Would she ever get used to so much green? Rey carefully guided the Falcon to the landing space Poe pointed out to her, hyper-aware of the tree branches reaching toward them like long fingers. And they weren't just green, either. Some of them were shades of brilliant red, yellow, and orange. The Falcon touched down and Rey went through the landing routine, shutting the ship down. Poe followed her lead, although he had so much more experience than she did—she had been half-tempted to ask him to pilot instead.

But in a very real way, the Falcon was hers now. Chewie had waved off his claim, saying even he was getting too old to keep running around the galaxy. General Organa told her, "Han would have wanted someone who loved her to have her." Poe seemed to respect that, and for that, Rey's affection for him grew. She'd gotten so used to having to defend her skills, to prove herself over and over again to everyone who underestimated her. It was nice to be accepted without a question.

Before they could disembark, an older man with brown skin and salt and pepper hair ran into the clearing, looking up at the Falcon with wide eyes.

"Dad!" Poe exclaimed and bolted from the cockpit. The rest of them followed in time to see father and son embracing enthusiastically and both talking at top speed.

"Is that the Millennium Falcon? I cannot believe you flew in here on—"

"Dad, you're not going to believe who's with me—"

"—whoever let your reckless ass fly here in—" Kes broke off as the rest of them came down the ramp. "I don't believe it."

Finn and Rey flanked Luke as they left the Falcon, and Kes jogged over to them.

"I can't believe it's really you," he said. "I thought—well, I hope you'll forgive me for saying so—I thought you were dead."

"Thought I was too, a couple of times." Luke broke into a grin the like of which Rey had never seen before. The years fell away from his face. "Kes Dameron."

"Luke Skywalker."

The two men embraced, thumping each other on the back. Luke shook his head. "Look at us. We got old."

"Well it beats the hell out of the alternative."

For his part, Poe looked stunned to see his father so familiar with a legend. Kes grabbed Poe around the back of the neck and hauled him in. "What do you mean showing up with company and no warning, boy?" He was grinning as he said it. "And who are your other friends?"

Luke answered before Poe could. "This is Rey, my apprentice, and Finn."

Kes's eyes widened at the word "apprentice" and Rey thought he probably knew what had happened with Luke's last apprentices. "Come on in, all of you. Are you hungry?" He ushered them down a wooded path to a weathered but neat dwelling. It was colder than Rey was used to, and damp. She pulled her jacket tighter around her and lagged behind with Finn, while Luke, Poe, and Kes led the way.

There was something else, a stirring in the atmosphere. No, not the atmosphere, the Force. Something was happening here, and it was something big. Rey stopped walking at first to stretch out with her growing awareness, trying to find the source of the feeling. It lay ahead of them, but she couldn't tell anything else about it.

"You okay?" Finn asked. He always asked that. It was like Poe and his instant acceptance of her, only better.

"Yeah, just cold."

"You're always cold." He nudged her with his shoulder.

"Well yeah, desert planet." She grinned up at him and he grinned back. Maybe this was what Luke had meant when he said he'd seen the way they looked at each other.

"Hurry up, you two!" Poe called. The others were far ahead.

Without thinking too much about it, Rey grabbed Finn's hand and started to run, pulling him with her. When they caught up to the others, she didn't let go, and neither did he. Touching someone like this, on her terms, was new. It fluttered in her belly, exciting and terrifying like the first time she tried sledding down one of Jakku's giant sand dunes. A little free, a little out of control. She didn't like being out of control—usually. Touching Finn felt... almost too out of control.

But the thing was, there was more to worry about than how Finn looked at her or how touching him felt. She'd seen the way Poe looked at him too, like a starving man. Too many times on Jakku she'd watched people tear themselves to bits with jealousy, and she wanted no part in it, not in feeling it or causing it. Luke was right, that side of love was too close to the Dark Side. She wasn't sure how to avoid it, not yet.

Finn's hand stayed in hers, keeping her warm, until they crossed the threshold into the Dameron house. Houses would never cease to fascinate Rey. She understood shelter. She was an expert at finding it, at constructing it, but the fact that most people who lived on planets lived in structures specifically designed and built from scratch to serve as a permanent shelter—the thought of that kind of wealth frightened her at first. It didn't take long to realize that for most people, it wasn't wealth, it was a necessity, especially living somewhere cold and where there wasn't enough scrap material to make a lean-to. Logic said that she must have lived in a house when she was small, but her memories still didn't reach back quite that far, only vague images.

The Dameron house was high-ceilinged but cozy anyway, and Kes settled them around a table with steaming mugs of tea. "So what brings you all the way out here? I know you're not just dropping in to say hello." Kes eyed them shrewdly, focusing on Luke.

