After the last sensor monitor blinked to life, finally, after days of fiddling and fussing, Poe dusted his hands together and settled them on his waist, a pleased look on his face. “Good job, everyone,” he said, using his commander’s—sorry, captain, now, Leia still hadn’t gotten around to promoting him again—voice. Even so, he still managing to sound like a proud father after his kid just made good on a school report. Or, well, what Finn imagined a proud father would sound like under those circumstances. It wasn’t like he knew from experience. Regardless, it reminded him of Cardinal, who’d always found one way or another to let his charges know when they performed admirably. “Let’s go ahead and pack it in, call it a night.”
Finn didn’t miss a lot about the First Order. He didn’t even really miss the time he’d spent in the young cadets’ program, but he still sometimes wondered what his first commanding officer was doing. He’d already moved onto Phasma’s own program when Phasma had assumed Cardinal’s role, too, but no one had ever explained just what had happened to the man. At the time, it’d been spooky just how quiet everyone had gone about him, pretending like he didn’t exist and never had. The truth was probably so much more abhorrent than what few rumors had circulated at the time, dismissed by Finn in their entirely as hearsay simply because he didn’t know any better. Like shadow given form, the truth was far more capable of cutting than anything as slippery as rumor.
He was reassigned; he deserted; he contracted Calamari influenza and was recovering from the safety of a planet-side medical facility deep in First Order space.
Cardinal had probably been killed and disposed of, quick and efficient and quiet, by Phasma, simply because she wanted to take over the entirety of the stormtrooper training program.
He couldn’t imagine a man like Cardinal surviving long in the First Order as it existed now. Even back then he’d known the guy was a little bit different.
Why he thought of Cardinal at all was beyond him; he hadn’t thought of the man in years and Poe wasn’t Cardinal, not even a little bit. Poe was so much more than that. He—“Wait, what?” Finn asked. Sure, he’d daydreamed a bit there, but he couldn’t have heard what he thought he’d heard. “We’re calling it a night?”
Poe’s brows furrowed and he glanced around at the too-small knot of people who now made up the Rebellion’s leadership, its troops, its spark and fire and future. Leia sat in the corner, mouth quirked upward as she gave Finn her full regard. She still looked so worn, so exhausted; that she didn’t take the lead on this only confirmed it. Poe glanced her way, too, as though looking for confirmation that he could field this one.
When Leia nodded, Poe then did the same in addition to holding out his hands. “Yeah, bud. Not much else we can do. This was the last of the systems that needed refitting. There’s not much else we need to do right this second.”
“What about recalibrating the shields?” This was the Falcon after all and he trusted Rey when she said it was a temperamental beast, always in need of attention and tender, loving care. They hadn’t stopped racking up time in out-of-the-way hyperspace lanes and at sublight in the remotest corners of the Outer Rim. “Or priming the hyperdrive? We can’t—” He looked toward Rose then, who looked back, just as determined. “—there’s so much left to do.”
And that wasn’t including the logistical stuff: like finding one of those bases Leia’s got locked away in her brain without alerting the First Order, tricking or otherwise convincing their potential allies to actually help, and keeping thirty people from losing their minds in the tiny confines of the Falcon’s cramped hallways, holds, and not-actually-bunks.
“Auxiliary weapons are still shot,” Rose pointed out, sensible, sounding a little exhausted herself. If he could, Finn would have argued with her; if anyone needed rest, she did. But he already knew what she would say and she seemed recovered enough to manage thanks to the liberal abuse of a medpac and their bacta stores. She frowned and crossed her arms. “Literally and figuratively.” She winced. “Sorry. That wasn’t actually meant to be a joke.” Her frown deepened and her cheeks turned a surprisingly disgruntled shade of scarlet. “Why did you do that?” she whispered to herself. Only Finn was close enough to hear. Nudging her as a distraction, he spoke his agreement, telling Poe that there really wasn’t any time to waste on this. It was the least he could do. He’d just keep an eye on her while they worked. No big deal.
Poe’s eyebrows couldn’t decide what they wanted to do. For the barest of moments, they furrowed together, and then one freed itself and climbed his forehead as high as it could go. He stood there with his lips pursed together, briefly silent, before he pointed at both of them. “You two especially need a break,” he concluded. “I’ll make it an order if I have to.” His voice was a bit strained, like the need to be a hardass wasn’t quite natural to him yet—or at all. But Finn knew regardless that Poe would make it an order and they’d be forced to follow it.
At least Finn knew one thing for certain. He might find himself pulling extra duty shifts, but disobeying a particularly innocent order during downtime wouldn’t get him the kind of punishment he’d have received from Phasma had he declined to follow one of hers. If they wanted to keep poking at the shields or the auxiliary weapons…
No, no. That was a ridiculous thought. He peered at Rose and shrugged, feeling the entire room’s eyes on him as he made his decision. “That’s okay,” he said. “I’ll—” He swallowed, still not entirely thrilled with the thought of leaving the place vulnerable even a moment longer than they had to. It’s not like we’ll defeat the First Order with the Falcon’s guns no matter how good they are. “—we’ll take a break.”
