Archive of Our Own ^beta

The call came in the middle of the night, a week after the Falcon’s final, desperate escape from the shattered remains of Crait. It came over every channel on the spectrum, and on the special, personal channel that Leia had made when Ben was five and she had promised that he would always have a way to reach her.

The message was simple: If the fugitive Leia Organa surrenders herself, the lives of her companions will be spared.

She didn’t believe it, but it was an easy decision anyway. Assuming, of course, that she could slip away before anyone could stop her. The plan unfurled quickly in her mind: refuse to surrender herself to anyone but Kylo Ren, wreak havoc on the way there. Star Destroyers were notoriously terrible at detecting small ships; she could get close enough to transmit a few viruses or plant a listening device on a transceiver or two. At the end of it all would be torture and death, but she could feed Ben quite a lot of disinformation before she went.

It was a good plan for desperate times, but there was one problem: Poe Dameron was waiting for her in the hangar bay.

They’d taken shelter at the old Ansarra Base, where Mon Mothma had kept a secret stash of starfighters and the equipment to repair them. Leia knew exactly which X-wing she wanted: it had a blue stripe down the middle, and more importantly, the old pilot training programs were still intact. Poe was leaning casually against one of the landing struts, waiting for her to approach.

“So, we’re gonna turn ourselves in, raise some hell on the way?” he asked, glancing at the admittedly overlarge blaster clipped into her holster.

Leia blinked. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Poe rolled his eyes, not something many people were brave enough to do at her. “You know, you’ve got this whole Force thing going on. You don’t talk about it, but it lets you read minds, sense things, whatever. And sometimes it makes you stupid, because you think anybody who isn’t a Jedi --”

“You know as well as I do I’m not a Jedi,” Leia cut in.

Poe waved an airy hand. “Reasonable approximation. Half-trained pseudo-Jedi is a mouthful. Anyway, you think anyone who doesn’t have your special talents can’t sense things, and it’s not true. I can sense things. About you.” He looked unbelievably smug.

“And what is it you think you sensed?” Leia asked, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Well, I definitely sensed Lieutenant Connix pounding on my door telling me Kylo Ren was trying to dupe you into giving yourself up.”

“You think I don’t know it’s a trap, Poe?” she said tiredly. “That doesn’t mean we can’t use it to our advantage.”

“Yeah, sneak up on a few star destroyers, plant some bugs, transmit some viruses, right?” Poe said, nodding at the bag of equipment dangling at Leia’s side. “So what’s the flight plan?”

“I hardly need to file a flight plan with you, Commander,” Leia snapped.

Technically, Poe was still a captain. Unfortunately, he did not take the bait.

“Yeah, you always do get defensive when you don’t know things, General.,” he said, irritatingly unruffled. He was still leaning casually against the X-wing, all the better to annoy her. “Look, frank evaluation of your skills. You’re a very competent pilot. You keep your head in emergencies, so you’ll get through a scrape better than most. But advanced evasive maneuvers? Concealing yourself in debris or parking yourself on top of a star destroyer? You don’t have the skills for that. So which is it, General? Are you gonna abort this mission, or take someone who can do it?”

Leia sighed. “Poe, you can’t possibly intend to come with me. What Ben -- Kylo Ren -- did to you was….” She sighed. “I don’t have words. Do you know how rare that is? I couldn’t possibly ask you to subject yourself to him again.”

Poe crossed his arms over his chest. “You didn’t ask. I volunteered.”

Leia shook her head. “And I refused your offer. You’re a good man, Poe, and frankly, this isn’t worth your life.”

Poe took a step forward, looking every inch the commander. “No, it’s not. But here’s the thing, it’s not worth yours either. That’s because a mission’s not worth anyone’s life if it can’t be successful. You taught me that one yourself. So either convince me you’ve got the flight skills or go back to bed.”

“There’s really no graceful way out of this, is there?” Leia asked, narrowly containing her sigh.

Poe shrugged. “Sure there is. Come show me where Mon Mothma hid her secret stash of hooch.”

He looped an arm around her shoulders and kindly did not force her to speak any difficult truths: that she’d felt adrift since she’d watched the rebel fleet vanish from the sky, that she missed her brother more than she could say, that for the first time in her life, she wasn’t sure what the hell to do.

Poe called a staff meeting in the afternoon. Well, sort of a staff meeting. More like an informal gathering in his quarters, where everyone perched on milk crates and half-collapsed furniture while daring each other to take a drink of the Bothan rum they’d found at the bottom of an old storage locker. So far, no one had volunteered, which was probably why they were all still alive.

Connix, as always, sat up straight with a data padd in her hand. “Status report on the general?” she asked, stylus poised above the screen.

“Attempting to die in a blaze of glory,” Poe reported, still bleary-eyed and a little hungover from the drinking session last night. Evidently Leia could still drink him under the table. Literally.

Connix nodded and made a note on the pad. “Recommended course of action?”

“Keep her busy,” Poe suggested, rubbing his temples. The thirty-year-old painkillers he’d found in the medbay hadn’t done much for his hangover headache. “Do not engage in a drinking contest except as a last resort.”

“Ideas?” Connix asked brightly, scanning the room.

Awkward silence followed. The problem was, managing a ragtag band of misfits was not quite as time-consuming as running an intricate military organization with thousands of troops and hundreds of ships. None of them were busy, but the idleness weighed on the general more than most.

“She likes to braid hair,” Connix supplied, not to be daunted. She tilted her head and Poe saw that sure enough, she was sporting a much more elaborate hairdo than he’d seen in the past. “You can’t just go up and ask her though,” she added. “She’ll see right through that. You have to bait her into it somehow. I suggest letting her see a terrible hairdo at breakfast but acting like you think it looks great.”

She shot Rey a meaningful glance, and Rey frowned, patting the three little buns on the back of her head. “Are you saying there’s something wrong with my hair?”

Poe waved his hands before the discussion derailed completely. “Conning the General into doing all of our hair is strangely adorable,” he said, looking at Connix, “but not that many of us have long hair. More options please?”

“Do you think she would teach me how to survive in space?” Rey asked brightly.

“That is actually not a bad idea,” Poe said, “Assuming you can practice without launching anyone into a vacuum and going into a coma afterward.”

Rose cleared her throat. “What about a mission that’s useful and not fatal?”

“We have those?” Finn asked.

“Probably not fatal if well-executed,” Rose amended. “We might be the last of the formal Resistance, but we’re not the only people who hate the First Order. We just need to find new members.”

“And the General would be an excellent recruiter,” Poe finished. “Of course, everyplace we could go is under First Order control, so what’s a viable target?”

“Hays Minor, where I grew up,” Rose supplied quickly. “We’re a mining colony. People there have skills we can use, and they would want to fight.”

“I’ll work on a way to jam the Order’s sensors,” Connix volunteered.

