"I can walk!"
"No, Rey, you can't," Poe snaps as he emerges from the cockpit. "Since you won't listen to either of them, listen to me. You can't walk yet. Maybe after you see a healer here."
Rey huffs. "BB-8?"
The droid lowers its head and bleeps sadly.
"Fine!" Rey glances up. "Carry me, Ben."
Poe bites his lip as he watches Finn frown.
"Are you sure you don't want Finn to do it?" Ben asks. Not Kylo. This is a change for Poe.
He reaches to pat his blaster, safely secured around his waist. Just in case.
"I asked you, didn't I?" Rey tries to sit up and sucks in her breath in pain. "Or I can walk."
"Wait, wait—Rey!" Ben reaches down and lifts her up in his arms.
BB-8 lets out a long, dreamy whir, and Poe glares at the droid. What are you suggesting? he wonders, but doesn't say it. Mostly because he doesn't want to jar Finn any further.
"Okay," Poe says instead, clearing his throat. "Yavin 4's pretty safe, and if I remember correctly, we should also be able to contact General Organa."
Ben focuses on Rey. What Poe would give to be able to see what's going on inside his mind. Although he's not sure he wants to see that level of darkness.
"Ben, you're going to tell us more things about Snoke, right?" Finn asks, hand on his blaster. Poe's relieved that they seem to be of the same mind.
He nods. "But you have to relay it and say you found out on the Finalizer."
"That doesn't feel right," Finn objects.
Ben glances at Rey as she throws an arm around his shoulder. "Please."
"I mean, I'll do it—but it's your information. I don't feel right taking the credit."
Poe's heart swells as he tries not to think of how noble Finn is. He's in love with Rey, not you. Stop it. Stop it right now, Dameron.
"Oh, for heaven's sake," Rey groans.
Ben swallows. "I'm serious, Rey. I don't—I'm not ready. To talk to her."
Rey scowls, her breath hitching in pain. "Well, I'm ready to be healed, so if you could kindly take me off this ship, that'd be great."
BB-8 opens the ramp, and they trample off, into the jungle. Melodious calls and strident shrieks dance through the air, all beckoning at Poe, calling him back to a time when his mother and his father were still alive.
"The colony's this way," Poe says, tongue thick in his mouth.
BB-8 whizzes in awe as they trek through trees cloaked in vibrant green. Splotches of scarlet and azure, pearl and lavender, stand out against the bark, against the canopy of leaves.
"Did you live in the colony?" Finn pants next to him as Ben steps over a pesky root.
"On the outskirts," Poe confirms. "There's a lake there."
"Are you gonna visit your home?" Finn asks.
"Nah."
"Why not?" A violet petal drifts down and lands on Finn's head. Poe brushes it off before he can think and then glances away from Finn, hoping his friend doesn't notice the color storming his cheeks.
"Maybe we will," Poe says. "We'll see."
At last, they emerge from the forest to find a small village. "This way," Poe directs, realizing with a sinking heart how unfamiliar all the faces are to him. There was a time when he knew them all, knew their names. He stops to ask a teen boy if the healers are still here.
The boy affirms that they are, and point Poe in the same direction Poe remembers from his childhood. He ducks inside, followed by Ben and Rey, Finn, and BB-8.
An older woman, hair probably still uncut from the last time Poe saw her, claps her hands. "Poe Dameron!"
"You remember me?"
"Of course I remember you." She clasps her arms around his neck. "We hear stories sometimes. Of your exploits."
"Listen, Seher," Poe says. "These are my friends. One of them's been hurt. She was shot with a blaster. She seems to be recovering, but we were wondering if you could help—"
"Of course, of course! Blaster shots are easier to fix than other wounds." The woman, her face a map of creases, peers at Rey, at Ben. "Such as what happened to your face, young man. That was a lightsaber wound, I can tell."
"Training accident," Rey wheezes with a smirk.