Poe nodded and moved on, giving out last minute assignments for the skeleton crew who’d be taking on their first watch rotation and dismissing the rest. By the time he was done, nearly everyone had filtered out of the main lounge and were going about their lives with as much normalcy as they could muster. As the room emptied, it only managed to seem larger by comparison, which was ridiculous, since it wasn’t that big to begin with. When it was just Finn, Rose, and Poe left, Poe watched them both curiously and said, near the doorway, “I really will make it an order, Finn. I know what burnout looks like and you’re heading for it.” His gaze settled on Rose. “Both of you.” The tone of his voice held more than the perfunctory, distant quality of his words might have suggested. It was like he couldn’t yet decide whether to approach them as friends or as an officer of the Rebellion and chose to split the difference.
“We know,” Finn and Rose answered as one.
Poe smiled then, brief and tired. His knuckles rapped against the wall. “I hear the Dejarik board still works. Maybe you’d like to play. Rose is a master at it.” With that, he sauntered from the room and he might have been whistling as he went.
“You play Dejarik, huh?” Finn asked, ignoring the fact that he really, really wanted to immediately wrestle the first skeleton shift from the lucky officers who’d pulled it instead of continuing to stand here alone with Rose. Not that he didn’t want to be alone with her! It was just… without anything to distract him, all he could think about was the kiss she’d given him, the way he’d thought she truly had sacrificed herself for him, a man she didn’t even know all that well and who’d managed to disappoint her inside of three minutes of meeting her.
And yet. That wasn’t true at all, was it? She knew everything she needed to know about him.
They shared a connection; he knew that. And he cared for her deeply already, but thinking about that in the midst of a war that felt entirely new, entirely different from what came before was self-indulgent and, frankly, terrifying.
The First Order didn’t make romance a top-tier priority for its soldiers. It wasn’t even a bottom-tier priority for officers.
“Dejarik? No. Yes!” She shook her head and glared at Poe, who was still visible at the far end of the hallway, his back to them as he chatted with another survivor. “I’m not a master at it. I haven’t played since… well. It doesn’t matter.” Unable to meet his eyes, she looked away. He’d have bet anything that she’d played Dejarik with her sister, could easily imagine them wiling away their off-hours, faces bathed in the light of the holographic pieces. There’d probably been a rec room back on the D’Qar base that all of the pilots and deck crew shared. Maybe the others would stand around and watch the Tico sisters play, fiercely competitive and entertaining as hell.
He didn’t even know the rules, but he bet Rose bent them to suit her whims.
And he presumed one or both of them had been excellent trash talkers.
One day, he’d love to find out if his presumptions were correct. But now, the wounds of the fight over D’Qar still so fresh, he refused to push the issue and ask if she did want to play, even though from what he knew of this ship, just about the only other thing there was to do was complete the repairs they’d already been told to leave for another time.
Han Solo hadn’t been all that big on shipboard recreation, Finn supposed, if the only thing around was a Dejarik table. Or perhaps Unkar Plutt had stripped the ship of anything that might have brought a person joy. From the way Rey talked, he’d been quite the character, unpleasant and odious and every sort of greedy there was. He supposed they could poke around for another source of entertainment, but even that felt a little weird, like ransacking the scene of a crime.
“What do you like to do on your downtime?” Rose asked as they stood there, voice a little higher pitched than usual, a little faster. It was the kind of voice she’d used on Cantonica when they’d met DJ and didn’t want to work with him. It was a shifty tone and betrayed the same awkwardness that Finn felt.
He thought about her question though. “I don’t know.” He dragged his hand across the back of his neck and shrugged. “Stormtroopers didn’t have a lot of time off in the First Order. There hasn’t been a lot of free time since either.”
More silence. He wished he hadn’t said anything. Or lied. He could’ve said he liked spending time on the practice range, firing at holographic projections and hurting nobody in the process.
“Oh. Right. Why didn’t I think of that?” She bit her lip, the same lip that Finn now knew the texture of and the taste. “You were a stormtrooper. I knew that and still…”
“It’s okay,” he said. His thoughts grew momentarily distant. He’d never fit in, not really. It was nice that it could be forgotten. Maybe one day, he’d forget it, too. “I don’t think I was ever really one of them.”
He didn’t say it, but he was glad she didn’t think of him as a stormtrooper. Some of the others… it was all they could focus on. Mostly it was fine; everyone was nice about it anyway, but everyone acted like what he’d done by abandoning them wasn’t a move of sheer desperation and fear. General Organa had called him brave when she’d first met him. He didn’t feel brave. He hadn’t felt brave until he confronted Phasma on the Supremacy, the entire ship on fire around them. Rey had been the first to make him feel like he was more than what he was. And Rose? She’d shown him that he was more than that, that he’d always been more than that. His fear didn’t define him. The First Order did not define him.
Instead, his choices defined him.
That was more than bravery could ever be to him.
Right now, his choices were trying to sneak off and undermine Poe’s request or figuring out how to answer Rose’s question.
The latter… sounded more fun.
“We… could play Dejarik?” Rose suggested, a little unsure, as though she could hear his thoughts. Her nose scrunched, dubious, like she still wasn’t sure they shouldn’t disobey orders and get back to work making the Falcon stronger and better defended. “If you wanted to.”
To hell with it. Poe was right. They’d burn out if they kept up this pace. That wouldn’t do anyone any good in the long run even if it felt wrong in the short.
They could have this. If Rose wanted it, too, who was Finn to say no?
“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, Dejarik sounds great.”
For the way she smiled at him in response, it was worth it. So very, totally worth it. Even if she wiped the board with him, it was worth it.