“We can do that?” Finn asked.

Connix looked insulted. “To give a small transport craft a few minutes to make atmospheric entry? Yeah, I think I can manage.”

“I’ll find a ship,” Poe said. “Rey will help me repair it, Connix will disguise it, and Rose is going to make a list of families we might want to contact. Everyone else provide support as needed.”

Everyone stood, nodding eagerly and dusting themselves off. The bottle of Bothan rum lay forgotten on the floor.

“Wait a second,” Poe called out before Connix could open the door. “Is anyone else tempted to kill themselves in a blaze of glory? Speak up now, because we need everybody we’ve got.”

He shot a meaningful look at Finn, who shook his head sheepishly.

“No, sir,” Finn said. “We’re all in.”

Leia sat on the floor of the hangar bay. An X-wing maintenance holo-manual cast blue light over the toe of her boot. Spacecraft repair was not her strong suit, but she’d learn, just like she’d learned how to use a soldering iron on the Falcon all those years ago.

Poe strode toward her, looking a little worse for wear. Truth be told, Leia was hungover too; she was just better at camouflaging it.

“My liver and I can’t take another drinking contest,” he said, leaning against the S-foil. “So please tell me you’re not still trying to take an X-wing on a suicide mission.”

Leia raised her eyebrows. “Do you have a better offer?” she asked, which was a much more entertaining response than no, because by the cold light of day, even I can admit my plan was ill-advised.

Poe’s face lit up. “Recruitment trip to Hays Minor. Sneak past some patrols, pick up some people who hate the Order, start rebuilding the Resistance. You interested?”

“It sounds like more fun than I’ve had in a long time,” she admitted, pulling herself to her feet. Generals, as a rule, did not spend a lot of time in the field; she’d missed it. “Now tell me, how are we going to make contact with your recruits? Will we be sneaking through their gardens and rapping on their windows at night?”

“I get the feeling you have a better idea,” Poe said, a smile tugging at the edges of his lips.

“We’re going to need some stormtrooper armor. Come back in half an hour and tell me how you plan to get it.”

Poe convened the second meeting of the day in the command center. It was much, much shinier than the last time he’d seen it.

“Finn mopped,” Rey said proudly.

“And Rey repaired the display screens with the wires from the holovid player,” Connix added.

Finn made a sad, strangled noise. “The holovid player?”

“Trust me, buddy, you’re better off without it,” Poe said, slapping Finn on the shoulder. “Those vids were…”

“Filthy,” Rose supplied.

“Not anatomically possible,” Connix added.

Poe cleared his throat. “We’ve been here for two minutes and we’re already talking about porn?” Evidently keeping staff meetings on track was a command skill he’d never fully appreciated before. “So, back to the official purpose of this meeting. The general would like us to obtain some stormtrooper armor to make it easier to infiltrate the mining colony on Hays Minor.”

“That’s easy.” Rey smiled brightly. “Bring me some stormtroopers and I’ll tell them to give up their armor.”

“What will we do with the naked stormtroopers?” Connix asked, stylus hovering -- as always -- over her pad.

“They wear clothes under the armor,” Finn said. “That stuff would chafe.”

“Not the point,” Connix continued doggedly. Her voice wavered a little when she asked, “I mean, would we kill them? So they couldn’t identify us later?”

Poe swallowed. He knew that if Snap or any of the intel guys had survived, they would’ve said yes. It was practical; they were the most wanted people in the entire galaxy, and the stormtroopers would definitely shoot them if they got to the chance. And really, why should he care? Poe knew he had more blood on his hands than anyone in the room. He fired missiles, not blasters. But the thought of executing someone face-to-face, someone who was probably already afraid….

“Alright,” he said. “Now accepting suggestions that don’t leave us with six half-naked stormtroopers or an awkward pile of dead bodies.”

“Could we steal from the laundry?” Rose asked.

Finn shook his head. The armor was personal issue, to be kept and cleaned by each stormtrooper. But… “We could rob the quartermaster’s office,” he suggested. “It’s not very secure.”

Poe nodded. “Your plan. You present it to the General.”

Rey bit her lip, looking oddly disappointed. Poe clapped her on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. I promise there will be ample opportunity for Jedi mind tricks in the future.”

Leia opened the maintenance hatch on the X-wing. Having read the manual thoroughly, she had learned two important things: under no circumstances should she touch the red wire, and also, she did not particularly enjoy spacecraft repair. But that was beside the point. The Resistance would need a fleet, so she would learn.

“General?” Rey called only seconds after Leia had opened the maintenance hatch.

She turned around, schooling the irritation off her face. She’d only just sent Finn on his way, and if she didn’t get a moment alone, she was never going to figure out this blasted X-wing. At least Rey’s hair was perfectly done; evidently Kaydel’s elaborate hairstyling ruse had not caught on. On the other hand, Rey looked dangerously determined. For what purpose, Leia couldn’t say, but she suspected that it would be somewhat more challenging than a few braids.

“I have questions about the Force,” she said without preamble.

“Oh dear,” Leia said. “Are you certain I’m the right person to ask?”

Rey squared her shoulders as if she were preparing for a long argument. “You survived in outer space, didn’t you?”

“Fair point,” Leia muttered, still feeling a touch uneasy. “What is it you want to know?” She had never even attempted to instruct anyone in the Jedi arts, and judging from Ben’s highly questionable life choices, that was a good thing.

“How do you know the difference between the light side and the dark?” Rey blurted.

That was not a conversation Leia was prepared to have without a drink in her hand. She slammed the X-wing’s maintenance hatch shut and beckoned Rey with a wave of her hand. “Come on, I know where Mon Mothma hid the really good stuff. Promise not to tell Poe.”

Rey fell into step beside her. “What kind of good stuff?”

For reasons Leia had chosen not to examine, she hadn’t wanted the general’s quarters on Ansarra base. Kaydel had blinked and said, “Of course, you’d rather share with everyone else.” In ten minutes, she’d divided all the extra pillows and blankets into even piles and delivered them to crew quarters. Then she’d shoved the last pile into Leia’s hands and said, “I’m not taking no for an answer.” Knowing a lost cause when she saw one, Leia had taken her share and piled them into a conversation nook in the corner of her room.

You made a conversation nook? Han would’ve said. Your princess is showing. No, that was what Amilyn Holdo would have said. Han wouldn’t have known what a conversation nook was.

Rey said nothing, just plopped down on the plumpest pillow and ran her fingers over the fabric. The smallest comforts filled her with glee, which was one of the things Leia liked the most about her.

She frowned when Leia handed her a glass filled with amber liquid. “I still think good stuff means wires and scrap,” she said, looking a bit embarrassed.

“Well, if you find that kind of good stuff, let us know,” Leia said, thinking of the tangled circuits inside the X-wing. “I suppose you didn’t do a lot of drinking on Jakku.”

