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Finn’s brow smells clean when Rey kisses it. There she plants the promise of a future reencounter, a crossing of paths, a fated reunion. She hopes he can feel it the same way she does, and that he won’t see her absence as abandonment. Leaving her friend is the last thing she wishes to do, especially with his wounds so grave and his mind still lost in a healing slumber, but she cannot linger. She is well-versed in waiting, but this time it won’t do.
The clothes General Organa lent her feel strange against her skin, but she embraces the change just like she embraces the unexpectedly comforting weight of a lightsaber in her rucksack. She has been stagnant for years, and now comes a period of change. No more waiting around but rather moving forward. Meeting people, making friends. She remembers Finn’s hand in hers and thinks that she rather likes the change. Finn has been good to her, a friend, a brother, and she wants to be good to him as well. She wants to do right by him, and she swears she will.
Which is why she hunts down Poe Dameron before departing.
She doesn’t really know the man. They have exchanged a few words, first over radio and then face to face, their only topic of conversation being Finn and Finn’s wounds and whether Finn would make it or not. The pilot’s fixation has told Rey everything she needs to know about him and his intentions towards Finn.
Normally, she would stay out of it. Finn is an adult, and she supposes that if he was self-aware enough to decide the First Order wasn’t his thing, then he should be more than capable of dealing with Poe and whatever is going on between them. Still, Finn is something of a child sometimes, and he isn’t in any condition to hold a conversation right now. So Rey tells herself that he will speak for himself when he wakes up—when, not if, never if—but she will do the talking in his place for the time being.
There is a mess hall in the Resistance base. She finds Poe Dameron there, Finn’s jacket in his lap, slashed and scorched across the back. On the table next to him, there is a sewing kit. Dameron isn’t caressing the jacket, but it’s a near thing, and Rey just barely manages to keep herself from rolling her eyes at so much sentimentality.
She kicks out the chair next to Dameron’s and sits down. “Hey.”
“Oh, yeah, hey.” The pilot smiles, straightening in his seat. “You’re Rey, right? Finn’s…”
“Friend.”
“Friend.” Dameron seems relieved. He looks down at the jacket. “Right. Cool.”
“Best friend, actually,” she proceeds. “We’ve been through stuff. Made us close. You would understand, yes? I heard your first meeting was nothing short of thrilling.”
“Oh, yeah. He was all dressed in his trooper gear. Looked badass up to the moment when he took off his helmet.” Dameron chuckles, the tip of his tongue darting out to wet his lips. “He was sweating a waterfall. Wanted to get out of there as much as I did—and for that, he needed a pilot.”
“And he got you.”
“And he got me.” Dameron shrugs. “Lucky boy.”
“Him or you?”
Dameron chuckles again, and this time he does run a hand over the rough fabric of the jacket. “I’m hoping both.”
That is a smooth reply. Rey would commend him for it if she weren’t trying to seem stern. She leans forward, her expression serious, and waits until Dameron looks up from the jacket to raise an eyebrow at him. People have told her she has an intense way of looking and that her silence can be unnerving, so she subjects the pilot to it for a couple of seconds before speaking again.
“You try doing anything he doesn’t like,” she says, her voice low, “and you’ll hear from me.”
Dameron gives her a bemused look. “Is that a threat?”
“I’m just saying Finn’s been through enough.” Rey straightens back up and readjusts her pack, the ancient weapon within clinking against the other objects she has packed. “And if I have to cut you up with Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, I will.”
Dameron stares. Rey stares back. The pilot startles her by letting loose a deep laugh, head thrown back and dark curls bouncing as he shakes with the strength of his amusement. She expected him to react in some way, but this is not it. Anger, she is used to. Disdain, she can handle. These are the things she has come to expect, not good-natured laughter.
She frowns at Dameron, not sure what to do. Hitting him seems like overreacting, but there is a certain appeal in the idea. Before she can raise her hand, however, Dameron gets himself under control. He drapes the jacket over his shoulders and holds it close. He gives Rey a bright smile, somewhat mischievous but not enough to make her mistrustful.
“I like you,” says the pilot. “I’m glad Finn’s got you to look after him.”
Having her existence being appreciated is an odd novelty. Rey isn’t sure how long it will be until she hears something like that being said to her again, so she accepts Dameron’s compliment with a small nod. Then she squares her shoulders and points a finger at him.
“Remember my words.”
“Oh, I will.” Dameron grins. “Bit hard not to.”
Rey doesn’t know what else to say, so she stands up and pushes her seat back under the table. Dameron’s eyes are on her all the while, dark and assessing but still warm. She holds his gaze for an instant—a long one. Then she turns and heads for the door. She doesn’t let herself look over her shoulder, not even when the pilot shouts one last farewell at her.
Later, much later, as she is piloting the Millennium Falcon through the velvet darkness of space, she will think of Finn’s jacket on Dameron’s shoulders and all of a sudden remember that the jacket had, at some point, belonged to the pilot rather than her friend.