"Put her here." Seher motions to a cot that Ben gently lays Rey down on and grabs a jar of bacta slime.
"Okay," Poe says, clapping Finn on the shoulder. "We'll come find you both. Finn and I have a message to send. BB-8—"
The droid bleeps and twitches.
"Fine. Stay with Rey. See if I care." Poe scowls, and the droid bleeps sweetly.
"Love you too, BB-8." Poe leaves, Finn following.
"Poe!" Leia shouts, clutching the transceiver. "What the—where are you?"
"We rescued Finn," he replies.
"R2 told us you were heading off to do that," Luke puts in.
"Oh hi, Luke. Where are you guys?"
"Where are we?" Leia splutters. "Where are you?"
"Yavin 4. Rey got hurt. Shot by a blaster. She'll be okay—there's a healer here, I remember from when I was a kid, who's pretty good—she'll fix Rey up. And then we'll come to D'Qar."
Leia's mind whirs. Something in the Force-it tugs on her. Another whim, another mother's lie, or truth?
"No, I don't think so," Leia says, glancing at Luke, at Chewie. "We heard from Bazine Netal that the First Order's still hovering nearby."
"So we need to hunker down here? Do we need to run?"
"No, Bazine should hear it if you do." Leia sighs. "We'll let you know when it's safe to come. Don't take any unnecessary risks, Dameron."
"General—I'm sorry about all this, I am." He sounds like Ben, apologizing as a child for destroying the hyperdrive. That time, Leia stood back and let Han rail, because she, too, was furious, even though her son's timid voice and tearless eyes scraped her conscience. Han sent him to bed, and Leia wanted to reassure her son she still loved him, but she didn't.
"I know you are," she says gently. "You're still my best pilot, Dameron."
"Finn's here, and he's got all sorts of information from his time on the Finalizer—about the Starkiller, about Snoke."
Leia leans back. "That's great. We'll have you tell us when you get here."
"Not now?" Poe's confused.
"Why not now, Princess?" C-3PO inquires. Leia slashes her hand through the air, beckoning for the droid to keep quiet.
"It might not be entirely safe," Leia comes up with. She knows Poe won't doubt her wisdom. "We'll contact you in a few days. Check back at the station and ask if there have been any messages for Kes."
"Okay."
Leia ends their conversation and turns to Luke. "Whatever information Finn has, it's not from Finn."
Luke nods. "Leia, Bazine hasn't said anything about the First Order patrolling nearby."
He might think she's being stupidly optimistic, but Leia doesn't care as she punches in the coordinates for Yavin 4. "He's more like his father than he realizes, Luke. He'll run if he knows we're coming."
"We're going there?"
Chewie growls.
"He's my son, Chewie. Yes, we're going to him." Leia looks out the windshield. "Let's go into hyperspace."
"Why exactly does the Supreme Leader even need Force users, if he's so powerful himself?" Phasma wonders aloud as she and Hux eat dinner, just the two of them.
"He is very ancient," Hux muses, stabbing at a piece of rare meat with a vengeance. "Maybe his power weakens over time."
"I would say it's far more likely it grows over time," Phasma counters, glancing around Hux's chambers. Plain and unfurnished except with the barest, skeletal metal furniture, Hux never spends much time in his room, unlike blasted Ren.
He's also never had another person in his chambers. Hux's stomach tightens. Blood from the meat he's cutting dribbles onto the table. Dammit. He'll clean it up later. Besides, he reminds himself. She can help you.
"You have far more freedom with your time than I do," Phasma says abruptly. "I'm devoted to my division."
Hux snorts. Devoted, indeed. "Maybe if you were a little less devoted, we wouldn't have to worry about Ren giving the Resistance whatever information he has on the new Starkiller Base."
Phasma's hand, still armored even though her helmet is off, smacks against the table. "Are you implying I brought FN-2187 on board out of compassion? For a traitor?"
"I really can't think of any other logical reason," Hux returns, his gaze unwavering. "I'll never understand why you feel so loyal to them, Captain. Why you memorize each and every number."