“No, never actually,” Rey said. She sat stiffly with the drink in her hand, though maybe the alcohol wasn’t the problem. Maybe the looming conversation was.

“So, you’re wondering about the dark side,” Leia said, keeping her voice carefully non-judgmental. It was a tone she hadn’t used in a very, very long time. That conversation had been a bit different: So, Ben, what are you and Jessika are doing for birth control? That one had caught her by surprise too; Ben lacked the social skills to acquire female companionship, but the pilot’s license had changed a few things…

“Master Luke said I was drawn to it,” Rey said, wrenching Leia’s thoughts back to the present. She hesitated, staring down into her drink. “There was a cave full of dark energy. I went in.”

Leia shook her head, savoring the way the brandy burned on the way down. “Of course there was a cave. The dark side is terribly predictable. There’s never an evil meadow, or a beach of darkness.” Rey smiled - only a tiny bit, but enough that Leia could push forward. “And what did you see in your cave of dark energy?”

“Myself. There was a mirror, and dozens of reflections of me. Hundreds maybe.”

Leia took another drink. “Go on.”

“They, um, they all --” Rey swallowed. “Well, they snapped their fingers.”

“That’s all?” Leia asked, narrowly suppressing a laugh. She leaned forward to put a hand on Rey’s knee. “I’m not an expert, but they say -- well, Luke said -- all you find inside is what you carry with you. If you saw yourself snapping your fingers, you’re probably doing all right.”

“I’d like to believe that,” Rey said. She sniffed the drink, then lowered it again. “Earlier, when we were planning the mission, my first thought was to use mind control on the stormtroopers. How do I know if that’s the dark side? Where’s the line?”

Leia snorted. “Well, if you become the supreme leader of a genocidal totalitarian regime, that’s too far. And you already said no to that one, so congratulations.” What was he even going to do with such a thing? She shook her head, dragging her focus back to Rey. “The truth is, the Force is like any other tool. You can use it to help people, or you can use it to hurt them. That staff you used to carry -- you could’ve robbed people with it, right?”

“I suppose.” Rey frowned. “The thought never occurred to me.”

“My point exactly. You were alone and hungry. Violence would have been a much easier option, and you still didn’t do it. Discovering that you’re a Jedi didn’t change who you are.”

Rey still looked doubtful, so Leia added, “If you don’t trust yourself, trust your friends. If they tell you you’ve gone too far, listen.”

At that, Rey brightened. “I do have a lot of those now, don’t I?”

Leia nodded. “Rey, I’m not an expert. But I give you my word - if I think you’re walking down a dangerous path, I’ll tell you. And then I’ll stop you.”

In retrospect, it sounded like a bit of a threat, but Rey’s smile was blinding. “You promise?”

“I do,” Leia said. And she’d hope to hell that this time she’d get it right.

Rey gave her drink one last, wary glance. Then she swallowed it in one gulp before Leia could stop her. When the coughing and sputtering died down, she stared at the glass as if it had offended her. Holding it out to Leia, she said, “My parents sold me for this?”

Leia felt her teeth grinding against each other as a sudden surge of rage coursed through her body. Someone had a child like Rey. And they had sold her. If she ever found them --

She stopped herself with a long, slow breath. Anger was of the dark side. And more importantly, that wasn’t what Rey needed.

She slipped the glass from Rey’s outstretched hand and squeezed her fingers tightly. “That was a terrible trade.” Then she picked up a comb. “Come on, let me do your hair.”

The next time Poe saw Rey, she was studying her reflection in a warped panel of the transport ship, turning her head from side to side and giving her hair experimental pats. He blinked at the crown of braids wrapped around her head.

“Did Kaydel’s weird hair scheme actually work?” Poe asked, running a few fingers through his own hair. Braiding it would be a stretch, but if it would help the general somehow…

Rey shook her head. “I just told her my parents sold me for drinking money, and she did this,” Rey said, gesturing at her hair.

While Poe was trying to absorb that particular emotional gut punch, Rey was pulling on a battle scarred helmet. He’d been planning to ask if she was okay, but the words died on his lips.

“The best part is, it fits under a helmet!” she exclaimed, her voice muffled by the blast shield.

“Pretty and practical, that’s the general,” Poe said. “Listen, Rey, are you --”

“I’m fine.” Rey pulled off the helmet and stretched her hand out for a tool. Poe prepared to hand it to her, but he didn’t need to; it leapt toward her on its own. “Really,” she said when she saw he was still staring at her. “I’m fine.”

She’d slid underneath the shuttle with a wrench in her hand, forcing Poe to cross the hangar bay and hunt for another dolly. By the time he’d found one and slid underneath the shuttle with her, talking about her parents seemed awkward, but then, Poe had never let a little awkwardness keep him down.

“It’s okay if you’re not fine,” he said. “I wouldn’t be fine if my parents had sold me for booze.”

Rey just shrugged -- well, as much as she could underneath the transport ship anyway. “I always knew it, deep down,” she said. “Now hand me those yellow wires.”

Poe reached for a bundle and she shook her head. “No, those yellow wires.”

It took four tries before he found the right yellow wires. When he passed them to her, he said, “Honestly, I’m not okay right now. Not so much with the shitty family history, a whole lot more with shitty decision making. Numerous casualties. Ill-advised mutiny. All that.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, if you’d like to be not fine together, we could do that.”

He’d been fiddling with another bundle of wires -- red this time -- and Rey reached up to still his hand. “Don’t touch those. They’ll kill us.” Her hand didn’t move off of his. Instead she squeezed his fingers. “I’m not fine. Nobody here is fine. But we’re taking care of each other, and eventually that will make it fine.”

Rey’s words were still echoing in Poe’s head when he went to check on Kaydel. She was surrounded by supply crates, scribbling frantically on her pad, and staring at a holo projection of sensor code.

He flicked the projector off with his toe and tugged the stylus gently out of her hand.

“You okay?” he asked. Up close, the circles under her eyes were practically black.

“Yeah,” she said, shooting him a look that was half confused and half annoyed. “I’m working on disguising our transport, and every thirty minutes, I take a break and organize supplies.”

“That’s not a break,” Poe told her. “And also, as of now, supplies have been officially delegated.”

Now Kaydel was really annoyed. “Delegated to whom, sir?”

“Not your problem. Anyone can handle the supplies, but only you can handle the sensors, so that’s the best use of your time.” He shifted on his feet, not sure how to proceed with what he wanted to say next. “Hey, Kaydel, you ever notice that when people spend all their time taking care of everyone else, sometimes that means they don’t ask for help when they need it?”

“The General?” Kaydel nodded eagerly. “Yes, of course. That is definitely her problem, but I’m working on it. She did eat three meals today. One of them was just a protein bar, but that was way better than a few days ago. Tomorrow I’m going to try to get her to --”

“Kaydel.” Poe held up a hand. “I’m not talking about General Organa. I’m talking about you.”

