Episode IV:
A "Wake up sleepyhead, it's almost dawn." combined with the feeling of someone shaking him softly took Poe Dameron out of his dreamless sleep. He opened one eye to look at Alex, already changed back into her own clothes, kneeling next to him. "You are up damn early...," he replied and sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. On his opinion the night had been way too short and not very recreative. Especially as the floor was hard and cold. God, he really longed for his own bed on the Resistance base. He was sure that once he was back, he would not get up from it for a whole day. "This floor is not comfortable enough to even consider sleeping on it longer than necessary. And we wanted to leave at dawn. We have a lot of things to do." The dark haired resistance pilot yawned. "I know. So what exactly is the plan for today?" Alex sat down at the fire and wrapped some fur around her leg onto the space where her uniform had the hole Poe hat cut into it to bandage her. "Walk to our ships, search for useful things, bring them here. As we surely won't be able to carry everything at once, I guess we will have to go at least twice," she told him. It seemed she knew perfectly well what they were going to do today. Great, if at least one of them did. "Well then we should get going", Poe said and grabbed the orange flight suit that was lying next to the fire.
Those snow shoes Poe had built for her and the stabilisation of her ankle worked wonders for Alex' abilities to walk. She was still limping, but the movements looked way more fluent than they had the day before. And it was not so painful anymore either. So, the unlikely pair easily reached the crash site of her TIE fighter. Poe had been right. It did not look good. At least the ship had only been on fire and, probably due to the cold, not exploded. But most of it did not really look usable anymore. "What exactly are we trying to build?" Poe asked. Alex stood in front of the ships remains and looked at it thoughtfully, "I'm not sure. I think we need something that can protect us from the cold which can fit us both. And it has to be light and portable," she replied. "Something like a tent?" Poe suggested "For example. But I am not sure whether this will be thick enough to protect us when it gets windy outside. And if we make one that will, it will surely be too heavy to carry around." The Resistance pilot nodded. He had only checked the weather conditions outside after nightfall once for a few minutes and the wind had been really cold.
"And if we build something made of snow? You know, like an igloo." She scratched her chin, thinking about it. "It will take us surely half a day every day to build an igloo that will fit both of us. But I like the idea of using snow. We could build a small wall from snow combining it with something else. Something portable around what we can build a small wall not bigger than what we are able to build in an hour." Poe smiled, delighted about his great idea. "How about a sleigh?" "A sleigh?" she asked, slightly confused. "Yeah. We could build a light structure on a sleigh. We could surely move that around easier, because we can pull it", he suggested. She nodded again. It was a great idea. So far, she had to admit, working with him was going rather well, because both of them had enough ideas which combined made even more sense "But I guess my ship is more likely to offer us a few more usable parts for that," Poe added and made a gesture with his head towards the other ship in the distance.
"We could at least use the rest of the solar panel over there," she then said and walked over to a part of debris sticking in the snow. She gave it a hard kick and the already almost broken off panel fell into the snow. "We should take at least some things from here too. We will see whether we need them later on. But you know what people say: Having something is better than needing something later on."
Poe continued to watch her, as she walked around her ship searching for other useful things she then put on a small pile right behind her. He could neither really figure out the system in which she was searching the ship, nor what most of the parts were for. But she seemed confident, so he decided not to ask about it. "Can you give me a hand?" she then shouted over to him. Poe looked at her standing next to the remains of her cockpit. The upper part looked burnt, but it had not been as bad as he had anticipated the day he pulled her out of the burning ship. The pilot walked over to her. "I don't think there is anything usable left in there." "That's what you think. Help me up, please." Confused at her asking that nicely, he nodded. Then he walked up behind her, cautiously grabbed her hips and lifted her up, so she could climb onto the cockpit. Before he could ask her what we thought she might be finding, she had already slipped inside the ship. From the outside, he couldn't see what she was doing in there. He could only hear her scrummaging through the things, swearing loudly about the state of her ship. Poe could perfectly understand her anger. He had felt the same when he first saw his X-Wing after the crash. Somehow you got attached to your own ship over the time and it hurts you to see it being damaged. Although it was only an object, for a pilot that object was everything.
