DEFENDING THE LEGACY, it reads.

It's interesting to her because it suggests that Kylo Ren is a recognizable enough figure to be poster-worthy. Of course the Resistance knows about him, but do people on the street on some newly-conquered First Order planet? It's been so long since she's seen a news report—she doesn't even know if the holo-networks are still broadcasting—that she has no idea if people know his name. None of the senators had been aware that the Order had a new Supreme Leader, and few of them had even known Snoke's name.

She wonders if he'd find it embarrassing, to have so many people looking at his image. She remembers his meltdown on stage as a kid, the way he hunched after his growth-spurt because he hated being so tall, hated feeling all the eyes on him. She wonders if he still hunches.

But he's not a kid anymore, is he? And now the whole galaxy's looking at him. Without his mask. She'd closed her eyes and thanked the Force when he showed up on Crait without that mask, even though what he was doing was unspeakable. She'd needed to see his face again.

The thought makes her so tired. So, so tired.

She sets the posters aside, face-down, and flips stoically through the holos. It's not long before she's laughing quietly at the candid, badly-framed images flickering across the screen. She's long-since learned to look at these things without tears. Even the pictures of Han only make her smile. He'd been so young then, so sure about everything. So had she. And Luke. It's hard to laugh at the holos of Luke.

If he hadn't left, they might have avoided this. Even after they lost Ben.

Rey only told her that they'd found these images in the Falcon. She didn't say what was on them, so Leia's unconsciously holding her breath until suddenly he's there, his holographic image hanging in the air.

There he is, sitting on a sofa, losing at flight-simulator with Luke that summer when he'd brought that serious, intense young man home, his first and only friend. She'd been so happy he had one, even one who grew up in the First Order, who spent four grueling years in the labor camps she'd unwittingly authorized, whose mother had been thrown into a Republic prison without a trial, her records lost.

Leia had denied it when Ben accused her. He was always throwing out anti-Republic conspiracy theories just to piss her off, and she couldn't believe the Republic would let that happen. But not even Leia could ever find out what happened to her—she never told Ben, but she looked for days and days, and Rax had been right. She'd been disappeared. Leia found out later there were others. How many, she didn't know. But digging up skeletons in the Republic's closet would only help the First Order, now; that's another crime she's got to hold in her heart.

Rax is a good kid, Leia, Luke had promised her. He's a good influence on Ben. But Leia had been skeptical; there'd been so much bitterness in him, all justified.

She flips forward. The holos aren't in chronological order, so Ben gets younger (but no older, since there hadn't been many happy memories after that summer) as she advances. It's a picture of a three-year-old in Han's arms that does it. He's flying a little model T-65 with a huge, toothless smile on his tiny face, his nose already long like his father's, his face smeared with something that's probably chocolate because he was constantly asking for chocolate, his black hair cleaner than she'd ever seen it once he'd started washing it himself. She stares at the holo with her lips parted and suddenly there's a huge swell of something inside her, something from the Force itself, and she's gone.

She weeps for Ben. For her baby boy. She wants sweep him up in her arms and sing the old Alderaanian songs she sang to him when he was little. She wants to fold her legs on the floor while he braids her hair in the styles she'd taught him, the last relics of a dead world. He loved to braid her hair. Let me do it, mommy. I know how.

She wants to tell him it's all forgiven, because it is. She wants to tell him that everything's going to be alright. Everything will be okay, sweetheart.

But it won't be. Not for him.

She sees the concern in Poe's eyes when he looks at her. She knows he would be relieved to see her like this, even, weak and human, but he doesn't understand. She's not her own anymore. The decisions she makes as Ben's mother can't be the same decisions she makes as General of the Resistance. She loves her son so much she's afraid her love might rip the galaxy apart. And she can't let that happen.

But she hates him, too. For what he did to Han. For what he did to Poe. For what he's doing to Rey. Especially that. She'd never share this with Rey, but based on his behavior she's almost certain he'd been in love with her. And now that she's rejected him she'll get no mercy.

Leia would be the first to admit her son was always a…well, a creep. Especially with girls. He didn't understand limits and he took everything personally. He'd be exactly the kind of man she'd expect to fall helplessly in love with the first female who showed him the slightest bit of attention and then put every ounce of his energy into making the rest of her life miserable because she didn't agree to spend it with him. And who knows what kind of power this connection gives him?