“What?” Kaydel blinked at him like he was suddenly speaking a strange new language. “I don’t know what you mean, sir.”

“I mean, I haven’t seen you take a break since we left Crait. Do you eat? Do you sleep?” He perched on the edge of her workstation and spun her chair around when she tried to turn away. “Kaydel, are you okay?

Kaydel nodded, half her attention still on the supply crates stacked around her. “Of course I am, sir. Has there been a problem with my work?”

Poe tried to move to block her view of the supplies. “Okay, enough with the sir. We mutinied together. I think you can call me Poe.”

“If I say yes, can I have my stylus back?” she asked, trying to snatch it out of Poe’s hand.

Poe shoved it in his back pocket, where it would be out of her reach. “It’s okay if you’re not okay. I’m not okay. It’s weird to say that, because I’m used to looking out for my squadron, not letting other people look out for me. But to tell you the truth, when I think about the number of people we lost, sometimes I feel like I swallowed a bag of glass. And now I’m experimenting with telling other people that, just in case it makes it better.”

Before Poe could process what was happening, Kaydel had launched herself toward him. He held out the stylus, ready to surrender, but she wrapped her arms around him in a surprisingly tight embrace.

“I’m not okay,” she said against his chest. “Thank you for telling me you’re not okay either.”

Poe put down the stylus so he could wrap his arms around her. She was making little sniffling noises now, so he squeezed her tighter and tucked her head underneath his chin. It felt good. Just really, really good.

When she finally let go, she got them both tissues, even though Poe hadn’t realized he needed one, and even though he had no idea where she’d found them.

“I just need you to know that efficiency is not some maladaptive coping strategy for grief. I’ve always been this good at my job, and I’m not going to stop now,” she said, sitting up straight and smoothing the wrinkles out of her jacket.

“Noted,” Poe said. He held up the stylus. “How about me make a deal? I’ll give this back if you promise to stop working at 11:00. If you don’t feel like going to sleep, come by my quarters and we’ll play hand of sabacc or something.”

“It’s a deal, Poe,” she said, managing a watery smile. “You’re an excellent commander, but that won’t stop me from kicking your ass.”

The recruitment mission did not go according to plan. The first conflict arose at precisely 13:00 hours, otherwise known as lunchtime. They were halfway to Hays Minor, and Poe had just leaned back into his chair when Kaydel said, “Who let the ex-stormtrooper pack all the food?”

Finn’s voice rose from somewhere in the back of the shuttle. “Like I keep saying, nutrigel cubes are very nutritious. They never go bad, they expand in your stomach...”

“Buddy,” Poe said. “I keep telling you, you have taste buds. Use them.”

Rey swallowed one and shrugged. “Not bad. And they don’t need rehydration.”

Poe swiveled back toward Rey. “And I keep telling you that most food doesn’t need rehydration.”

“Mmm, slimy,” Rose said from her spot on the floor. “Just tell me you brought something else for dinner.”

Finn nodded earnestly. “Yeah. Orange ones.”

Leia’s ration pack was already empty. Poe shot her a surprised look -- he’d only managed to force half the cubes down, and he was hardly a picky eater -- but Leia just shrugged. “I’ve eaten much worse than that.”

Kaydel’s head swiveled like a radar antenna, and she tucked her feet beneath her like a little girl at story time. “Is this a weird diplomatic mission story, or a weird rebel mission story?”

Poe looked around, and suddenly everyone was staring at Leia, the air full of expectation. He forgot sometimes that the rest of them didn’t know her like he did; to them, she’d always been the fearless general who gave orders and saved the day, not an actual person with a past and stories to tell.

“Not a mission,” Leia said, smiling faintly. “My parents told me I couldn’t travel with them until I proved I could eat anything I was served. So I caught a tentaculous eel worm and swallowed it whole.”

“How did that work out?” Poe asked.

Leia suppressed a small shudder. “Well, the parasitologist proclaimed me the most interesting case he’d ever encountered. I think he wrote a paper.”

“But your parents took you on their next mission?” Rey asked, her face alight.

“No.” Leia grimaced. “Apparently, diplomatic travel requires good judgment as well as a strong stomach.”

Poe had a lot of follow-up questions: what the kriffing hell was a tentaculous eel worm? Why did eating one necessitate treatment by a parasitologist? Was Leia a bigger badass if she did this when she was a little kid or a teenage girl?

But alarms began to wail before he could ask.

Poe spun toward the flashing red lights on the control panel. “Environmental rupture in A2!” he shouted. “Two minutes of breathable oxygen left!”

Rey tore the bulkhead off -- whether with her hands or the Force, Poe couldn’t say. Finn was close behind her, while Rose yanked an emergency toolkit off the cargo rack. Kaydel stood behind them, back straight, ready to jump in as soon as anyone asked. And Poe stood silently at cockpit door, because he could do absolutely nothing to help. If it been a fault in the flight control or the weapons system, sure, he knew how those worked. But O2 scrubbers…

Leia saunted toward him, looking maddeningly serene. “Let’s choose a command structure,” she said. “This is a good opportunity to observe.”

Poe swallowed, trying to rein in panic. He was in charge. Everyone’s lives depended on him. And he was doing nothing.

Leia punched him in the shoulder, harder than he strictly thought he deserved. “Welcome to senior command, where half of your job is deciding where to delegate what. They fix life support, we set the chain of command. So what do you see?”

“The problem’s getting solved,” he said immediately, because it was. Rey was hip-deep inside the hatch, and already the plumes of smoke were tapering off.

Leia nodded. “Is it getting solved efficiently?”

“Not quite.” He pointed toward Finn, who was grasping at random tools while Rey yelled that he was wrong. “Rey’s giving all the orders to Finn, but he’s not the right guy for the job.”

As he watched, Rose shoved Finn out of the way with her hip and parked herself by the toolbox. She kicked a pile of blankets toward Kaydel, who promptly started mopping up the blue coolant leaking across the floor.

“Rose is the one actually keeping things moving,” he said. “Kaydel’s not a mechanic, so she’s staying out the way while she waits for orders.”

Leia nodded. “So who’s your second in command?”

“Rose if I want someone to take charge, and Kaydel after that.” That, at least, was easy. He’d performed the same kind of analysis hundreds of times while figuring out the chain of command for his squadron. “Rey’s smart, but she hasn’t worked on a team before. And Finn was always afraid of getting executed if he couldn’t follow orders, so he doesn’t admit it if he doesn’t understand.”

Leia squeezed his arm just as the alert klaxon died down with a slow whine. Rose lifted a hand to high five Rey, who responded with a puzzled look. Then Finn shouted, “I know this one!” and high-fived Rose even though he’d mostly gotten in the way of the repair work.

“Our crew is weird,” Poe said.

