Nyzar sat back, arms folded. "Not keen on this, Captain."

Kaydel paused, her arms full of ration packs as she watched the show. Rey's hands were on her hips, her eyebrow comically arched as the slender young woman stared down the burly Zabrak. "Orders are orders, Nyzar. We're eating with the escapees."

That was an important distinction they'd decided to make: escapees, not deserters.

Tannell chuckled as he picked up a couple of water canteens and headed down the ramp, passing a bemused Ki'rii.

Rey and Kaydel had decided that they ought to make themselves properly visible to the Vehement's crew. If they were lucky, they might even strike up a conversation or two, and it was lunchtime in any case. So after they'd radioed the fleet, Rey had declared that they would eat outside, in view of the locals.

"This is so very you, Nyzar," LM put in. "You go into battle without a squeak of complaint for two years, and now we're just asked to have lunch with strangers…"

"All right," Nyzar conceded, running his fingers around the short horns which crowned his scar-ridged head. He looked at Kaydel. "You're sure they're no threat? Just jittery kids, like the Captain says?"

"They're about our age." Rey's gesture took in herself, Kaydel and Ki'rii.

The two ex-gladiators exchanged a look. "Kids," LM grated sagely. Chewbacca rumbled disapprovingly. Rey just rolled her eyes.

"Look, I know you're about to say that could still be dangerous, but as long as we don't visibly have fingers on triggers, they won't."

"You two are very lucky in your commanding officers," Kaydel said. Heck, even Poe would probably have given them a telling off had he been here. The Resistance weren't authoritarian types by any means, but they understood the value of proper discipline.

Especially after Crait, though on that occasion, the guilty parties had been left to work through it themselves. Which in Kaydel's case had meant weeks of stewing in her own head, until Rey came to her and offered to help… The memory of that was enough to put a smile back on her face.

Rey tapped her foot. "And the commanding officer says, get your backsides out there. You too, Lieutenant," she winked at Kaydel.

"On it," she replied.

The other Scrappers were already sat down and eating down by the ramp – and holding tentative conversations with some of the former troopers and crew members, Kaydel noted. That would make their job here a little easier, hopefully.

Some of it was probably down to the composition of the group. Stormtroopers, according to Finn, didn't see many people from other species either during their training or afterwards. They certainly didn't get to interact with them peacefully.

Olesin wasn't having any of it, parking himself in the shade and wearing an expression as stony as Kaydel had ever seen on him. By unspoken agreement, the solitary Kaleesh was left to it. He'd fight tenaciously for his comrades in battle, but he was rarely anything but a grouch outside it. Fortunately, the droids and Gial were ably distracting the spectators.

Kaydel took a seat on one of the containers, watching Tannell show off his vibrosword to one of the troopers. A shadow passed over her briefly, and she looked up to see Rey.

"Good call, Rey. Looks like we're popular."

Rey's head bobbed, a little smile playing across her face as she reached for a ration pack and opened it. "BB-8 might actually feel like he's had enough attention for once, today."

Kaydel snorted. "Fat chance. People are listening to Threepio, that's our one miracle for the day used up."

One particularly youthful crew member glanced at them nervously, halfway to crouching down and petting Gial. Rey waved at her to carry on, smiling. "We've never known him to bite."

"Maybe we should head to Ach-To after this," Kaydel said. "Round up a whole bunch of Porgs – I mean, take a load of our new gunships and load 'em right up. Then we'll go all over the Galaxy and pose with them. Our armies will dwarf the First Order within a week!"

Rey dissolved into giggles, planting a hand on Kaydel's thigh as she bent double. "That's a wicked, wicked idea, Kaydel. Kidnapping Porgs!"

To see Rey let her composure drop gave Kaydel a little rush, but she kept her tone resolutely deadpan. "You did it to Gial."

