He always knew it would come down to this. Ever since he stared down the hot, fiery maw of that cannon on Crait, determination burning the fear from his body—the first time in his life he wasn’t scared, didn’t have to force himself to push past his own terror—he knew. The First Order would never stop and though the Resistance might flee and retreat, most everyone believed it would always come back, an unstoppable force against which the First Order was an immovable body that would eventually be destroyed. Nobody really believed they would all get out of this unscathed, but sometimes Finn felt like the only person on the base who’d truly internalized it, lived it, breathed it. Knew for a fact that this was always going to be the end result. One last stand with a too-high cost.
Poe stared, grim-faced, at the real-time telemetry scrawling across the holoprojected image of the very hidden, very remote, now very much unsafe system they’d chosen for their final base. But even the most secure, obscure places in the galaxy couldn’t remain a secret forever. Techs and officers alike shouted status reports, each yell tumbling over and around the last. “Scramble our fighters,” he said, low, but somehow everyone in the room heard him anyway. His voice was heavy and resigned. It mirrored the shadows that had gathered under his eyes, in the hollows of his cheeks. This war had grayed his hair, made him seem older than his years. He might have argued that these changes hadn’t made him any wiser, but Finn would have argued otherwise. “Looks like it’s finally time.”
His eyes found Finn’s and he nodded without ever needing to issue orders to Finn. He already knew what they had to do. There was relief in his gaze and though nerves sang through Finn’s body, he was glad that Poe would have this one reprieve.
Even once he’d assumed command, they all knew he wasn’t meant for it: he was a pilot first. And they needed a pilot more than they needed an admiral.
Now he’d get to be one again.
They’d drilled for this scenario, every last person on the base, and they were as ready as they’d ever be as Finn went through the final preparations. He’d be needed on the battlefield, too, before too long, but someone had to organize first. Someone had to deploy their battalions—they had battalions now, instead of mere guerrilla fighters, that was what the First Order had done to them—issue orders for troop movements. Hang back while others fought. The most selfish parts of him wished that General Organa were here even though she’d done her time already and deserved the chance to recover in peace from the trauma of deadly, cold vacuum, something she’d never been able to do while she was in direct command, even well out of the way of the worst and most immediate of the action.
He knew better than to place that burden back on her shoulders. And even if he could have secured a private line of communication, what good would it have done? She’d taught both Poe and Finn everything she knew. He could already anticipate how she would act and, if necessary, execute those orders.
It’s just nerves, he reminded himself.
He just. He supposed he wished there was more time. Every step they’d taken had been meant to eke out more of it, but for all the work they’d done…
It hadn’t amounted to much, had it?
“Hey!” The shout was accompanied by a fist punching him in the arm. Finn knew better than to flinch, though. He was used to it from this particular source. One of the few good things to have come out of this damned conflict, one of the few things he couldn’t regret. Rose glared up at him and planted her hands on her hips. She was dressed in her usual coveralls and they were dirty, also normal for her. A smudge of grease lashed across her forehead and it took every ounce of Finn’s self-control to not reach up and wipe it away.
There was no time for it and the odds were on her ducking out of his touch. Leave my badge of honor alone, she might have joked. I earned that mess.
“Hey yourself,” he answered, the world narrowing down to her and her alone for the barest of moments, a reprieve in the midst of calamity. He shouldn’t have done it, but he could see all around him that others were sharing small, intimate moments with one another. If they deserved it, so did he. So did Rose.
“You’re doing that thing,” she said, stern, “where you’re thinking too hard about all the ways it could go wrong.”
“I am,” he replied. What was the point in denying it? “I really am.” And he wished he wasn’t. But that was why Rose was here, punching him, staring up at him with unhappily thinned lips. He was working on it, really he was. It was just easy sometimes to fall into old patterns. Easier still when those patterns were accompanied by the full weight of the First Order’s might behind them.
He smiled at her, the best one in his repertoire. He heard what she was saying. He was listening. She had enough to worry about without thinking it was her job to make sure he stayed focused, that he didn’t fall into despair. That was the smile he gave her.
Wrapping his hand around her neck, he pulled her close. Her pulse fluttered against his fingertips the way it always did when he touched her. A matching flutter beat feather-light against his sternum. That, too, he always felt whenever he touched her.
Maybe it was the end of the world and maybe it wasn’t, but as he brushed his mouth against hers, her taste as familiar to him as clean, cool water, as necessary as breathing, he chose to believe they’d win today. She and him and everyone around them who continued to fight for the cause. They’d win, because the alternative was impossible to imagine, the alternative was a galaxy Finn didn’t want to live in.
Rose’s lips opened and her tongue pressed against his, parting his teeth, curling against the roof of his mouth. He would miss this most of all if they lost today.
So they’d better not lose.
And then she pulled away again, too soon, though they’d probably wasted too much time. Her grin was incandescent, brave, and she cuffed him on the chin. “Everything’ll be okay,” she said, taking a few halting steps backward, her feet willing her to return to the maintenance bay, where Finn knew she was needed. “You’ll see.”
He would.
That was the galaxy he wanted to live in after all.