“But the important word is our,” Leia answered as she slid into the co-pilot’s chair beside him.

Slipping into the atmosphere of Hays Minor was easy, and not in the way that made all the hairs prickle on the back of Leia’s neck while she looked for a trap. When she opened her mind, she could feel the tired submission of the population, and the dullness of the soldiers sent to guard them. This was no longer a place where the Order sent its first string troops.

“Finn and Rose will enter the quartermaster’s office through the rear cargo door,” Poe was saying. “The rest of us will cover their backs while they get the armor Once we’ve suited up, we’ll pretend to arrest the targets Rose suggested. In reality, that provides our opportunity to talk to them about the Resistance.”

“And the General will stay behind as the getaway driver,” Finn finished, and Leia’s head snapped up.

“I will do no such thing,” Leia snapped. It had been years since she’d gotten to do actual fieldwork. If this boy thought he could deprive her of all the fun…

“You’re a little short for a stormtrooper, ma’am,” Finn said, bobbing his head nervously.

“Well, I’m sure some armor can be found,” she said reasonably. Short people could have all sorts of useful combat skills: marksmanship, organization, codebreaking... Surely the Order made exceptions now and again.

Finn cleared his throat. “I mean, ma’am, you are well below the height requirement to be a stormtrooper. A person of your stature would have been, uh, discharged to the sanitation corps after puberty. There will be no armor.”

Beside her, Poe’s attempt to suppress his laughter turned into an snort. “Better a getaway driver than a toilet scrubber.”

“Do I have the flight skills for that, Commander?” she snapped.

“To open the throttle and keep your finger on the trigger? Yeah, probably.” He looked around their little crew. “But nobody’s working alone on this mission. Somebody’s got to stay with the general.”

“I can do it,” Kaydel said immediately. “If the General’s too short, so am I.”

“Yeah, but nobody knows what you look like. Half the galaxy’s on the lookout for Rey,” Poe said. “Exposing the two most wanted people in the galaxy is an unnecessary risk.”

Leia wanted to huff, but it was exactly what she would have done: force Rey to work with someone other than Finn, and cover it with a plausible excuse. When Rey didn’t protest, Leia had a bad feeling she knew what was coming -- more difficult questions about the Force.

It was Rose who spoke up first. “Wait. Are we really going to leave our best recruiter behind?”

“You’re not,” Leia said. She looked pointedly at Rose. “You’re the best recruiter. This is your home. People here will listen to you.”

She watched as Rose straightened, her cheeks turning faintly pink. She wasn’t used to being noticed, Leia thought, much less praised. Both of those things ought to change soon.

Poe passed her a comm unit. “Hey, don’t eat all the nutrigel cubes while we’re gone. And come get us if we’re in trouble, alright?”

The first half hour on the transport passed quickly as Leia and Rey worked together to set up a perimeter alarm. Rey had left Poe’s comm sitting in the middle of the control panel with the volume all the way up, and Leia snatched it away so she could transmit the signal to an earpiece instead.

“Rule number one, don’t ever leave the comm where anyone could overhear it,” she said.

“Right.” Rey nodded briskly, watching as Leia slid the tiny earpiece into her ear. She paused for a beat, drew in a breath, and said, “If there’s nothing else we need to do, I have more questions about the Force.”

Well, that was fast. Leia’s eyes swept across the shuttle, as if she were going to find an escape - or at least a hidden bottle of booze. When it became clear that she was trapped, she said, “Rey, I am sorry to tell you this, but I am not a Jedi master.”

“Really?” Rey snapped. “Because in my experience, the first thing Jedi masters do is try to turn you away.”

Leia closed her eyes, willing herself to be conciliatory. “I am sorry Luke did that to you, but that doesn’t make me a Jedi master. I picked and chose what I wanted to learn. Getting training from someone like that is the most dangerous thing you could possibly do.”

Rey gritted her teeth. “No. Getting training from Kylo Ren is the most dangerous thing I could possibly do, but at least he offered. Everyone who’s actually good makes me beg. If I have to follow you every moment of every day until you give in, I will. I’ve done it before.”

Leia could feel her anger in the heat rising to her cheeks, the pulse beating in her throat, her fingernails digging into her palms as she curled her hands into her fists. Rebuilding the Jedi Order was the one responsibility she’d ever thought she could give away, and here it was, back in her lap again. She forced herself to count to ten, slow down her breathing, open herself and find steadiness in all the life that surrounded her.

“Please,” Rey said. “I don’t want to do this alone.”

Leia allowed herself one last, wistful look at the instrument panel and said goodbye to a peaceful afternoon tending to a mission she knew she could fulfill.

Then she turned to face Rey. “What exactly do you think I know that you don’t?”

“The light.” Rey licked her lips, searching for words. “You lost everything, and you’re still here, with us, fighting. You could’ve stopped. You could’ve hidden in a cave. You could have an empire of your own, easily. But you’re the opposite of everything that’s been done to you. That’s what I want to know.”

“Oh, is that all?” Leia snapped, falling heavily into her seat. Glad to see your defense mechanisms are fulling engaged, Your Highness, Han’s voice said in her ear. “I hate to break it to you, but I mostly try to pretend none of that ever happened and go on with my day.”

“That’s not true,” Rey said, clenching her jaw. “I know there’s more to the light than ignoring the dark. There has to be.”

Leia blinked. It had been years since anyone had been so determined to call her out this way.

“It’s the stars,” she said finally, looking up at the sky even though she knew she couldn’t see them now. “All the light we see is from stars that died thousands of years ago. It doesn’t matter that they’re gone. Their light still makes a difference. That’s what I think about on the bad days.”

Rey gave her an uncertain smile. “On Jakku, when I was alone, I used to stare up at the stars and imagine I was fighting in the Resistance. I didn’t think it could happen, but it did. I know it’s awful, and everyone has lost so much, but this is the happiest I’ve ever been.”

“It’s not awful. I’m glad you’re happy,” Leia said. She felt some of the tension slide out of her shoulders. This wasn’t such a terrible conversation, now that she’d let herself open up a little. Maybe she ought to do that more often.

“What else do you want to know?” she asked, pushing down the last of her trepidation.

“Master Luke said the Force isn’t about stacking rocks,” she said. “But suppose I wanted to know how stack things? It does seem useful.”

“That I can actually help you with,” Leia said. Luke had not been particularly impressed by her desire to learn how to stack objects with the power of her mind; but then, he’d never been a working mother. “Have you tried it on your own?”

“Occasionally,” Rey said, looking sheepish. “I can pick up a lot of things at once, but everytime I try to move just one of them, they all fall down together.”

Well, that certainly explained the strange piles of metal Leia had found scattered all over the base in the past few days.

“It’s a matter of being able to split your focus,” she said. “Tell me, can you rub your head and pat your stomach at the same time?”

Maybe she could be a batty old Jedi master after all.

