He couldn't see her face. Finn was sure everything would make more sense if he could just see Rey as she spoke to them over the long-range communicator.

"We need a rendezvous point," she said, after their hellos. "The engines on this thing aren't very powerful. I've found a way to push it along faster." Faintly, away from the mic, he heard her whisper, "Stop that now."

"What was that?"

"Nothing to worry about. I've picked up a co-pilot. He's an idiot, but he can fly."

He? Finn tamped down that curiosity under Poe's quick 'shut up' glare. Poe said, "Can you make it to Axxila?"

"We can try." She closed the transmission.

"I knew she would make it out safe," said Poe. "You knew she would make it out safe."

"'He?'"

Poe turned away and set the course for Axxila into the computer. "Rey's obviously picked up another stray fluffken. Soon we'll have the whole flock, and I can coop you all up for the eggs."

"I'm not a baby fluffken. I'm a trained soldier, thank you." He? "Have you reached the Resistance fleet yet?"

"I've been trying the usual frequencies. No chatter."

"But we can join them from Axxila?"

"We should." There was a hesitancy in his voice.

"You said you knew where the fleet was relocating to."

"The General does. I was going to be told when we were ready to go there. She knew the mission."

"I don't understand."

Poe tended to keep his face in a half smile. Finn had come to recognize this as a more effective mask that his own old helmet. "Our original mission was to retrieve Luke Skywalker, the most powerful Jedi in the galaxy. If he'd gone to the Dark Side and I'd known the location of the new base, he could have taken it from my head."

"You're telling me we're lost?"

"No. I'll find the fleet. Axxila is a good place to start. We'll pick up Rey, we'll rejoin the fleet, and we'll go from there."

"You don't like her, do you?"

Poe blinked in confusion. "What?"

"You're always weird around Rey. Don't think I haven't noticed. You're nice to everyone, but you've got some issue with her. Is it the Jedi thing?"

"I don't have an issue with her, Finn. I like Rey fine." He put on a smile Finn didn't believe for a second. "The Jedi thing makes me nervous. I've met them, and some are good, and some are monsters, and she's got one of the biggest monsters riding along inside her head. I can't help wondering what he's saying to her in there. If Rey's going to be as strong as everyone says, Kylo Ren is the last person we want doing anything to her. I'm worried for her, and I'm worried for us. But I don't dislike her."

"Good." Finn didn't want his two best friends to fight.

"I feel like a broken tape spool, but we should do that again."

Rey nodded, resting her sleepy head against Kylo's bare shoulder. The low oxygen in their stolen shuttle was getting to her again. That must be why she felt so intoxicated in his arms. When had she gone from "Don't touch me!" to "Touch me like this..."?

Deep inside herself, in a place he couldn't reach, she clawed back to sanity. In a long list of terrible ideas, this was her absolute worst. She knew her own cool hatred of the man next to her, blaming him for the loss of friends, of home, of hope. He destroyed everything he touched. He'd stalked her halfway across the galaxy in order to slay her and everyone she cared about. That hadn't changed, no matter how limp and sated her body felt, resting here between hungers. She'd been drawn to him by the unwilling bond of their linked minds. They'd smashed into each other, two half-trained angry magicians misusing their own powers, and like two crashed speeder bikes, they were entangled, unable to go forward or back. The presence of him so near, inside her mind and beside her body, overrode the inner warnings and drew them both to merge into one again and again. Only the certain knowledge that he was as helpless as she kept her from weeping inside her own mind.

They were both caught. He didn't want to be here with her. He didn't want to be obsessed with her. He hated Rey as much as Rey hated him, and after they rested for a while, she would be ready to shove his shoulders against the thin mattress of this bunk and ride him until he screamed. Again.

Despite his suggestion they do so right now, she felt him nod off. His mind went silent for a while before drifting into a dream. They had no mental barriers between them now, save the very small place in her own mind which she'd blocked off from his view. She read his dreams as easily as she once watched holodramas scavenged from the rec center of an old Imperial crash.

He dreamed about her, reliving the better parts of the last few hours. Half-awake herself, she felt the arousal bloom between her legs, knowing how deeply he wanted her.

The dream shifted. She saw a curious little man, the same as from the vision he'd shown her back on Yavin IV. "Where have you gone, my apprentice?"

Fear wormed into her. Rey's own dream self was gone, and her lover turned back to a boy of no more than eight or nine years old. He hid around a corner from the man.

"You can't hide forever. Come home and all will be forgiven."

He stayed hidden. Rey pulled herself from the dream, and shook him awake. "Did your boss just call you?"