The minutes passed on and he was asking himself what the hell she was doing inside. Suddenly her head appeared through the hatch again. "Can you take something from me?" she asked. Poe nodded, although he was questioning himself what she had found inside. One by one she then passed some parts to him. Much to his surprise, it included an almost completely intact bag and two slightly bent metal boxes. The resistance pilot just wanted to crouch down to have a closer look at it, when Alex slid out of the ship and asked him to help her down from the ship. Which of course he did. "Told you I'd find something. Now let's look at your ship," she told him and grabbed the bag, the boxes and several of the pieces she had thrown on her pile. Poe grabbed the rest and followed her. It was already a lot to carry and he still had no idea what to do with all the stuff. But the enthusiasm she showed today baffled him. She looked like she was in her element. And he had always thought the First Order only educated them for their designated role, not being able to do anything else. It seemed like he had been wrong about that.
Standing in front of the X-Wing, Alex put her arms to her sides and eyed the ship interested. "Never seen one of those from this close?" Poe asked with a smile. "No. Only in battle. Same as you with the TIE-fighter, I guess." He laughed and shook his head. "No. I've even flown one of yours." She turned to face him. That definitely got her intrigued. "You?" "But it was a two seater." Alex raised her eyebrows, asking herself how he had gotten into a Special Forces TIE-fighter. Poe noticed the confusion but did not really understand why. "Oh come on. By what you told me about your gossiping in the First Order, I can't imagine that you don't know the story of how I fled the First Order with Finn in that TIE-fighter." She shook her head and by the look on her face he knew she was not lying. Seems like the First Order had done a fine job hiding that unpleasant day for them. "Well, at least I found something I can tell you about later on."
She turned towards the ship again and continued to eye it. It looked interesting and like much fun to fly. Alex caught herself desperately wanting to fly one of those just for fun reasons and to try how it worked. She had never been able to withstand anything with wings and an engine. Poe noticed her interest in his ship and he could perfectly understand.
"I think, here are a lot of things we could use. If we for example manage to remove the hatch that would make a perfect roof", she suggested. Poe looked at her and noticed she had somehow managed to climb atop of the crashed ship. "Are the engines still working?" she asked. Poe walked around the ship and had a look at it. "Two of the engines are completely unusable. The others are damaged as well. But we might be able to get one of them running." "Then maybe we could use one of the engines to make our sleigh move. It would surely not be really fast, but faster than walking and easier than pulling it around." "Don't you think it will be complicated to get all those parts to our cave?" She sat down on cockpit. "Yeah. We can take some essential parts we need for prebuilding to the cave, but we have to assemble it here," she agreed. Poe leaned onto the side of his ship. "And without the necessary tools…," he added. But that did not seem to demotivate her. "We will be fine," she told him, climbed onto the wing and started to remove some loose parts with her hands. Poe took that as a sign to start searching for some usable things as well.
Several hours laterm their pile of stuff had grown significally, so both of them decided to start carrying stuff over to the cave. As is was too much for both of them, Poe then returned to the ships again to get the rest, while Alex was given the task of finding them dinner and more wood for fire and their sleigh.
The resistance pilot had spent the last two hours of walking back to the cave thinking about the fact that he should have given her his blaster to hunt for food. She would probably never be able to get anything without a weapon. Alex hadn't asked and he hadn't thought about it before. It had only come to his mind when he had been already at the crash site and with that way too late for him to do anything about it. It seemed like they were going to starve today. His stomach already told him with a loud grumble that it disliked this fact. The sun was already setting, so there was no way that he was able to get something unless it directly threw itself right into its way.
Much to his surprise, he was welcomed by the smell of something cooking over the fire. He placed the rest of the parts on the pile with the others and walked over to Alex, sitting next to a large branch, cutting it in form with a knife. Where the hell did she get that from? He checked his boot, where his own knife was still safely attached. "And I have been worrying all the way back here about not getting any dinner…," he told her and sat down next to her. "Are you underestimating me again, Poe?" she asked, clearly amused. He grinned. "Seems I that was. I didn't expect you to find a knife in your burnt ship and to kill some poor deer without a blaster." Whatever was just cooking over the fire was definitely smaller than the animal he had hunted the day before and he had no idea what it was. But that did not really bother him, because he hadn't known either what kind of animal he had killed the day before. He decided was better not to know if it looked eatable.