"You're not the one charged with ensuring they reach their full potential," she snaps. "Day in and day out, that's my job. I oversee the details of your broader program. Without me, you'd have no success."
Hux tries to focus on breathing, on remaining calm. "That's not true!" He is responsible for the entire program! He modeled it after his own father's genius Cadets program, the program that trained Hux himself.
"Yes, it is, and I cannot see why you're upset to hear it. The facts are that I know far more about what motivates the stormtroopers than you do."
"And what is that?" Hux spits. His grip tightens on his water glass, so tight he wonders how the glass doesn't shatter and send shards stabbing into his palm.
"The same thing that motivates you," Phasma says. "Individual recognition."
"Get out," Hux snarls, pushing himself to his feet.
Phasma stands, taller than Hux himself. "I thought that's the whole reason you asked me here. To figure out how to get yourself the utmost recognition. Because, as flawed as you are, you might do a better job with the First Order than Snoke."
Hux crosses his arms and drops back into his seat. Phasma does likewise.
"You should comb through the old files from the Empire, see if you can find anything," she advises. "Specifically, you should look for information about Darth Vader, about the Sith, other Dark Side users."
Hux swirls water in his glass. He hates this Force mumbo-jumbo. Without it, he would be leading the galaxy.
But if he can find something out about it worth exploiting and twisting to his advantage, he will.
After Phasma leaves, Hux cleans his table, scrubbing the blood away because he doesn't mind doing his own work. His father taught him to work hard, hard, harder, harder still—fuck! His elbow knocks the glass over, sending glass everywhere.
Still on his knees, Hux painstakingly picks up each and every shard of glass, wipes his own blood and the animal's blood off the table, off the floor. One at a time. One at a time. One. Two. Three.
His nose stings, and Phasma's words sting his mind. Because he remembers when he stopped learning the names of his fellow cadets, on the advice of his father.
"Someday, boy," Brendol Hux told him, hand clenched around the back of his son's neck, clenched so tightly Hux feared his neck would snap. "You'll have to kill one of them."
"You can walk!" Finn exults as he and Poe arrive back at Seher's.
"Yes," Rey says, trying to stand fully upright. She's still weak, and she can sense Ben's worry, and his hands hovering over her shoulder as if ready to catch her.
Poe relays Leia's warning about the First Order. "Honestly, we'll be fine here," he finishes, as if to reassure them.
"Bazine Netal?" Ben echoes.
"You know her?" Finn asks.
"She's a mercenary. She's the one who found… something on Endor for me."
Darth Vader's helmet. Rey sees it in Ben's mind.
"Well, it seems like she's chosen a side, and it ain't yours," Poe says cheerfully. His eyes dart to Ben to watch his reaction.
Ben shrugs.
"Are we going back to the Falcon?" Rey asks.
"We could," Poe says, biting his lip and glancing at Finn.
"Or we could say in Poe's old house," Finn puts in.
"Let's go to Poe's house," Rey says instantly and sees the pilot's face light up with a sort of pride. He mumbles something about needing to buy a few things in town.
As they walk, slowly out of respect for Rey, she keeps replaying the night before in her mind. Her drifting in a sort of gray space, hearing Ben's voice, waking up and him kissing her. She steals a glance at him and sees his face flushing.
No one's ever kissed her before. Unkar Plutt, drunk, once tried and woke up the next day with his already squashed nose even more smashed than before his drinking escapade.
They hadn't talked about it. One quick brush of his lips on hers, and then he was calling for Poe and Finn, and she was left confused because she felt that he was afraid still, and she doesn't know why, because he's blocking her.
What are you afraid of now?
He glances at her as they leave the main confines of buildings, trekking along a mud-strewn path littered with quartz rocks. We'll talk later.
"Here we are!" Poe announces, pausing in front of a rounded metal house with dusty windows. Mountains tower in the background, and a peculiar tree that instantly draws Rey's attention stands in front of it.
