Chapter Text
CHAPTER NINE
Night fell swift and silent in the desert. Finn walked in lockstep with the scavenger, awkward silence trailing like a comet’s tail. “So,” he said as he scrambled up another dune, Rey following with unnerving grace. “How long have you lived here?”
“I’ve never been anywhere else,” said Rey. “My parents told me about other worlds, but we never had the credits to leave. This place, the Outpost…” She paused, sucked in a sharp breath. When she spoke again, her voice was carefully uninflected. “The people who destroyed it. Who are they?”
Finn reached the top of the dune and slid down the other side, wincing as sand slipped through cracks in his armor, sticking to his sweat-damp underlayers. “I’ve been with them since I was a kid. They call themselves KAOS, and their leader is this guy covered in…” He paused, searching for the right word, and came up short. “Smoke? I dunno, he wears a mask and robes, and he’s really old and knows all the secrets of the universe. At least that’s what they told us. ‘Pulsar knows how to bring peace and order through conflict and chaos.’ Or something like that.” Finn stopped, wincing as a gust of night-chilled wind threw sand into his face. A pang of regret that he’d left his helmet behind. Ahead, BB-8 whistled mournfully, ducking his little head against the gusts. “I never really believed it, y’know? I got in trouble a lot. But I didn’t have anywhere else to go, and no one to leave with, so I stayed. Sounds like a terrible excuse, now I’m saying it out loud.”
Rey was silent as she slid down the dune and made for the next one, booted feet stirring up eddies of sand. BB-8 sped along a few paces ahead, relentless in his pursuit. “I understand,” she said. “Being stuck.”
Finn glanced at her. “Really?”
She shrugged. “I steal from the dead to make a living. I don’t need your excuses, Finn.”
Warmth blossomed behind his ribs. “I’m sure they’d understand,” he said. “The dead. If they were alive.”
“I wouldn’t steal from them if they were alive.”
“You tried to steal Poe’s ship.”
Rey gave him a look. She sighed, looked away, back toward Niima. “I panicked,” she said. “Which does sound like a terrible excuse now that I’m saying it out loud.”
Finn smiled. “I get it. Life must be tough out here.”
“Understatement of the millennia,” said Rey. They crested another dune, BB-8 rolling, Rey gliding, Finn sliding. The Outpost sprawled ahead, smoke rising to join the falling dark, fingers of night caressing the carnage. Rey paused, body tense and still, staring into the near distance. “I can’t believe it’s all gone.”
Finn reached for her hand.
Rey jerked away, grabbing the staff strapped to her back.
Finn took a step back. “Sorry! Sorry. It just felt like I should, um. Comfort you?”
“You shouldn’t. And don’t try it again.” Rey turned and broke into a swift walk.
Damn it. Finn mentally slapped himself, taking a moment to regroup. So Poe’s affinity for touch wasn’t socially universal. Good to know.
“You coming?” Rey called over her shoulder.
“Uh, yeah. Right behind you.”
He jogged to catch up, shivering in the plunging cold, as they left the dunes and emerged onto a flat, arid plain. Rey picked up the pace, again, BB-8 speeding along in the lead. Finn gritted his teeth and followed, trying (and failing) to ignore the hair-raising screech of sand grinding between the plates of his armor. “Rey, wait.” He pointed to a hulking silhouette on the edge of Niima. “There he is!”
Rey didn’t respond, but she broke into a jog, which was not what Finn was hoping for, but alas. Her desert, her rules. It didn’t matter that Finn had the blaster, because without Rey, he and Poe were totally screwed, and she knew it. She had this whole thing figured out, didn’t she? Smart. Had to be, living out here. Especially alone, which it seemed she was.
“We’ll have to do this fast,” said Rey, “so I’ll need everyone searching. Do you know what an X-Wing’s hyperdrive look like?”
Finn shook his head, then, realizing she couldn’t see him, called out, “No. You could draw it for me, maybe.”
Rey snorted. “You and the pilot can search the Outpost. The droid and I will take a speeder to my house and check there. I might have some old X-Wing parts lying around; my parents used to talk about rebuilding one and getting off Jakku. I don’t think I ever threw those parts out.”
There was a story there—Finn could tell by the shift in her tone—but after the Attempted Hand-Holding Incident, he wasn’t about to pry. “Cool,” he said.
Another minute of silent walk-jogging, and they arrived on the outskirts of Niima, approaching the powered-down X-Wing under cover of night.
“Hey!” Poe called, climbing out of the cockpit and dropping onto the sand. “Thought you’d gotten lost out there. Was about to come looking.”
“At night? You would’ve been lost in minutes,” said Rey. Before Poe could reply, she added, “Finn is staying here with you to search the Outpost, and BB-8 and I are going to take a speeder—assuming KAOS didn’t destroy them all—and search my house.”
“House?” said Poe.
“Yes,” said Rey, defensively.
Finn cut in, because this was hurdling toward a full-blown argument they didn’t have time for. “No time to lose. Poe, c’mon.”
“BB-8,” said Rey. “Follow me.”
Finn stood beside Poe as the droid did a lap around them, BB-8 nudging Poe’s palm for head pats before following Rey into the Outpost, past a row of blaster-scorched tents, and out of sight.
. . . .
Rey found a speeder under a tarp behind the rations stand and started it up, lifting BB-8 into the back seat. She climbed into the front, powered it up, and twisted to look back at the droid. “If you fall off,” she said, “scream as loud as you can.”