She keeps flipping through the images, relieved that most of them don't include Ben. There's the million-credit question, isn't it? His power over Rey. This arrangement with her isn't sustainable. The smart thing would've been to be to maroon her on a planet before they ever landed here, so that if he could use the connection to find her, they'd be long gone before he dropped out of hyperspace. The fact that they're not dead yet suggests that that fear, at least, was overblown—but that's just luck. She'd knowingly put all her people and all Desso's people in mortal danger because she couldn't stand to hurt Rey.

And she knows the Force well enough to recognize the Dark side. Rey'd used it to save one of her best friends, but it's still the Dark side. That's how it starts. That much power—the Resistance can use it—even Ben had seen that. That's what Ben's banking on, she knows it. He's betting that Leia will be desperate enough to push Rey to the Dark side just because she needs the firepower.

It's a solid bet. Desso's already asking why they don't have the Jedi out there mind-tricking people into stealing ships. At some point, at the very least, she'll have to ask Rey to leave for her own safety.

She rests her head in her hands, burrowing down in the collar of the coat. Suddenly, she's freezing, like she hadn't felt the cold before this.

What if Poe's right? If Rey can convince him to trust her, Rey might be able to get close enough to him to—

No. That's not an option. She can't ask Rey to do that, and she can't do it. Facing him on a battlefield is one thing. Assassination is another.

But she knows that's only weakness. They're desperate, aren't they? If that's what it takes to save the galaxy from the First Order, what right does she have put her own morals above the needs of hundreds of trillions of people? What kriffing right?

She wishes she could stop crying. She stands, sighing as she turns away from the holo console. She needs something more solid to look at. Finding nothing, she sits back down and stares at her own lap, her own hands, swollen and starting to twist with age.

Since Han died, whenever she has a night alone, this is what she does. When the Resistance isn't there anchoring her, reminding her of who and what she is, the General, she falls apart.

She's supposed to hate him. She does hate him. How could she not hate a son who forces her to sit up here in the middle of the night sobbing because she has to think about these things? What mother should have to consider killing her child?

She picks at the hem of her coat sleeve, at the loose threads where the droids have repaired the coat before because it's a nervous habit, to pick at her sleeves. With no heating system clanking in the background and no wind outside, it's eerily silent in the little room. She should go to bed.

Does it make her a bad mother, to hate the monster her son became? Probably. There's no question she was a bad mother. But is it so bad, to be a bad mother? She'd been so young. So stupid, in so many, many ways. Isn't every woman bad at this, when they're young and stupid?

And there's that voice, the voice that whispers to her from the darkness, the voice she tries to keep at bay because if she listens to those whispers she won't be able to protect the people she's sworn to protect: Your fault. You're his mother. This is all your fault.

She wipes her eyes and her nose with her black satin sleeve. The black reminds her. For others, maybe, being a bad mother might be forgivable. But no matter how much she tries to hide from it, she's her father's daughter. Spectacular, galaxy-shattering failure, failure that propagates outward from a single act of stupidity to ruin the lives of trillions for generations to come: there's another family trait, there's the legacy that Ben is so far doing a stunning job protecting. He's only thirty and he's already the Skywalkers' most dazzling failure yet. Plenty of chutzpah, not a speck of wisdom. Like mother, like son.

At least he's so awkward he'll never reproduce.

The thought makes her snort a bitter laugh through her tears, until she considers that he possesses such an egregiously huge ego he's probably already growing an army of clones.

She's a terrible mother for thinking these things. Even if they're true, they're mean-spirited and she's terrible for thinking them. Isn't she? Or would it be worse to live in denial, but love him unconditionally?

She should go to bed.

This is how it always is. Every night, going in circles, doubting herself and talking herself back to sanity. She doesn't know how much longer she can do this. Luke was supposed to be here, to help her. And Han. And Amilyn and Ackbar and all the rest of them. And Ben. Ben was supposed to be here, with her, a son to be proud of, to worry over when he flew off to battle, to be warm and solid and ridiculously tall for her to hold when he got home. She wasn't supposed to do this alone.

Slowly, she straightens, feeling more in control. She smoothes down the threads she's pulled loose on her sleeves. With a tap of a button she shuts off the screen of the holo-console and ejects the drive, dropping it back into her pocket. The grid of backlit keys goes dark. After a moment she folds up the posters and pockets them, too.

She's never had it in her to put up with peoples' bullshit. That doesn't mean she doesn't love them.

She stops.

There's someone there. Just in front of her, but so far away.

She jerks her head up, toward the presence, and finds herself looking through her tears out the dark window back toward the main building where all the Resistance soldiers sleep. She knows most of them are still in the hangar working on the senators' ships, except Rey, since Rose ordered her to go to bed after her stunt with the ship.