He blinked the sleepiness from his eyes. "He's trying to track me. He doesn't know where we are. You heard him, too?"

"I heard your dreams." In another context, this would be very romantic. In this context, Rey couldn't contain her shudder. "You're sure you're shielded?"

"From Snoke? Yes." He sat up on the bunk, away from her. His mind lay open to her still, and she read the fear. Snoke hadn't tracked him, but he wouldn't stop looking for his prize pupil.

"Has he found your mother yet?"

"No. He hasn't found her and she's alive." He was positive, and she knew he wasn't lying, either.

"If you can read her mind, why didn't you use that against her?"

"She and my uncle could always shield their thoughts to me." His thoughts wandered down what she could see was a well-traveled path of things hidden and old resentments. A borrowed memory jarred her, stealing her breath. She hid her reaction.

"We should spar," Rey said, crawling past him to get out of the bunk. She'd found a supply of clothes from the ship's owners, and dug out a light shift to wear.

"You want me to teach you all my secrets so you can defeat me the next time we fight?" She felt more amusement than worry. Despite their history, he didn't consider her a threat.

"You're not afraid, are you?"

A teasing smile crossed his face. "I wouldn't want to injure you, at least not for the next few days."

She pulled her hair back out of her way. "Put your trousers back on. Your family has a bad habit of losing limbs during duels. I wouldn't want to chop off something I might have use for later."

There wasn't much room on their stolen ship. The wrong stray movement with either lightsaber and they risked damaging the scow, or each other. He'd said he wasn't interested in maiming her for the moment, and Rey admitted she had other needs from him while they were trapped together. Despite his word and her own desires, she didn't trust Kylo, not at all. She was sure if he thought he could best her now, he'd kill her with no regrets. The thin air didn't help. She couldn't catch her breath, she couldn't think clearly.

It was perfect training.

They danced together through the ship, blocking and parrying each other's blows. Her own skills had been honed by her staff and years of fighting the other scavengers. They'd come for her finds, and her few possessions, and for her body, and each time, she'd fended them off. She had the skill. Her lightsaber could work as that kind of weapon, and her fighting style served as enough of a surprise to keep him off his guard.

"Watch your feet!" he thought at her, and she expected a lunge, but instead she saw the careful step of his own, bare on the metal floor. She couldn't copy the stance. Instead she let herself become more aware of her limbs and the position of her body as she spun to block another attack. For a moment, their faces were next to each other.

She felt him expect her to kiss him. Instead she hit him with an elbow and jumped back, twirling her lightsaber like her staff and nearly disarming him.

He frowned in thought. "Show me that again."

Rey demonstrated, slowing her movements for him to echo. She oughtn't let him see her techniques. He'd find the means to thwart her. At the same time, she couldn't help the pride that formed in her belly as he copied her movements, shifting his center of balance until his own muscles functioned the same way. As he went through the motion again, she brought her lightsaber around, and now he was defending in the same fashion she did.

"You need to work on your form," he said, and attacked head-on. Rey feinted and ducked, heading for the cockpit. He followed, body lit up with the red glow of his lightsaber. "Are you trying to get trapped in there?"

She read a very clear image in his head of the two of them trying to fit into one pilot's chair, Rey wrapped sinuously around him.

She switched off her lightsaber as Kylo approached her. Instantly she fell to the floor and dove through his legs, slapping the close button as she did. Technically, this did not help her learn how to spar, but the thud of his fist on the metal door from the other side was a satisfying victory.

A moment later, he touched the control panel on his side. "You'll have to do better than that."

"You'll have to teach me, then."

He switched off his lightsaber, placing it carefully on the one small table bolted to the bulkhead. "After we've eaten. You said you found food?"

"Not much. I don't think they were intending a long voyage. The food synthesizer's busted." Their fight done, Rey turned her back to him, digging for the rations packs she'd found. She felt his hands on her back, hot through the thin fabric she wore. Rey tensed. He could just as easily kill her with his bare hands, or even without. He'd used the Force to kill any number of people in the past.

"I don't want you dead." He kissed her neck. "I don't want you hurt." After their second coupling, or had it been the third? When they'd come up for breath, she'd helped him apply a bacta bandage to the burn on his leg from Finn's blaster. Each accidental prod to the tender flesh sent an equal measure of pain into her own leg. He wasn't saying kind things to get her back into the bunk with him. They had joined to the point where not only did they form a deliriously pleasurable feedback loop whenever they touched, they also felt one another's pain. What that meant for when they must eventually face each other for real over locked lightsabers was anyone's guess.

