"Charged Particles"

34 ABY

The good news was that Poe Dameron and Rey were excellent pilots, so they'd managed to land the little shuttlecraft safely, albeit in a few pieces. The bad news was that an electromagnetic pulse had fried every electrical system on the shuttle, rendering it inoperable.

"I think it was a CME," Poe said glumly from the cockpit of the now-shattered little ship.

"A what?" Rey asked, getting a kit together and throwing it into a backpack.

He stood up and began organizing his own pack. "A coronal mass ejection. A solar flare that hits the planet's pole…or the ship closest to it. We just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time." Lightning flashed constantly in the sky, angry clouds talking to each other with electricity.

He flipped on the comlink. "Black leader to Saber-Cat?" He hailed them a few times before giving up and pocketing the comlink. To Rey, he said, "Why don't we get some distance between us and this lightning storm, and then try them again? They won't be able to read us here with all the interference. And if they try to land, another pulse might get them too. So they're not gonna land here."

Poe and Rey started walking south through the jungle, periodically stopping to try hailing the orbiting Saber-Cat. It was strange, just the two of them together. Usually, Finn was around as a buffer—Finn talked more than his two friends put together, and he was the common link between them. Poe and Rey had flown and fought together on a few missions, but they seemed to have little in common besides a passion for flying, admiration for General Organa, and an affection for BB-8. Things were still a little awkward when Finn was absent. After a couple of false starts, though, they'd managed to relax with each other, and were now keeping a cheerful conversation going.

After an hour or so, they concluded they were far enough away from the lightning storm for a rescue shuttle to land, so they set up a little camp and sat on a log, talking. By evening, Rey's head was swimming with new stories. Poe's vivid tales of a childhood spent in the lush jungles of Yavin IV, a jungle like the one she was currently traversing, inspired her. He was lucky enough to have grown up with freedom: freedom to get an education, to fly whenever and wherever he wanted, to choose his hobbies and to explore his surroundings. Freedom to be creative, to relax. Everyone she'd met in the Resistance took these freedoms for granted. Rey's own childhood had lacked all of those intangibles, yet she was neither jealous of nor resentful of Poe. He wasn't telling her those stories to make her sad—it just didn't occur to him that such freedoms weren't always predestined.

Poe was just like his homeworld: brimming with life and energy, unflaggingly warm, revitalizing, easily accessible. His Force presence appeared as a soothing orange hue to Rey. It was easiest for her to associate people's Force signatures with colors, and Poe was a deep orange. Like sand at sunset. Like the comforting campfire he'd just made. There was nothing deceptive about him; what you saw was what you got, and Rey appreciated his friendly honesty. He felt trustworthy. And she knew he liked her; he'd been smiling warmly at her all afternoon. So she opened up to him, comparing his childhood with her life on Jakku, describing her training with Master Luke, even admitting her doubts about fulfilling her potential as a Jedi.

"It's getting dark too quickly," Poe commented, interrupting their conversation. "Looks like a storm is coming. Maybe we should get under shelter?"

Rey looked around doubtfully. Nothing around but tall trees, hanging vines, soft mossy ground. No shelter at all. "Did you bring a tent?"

Poe managed not to look smug. "Of course." He pulled a collapsible tent out. "I won all sorts of ribbons and badges for scouting when I was a kid."

"Oh," Rey said, eyes wide with feigned admiration. "We're in good hands, then."

"Absolutely," he replied with a grin. "And we've got the best tent that Republic Army Surplus has to offer. It's probably no more than a decade old." After inspecting the worn bundle critically, he added, "Okay, maybe two decades. Definitely Republic, though. It's not from the Rebellion days."

"That's something."

Rey tried to help set up the old brown tent, though she had no idea what she was doing. It was quickly determined that she was just slowing down the progress, and since rain was looking increasingly likely, she decided just to sit down on the ground and let her friend work. He whistled a cheerful melody. She watched him, charmed. "Does that song have any words?" she asked him.

"Sure. It's an old ballad my mom used to sing when she was happy. It's got, I don't know, ten or twenty verses." Poe paused, reflecting. He missed his mother at unspectacular moments, like now, and sudden pain stabbed at his heart. He stifled his sadness and concentrated on putting Rey at ease. He sang the ballad in a bright tenor voice, surprised at how effortlessly he remembered the words. The lyrics were from the point of view of a young man who left home on a sailing ship to explore his world. He sang plaintively about all he'd left behind: his girlfriend, his buddies, the gentle beauty of his home. Poe had made it through four verses before she spoke again.

"Nobody sings on Jakku."

He stopped his crooning and tent construction to look at her. "Really? Why not?"

She shrugged. "Nobody has musical instruments. They're not practical. And there's not much to sing about. Besides, singing dries out your throat."

"Music is an essential part of human culture."

She gave him a crooked smile. "You sound like a Jedi master."

Poe wasn't sure if that was a compliment or a criticism. Before he could ask her, though, the heavens opened up and rain attacked them. Rey yelped, grabbed the backpacks, and scurried into the tent, not caring whether it was ready or not. Poe spent a few more minutes making sure the tarp was well anchored to the ground before joining her. He took off his soaked jacket and shirt.

"Hope you don't, uh, mind."

Rey looked everywhere but his bare chest. "Oh, no," she said as normally as possible. She unrolled her thin sleeping bag and hastily crawled inside. Then she snuck a peek at his chest. And another.

Poe unrolled his own sleepsack, then dug into the backpack again. "Hungry? I brought rations along."

It hadn't occurred to her to bring food; it was supposed to be just a short hike until the orbiting ship could find them. "Sure, I could eat. What else did you bring along? Chewbacca's bowcaster? Board games? A portable X-Wing?" She smiled hopefully. "An X-wing would really come in handy."

Poe made a show of searching the tent. "Nope," he said sadly. "Not even sabaac cards. Got a comlink, though." He flipped it on. "Black Leader to Saber-Cat. Do you read?" Only static answered, as it had all afternoon. He shrugged, dropped the comlink, and ripped open two packages of rations.

While they ate, he scrutinized her. He had always liked Rey, though he would have been intimidated by her if not for Finn. His first impression of her had been of a mysterious Force-sensitive that came out of nowhere. General Organa, normally cautious, had trusted her without reservations and sent her off to train as a Jedi. It was only after she left D'Qar that Finn had told him about her sweetness, her humor and beauty. So even before really getting to know her, Rey had shifted, in his mind, from a sanctified hero into a desirable woman. After she returned with Luke Skywalker, Poe and Rey had developed a friendship and (he hoped) a mutual admiration for each other. Thus his image of her had shifted again, from a pretty woman into a trustworthy friend, as well as a great pilot. They'd gone flying in his X-wing twice—great fun—and she'd taken him up in the famous Millennium Falcon and shown off the abilities of the YT-1300. Since that day, he'd considered her his equal as a pilot. Nobody could fly that old pirate ship like she could.

And yet Poe felt that something had changed in their relationship today. Their previous conversations usually centered on ships or piloting. Or they just let Finn ramble on; his boyish enthusiasm for everything tended to overshadow both Poe and Rey. He wasn't used to sharing anything personal, let alone intimate, with her, but today he felt compelled to tell her his whole life story. He wanted her to know him. Poe wasn't sure why this urge had suddenly developed, or why she was now so overwhelmingly beautiful to him, and he wasn't sure he wanted to analyze it too closely. Better to just eat his ration packet and curl up in his sleeping bag.