Poe stepped away from the brown water sluicing out of the quartermaster’s office, shaking off his feet. Finn and Rose appeared a second later, loaded down with two sets of armor, a custodial uniform for Kaydel, and several blasters.

“Rose flooded the ‘fresher,” Finn said. “It was supposed to distract the guards for a few minutes, but they actually screamed and ran away.”

Kaydel swiped at her boots with a handful of fallen leaves. “Next time you plan to unleash a flood of poodoo water, warn us please?”

“She means good job,” Poe said, reaching out to take a some of the blasters from Rose. “Now let’s get dressed and get out of here before maintenance comes back.”

When everyone had finished changing, Poe stepped back to survey his team. All in all, they looked good, he thought, even if their stance wasn’t quite as rigid as real First Order troops. None of the armor had fit Rose, but with her tattered cargo pants and a scarf wrapped around her face, she blended in so perfectly that Poe wasn’t worried. The truth was, he was more worried about himself than anyone else.

“Your butt plate is falling off again, sir,” Kaydel hissed beside him.

“Is that not happening to anyone else?” he asked, trying to peer discreetly at his own backside.

“Don’t worry. I’ve got glue,” Kaydel said. “Also a first aid kit, nutrigel cubes, and antacid if anyone needs it.”

“Of course you do.” Poe had no idea where she was managing to store all of that, but that was Kaydel for you. In no time, she was crouching on the floor behind him, gluing his butt back together.

“If everyone’s ass is together, here’s the plan,” Rose said. “I’m going to walk about ten meters ahead of you. Don’t cross the street every time I cross the street, and don’t stop every time I walk into a store. I’ll lead you to the houses we’re looking for.”

Poe nodded tersely. “Finn, you’re in the lead. Tell us if we look like idiots.”

Rose stepped around the corner of the building, and Poe counted to twenty to give her a head start. They’d only made it twenty meters down the sidewalk when Kaydel stopped abruptly.

“That’s you, sir,” she breathed, and sure enough, there was his face on the side of a building. WANTED, it said, DEAD OR ALIVE.

Finn was staring at an identical poster of himself and Rose. The holos of Rey and the general were twice as a big.

“I didn’t know there were that many credits in the whole galaxy,” Kaydel breathed, staring at the reward for Leia. Then her voice turned indignant. “When do I get one?”

“Hopefully never,” Rose snapped through the comm. “Now get moving before somebody asks why stormtroopers are gawking at a few wanted posters.”

“I respectfully suggest you and Finn go back to the ship, sir,” Kaydel said, and Poe narrowly resisted the temptation to spin on his heel and glare. “The amount of credits they’re offering, in a place like this… You’re asking people to turn down years of food for their families.”

Poe’s grip tightened on his blaster. He’d thought about the risk of capture, of course; he just hadn’t considered how much turning them in would help someone on a poor mining colony. Hell, now he sort of wanted someone to turn him in, if it meant their kids got to eat.

“We can’t turn back now,” he said firmly. “Everywhere we go, everything we do is going to be dangerous. We can’t just hide in a hole. That’s what the Order wants us to do.”

Poe suppressed a shiver as they walked through the desolate streets. Red dust from the mine drifted in the wind, turning the buildings a strange shade of ocher and making him glad for his mask. After two blocks, he stopped worrying about whether they were acting like real stormtroopers; everyone scattered as soon as they saw white armor approaching. The only real challenge was stopping Kaydel from trying to help everyone they walked past.

“That little girl’s basket is so heavy,” she whispered. “Look, she’s about to drop it! And that old woman…”

Poe grabbed her arm in a gesture that he hoped looked more foreboding than reassuring. Since that night they’d played sabacc together, a strange warmth flooded his chest every time he looked at her.

“Hold it together, Connix,” he said, keeping his voice too low for outsiders to overhear. “You’re doing enough to help these people already.”

Rose rounded a corner and led them down a dark alleyway. “Target ahead in twenty meters. You stay out of sight while I knock. When they open the door, run in like it’s a raid.”

“Out of curiosity, what are the odds they’ll shoot us?” Finn asked conversationally.

Rose snorted. “The Order took away our weapons a long time ago.”

“Blasters set to stun just in case,” Poe reminded them. “Connix will make sure the curtains are shut, then we take off our helmets and explain what we’re really doing here.”

“And run like hell if they turn us in,” Kaydel added.

“And run like hell if they turn us in,” Poe confirmed.

Poe hoped that for as long as he lived, he’d remember the awe that lit Ayla Tico’s scarred face as soon as he took off his helmet.

“You came for us,” she breathed, staring at each of them in turn. She ran to Rose, pushing away the scarf to cradle her face. “When we heard the Resistance had fallen, we feared the worst. But when they put up that wanted poster, we knew you’d survived.”

Rose pushed her hands away gently and walked toward a low table. Holographs and candles flickered in the dim light, and a tiny vase was filled with stunted flowers.

“You already lit a candle for Paige,” Rose said, and Ayla nodded.

“When she wasn’t on the poster with you, we knew.”

Poe stepped back into the corner, not wanting to intrude on a private moment, and Finn followed along. Kaydel settled on the floor and began folding a stack of tissues into flowers for the memorial table, and warmth flooded Poe’s chest again. How did she always know what to do?

“Aunt Ayla, we can’t stay for long,” Rose said, breaking the silence. “We’re going to rebuild the Resistance. If you know anyone who’d join, call them here quickly.”

Poe had imagined a crowd of people too big to fit on the transport. What he got was a small stream of tired looking miners.

“You have to understand, people here are afraid,” Ayla told him apologetically. “The Order has been broadcasting vids of the Resistance’s defeat nonstop.”

“We’ll take what we can get,” Poe said, pushing away the last of his disappointment. A doctor had come, and two mechanics. That alone would be a huge help.

At the last moment, a woman with tattered gray coveralls slipped in, pulling two children behind her. Poe and Kaydel exchanged looks; they hadn’t considered the possibility that someone would want to bring kids.

“The heroes of the Resistance,” she breathed. “I had to see it for myself.”

She moved to shut the door, but a man with the most atrocious mustache Poe had ever seen shoved his foot inside. “There room for one more?”

His booming voice filled the tiny living room, and Poe thought he saw a few people wince.

“I’m sorry,” Ayla whispered to someone. “They really need recruits.”

Excellent, Poe thought. This was clearly the uncle who made everything awkward at the family Life Day party.

Mustache man wasted no time marching straight up to Poe. “So we’re gonna blow up the base?” he practically shouted, and Kaydel clamped a hand over his mouth immediately, shuddering a little when her fingers brushed against his overgrown mustache.

“This is a secret meeting,” she hissed. “Keep your voice down.”

“So we’re gonna blow up the base,” Mustache whispered.