One dim light shines from the barracks, and she knows.

She looks out the window until her tears freeze on her cheeks, and she holds onto that light like a candle sheltered in her hands, but she can't stop it from going out. When it does, she sighs, and crumples again into the folds of her coat.

Negotiations with the civilians really start to go downhill as soon as the little girl—human, golden-haired and sun-baked under her thick winter cap from long summers picking at the shadeless durasteel carcasses in her mother's shipyard—tugs out a blaster and angles it up at the grey leather flap of Finn's jacket. "You're takin' that ship over my cold dead bones, son," the girl's mother informs them, pulling a matching blaster from the folds of her long winter robes. Four echoing clicks behind her indicate that her brothers and sons agree.

For a moment, nobody moves. The shipyard opens onto a marketplace crowded with stalls bustling with holiday traffic. In the plaza a few stalls over a children's' choir sings some traditional solstice song from the religion of this world, and the strains of it flutter over them, mingling with the snowflakes in the brisk wind. The foreboding that has weighed on Rey's stomach since her encounter with Ben seems to shift, like it's teetering on the edge of something.

Several things happen at once. Finn actually puts his hands up. Rey throws out her hand, not to surrender but to freeze every single one of them, or try to. And Poe, wearing his own jacket now since they're on an actual mission, steps into the no-man's land between them with his hands up in a placating gesture.

The children rest after a soaring crescendo, letting the sounds of hawkers and hagglers take the melody for a few seconds before they start in on another off-key song. She'd love to stand and listen—on Jakku, the market women would sing in the evening sometimes, and she would edge as close to the outpost as she dared at night to listen to the strains of music warbling out over the desert. Their songs were always sad. Wailing. The childrens' songs sound happy. Yeah, she'd like to listen.

But instead she's here, stealing a family's property at gunpoint, watching the early sunset and the holiday lanterns paint multicolored, dancing reflections on the dull surfaces of their blasters.

"Let's all calm down," Poe says after a few tense breaths. "Ma'am, this is a serious military need. We're going to need every ship we can get to go out there and fight for the Republic."

"It look like the Republic's done shit for me lately?" the woman asks, adjusting her head-covering and jutting her chin around the desolate shipyard. She spits on the snow. It's black, the saliva. "You people ain't done nothin' 'cept try to haul my girl off to the army and now try to steal my damn merchandise."

Poe's good at talking, and he does his best to convince the family that giving up their rickety but still spaceworthy craft for the good of the Republic is a fantastic idea. He fails. Rey's not surprised. They've failed ten times already today.

"Ma'am, I'm authorized by the Republic Defense Forces to use force to commandeer this spacecraft," Poe says. Rey thinks he gets farther when he cuts the fake cop-speak, but she can see in his eyes he's already given up on this.

"You ain't gonna shoot me, son," the mother says, chewing on something that seems to be attached to her cheek. And she's right, they're not going to shoot her.

Rey exhales, trying not to show too much relief as they leave. She pulls her borrowed too-large orange polymer jacket around her as they step into the lights and food-smells of the crowded marketplace. She can't shake the feeling that one of these standoffs is going to end in a firefight. So far the worst that's happened is that they made an old widow sob because without her ship she couldn't run her business and without her business she wouldn't be able to buy her son's passage home when he got out of prison—Republic sector-level prison—off-planet.

They'd walked away from that one as fast as they could; she saw Finn run back and give her his three credits, the ones he'd kept from Takodana when Han gave them money for a drink. He'd held onto them because he'd never had money of his own before. Thought they were lucky.

"Lethal force, my ass," Poe snaps to no one in particular when they're back in the marketplace. "Desso's out of his mind if he thinks we're going to go around shooting civilians."

Neither Rey nor Finn say anything. Poe's been in a shitty mood since this morning. Whatever happened at the classified Senate meeting—which started at 0600 hours after a night that kept everybody except Rey in the hangar until 0300—had made him furious, even before he learned he'd been commanded to go out and steal.

It's only 1430, but the winter day-cycle this close to the pole is so short the suns are already sinking below the horizon. A gong shimmers from somewhere across the market as soon as the second sun disappears, and Rey watches with interest as the shopkeepers all set out some sort of native winter gourd, deep green, using the twisted, dry stems as hooks to hang them on colored ribbons strung up outside each stall. In the dimming light Rey realizes with delight that the gourds are infested with some sort of glowworm. Their flickering, slithering lights shine out white and orange and yellow through the thin skin of the fruit, creating beautiful, pulsing lanterns that shine out over the darkening snow.