"I saw the tree growing in front of the house," Luke said. "It's not native to Yavin."

"Shara told me where it came from." Kes cut him short with a smile. "You don't need to play the enigmatic Jedi."

"It's the only one of its kind left. I'd like to remedy that."

"The other piece...?" Kes didn't finish the thought.

"At the first academy," Luke said.

"Wait." Poe looked between them. "The Coruscant tree? We came here for that? I thought it was just a tree."

Luke turned to Rey. "Is it, Rey?"

Why was he asking her, she'd never seen this tree—then she remembered the sensation walking toward the house. She took a deep breath and reached out, trying to let go and be open to whatever—and there. She felt it again. Vibrant, shimmering, and now that she knew it was a tree, the size and shape made sense. "Oh no," she said. "That's... definitely not just a tree." The Force emanated from the tree, old and deep and strong. It was like a beacon calling her—not to it, but rather to a deeper, inner part of herself. Somewhere she wasn't prepared to go. The tree's power was immense enough that dragged her inward, the same way that Luke's lightsaber had on Takodana, only much much stronger. It threatened to overwhelm her and drag her under, until she sensed Luke's presence within, moving between her and the tree like tossing a rope to someone caught in the Sinking Sands. Finally she was able to disengage.

She tried to catch her breath, aware of everyone's eyes on her. Finn reached for her hand, but she couldn't, not right now. She folded her hands in her lap instead.

"I should have warned you," Luke said. If he hadn't been there, as a buffer and a guide... Rey shivered. She glanced at Finn, who still looked worried, then at Poe, who was trying not to look at Finn.

A buffer. The faintest glimmer of an idea started to form in her head.

Then Luke started explaining what he needed, and she put the idea away so she could focus.

#

Their tea grew cold while Luke told them about the tree. He addressed most of the story to Poe, who found the attention disconcerting. "You were too young to remember, but your mother's last mission for the Rebellion was with me."

"She didn't talk about it much," Kes said. "Not even to me." Was his hair grayer than it was before? Poe tried to remember the last time he'd been home. Had it been that long?

"But you knew the tree was... special." Poe didn't phrase it as a question. All he had known about the tree was that it had been a gift to his mother, and that none of his playmates on Yavin had one like it in their yards. The trees on Yavin were tall and straight, the Coruscant tree was broad, almost as wide as it was tall. He'd learned to climb in its branches, and had learned that heights were something to be enjoyed, not feared. Rey, apparently, had recognized something more about it.

Kes smiled and his eyes took on a distant cast, seeing something far beyond the cozy dining area they were in. "She told me that much. She was more than a little star-struck when she got home. Of all the people we fought alongside, you were the only one that intimidated her a little."

Poe couldn't blame her for that; Luke certainly intimidated him enough.

"I don't believe that for a second," Luke said. "She intimidated about as easy as Leia does." He went on. "The Emperor managed to destroy almost all of the ancient Jedi relics and artifacts, but I'd heard rumors of a few he'd kept aside for his own purposes. Shara got us into an Imperial research base on Vetine."

"They were keeping a tree there?" Finn sounded skeptical. "I don't get it, what's so special about this tree? Was the Emperor a gardener or something?" He caught Poe's eye and grinned. Poe ignored the little flip his stomach gave.

"There were two fragments of a tree that grew in the courtyard of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. For hundreds, maybe thousands, of years, that tree grew, bathed in and surrounded by the Force. The tree itself became a powerful entity, almost a teacher in it own right, guiding students in some ways, pushing them in others." Luke closed his eyes, as if viewing the memories. "Shara and I took the two remaining fragments. I gave one to her, and planted the other." His eyes opened. "It has since been destroyed. The tree outside here is all that remains."

"You can't take an entire tree, can you?" Rey asked. "I don't think there's room in any of the Falcon's cargo holds."

"I wouldn't dream of taking a gift back entirely," Luke smiled. "But we can take cuttings, plant them elsewhere." He turned to Kes. "It might take some time. Rey and I will have to prepare the tree before we start cutting. We'll stay out of your way as much as we can."

"That's no problem at all. I can think of a few chores I could use a hand with." Kes directed his words to Poe, who groaned.

"I learned how to fly so I could get out of those chores."

Kes clapped him on the shoulder. "First thing, you should get everyone's things off that ship so I can get your rooms ready."

"Yes, sir." Poe stood, resigned.

Finn jumped to his feet. "I'll help you." Rey started to join them, but Finn shook his head with a grin. "You get to figure out how to trim a tree."

"I will need your help, Rey," Luke agreed.

Poe ducked out into the Yavin twilight with the weird sensation that Luke had just helped make sure that he and Finn were alone for a bit.

