"I was the navigator on our ship for ten years.", Finn said. "You sure you don't want me to do it?"

"See that droid over there.", Lara replied. "He is the navigator of this ship and even if his programming somehow crashed and shut down right now I still wouldn't let YOU touch any controls on the Falcon."

BB-8 whirred his head so that his eye was facing the young man and whistled a tone that sounded surprisingly to Finn like an apology before turning his attention back to the controls all around his cylindrical interface.

"OK, fine.", Finn mumbled. "You were the one that said you weren't sure where we were going to go now…or was I not supposed to hear that?"

She quickly lifted her head up from the controls in front of her and turned her gaze towards him.

"What is your name, anyway?", Lara said as she scowled at him.

"Finn…my name is Finn.", he answered

"Well listen here, Finn.", Lara shot back. "You helped us out back there on B'wynn, so I do kind of owe you for that, but that doesn't mean I trust you. You're a guest on this ship, FOR NOW and if you don't mind, could you just keep your comments to yourself before you find yourself dumped at the first mining asteroid we fly by."

Finn looked Lara in the eyes and was going to remind her that he didn't just "help"….he actually saved her life. He thought better of it, though, and bit his tongue.

"May I ask what your name is?", he asked so as to change the subject.

"Lara.", she answered coldly. "And that little astromech over there is named BB-8."

Finn nodded in the direction of the droid as he beeped a pleasant tone.

"Well, anyway…nice to make official acquaintance.", Finn said.

"Yeah, great", the girl shot back quickly as she turned her attention back to the controls in front of her. "Pleasantries exchanged. Now keep it quiet while I decide what we are going to do next. We can't go back to B'wynn."

Lara always knew that the junk world would not be a permanent residence for her, but nevertheless she thought that her decision to leave would be a little more deliberate, a little more planned out. Instead, she was chased off like a fugitive…one step ahead of a brutal band of killers intent on adding one more notch to their collective belts. Now that she had a chance to catch her breath and reflect, the situation seemed somewhat sad. Was this wandering ever going to end? Why did she have such a knack for unexpectedly running away from each and every hurdle she faced so far in her life? One day she had to find her place and purpose, didn't she?

Just as Lara felt herself sinking into the despair that gripped her thoughts so many times before, a series of beeps and whistles emanated from BB-8, breaking her concentration and shaking her out of her mental trance.

"I agree with the droid.", Finn remarked. "We need to figure out somewhere to go quickly. The Falleen we crossed back there is going to be out for revenge and he's pretty resourceful."

Lara snapped back around and stared right at Finn with an incredulous look on her face.

"You can understand him!?", she asked.

"Yeah.", he confirmed, sounding somewhat surprised. "Everyone I have ever known on a starship can understand astromech language"

"No offense, little guy…but it's really not that difficult", he stated as he glanced in the direction of the droid.

BB-8's soft beeping answer indicated that he didn't take offense, causing Finn to smile not only because he was starting to like this little guy but he also knew it would most likely annoy Lara.

"Look.", Finn directed at Lara. "In my time with that crew, I've been all over the Outer Rim. I know a place that they definitely wouldn't look for us."

"Where?", she asked sounding a bit exasperated, not even trying to mask the frustration at having to rely on their new passenger to get them out of harm's way.

"I know the coordinates.", he replied "Since you don't trust me, I can give them to BB-8. He can analyze your database and plot our route there. How's that?"

"Do I even want to know why your band of goons wouldn't look for us there?", Lara questioned.

"The planet orbits a cold white dwarf star.", Finn explained. "It's dark, lifeless and inhospitable. The perfect place to go missing for a while."

"And….", he continued somewhat sheepishly. "We were kind of chased off the world by a local militia group when they discovered that we were leeching power from their grid and piggybacking their off-world transmission lines."

"So you want US to go there!", Lara scoffed, her words dripping with disdain. "Sounds like a great idea."

"We can go to the other side of the world…away from them.", he explained.

"Do you understand that WE will also need some source of power if we plan to stay hidden there for any length of time?", she remarked.

"Well, I'm open to any ideas that you have.", Finn quipped. "But since you seemed to have no ideas earlier, this sounds like our best option at the moment. Besides, it's only about two dozen parsecs away."

Lara was greatly annoyed at the situation they currently found themselves in and even though she didn't really trust their new passenger, she did sense that he was right about their pursuers. She needed to make a decision about where to go very soon.

"What do you think, buddy?", she asked BB-8.

The droid surprisingly beeped his approval of the plan.

"Well there we go.", Finn remarked with a smile.

"Hey-!", she rebuked "I don't need your translation and I haven't decided anything. Give him the coordinates of this planet and then go back to the living quarters while I weigh our options. It's getting cramped in here anyway."