"He was a stowaway and you know it." But her tone was playful, and the hand on Kaydel's thigh squeezed gently. Kaydel drew a little breath, and felt the colour rising in her cheeks.

She leaned over and kissed Rey. "Don't worry, Jedi. Your diabolical secret's safe with me." She reached for a pack of crisped vegetables and offered them. "Seconds?"

Rey grinned. "I'll take a few. Remember, we've gotta leave some for the others."

/¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯\

JN and Arron had led Finn, Rose and Poe up one of the higher towers, one of the few which didn't seem to be a lookout post. Apparently the division's de facto leaders had taken it for a communal space, reminding Finn of his and Poe's favoured perch at the Agnoa base.

They went through introductions and desultory small talk, but before too long, Finn decided they were ready to have the conversation he'd come here for.

"So." He sat back. "Our intel says you were meant to quell a rebellion on Ublest, but disappeared on the way there. What happened?"

The other officers looked to JN, who stared cautiously back at Finn. "Why do you want to know?"

"Because, leaving aside what it means to the Resistance… you're the only other Stormtroopers I've ever known to step away from the First Order. I'm curious to know how it happened, and how it ended with you here."

The young woman seemed to shrink a little, gazing into the fire. "We were fresh out of the academy, and just before we got out the rumours reached us. Stories about a Stormtrooper who renounced the First Order and escaped."

"It wasn't just the Stormtroopers," Arron added. He caught Finn's eye and explained, "I didn't enlist willingly. A lot of us were pushed into the Academy. It might sound weird, but your story was inspiring to us as well."

JN nodded, but a haunted look had crept onto her face. "So we mutinied."

Finn shifted uneasily in his seat, remembering how Phasma had gunned down those Stormtroopers on the Supremacy when they hesitated. "Why do I get the feeling that didn't end well?"

"Because it didn't. The captain ordered a purge immediately. There were still a good thousand veterans aboard and we couldn't sway them." She shuddered. "We tore into other. It was a miracle that they didn't manage to blow the reactor, but stars' end, we bled for it, and we made them bleed too." Her expression was strained, tears welling up in her eyes. "I put down comrades, people in my own colours. Parts of the same system I was meant to belong to."

"And then?" Finn pressed her.

"I keeled over." She shook her head, the ghost of a laugh hissing between her teeth. "All of us did, literally. We fought for three hours on that ship before we'd killed everyone trying to kill us. Made a jump to the middle of nowhere and we all just… collapsed." She slumped forward a little. "It was easier to fall down that get up the next day. The weight of it just fell on us – what we'd done, how alone we were."

Part of him wanted to argue against that. You weren't alone. You could've come to us. Those thoughts came easily to Finn, but he knew they weren't the full truth. Because if you said that, you failed to understand that quitting the legions didn't just mean stepping out of a cage. It meant leaving the very framework of your life.

He'd been there. Before he'd stepped outside it properly – before he'd met Poe, Rey and especially Rose – his conception of the Galaxy beyond the legions had been stunted. He'd had a vague idea of how civilians lived, but he hadn't understood them. They were this nebulous mass outside the regimented order of a Stormtrooper's life.

And a Stormtrooper didn't stop believing the propaganda they were brought up on just because they didn't believe in the First Order any more. If anything, the overwhelming size of the regime and its armies loomed even larger once you were out of it. He remembered the punishment beatings which were a case in point – the offender would be set against a little phalanx of fellow cadets. An individual against the unified, weak and easily battered down.

And the Vehement's crew would had seen more than he had before deserting. The Hosnian Atrocity, the subjugation of Republic worlds and the bloody reprisals meted out to any who held out. To expect them to think the Resistance could keep them safe would be a bad joke.

So he let her carry on, uninterrupted. "We patched up the damage, gave the dead to the void… and ran."

"And since then, you've been here?"

"After twenty-six days of wandering, yes. We came across an old wreck-" the spy's recordings had mentioned that, Finn remembered "-dug around in it, got some obscure navigation charts and found our way here."