Finn caught up to him. "Sounds like I tagged along on this trip for nothing."

"I dunno." Poe glanced over at him sidelong. "You can keep me company while the mystical types are doing their thing."

"That's true—wait. Did you just sign me up to help you with your chores?" Finn whacked him on the shoulder, laughing.

"Don't listen to my dad. This place practically runs itself." He bumped against Finn half on purpose, as if his body were drawn into Finn's orbit. That wasn't far wrong, come to think of it.

They walked in companionable silence until the Falcon came into view. "Everybody packed light, right?" Finn climbed up the ramp.

"Unless you brought your whole junk shelf with you."

"Hey! It's not junk, it's a collection."

Poe couldn't resist. "Yeah, a collection of junk."

Finn ducked back down the ramp, charging him. "You take that back!" He was trying to keep the grin off his face.

Poe didn't even try. He tried to dodge Finn, but good in a cockpit didn't mean good on his feet. Finn caught him around the middle and they tumbled to the ground like a sack of Jogan fruit, both laughing. Finn tried to pin his arms, but Poe managed to keep his hands free so he could fight dirty: he went for Finn's underarms.

Turned out that stormtroopers were ticklish.

In a matter of seconds, Poe had the upper hand despite his comparative lack of hand-to-hand experience, wriggling his fingers along Finn's sides until he got the leverage to flip them both over. Finn shrieked like an overexcited R2 unit and Poe stopped out of mercy.

"You better hope they didn't hear that at the house." Poe tried to catch his breath, still half-heartedly trying to pin Finn down.

"Wouldn't be the first time Rey's saved my ass."

"Except this time she would totally be on my side." Between the giggling and the panting, Poe failed to realize that he was straddling Finn's hips at first. Then he caught Finn's hands and pressed them to either side of Finn's head and something shifted between them. "Besides, do you really want her to see you like this?" It came out breathier than he intended.

Finn opened his mouth, then closed it. Poe knew he did, because he couldn't stop looking at his mouth. "I don't know if she would approve," Finn said weakly.

It would be so easy to close the little distance that remained between them, for Poe to lean down and press his mouth to Finn's, just once, just to see what it was like. He wanted to. But Finn—Finn looked uncertain enough that Poe couldn't do it. Instead he pushed himself to his feet and offered Finn a hand up.

The inside of Poe's mind was spinning. It was hard to let go of Finn's hand. A loss of warmth. He knew what the score was. Finn cared about Rey, and she probably cared about him. He needed to let go of more than just Finn's hand, or he was going to wind up with a broken heart. "Come on, they're gonna think we got eaten by howlers."

"Do I want to know what those are?"

"No, unless you're a fan of giant carnivorous lizards." Poe boarded the Falcon and started rounding up everyone's belongings. There really wasn't much, and between the two of them they could carry it all in one trip. They walked back through the woods to the house where Poe had spent the first eighteen years of his life.

It seemed so small now, compared to Poe's memories. One of his earliest memories was of running to greet his parents when they came home from the war, running down the same path he was on right now. In his memories, everything towered over him, and now both the trees and the house were strangely diminished. The only thing not diminished was his father.

"I was about to come out and look for you," Kes greeted them. "Poe, help me get the guest rooms ready."

#

Civilian beds felt strange to Finn. The bunks on First Order ships were designed for maximum efficiency, interchangeable, just big enough to fit the average stormtrooper and no bigger. His bed on D'Qar was a little better, but it was still ultimately military gear on a military base. The guest room that Poe showed him to was lush with warm fabric drapes, pillows piled on top of pillows, and a mattress so soft Finn wasn't sure he was lying on anything at all.

He couldn't sleep. Despite the lateness of the hour, the faint sound of Poe's dad and Skywalker talking carried to him across the house. They had started on war stories after dinner, and showed no signs of slowing down when the other three were yawning. Apparently once his other guests were seen to, Kes had gone back to talking.

Finn lay in the too-soft bed and listened to the murmuring of the two older men, trying not to think of what had happened out at the Millennium Falcon. Which was a joke, because he couldn't stop thinking about it. He could still feel the weight of Poe's body against his. Finn had wanted. Something. It wasn't that he was fully ignorant of these things. Stormtroopers didn't... well, they just didn't. Now that he could, he didn't know where to start.

Poe had been about to kiss him. Finn wanted him to kiss him. Then Poe had asked if Finn wanted Rey to see him like that, and the bottom had dropped out of Finn's world.

He did want that. But he also didn't. He didn't know what he wanted where Rey was concerned, but he wanted something. It was different from what he felt for Poe, but it was there. So instead of kissing Poe, he'd frozen until Poe pulled away from him. He still wasn't sure he'd done the right thing.