She glances over at Finn, and he looks so sad.

"I don't feel like one of the good guys right now," he says quietly to Rey. They both know it's not Poe's fault.

"Me neither," she says.

She hasn't felt like one of the good guys since last night.

You failed him by thinking his choice was made. It wasn't. She can't stop thinking of those words, her own, as she stomps through the snow, her polymer jacket and jumpsuit swishing loudly with each step. She'd felt his conflict and his grief and she hadn't reached out to him.

When he'd told her that was real, when you came to me, that was real. What had he meant? She hadn't told that to Leia. She probably should've but it felt too raw, too personal. For a mad moment she though he might be in love with her, but that's not it. He might be a little jealous of Poe - she'd felt something physical, certainly, when he'd been with her in the turbolift, and when they touched hands - but that feels so unimportant it's almost like it's not there when she feels the texture of the connection between them. The 'that' isn't anything as shallow as romantic love. She's sure of that. She's not sure what the word for it is, but she had felt something deep, something real when she'd gone to him then. Friendship. Companionship. But, no, that's not it, it's more important than that. It's something else.

It's the opposite of alone, whatever that is. It's the feeling they'd shared when they fought side by side, each of them certain that the vision of the future they'd seen was coming true, each of them certain they'd won.

What had he said to her in the turbolift? That when the time came, she'd stand with him. Standing with. That's what he'd been talking about when he'd said that was real, I felt it. That's what he wants from her. To stand with him. Not literally, maybe, not on the same ship even, but to help him. Somehow.

And she hadn't. She could give herself reasons why she hadn't. She'd stayed up most of the night, even after Rose came in and fell exhausted onto the other bed, giving herself reasons. But that doesn't change how she feels. Like one of the not-good guys. And this disaster of a mission hasn't helped.

Poe, who knows as well as anyone how desperately they need these ships, had asked her to try mind-tricking one of the civilians. He'd obviously hated to ask, and she'd hated that she'd been angry at him for it. He's trying to do what he thinks is best for the Resistance. She knows that.

But she remembers Ben's words: they'll use you as a weapon, against anyone who stands in their way.

And she tried, she really tried. But she couldn't do it; she'd just looked an idiot, commanding someone to give up a ship. She's had trouble feeling the Force all day, like her desperate, accidental pull on the Dark side had changed something inside her. She wonders if that's part of the reason she feels like her stomach doesn't have enough room.

Rey sighs and wishes she could walk through the stalls, looking at the lanterns and the little toys and listening to the singing and dipping into the narrow alleyways between the stalls to kiss Poe in the light of a thousand lanterns.

But Poe isn't smiling either. He'd smiled at her this morning when he left the Senate meeting, clearly thinking she was the best thing he'd seen all day, but when he leaned in to kiss her she'd shaken her head and turned away.

"What's wrong?"

"He can feel it. He knows it's you."

His eyebrows knitted in concern, then the full implications of that hit, and she saw his pupils widen in an emotion she's never seen in Poe. Fear. He's still dealing with his own Kylo Ren-related trauma.

"That's—that kind of kills the mood. Hell, Rey, that makes my skin crawl."

"Me too. I don't think I can-" she broke off. She doesn't think she can kiss him or do anything else without thinking about the fact that Kylo Ren is watching and waiting to use it against her.

"Yeah. Yeah, I understand. Did he hurt you?"

She shook her head again. "No. It's just embarrassing."

There's an understatement. Tiny details of her day are now excruciatingly humiliating with the inescapable awareness that Ben is following along. She feels—violated. The word feels wrong, too intense. Compared to going into her mind, after all, what he's doing is harmless. He can't see her thoughts, her memories. Only her emotions and sensations, and that's not all that different from what she does to people all the time, feeling their emotions in the Force. That's not a violation—is it?

But, still, she agrees with Poe. It makes her skin crawl.

More importantly she's constantly terrified that he's piecing her thoughts together in real time. He must know she's on a cold planet, is that enough to find her? Leia didn't think so. But now Rey's a lot more worried about accidentally giving away information that could get them all killed than she was.

"Leia knows, yeah?" Poe actually blushed. "I mean, whatever you're supposed to tell her. Not the—the details."

Rey wanted to kiss him so badly when he blushed, but they'd both be thinking about Kylo Ren listening in on their private moment. "Yeah. She knows."