Poe cleared his throat. “I like where your head is at, buddy, but no, we’re not gonna blow up the base. We could, but we would probably die, and the Resistance aims to live and fight another day.”

The man looked at Poe hopefully. “But sometimes we get to blow things up?”

“Yes,” Poe said. “In the Resistance, things go boom.”

He gave Poe a high five that almost knocked him off his chair. “I’m in!” he yelled, earning him another ferocious glare from Kaydel.

“Oh good, sir. You’ve recruited the local pyromaniac,” she whispered, smacking Poe on the shoulder a little harder than he thought was strictly necessary.

“I’d rather have him on our side,” he said. “And see? Rose is getting the rest.”

She was standing in a circle of about ten people - maybe not as many as Poe had hoped for, but still enough to swell the Resistance’s ranks by nearly fifty percent.

“I am asking you to risk your lives, but not for a hopeless cause,” she was saying. “Staying here is a hopeless cause. You’ll live your entire lives at the mercy of the Order. You’ll sacrifice your mind, body, and soul in the mines, and for what? Just enough ration cards to survive? My sister died, but at least she died for something.”

“She’s good,” Finn whispered, but Poe was focused on the woman who’d brought the children. She was standing in the corner now, and she’d shifted her children behind her like she was afraid something would happen to them. Her hands were trembling.

Kaydel was looking at her too. “Sir, she just called someone. Look, the light’s flashing on her comm.”

“Alright, this meeting is over,” Poe announced, his voice cutting through Rose’s quiet conversation. “Decide now whether you’re coming or not.” He looked back at the woman cowering in the corner. “Ma’am, I just want you to know I don’t blame you for trying to turn us in. The Order’s not going to catch us, but I hope they give you something for your trouble anyway.”

He nodded toward Kaydel. “Stun them and tie them up. That way the troopers won’t blame them for us getting away.” He looked back at the crowd gathered around Rose and her aunt. They looked frightened but determined. “Anybody else want to stay behind?”

When nobody volunteered, Poe smiled. “Welcome to the Resistance.”

“Rey, we’re about to have company!” Leia called when Poe’s comm reached her.

The thirty-odd objects Rey had been levitating fell to the floor with a clatter, and Leia thought dimly that she was supposed to say something about the importance of learning control.

Rey reached for the empty holster on her belt and her eyes widened. “I haven’t got my lightsaber anymore.”

Leia shoved a blaster into her outstretched hands. “Someone once told me that an ancient weapon is no match for a blaster at your side, and I hate to admit it, but he was right,” she said, loading a clip into her own weapon. “Do you know how to use one of these?”

Rey swallowed. “If I think answer is you point at something and pull the trigger, does that mean I don’t actually know how to shoot?”

“I’ll teach you when we get back,” Leia said, taking the blaster back from Rey. “New plan. You hold the ship steady, I’ll drop the ladder and keep everyone covered while they climb up.”

“With one blaster?” Rey asked.

“No,” Leia said, heaving out a massive box. “With this.”

The truth was, Leia wasn’t even certain what to call it, but she’d found it at the bottom of Ansarra’s weapons cache. She’d only ever seen one once, and that was on the statue of Baze Malbus at the Rogue One memorial. As near as she could tell, it was small personal canon that came with a portable powerpack to strap on her back.

“You’re smiling a lot,” Rey said as Leia pulled the straps over her shoulders.

“It’s probably the dark side. Now come on, let’s go get our friends.”

Poe flattened himself against a wall as a blaster bolt whistled past him, close enough that he felt its heat on his face. It slammed into the building above him, raining red dust down on their heads. The strom troopers had cornered them in an alley behind Ayla’s house. The good news was, it was across the street from a park that would make a decent landing zone for the transport ship. The bad news was that they were about to die.

“Is there a reason you left our Jedi behind, sir?” Kaydel asked, sliding another cartridge into her gun.

“The General’s gotta learn she can open up to people,” Poe said, taking aim at a stormtrooper in the mouth of the alleyway. “So I made up an excuse to isolate her with somebody else.”

Kaydel flattened herself as another blaster bolt sailed over her head. “I do hope the general’s emotional journey is worth our lives.”

A loud whoop resounded down the alleyway, and Poe risked a backward glance at the source. The man with the mustache ran past them to snatch a weapon from a dead stormtrooper. He waved it triumphantly before running back to the rest of the recruits.

“Oh good, your pyromaniac has a high-powered blaster rifle,” Kaydel said. She yanked on his arm hard enough to make him fall to his knees. “I’d suggest you take cover. This is a friendly fire accident waiting to happen.”

Poe flattened himself against the asphalt seconds before Mustache unleashed a salvo right above their heads. Another whoop resounded down the alley, and suddenly the oncoming fire stopped.

“Hey, I think he actually hit something,” Kaydel said, peering over a pile of rubble.

She had a very nice smile, Poe thought stupidly, and she liked to question orders, which made her even more attractive. The oncoming fire resumed again, and when they ducked, their faces were almost touching.

“You know,” Poe said as he reloaded his blaster, “if my accounts weren’t frozen and we had somewhere to go, I’d ask if I could take you out to dinner.”

Kaydel propped her blaster on a hunk of concrete and squeezed the trigger. “If you’re asking me out, you’re going to have to do better than naming stuff we can’t do,” she said.

“Hm, okay, how’s this? When we get back, I will...heat up a piece of scrap metal with my blaster until it gives off approximately the same radiant energy as a candle, and we can watch the moons go past while eating the least stale food I can find on base.”

Poe was watching Kaydel’s face so carefully that he didn’t quite understand what happened next. One minute, stormtroopers were advancing down the alley, and then a fireball fell out of the sky.

Before he could process what had happened, the comm clicked on and Leia’s voice was in his ear: “Get ready to run, flyboy.”

He pulled himself to his feet, tugging Kaydel along with them. They ran down the alleyway together, dust in their faces, wind in their hair, still dodging an occasional shot from the stormtroopers standing on the rooftops.

“I didn’t hear an answer,” Poe yelled over the steady thrum of the transport’s engine.

“Yes!” Kaydel shouted. “It’s a date!”

Leia leaned further out the transport’s door, and the safety harness bit into her shoulders. The wind smacked her in the face, filling her mouth with grit. She was practically dangling outside the ship now, and it had been months since she’d felt so alive.

Now that her team was on open ground, stormtroopers were converging behind them. Leia squinted down her sight, took a breath, and squeezed the trigger slowly. Plan, breathe, execute, just like Cassian Andor had taught her all those years ago. She smiled as another squad of stormtroopers went up in flames.

And, okay, the gun...canon...flamethrower...whatever-it-was was just a little unpredictable. The explosion knocked Poe off his feet, and Leia watched his butt plate roll across the grass.

“Holy kriffing bantha poodoo!” he shouted, followed by something that could have been a thumbs up but might also have been an obscene gesture.