He was still wondering when his eyes finally closed.

The next morning, Finn was up before everyone else, at least, that's what he thought. Voices drifted to him from the front of the house and he followed the sound. Skywalker was sitting on the ground in front of a tall, broad tree, and Rey was standing in front of him, moving through a series of forms. The forms were unfamiliar to Finn, but he recognized them as some variety of martial art. She moved with liquid grace that took his breath away. It was one thing to see her fighting for her life—and he certainly had. It was something else entirely to see her moving for the sake of movement itself. Her face was a serene mask despite the beads of sweat gathered on her face in the humid morning air.

If he were logical in the slightest, he would be afraid of her. She was not only training under the man Finn grew up terrified of, but she had the same sort of power that he did. The same sort of power that Kylo Ren had. The Force. The mystical bedtime story that wasn't a bedtime story after all. But he wasn't afraid. Not of Rey, at least. He saw her power, but he also saw the girl who grew up alone like he did. He saw the girl who'd helped a droid in need—a droid! And he saw the girl who had saved Finn's life, more than once.

He'd trusted her with his life this far; he wasn't going to stop now. If anything, her power made her more alluring. Being around Poe was like doing a corkscrew spin in the jump seat of a TIE fighter. Being around Rey was like... like standing next to a power pylon and feeling the hum, letting it make your hair stand on end.

"Do you feel the difference here?" Skywalker was asking her.

Rey nodded, not even pausing in her sweeping arm motions. "It's easier. Clearer."

"That's the tree. Jedi at the temple used the tree in two different ways. They used it as a meditation focus, allowing them to go deeper within than they could alone—you experienced a little of that last night. But they also discovered that it was easier for the students to learn to manipulate the Force when they were near it, it's easier to reach, somehow."

Finn needed to clear his throat or say something, before he overheard some sort of secret Jedi training he wasn't supposed to know about. What came out of him was halfway between a cough and an ahem.

"Are you all right?" Rey instantly asked.

"Yeah, I, uh, swallowed a bug, I think." Smooth recovery, FN-2187. "Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt anything."

"It's time for a rest anyway." Skywalker moved to stand, waving off Rey's offer of assistance. "Come back after breakfast and we'll start work preparing the tree for cutting. I'll need your help."

"Okay." Rey took Finn by the hand like she had the night before, and Finn had to keep from squirming at the flush of warmth that crawled up his face. She talked to him the entire time she walked to her room, about her training, about the tree—which apparently really did emanate the Force. Finn could barely hear over the sound of his heart racing. Once they got to her room she sat him down. "Wait here."

Finn sat in the edge of her bed while she ducked into the refresher and tried to figure out what was going on. By the time she came back, toweling off her hair, he'd worked himself into a state of utter confusion. She plopped next to him and took his hand again.

"You were my first friend," she said. "Did you know that?"

He shook his head, something in his chest crumpling. He'd known she was alone, but not how alone. For all that he'd never fit in with the First Order, at least he'd had squadmates.

"I like touching you."

What the hell did he say to that? None of the holovids he'd watched had covered this. "Uh, I like touching you too."

She smiled, but it wasn't the full, bright smile he'd come to expect. It was quieter, almost shy. "But. I think there's someone else you might like to touch too."

Finn opened his mouth. Then closed. Then opened it, but what was he going to say?

Rey laughed at him, the shyness vanishing. "Oh come on. Poe's been following you around with stars in his eyes ever since I've known him."

He thought the words first, then had to force himself to say them out loud. "But—but I like you both."

"I know." Of course she knew, she knew everything. "I don't know if I'm that person though. I like this." She squeezed his hand. "I don't know if I would like anything else, beyond this." Rey bumped him with her shoulder and grinned. "And well—it's pretty obvious that Poe would."

Poe wasn't the only one. Finn tried not to think about what had happened the night before, just in case Rey could read his mind. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that you should talk to Poe. As long as I can still hold your hand, be with you, I'll be happy. And you'll be happy. And Poe will be happy."

Maybe someone who'd had a normal childhood around normal people could have come up with something to say, but Finn was speechless. Finally he managed, "I don't want to hurt you, though."

Rey gave him that look. That look that said you're very sweet but sometimes not very smart. "If you and Poe are happy and if he doesn't keep you all to himself, I'll be happy." She leaned up and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. "Luke says it will take a few days for us to get the cuttings from the tree, so you'll have plenty of time to talk to Poe. Will you do it?"

"You really want me to." Finn's head was spinning.

"Am I going to have to lock you two in a room?" she teased.

"I'll do it. I'll talk to him."

"Good." She stood and hauled him to his feet. "Let's go get something to eat."