Finn pursed his lips into a frown and shook his head in mild disgust but wisely kept his mouth shut while getting up from his seat. He leaned over the console in front of the little navigator and typed in a string of numbers and symbols before turning towards the rear of the cockpit and exiting down the access hallway.

When Lara was sure that he was gone, she turned to BB-8 and quietly spoke. "Send me the data on this planet he was talking about."

The droid whirred and beeped as a holographic image of the small world winked into existence above the ship's control panel in front of her.

"Interesting.", she remarked as she studied the slowly rotating 3D image. "He was right about the physical description. The place looks like a decent place to lay low, but why did he not tell us the name of the planet?"

BB-8 chirped a questioning tone as Lara slowly raised her hand to her chin, continuing her analysis.

"He had to know the name if he was a navigator with that crew.", she muttered as the droid chittered another reply.

"I know you've taken to him, but I'm just not sold yet.", she directed at her companion while still pondering.

"Ok, let's head for this planet.", she finally relented. "Make the calculations for the jump and run a diagnostic on the hyperdrive. If it checks out, get us on our way. I'll need to check on some of the other systems from back in the hold. We haven't flown this ship in almost two years."

Her mechanical co-pilot beeped an enthusiastic reply.

As Lara watched him begin to process information, she felt a bit of regret in the fact that she couldn't share the little guy's naïve enthusiasm. BB-8 never showed any disappointment. He just did what needed to be done, no questions asked and most of the time he solved any problem presented to him. She knew that droids didn't really have personalities, but still the little guy was the most positive being she had ever been around. Lara cracked a small smile looking at him work.

She swiveled her seat forward, reclined back while sighing deeply and stared out through the glass panels. The cold emptiness of space stared back at her, giving her none of the comfort she was looking for. How long ago was it that she was riding a wave of excitement and emotion before the Jarlin race? It felt like a lifetime ago even though she knew it couldn't have been more than a few hours.

Yeah, HOPE. That's what I felt, Lara thought disgustedly.


Finn slumped on a small, semicircular couch in what the girl called the "living quarters". He had been all over the galaxy in his short life and had seen some dark dirty spaces. He'd been in awful locations while running from both law enforcement and other criminal gangs, holed up in underground bunkers on war torn worlds and been hiding in low-level residences on Coruscant itself. As he looked around the Millennium Falcon, though, he was pretty sure that if he had to list the five worst places he had ever been, this junkpile he was currently a passenger on could easily make the list.

The ship smelled awful. The acrid smell of coolant mixed with burning plasma hung in the air like a nasty soup and it wasn't hard to see why. Leaking conduits drooped along the ceiling lines haphazardly and exposed wires littered the walls, crackling and sparking at random. How a fire had not already broken out in multiple places was beyond a miracle, Finn thought.

The Falcon didn't look much better than it smelled either. There was a layer of oily grime on almost every surface, from the beat up seats to the vinyl rectangular panels in the ship corridors that looked like pads from an asylum room. Control panels were in different states of disrepair and there was a huge hole in the floor with a metal grate that Finn surmised was its cover laying right next to it. Metal boxes and canisters were toppled and lying everywhere making the interior of the ship look much like the surface of B'wynn.

Although deep down Finn recognized that he had made the right choice by helping this girl, he couldn't quite relax. The thought of Xirane hounding him for the rest of his life loomed very large and he wasn't confident that IF they were somehow found, Lara would be willing to return the favor. This whole scenario was making for a large headache that he tried unsuccessfully to soothe by leaning forward on a broken holo-chess table and massaging his temples.

Maybe if I lay down for a bit, that might help, he thought. How long had it been since I slept?

He couldn't actually answer the question accurately but estimated it had been more than a day. He lowered his head to his crossed arms on the gameboard and as he closed his eyes, Finn remembered a crazy creature on some backwater world he had visited with Xirane's crew that shouted at him about something called THE FORCE. He didn't know what this Force was and ignored the raving alien as it ranted at him over and over, but he later came to understand it had something to do with the Jedi Knights of the Old Republic. Why he recalled that experience at this moment, Finn didn't know. He didn't have much time to contemplate further, however, before he was sound asleep.


Finn awoke a short time later to the sound of metal hammering on metal. As he lifted his head and his vision began to come into focus he was able to ascertain that the sounds were coming from the open hole in the Millennium Falcon's floor. For a brief moment, Finn was worried that maybe the dilapidated ship was coming apart from the strain of being in hyperspace, but before long he heard a string of curse words that would make a weapons smuggler blush coming from an unseen Lara down in the floor cavity.

He rose up, shambled slowly over to the edge of the hole and peered down inside.

"Do you need any help down there?", he asked Lara

"Not with the ship, I just finished making a small adjustment.", she replied. "But I could use a hand getting out of here."

Lara reached up, grabbed his outstretched hand and was quickly out of the small cavity in the floor.