"There used to be a starfighter," Poe says, more to himself than to any of them. "On the left, in that patch of grass there." He turns back and notices Rey, Ben, and Finn all captivated by the tree.
"Figures," Poe says. "That's a Force sensitive tree. Luke gave it to my mom."
"Huh," says Finn.
"I didn't know trees could be Force sensitive," Rey breathes.
"Let's go inside," Poe says.
"Has anyone lived here, since you left?" Finn inquires, dragging himself away from the tree. Rey catches a flash of something in Ben's mind.
Really?
Ben looks at her and nods. Finn has the Force.
Rey grins.
"It's pretty dusty," Poe says, glancing from face to face to droid.
"It's fine," Finn reassures him, and Poe smiles.
"We can clean," Finn adds. "Not Rey though. Rey gets to rest."
"I can help," Rey insists.
BB-8 tells her to shut up.
"Rey, you can stay in here." Poe waves his hand towards a silver door. Rey considers protesting again, but Ben pleads with her in her mind, and she gives in. Seher did tell her it would take at least another day until she would be ready to "exert" herself.
"I bought us blankets in the village," Poe says as he enters the room and dumps a pile on the cot. His brow creases, and Rey wonders what this room is to him.
Rey crawls onto a bed with soft aquamarine covers and closes her eyes. She won't sleep—she can barely fall asleep at night—but she can rest.
Except she can't, because she keeps thinking about Ben kissing her, and how strange it is, and the fact that he's still afraid, and she doesn't know what that means but she wants to understand. Ben?
Yes?
Can you come here?
He appears moments later, a dust rag clutched in his hand, BB-8 trailing behind him. Rey smirks. "Poe's putting you to work?"
He shrugs. "Are you okay? Do you need—"
Rey struggles to sit up. "I need to talk to you. You need to talk to me. We need to talk."
You're so afraid…
He swallows but comes closer, taking a seat next to her. That's not enough for her. She reaches out and takes his hand, like he took hers last night. "Why are you acting like this?"
He swallows, and his mental shields drop. "Because I can't imagine why you would want—I'm the one who hurt you, Rey, who kidnapped you. I'm the murderer, a liar, a traitor. That man out there—he's done nothing but come back for you, care about you—"
"Of course I love Finn," Rey interrupts. "I do."
He nods. "I'll—I'll get out of the way."
"Oh, for heaven's sake, pay attention," Rey snaps. "I love Finn, Ben, but as a friend. He's my friend. I don't understand why you're not listening to me. I've told you and I've told you. You can see into my mind, even." She pauses, searching his. "This isn't really about me, is it?"
He shakes his head. "Rey, I hurt you. I'm part of the Order that took Finn's entire childhood. I don't know whether I can join the Resistance. I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm—"
"Is it really that bloody hard to believe someone could care about you? That someone from the Light could see what you've done, all of it, see all of who you are, and still care?" Care isn't even what she means.
Hope sparks blue inside him and in her. Rey reaches out, takes his face in hers. Don't be afraid. I feel it, too.
Why? he asks her.
She doesn't know. She knows pieces and bits, though—like that watching him die would have scarred her, like that there's Light in him, there's kindness, and there's love too, and with each moment, the Light and love are glowing brighter. He wants to change, he wants to be better, to atone, and she admires that.
She didn't bring the Light, she knows. It was already inside him.
Rey knows that he wants her, too. She waits, her eyes searching his, her mind linked with his, feeling everything he's feeling—all the doubts and the fear that he's wrong, that maybe Snoke is right but he can't be because then she'd be dead.
Ben leans closer and kisses her again. She runs her fingers through his hair, kissing him and kissing him, exhilarated and light and knowing that she's taking a risk and deciding that it's well worth taking.
She's afraid, but she plunges in anyways.
"Rey, how—" Finn steps into the room and freezes. "Oh. Oh."