They ate their rations quickly. Rey was used to poor food, and the First Order didn't provide much better than this. Food was energy, and they'd been burning up more than they should pushing the engines with their powers.

"Have you ever eaten poached ganza eggs?"

"No. I found a hirachi nest once. They're sand birds, hardly any meat on them, but the eggs were good." She'd roasted them, allowing herself one per day.

"They poach the ganza eggs in a light fruit liquour, and serve them over hot mash. They're perfect when the yolks are cooked almost through, and you break them open to soak into the mash." Her tasteless meal became even less satisfying as she read the sense memory from his mind, the rich smell of the sauce and the hot savory mash with each springy bite of egg.

"Stop talking about food. We don't have enough rations to eat more, and you're making me hungry again."

Instead of replying, he took the rations wrapper from her hand and dropped their waste into the small incinerator. Then he touched his head against hers, pressing into her the memories of meals he remembered, portions larger than any she'd ever seen, decadent tastes of sweets and spices and succulent meats. None of the memories were recent, and all clouded over with the patina of childhood awe.

"I didn't know what I was missing."

"Now you do."

She hated him for that, for the regrets of what she never had and what he'd thrown away. She had no luxuries in her life, no memories of warm meals or tender arms tucking her in at night, or of knowing she was safe and loved. He'd been given those outrageously profligate riches from birth, and he'd walked away from them. Rey never would have. She'd have stayed forever.

"Nothing's forever. You know that."

And she listened as it crossed his mind again that at some point, he would have to kill her.

They landed the Falcon for repairs on a small moon with little atmosphere. Leia remembered this from countless times in her younger days, patching up this same vessel with spit and hope. She still had spit.

"We don't have long," she said, though Chewie already knew. He'd yanked off half a dozen panels, giving her quick instructions how to repair one at a time while his clever paws dug into the wounded guts of the ship he loved. Leia followed his directions, thinking back to the many times she'd tried looking at schematics of this freighter class, only to come up against the radical modifications those two clowns had performed.

"What do you want to do with her?" Leia asked, as they stood side by side at different panels.

Chewie asked with who, and growled as he poked himself with a soldering iron.

"The Falcon. She was yours as much as she was Han's. I've got no interest in his share. I love this old bird, but I'm only a pilot when I have to be."

He shrugged. He said he was happy to keep flying her as long as he could. He'd thought he'd found a decent co-pilot, but she could be anywhere now. She could be dead.

She shook her head. Rey wasn't dead. Leia was sure of it. She was less sure about Commander Dameron and his pet ex-Stormtrooper. Worrying about them did her no good. She had to trust Poe would get them all back to the Resistance safely, and she would focus on getting herself and Chewie back there. After that, they could worry.

Poe wasn't worried. That was his story and he would stick by it. The little blue ship was the best Madame Baltana could have done under the circumstances. Whoever she'd bought it from had been paid too much. The engines coughed along on very little fuel. Axxila was the closest planet he'd trust to land, and the easiest to catch the bypass from, but if they made it in one piece, they'd be very lucky. Rey and her new co-pilot would surely beat them there by hours if not a full day.

He said none of this to Finn. "ETA is in two days. I've set a path to conserve our fuel. We don't know how far we'll have to go once we reach Axxila."

Finn diligently watched him reset the course on the nav computer. He always watched Poe like that, like he was taking notes. He was doing much better with his flying lessons than Poe could have expected. Another journey after this one, and Poe would feel safe putting him inside an X-wing. Probably.

He sat beside Poe. "Two days?"

"Best we can do."

He could tell Finn wanted to contact Rey again, confirm she was okay. Ask about her new friend. Finn was as easy to see through as transparisteel. Poe kept himself closer, and among everything else he had to teach Finn, he would eventually have to show him the same trick. He didn't want to yet. He'd so rarely met someone as genuine as Finn remained, earnest and not afraid to show when he was scared, and full of sweet intensity over a girl he barely knew. Breaking his innocent openness would be a crime, and it would hurt him.

It bothered Poe more than he wanted to admit how much he wanted to protect this kid from being hurt.

"Tell me about your aunts," Finn said.

"Madame Luna and Madame Baltana? Nothing much to tell. They were friends with my mother when we lived on Yavin. They had us over all the time."

"Are they sisters?"

"Married. Madame Luna has a twin sister. I've never met her."

"Oh." That was a face. Finn had grown up with the First Order's strict notions. Who knew what they'd had to say to him about women who married each other? Or anything else?