"Well, I like what you've done with the place." He looked again at the quiet orderliness of the settlement. There was a slightly brittle edge to it. For all that it seemed peaceful, there was still that constant tension there. "Is it always this quiet? I haven't even heard anyone argue down here."

She gave a small shrug, looking out at the jungle beyond the walls. "We've got to be. All we've got is each other."

"You could have a lot more than that." That brought her eyes back to him. He saw wariness there, but there was something else behind it. Hope perhaps – a hope she didn't quite dare to believe in yet. Glancing around, he saw the same thing in the others' eyes.

He also shot Poe and Rose a look. They both smiled and Poe gave a little shake of the head, an implicit you've got this.

"I'm not gonna lie, it means trading the quietly fearful life for putting yourself straight in the line of fire, but if you don't take this risk, then you may never get to breathe free."

"We're free here." She said it vehemently, but she could clearly tell that the words came off a little hollow, despite how much she tried to make herself believe it. "And if the First Order are hunting here, we'll up sticks. The Galaxy's a big place."

Finn shook his head, letting his sadness show. "What you've got here isn't real freedom. And I get that it feels safe to a point. I nearly chose this life myself, taking a ship to way out and disappearing on a nowhere world." He leaned forward, looking her straight in the eye. "But I see the way your people look up every time a cloud crosses the sky or there's a loud noise way off. Every man and woman in this city is waiting for the day when the First Order finally appears over your world and you have to either fight or flee."

"Well, what's the alternative?" Her voice cracked a little, though she did her best to make it into a laugh. "Take down the regime that controls the Galaxy?"

He resisted the urge to remind her that the First Order was already hunting them. After all, he wanted them to want to take the Resistance's side.

"It sounded crazy to me too," he said, injecting some warmth into his voice. "But then I saw how the First Order treats the rest of the Galaxy, not just us. And I learned how good it felt to give them one in the eye. You heard about Phasma?"

She eyed him as though she was afraid of saying something foolish. "There were… rumours about Phasma."

"Including how she dropped the shields on the Starkiller, and threw her own men under the tank when she got called on it?" He hadn't realised how matter-of-factly he talked about that these days until he saw the look on her face. He almost laughed, but then he got a hold of himself and carried on, riding the wave of passion he'd raised up inside himself. "Because that's the weakness the First Order has been hiding all this time. They tell us and everyone else that we're weak, to make themselves seem unstoppable."

He saw her begin to object and rushed on.

"I'm not saying that it's easy to fight them, far from it. But I know how it feels when you win out, against the odds. Because it's not just about destroying the thing you hate. It's about finding things you never even dreamed of before, things and people that you come to love. That's when you understand what it means to really be free, and after that first taste you just want more, for yourself and for others. It's when you stop asking what chance you have, and start asking what choice do we have but to resist their evil with everything we've got?"

He stopped, catching his breath. She was watching him in silence. They all were.

"You have a chance to show the Galaxy that the First Order isn't as tough as they want everyone to think. And you've already thrown off the colours. Close enough to being free that you might as well go the distance, right? On which note…" he smiled. "My friend Poe says you should never turn a person into a number. So, JN… if it's alright with you, I'm gonna call you Jannah from now on."

"Jannah..." she sat back, almost trying it on. "Jan-nah. Yeah," she said, a smile finally breaking out on her face. "I like that."

"Glad to hear it." He leaned forward, holding out his hand a little. "I need you to gather your people together tomorrow morning. Whatever space is big enough to fit all of you. For now though, I need some sleep."

He'd barely turned the corner when Rose turned and thudded into him, hugging him tightly.

"Hey, hey!" he laughed, returning the embrace. "Is this the bit where you say you're proud of me?"

"So proud." Her voice was a little muffled by his shirt.

"Well, you know." He glanced up at the deep blue sky, then looked at her. "I had some very good influences."