“Hold it steady!” Leia yelled to the cockpit. “First team approaching the ladder!”

“If you want me to keep it steady, you’re going to have to take out that blaster cannon!” Rey yelled back.

That was going to make quite the explosion, Leia thought as she lined up her sights. She squeezed the trigger, and fire rained down on the rooftops, taking the blaster canon with it.

The first person to come up the ladder had a truly atrocious mustache. He took one look at Leia’s canon and his face split into a wide grin. “Right on, sister!” he yelled, punctuating his exclamation with an ear-splitting whoop. Leia high-fived him just to get him out of the others’ way.

Leia watched as the new recruits buckled themselves into the seats. She’d hoped for more, of course, but she spotted a man with a medkit in his hands and two women with mechanics’ grease on their fingers. They would be enough, she thought. A spark to get the fire going.

Poe climbed aboard last, panting and slightly singed. He eyed Leia’s gun dubiously.

“That was a little overkill, don’t you think?” His face broke into a smile. “Can I have it?”

Several hours later, Poe engaged the autopilot and stepped into the cabin, where he was greeted by the sound of soft snoring.

“Are they really all asleep?” he asked, eyeing the new recruits.

“The Order doesn’t give them many days off,” Rose answered. She was slicing her nutrigel cubes into quarters and dividing them into little packets - one for each person on their new crew, Poe guessed. None of them had had much to eat, and none of them had complained about orange nutrigel cubes for dinner.

Poe clapped her on the shoulder, and she looked startled. “You did good today,” he said, and she smiled back.

“You too, sir.”

His eyes swept over the cabin, checking in on the rest of his crew. Rey was sitting cross-legged in the corner, floating a line of gray blocks. Finn sat in a seat nearby, trying to break her concentration by pelting her with bits of cloth from the ripped up upholstery. Both of them were smiling.

Kaydel sprawled over two chairs in the back, just as exhausted as the new recruits. For once, there was no stylus in her hand, and she had a slash of dirt across her cheek. Poe spread a blanket over her shoulders, and she squeezed his fingers before she fell back asleep.

Leia was nowhere to be seen.

He chewed on his lip for a second, wondering if she wanted to be alone. Then he decided it didn’t matter; she was his crew too, and he wasn’t going to leave her by herself.

There weren’t many places to hide on a transport ship this small, and Poe found her on his first try, in the cramped cargo hold underneath the main passenger cabin. She was standing in the corner, arms crossed over her chest, staring out the tiny porthole.

Bits of metal and plastic were scattered across the floor, and his feet crunched against them as he stepped off the ladder.

“Low tech perimeter alert system?” he asked. “Make sure you know when nosy crew members are coming to invade your fortress of solitude?”

Leia shook her head. “I smashed my comm.” She paused, swallowed. “The one that had the special channel I made for Ben when he was five. It was time.”

Poe studied her, not sure what to say. She looked tired, and sad, but more peaceful than he’d seen her since they left Crait.

“If I asked if you were alright, would you lie?” he asked.

“I’m fine,” she said. Then she smiled ruefully. “That’s a lie. How about, I’m as close to alright as I’ll ever be.”

It was one of the most honest things he’d ever heard her say, and his heart broke a little. At that moment, he made one of the bravest, stupidest decisions of his life. It must have shown on his face, because Leia shot him a look that clearly said whatever damn fool scheme is percolating in that idiotic flyboy brain of yours, don’t do it. Undaunted, he took a step forward, then another. She frowned and tried to take a step back, but the bulkhead was right behind her. Then Poe was in range and there was no escape: he flung his arms around her and pulled her into the tightest hug he could manage.

It wasn’t that Leia didn’t like to be touched; for as long as Poe had known her, she’d squeezed her subordinates’ hands and patted their shoulders whenever they needed reassurance. But it never went the other way around, and anyway, he was ninety-nine percent sure that anyone who cornered Leia while she was feeling vulnerable stood a good chance of dying.

When he didn’t get kneed in the groin, he relaxed slightly, even though Leia still felt stiff in his arms.

“I’ve been trying this experiment,” he said just as she stepped away from him. She opened her mouth for a no doubt scathing reply, but he waved his hand before she got started. “Come on, hear me out. I’ve been trying this experiment where I tell people when I’m not okay. The really weird thing is, it helps. So I just wanted you to know, you don’t have to be our symbol. You can just be a person, and you can say things like ‘my family sucks moof balls’ or ‘I feel like poodoo today’ if you want. Somebody might even say ‘me too.’”

Leia pressed her lips together. He was still sort of waiting for a slap, but it never came. Instead, she said, “Alright, fine. I’ve felt like poodoo since, well, Luke died and the Resistance blew up. But today felt better.”

Poe nodded, taking inventory of himself. He found that he agreed. “I’d raise a glass to that, if we’d brought anything besides water.”

A crunching sound made him jump, and when he spun around, Rose and Rey had come down the ladder. He had to hand it to them; they were brave women. He wouldn’t have dared intrude on the general’s solitude until, well, today.

Rey was hanging back by the ladder, chewing on her lip. “I’m not sure if I know what friendship is supposed to mean. I was alone for a long time.” She took a breath. “But what you said to me earlier, about how my parents made a stupid trade. I just want you to know, Ben did too. If he could’ve had you, and he picked the dark side instead -- well, he was an idiot.”

Rose had been fidgeting with the sleeve of her hoodie, but when she looked up, she looked resolute. “And I wanted you to know that I miss my sister every day too, and if you need to talk about your brother, I won’t think you’re weak.”

Poe climbed back up the ladder, deliberately not looking behind him. That was how you made a team - you took people away from the people they were comfortable with and forced them to spend time with each other, even if they weren’t sure how to do it. Anyway, he had a mission.

When Poe climbed back down the ladder three hours later, Rose and Rey were asleep, one on each side of Leia. Leia herself was staring straight ahead. Her eyes were rimmed with red, but the tension had slid out of her shoulders and she looked peaceful.

He settled on the floor close to her, his knee resting against her ankle. “I programmed you a new comm,” he said. “It has a special channel, just for us, so you’ll be able to reach me anytime, no matter what.”

Leia closed her hand over his when she reached out to take the comm.

“Thank you, Poe.” Her voice was quiet, but he could feel an odd warmth that made him think she was doing that weird Force thing that let her radiate feelings at other people.

He shook his head. “Don’t mention it. Just try to remember friendship goes both ways, okay? You don’t have to be in this alone.”

She gave him a rueful half smile. “I might need reminders now and again.”

Poe smiled back. “Good thing we have a special channel so I can reach you anytime. I’ll never leave you alone.”

Light flashed in Leia’s eyes, and Poe readied himself for a devastating one-liner. He lifted his chin and smirked to remind her that no matter how tired he was, his banter game would be strong.

Instead she said, “Good. Because I don’t actually want you to leave me alone.”