BB-8 whistled in resigned agreement.
They sped off, past tents and stands full of blaster holes and dead bodies, back into the dune sea. Rey averted her eyes, afraid she’d recognize someone among the dead. Not that she had many friends here—or any, as frivolous attachments were a death sentence—but it felt disrespectful to turn the dead into a spectacle, even in the privacy of her own mind. She couldn’t bury them, and if she did a predator would dig them back up, but she could allow them the dignity of remembering them as they’d been in life.
KAOS. She turned the name over in her mind, sharp rock in a tumbler. Smoothing the edges until she could hold it steady, look at it from all sides. They did this. And Finn was one of them.
She wanted to be mad. She wanted to rage, to scream, to hurt as she’d been hurt. To take from them what they’d taken from her: her home, her community, her life on Jakku. Instead, calm filled her like water poured over molten stone, solidifying, stabilizing. It’s not about revenge, she told herself. It’s about making sure it doesn’t happen again. Not to anyone.
Rey urged the speeder on, past the open-air graveyard and into the dune sea.
As they came to a halt outside the hollow AT-AT Rey used as scrap storage, BB-8 whistled inquisitively.
“I know,” Rey said, “but it’s better than most people have. And no, I don’t live here. This is…” She shrugged. “It’s my garage, I suppose.” She pointed over her shoulder, back in the direction of Niima. “My house—” she put an emphasis on the word that warned against correction, “—is that way.”
BB-8 beeped, curious little chirps. He hopped down and followed her, stopping outside as she clambered into the AT-AT husk and surveyed the piles of junk and scrap within. She looked back and smiled. “I’ll only be a minute,” she said. “If you see anyone coming, call out and then hide. Okay?”
An understanding beep.
“Good.” Rey turned back toward the night-dark interior of the Empire’s once proud machine. Ducking and weaving past wires and scraps, she made for the back of the ‘room’, scouring the part of her mind that was eternally six years old for the location of her parents’ prized salvage.
“It’s in here somewhere,” she told no one in particular. “I know I saw…” She kicked aside a metal box of fuses, pushed past a tangle of fray-ended wires. “Here. Here!” She knelt, lifted a panel built into the sand-facing side of the Empire’s ruined machine, and there they were: pieces of rebel ships that her parents had set aside, the promise of a new life that never arrived. She rummaged, pulling up handfuls of loose parts and shoving them into a pouch tucked against her right thigh, hidden under folds of beige fabric. In the dark, it was hard to tell what she was taking, so she reached out with closed eyes and felt. Her fingers danced over metal rings and cylinders until There!
“Got it!” She closed the hatch, ducking and weaving back to the entrance. She hopped down, ship parts rattling against her leg, and patted BB-8 on the head. “Here.” She dug in the pouch and unfurled her hand, revealing the assorted pieces. “These should be enough to repair the hyperdrive, right?”
The astromech rolled close, examining. Beep, beep, trill.
“Perfect.” Rey shoved the pieces into the pouch and motioned for the droid to follow. BB-8 rolled after her, and she boosted him onto the back of the speeder. “You secure?” she asked as she swung up into the driver’s seat.
Confirmative, if slightly apprehensive, beeping.
“Good. Let’s hope we get back before sunbreak.”
Rey powered up the speeder and they set back out over the shadow-drenched dunes.
. . . .
“So,” said Poe as he used a discarded polearm to shatter a window.
“So?” echoed Finn.
“Where are you from?”
Finn followed Poe through the window into a room full of vacuu-sealed packets of… food? Not exactly what he’d eaten on extended training missions to barren planets, but close enough to make his stomach turn. Those things had never agreed with him, and he certainly hadn’t agreed with them.
“Sorry, again?” said Finn, picking up a handful of rations and stashing them under his armor.
“Y’know,” Poe said, rummaging around in a pile of unsorted salvage. “Your home planet.”
Finn shrugged. He rubbed the back of his neck, avoiding Poe’s eyes as he joined him at the salvage heap. “I’ve been with KAOS since I was a baby, I guess. No idea where I came from. No one told me, and I knew better than to ask. KAOS doesn’t dwell on the past; neither do I.”
Poe reached for a silver cylinder just as Finn did, Poe’s fingertips brushing the curve of Finn’s wrist. Finn jerked back, goosebumps rising on his forearm, inhaling sharply.
“Shit, sorry.” Poe put up both hands.
Finn tripped over his tongue in desperation. “No, it’s fine. I just… I’m not used to. That.” He searched for the least depressing way to phrase it. “We wear gloves and armor most of the time. We don’t share beds, so. It feels… weird. Touching people that aren’t me.”
Finn was pretty sure he’d failed at coming off cool and casual because Poe looked devastated.
“Okay. Just tell me if I ever do something you’re not comfortable with.”
“Yup. Uh-huh. Got it.” Finn offered the most unbothered smile he could muster and turned back to the scrap pile. He needed to change the subject, pronto. “So. Where are you from? Your home planet.”
“Home moon.” Poe returned the smile. Tension bled out of his tone and Finn’s shoulders sagged in relief. “Yavin IV. It’s beautiful. My dad still lives there.”
“I bet,” said Finn. “That it’s beautiful. Not that your dad lives there.”
Poe laughed. “You’re funny,” he said, and fell back in next to Finn, bumping their shoulders together.
They went back to work, the silence between them comfortable. Finn didn’t stop smiling until he heard a speeder approaching, bringing with it the first light of approaching dawn.