As she'd expected, the news that her son had appeared to her weeping on the floor hadn't cracked Leia's clinical composure. Rey gets the sense that she's got her hands full with whatever the senators are talking about in their private meetings. Ben's going to hurt no matter what, so no sense putting much time into it.

But the knowledge that touch, at least, is getting transferred through the connection alarmed her. She drilled Rey for five minutes on the precise details of the encounter, terrified that if Kylo Ren could feel what Rey feels, he could also see what she sees and hear what she hears. Leia pointed out that if he could recognize Poe through the Force, he almost certainly knew that Rey was talking to her in that moment.

Rey imagines him sitting in some dark room like she'd seen on Snoke's ship, feeling his mother's presence through the Force. Does he miss her? Is he angry? She can feel almost nothing from him, not like the tide of grief from last night.

They're in a relatively isolated section of the market, far from the crowded center where the children are singing. Poe's walking ahead of her and Finn, studying his comm and looking for the next place they're supposed to try to rob, when suddenly he throws it into the snow.

Rey and Finn both stop, wondering what's wrong.

"Forget this," he snaps, sounding very much like Finn. "This is a waste of time and it's completely unethical and I'm not going to be a part of it and I'm not going to order you two to, either. I can't."

"Poe," Finn says after a long moment of silence, "no offense, but can you really afford to be ignoring orders right now? She's still pretty sore about the mutiny."

Poe frowns and picks his comm out of the snow like he's personally surrendering to the First Order.

"Yeah, Finn, she's sore about a lot of things. But I take responsibility if Leia or Desso comes down on us." Finn looks uncomfortable, but nods. He's better at following orders than either of them, despite being a deserter. "Rey," Poe continues, "I'm sorry I asked you to use your powers that way, back there. That was. That's a bad direction for the Resistance to go."

Something in the way he says it makes her suspicious. "Leia put me on this mission because she thought I could mind-trick people into giving up their ships, didn't she?"

Poe frowns, not wanting to say something he shouldn't, but he looks at Finn's equally suspicious glare, and the he looks at her, and he cracks. "Desso did," he says, having the grace to look embarrassed. "Leia was against it."

Rey nods. That's good at least. Sliding down to the Darkness accidentally was one thing, but she doesn't know what she'll do if they start asking her to do it on purpose. "Back to the speeder, then?" she asks.

Poe sighs. "Yeah. Let's go."

Finn clears his throat. They both look at him. "So, here's a thought. We could go back to the base and freeze and get yelled at. Or," he says with an anatomically unlikely waggle of his eyebrows, "we stay here and walk around awhile, maybe get some of those pastries they were selling back there. Some kind of hot drink that tastes better than the caf at camp."

Rey grins.

But Poe's still frowning, still angry at Desso and Leia and Kylo Ren. Neither Rey nor Finn have ever seen him this angry, and Rey feels Finn's concern joining hers in the Force. "You know what?" he says, looking like he's half a second away from throwing his comm in the snow again, "none of us slept, there's no kriffing daylight on this planet, my morale is pretty damn low, this is the most beautiful thing I've seen in years, and that's a freaking fantastic idea, Finn, why don't we just walk around and boost the hell out of our damn morale until our shift ends instead of stealing from civilians?"

At his words, that sense Rey has of everything teetering, about to fall, eases. Suddenly the snow underneath her feels solid and safe. Finn beams, and Poe finally relaxes enough to allow his usual grin to break through. Rey throws one arm around Poe's shoulders and one around Finn's, and the three of them walk over their footsteps in the opposite direction, heading back to the crowded center of the market, the smell of spices and meat and baking, the sound of children singing.

Of course none of them have any money, not even Finn since he gave his lucky credits away. But Finn's cheeky grin and his promise that his friend Rey here could do a cool magic trick in exchange for a round of something hot had been enough to get them three paper cups of syrupy but delicious mulled wine.

Neither Rey nor Finn has ever been this happy. They both know it, and Poe's lingering bad mood fades quickly into a determination to show them the best time of their lives since neither of them has ever had a holiday, much less a holiday market.

They stroll through the endless stalls of food and this planet's traditional crafts, asking about the little toys and the glowgourds and the snowworms, and she takes Poe's hand in one of hers and Finn's in the other and for a moment everything is perfect, and then they hear fireworks and look east, toward the camp, where a column of smoke climbs into to the sky and several thousand TIE-fighters tumble down from the clouds like snow.

The next few chapters are big. I'm super excited. Comments let me know people are still reading, so if you are, thank you so much! I hope you're enjoying it.

Every time Finn shows up everything becomes fluffy and I love him but we're about to get real dark again.