"They seemed nice," said Finn. "Can I go with you when you visit them? I want to thank them for their help."

A warm feeling filled him. "Sure."

"I bet Rey would like to come along, too."

"Sure."

Finn's happy expression slipped. "You said you liked her."

"I do."

"Stop with the bantha poo. You're not fooling anyone."

He counted slowly. At the end of his count, he'd feel better. He reached ten, then twenty, then thirty. "I like your girlfriend just fine."

"She's not really my girlfriend. We're friends."

"She's your girlfriend." That much was clear. "You've been crazy about her ever since you met her, and she likes you back."

"You think so?"

"You two spent last night together. Don't tell me you just slept."

Finn looked away, and Poe thought he saw a warm red flush creeping over his face. "I was going to ask you about that."

"About what?"

Finn squirmed. "When I was in training, we had the sex talk pretty early. They didn't care if we slept with our fellow troopers. They just told us to keep our helmets on if we did."

"That's kinkier than I was expecting."

"Right? Phasma's got some issues." He laughed. "They didn't want us getting close, not emotionally. It's easier to leave a fallen comrade behind if you don't see him as your friend. I tried to make friends anyway. The holodramas said you ought to like someone as a person before you slept with them." Apparently the Stormtroopers never watched pornographic holovids.

Not for the first time, Poe wondered at this man. He was like a little bird who'd been raised in a dark box his whole life while longing for the sun, and who couldn't stop preening in the warm glow now that he was out here.

"I was thinking, you're pretty knowledgeable about…things. Do you have any advice for someone who isn't?" He'd screwed up his voice into a tight question, embarrassed by his own lack of experience. He wanted to know what to do. With her.

Poe checked the nav computer again. Two long days. "I can't tell you."

"Oh. All right."

"I can show you, though." He caught Finn's face in his hand and brought his chin in for a kiss, mouth parting under the first pressure. Finn gasped. But he didn't push him away.

Poe let himself enjoy this for the moment. Any time now, Finn would tell him to stop, and he would, and he'd toss it all off as a joke. He'd have this memory to take out for later.

"See," he said, breaking the kiss. "You start with a good kiss. Kissing indicates how you want to hold her, and how nimble your mouth is. That's going to be useful later. Start slow, and build up to the passionate ones."

"Right." Finn nodded, like this was a class, the way he always did. To Poe's amazement, he bent in with a soft kiss, gently nibbling with his own lips. Poe'd had better. This was nice, though. Very. He kept up a firm pressure on his side, letting his hands fall onto Finn's shoulders.

"Not your first kiss, then."

"The other night."

"Right." Curiosity was killing him. "How far did you get? Just so I know where to start the instruction."

"We didn't get farther than this. I, uh, I really liked the kissing." His skin was hot against Poe's face. No wonder he was desperate for some advice. Poe had known plenty of women, and men too, who would drop a man fast after he filled his own shorts. Rey wasn't leaving him over a misfire, but Rey wasn't here.

"That's just a matter of practice. Your first couple of times are going to go fast because you're not used to it. You can make things better by finishing yourself off once before you get started with her. That might be hard to explain."

"Yeah. 'Excuse me while I go into the 'fresher for about five minutes' isn't the most romantic line in the middle of the evening."

"You're looking for romance? That's a whole other Binspo game. Romance means dining and dancing, and spending time listening to her dreams."

"I don't think Rey's into that. Should I try?"

"No." Poe didn't think Finn's favorite scavenger would have much use for the usual trappings of romance. Or maybe she would. People were funny. Maybe Rey wanted nothing more than a chance to wear a glittery lanza silk gown and tiny, uncomfortable jeweled slippers as Finn, in a dark, tailored suit with a rich cape, swept her onto some dance floor.

Finn said, "Let's start with this. I can learn how to be sexy with her, and we can work on the romance later."

"You did not just say 'be sexy with her' right now. You didn't. And you never will again. Swear to me."

"Bad?"

"It's not good."

"Right. How should I talk to her about it?"

"Knowing you? Don't. You'll try to impress her and wind up claiming to be the long-lost Prince of Daimla."

Finn twitched his shoulders. "Just kissing?"

"Kissing is a great start."

Finn kissed him again, more passionately this time, testing the movement of his own mouth and exploring the shape of Poe's teeth. Poe was going to need a few private minutes in the 'fresher himself very soon.

"Good?"

"Good," said Poe.

"Show me more."

Thanking whatever stars had been in the sky the day he'd been born, Poe did.

tbc

Reviews welcome