"You could have given me yours," she said without looking up from the branch she was cutting. "I know. Don't think it was something about lacking trust. Surprisingly I would not have hesitated to give it to you although we are on different sides. I just didn't think about it," he replied, trying some kind of apology. Luckily, Alex did not seem to mind and was not taking this personally. "All right. Anyway, who said I don't have a blaster?", she added with a grin. "Because I still have mine." The First Order pilot looked straight into his brown eyes. "So what? I didn't have a knife until noon, did I?" she told him and took out a small, still shiny blaster.
The resistance pilot thought for a second about whether she would use the weapon against him. Until now, she did have a reason to agree to their plan of leaving together, because he had the advantage of a weapon. Now they were even and she didn't have to care for their agreement anymore. She noticed his hesitation. "Don't worry. I am one of those people who tend to keep their promises. No matter to whom."
"Well then. Any more interesting findings in your ships I should know about?" he asked to change the topic. Alex put the knife aside, took the two metal boxes and the bag and placed them between them. "In my TIE-fighter there is a small chamber right below the spot where the second seat used to be. Because of its position in the floor, it's rather fireproof and safe. So I use to store some basic stuff for emergencies in my ship," she said with a nod to the boxes. Poe shook his head. She was full of surprises. "What kind of basic stuff?" "First aid kit with a small food supply. But it' just enough for a couple of days," she replied, pointing with her finger to one of the boxes. "And a basic tool kit for slight emergency repairs. But before you get carried away. It does not include a welder," she added, pointing to the other box. "Gods, you are brilliant!" She shrugged "I just prefer to be prepared." "And the bag?" "My spare blaster and some clothes to be able to blend in. But they are not made for this type of temperatures, even though I believe have a scarf I could lend you," she told him with a twinkle. Poe returned the smile and took the box with the tools. She had been right about its contents, because it really contained a small set of tools they could use to assemble their sleigh and scavenge the ships. He then took out his knife and sat down on the opposite end of the branch to help her carve it.
"So, tell me about you in that TIE-fighter," she asked at some point. Poe slightly bit on his lip. "I can't believe they managed to hide that. Am I even allowed to tell you?" "Why shouldn't you?" she asked. "Because if they put all the effort into hiding it, trying to make sure no one – like for example you – finds out, maybe you shouldn't know. I don't want to cause trouble." Alex gave him a sceptic look. "Like that would stop you from telling me. If you can tell me something that makes the First Order look bad, you are surely thrilled to tell me." Poe smiled. "True."
Poe thought about how much he could tell her. He should leave out the story around the map to Luke Skywalker for safety reasons, he concluded quite fast. Even though the First Order knew they had the complete map, he should not give them more information on the issue. Who knew whether Alex would tell one of her superiors about it one she was back. "It started with me getting caught and imprisoned on the Finalizer. I won't go into details on how and why. But by imprisoned I am talking about being chained to a fucking chair, beaten by your guys and interrogated by Kylo Ren himself." Already when the words had left his mouth he regretted saying them. Because it was not important for his story. "You probably deserved that," she replied without looking up. He knew he should not be surprised about her reaction, but he could not deny to be slightly offended. Probably she wasn't even to blame for it, because it was something they had taught her already as a child. Trying to avoid an escalation, he decided it was better not to start a discussion about the sense and dubiousness of torturing prisoners and swallowed his reply. "Whatever," he started a sentence.
Alex looked at him "What? You are not going to challenge me in that? No try to lecture me? I always thought you resistance-fighters were so much about, what is it you call it, integrity?" Poe glared at her. "We are. But I don't think it would make any sense discussing it with you," he replied. But she did not want to leave it at this. "Why?" Poe noticed his well-kept temper leaving him. "Because when it comes to such things, we live in different worlds," he started and could not refrain from starting a rant. "You probably have never seen with your own eyes or experienced what the First Order does. You have always been on the right side and never been the one they wanted something from. Additionally, I don't think you would be able to distinguish right from wrong in this case. Or whatever you consider right and wrong is completely different from my view. I guess, I can't even blame you for that, because you don't know it differently. You have never seen the universe with your own eyes and had your own thoughts about it, you have only seen and known what they allowed you to see or know. I guess you haven't ever thought whether there might be more out there than the First Order. You have most likely been with them since you were a child. I suspect that you don't even know which planet you are from or who your parents were."