"Small adjustment?", he chuckled. "Sounded to me like you were fighting pretty hard down there."

Lara just glared at him, looking unamused while wiping some grease from her cheek.

"Or not.", he mumbled as she turned away and walked towards a seat near what looked like a bank of diagnostic panels.

"Looks like we'll be arriving at your planet within the hour.", she announced after sitting down and glancing at the monitor in front of her. "So you got a plan as to what we are going to do then?"

"Um, well…..not really." Finn replied. "But I'm working on it."

"You know, you're really not much help." Lara quipped while turning back to face him. There was clear annoyance in her voice as she continued. "How did you ever hook up with that crew you were with and last for any amount of time with them?"

"I told you. I'm a good navigator." He shot back. "And I'm also an excellent computer slicer. I earned my keep with them, thank you very much."

"OK…..settle down.", she responded. "It was simple question. No need to be hostile."

"YOUR tone has been nothing but hostile since I came on board.", he snapped angrily at her.

Lara dismissed his response curtly with a hand wave which seemed to irritate Finn more, but he kept his composure and said nothing.

"You didn't answer my other question.", she continued. "How did you come to join that gang of thugs?"

Finn lowered his eyes and dropped his head slightly in response to Lara's inquiry. She sensed that she had opened an old emotional wound and immediately felt guilty for pressing the issue. He quickly raised his head, though, looked her in the eyes and began to tell her.

"When I was a boy.", he began "About six years of age, I was later told…my parents, my two sisters and I were on a transport to the Inner Core systems. I was too young to know the full reason why we were all headed there, but I seem to remember my father speaking about a new job."

"We were approaching a landing platform on the Hutt moon Nar Shadda to changeover to a different ship heading to Kuat", Finn continued. "I don't really recall how far out from the deck we were, but I do remember the ship lurching hard as if an engine had failed. I heard people screaming as we picked up speed but my dad leaned over close and told me not to worry, that we were going to be all right. I believed him…but I shouldn't have."

"I never heard from or saw any of my family again", he said sadly. "The next thing I remember was being pulled from wreckage by a young female Falleen. She took me away from the crash site and got me medical attention for a broken arm. I was lucky that was all that happened to me. Later she told me I was one of a handful of survivors and was the only human to make it. Her name was Zanu."

"Let me guess.", Lara interjected. "This Zanu was the girlfriend of our mutually acquainted murderer."

"Yup.", Finn replied. "She treated me over the years as her own child and I came to look at her as my guardian, although Xirane often called me her pet. She wasn't a fan of that and told him about it many times, but I'm sure you can guess how well that went over."

Lara sighed and nodded her head. Finn detected a slight bit of relaxation in her body language, the first indication he had seen of Lara showing compassion for or acceptance of her new passenger.

"So anyway.", he continued. "Like I told you…as I grew older, I learned skills that made me valuable to Xirane. So much so that even after Zanu was gone, they kept me around."

Again, Finn dropped his head and his voice trailed off. This time though, he kept his head down and he seemed to be finished speaking. Lara had a feeling that she knew what had happened to the female Falleen, but she did not want to pry any further. The young man seemed genuinely hurt recalling these memories and she wasn't interested in delving into his mental scars. She had neither the inclination nor the ability to comfort him, not when she had her own problems to worry about now.

"You're gonna ask me what happened to her, right?", he spoke up surprisingly.

"No, I didn't want to…", Lara started to reply

"It's all right.", he answered as he met her gaze again. "You should know what happened. It's probably the reason I'm here on this ship right now, truth be told."

"Xirane killed her right in front of me.", he proceeded to say. "He blamed her for a botched job and gunned her down in cold blood, with no remorse."

"I'm sorry.", Lara somberly replied. "I know a thing or two about revenge, myself. I can see why you helped me."

Finn looked somewhat confused.

"What I did down there wasn't about revenge.", he replied.

A similar questioning look formed on Lara's face when she heard this.

"I helped you because it was the right thing to do.", he finished.

This was certainly not the response she had expected. Had she completely misread the young man sitting here telling his story? For years, her first instinct had been to mistrust almost everyone that she met. Until about five minutes ago, she didn't trust Finn either, but she could somehow sense now that he was genuine. He had obviously been through some tough things and most likely seen some real atrocities in his short life, but did she also sense something else deeper inside him? She wasn't sure but it was probably time to let her guard down a bit. She did owe him her life whether she asked for that debt or not.

"Finn.", she said as a small grin crossed her lips. "Thank you for what you did back there on B'wynn."

He began to nod but before he could say anything, a glowing red light on a panel in front of Lara beeped to life.

"Looks like we're approaching your hiding place.", she exclaimed. "You finished working on your plan?"

"Yeah, I have some ideas.", he said unenthusiastically.

His words instilled neither of them with any confidence as they both rose from their seats and headed to the cockpit.