This took me a little while, but here’s the follow up to this post about Kes and Poe!

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“You know, I’ve been thinking for days and I still can’t figure it out.”

Finn, who was admiring the view of the tall grass in the waning light, gives him a curious glance. Kes cuts the end off the lash tightened around a newly-repaired fencepost before he turns to face Finn.

“What do I say to the man who saved my son’s life?“

The surprise hits Finn’s eyes and he opens his mouth to speak, then just gapes for a moment before he tries to laugh.

“I mean… you don’t have to- I needed a pilot, didn’t he tell you? It was-”

“Everything. You saved everything dear to me, Finn. He is my entire universe, and you got him out of there.”

Finn picks at a blade of grass that comes to his waist while CR-660 bobs around in the air, fussing with the fencepost. The air is still in the late afternoon, the light hot and big across the grassland.

“I thought I’d lost him in the desert, on Jakku.” Finn looks up to meet his eyes. “I thought that was it.”

“That wasn’t the end, though. Even if it were…” Kes feels a lump growing in his throat, and walks on to the next fencepost to distract himself. CR floats along  behind him, chirping. “It would have been a better- a better end than that hole.”

Unable to go on, he waves CR onto the damaged post. She hovers around, inspecting the split wood before she flies off to a woodpile nearby for a new one.

“Don’t say that. Please.” In Finn’s tense voice Kes hears the echo of what he suffered in those hours when Poe was presumed dead, hours that Kes himself never knew except in nightmares both sleeping and waking.

“I’m sorry. That’s enough about that. But here’s something else I wanted to ask.” He watches CR zoom back, wooden posts floating at the end of her little tractor beam. “Are you all right?”

“Me?” Finn looks lost, not yet familiar with the question. “I… think so?”

“You don’t need to talk about anything you don’t have to, of course. CR, not so tight. You’ll split the wood again.”

The droid boops back, do it yourself if you can do it better. She does pull the lash less tightly in her rounds around the post, however.

“I want to, but I wouldn’t know where to start.” Finn is looking across the grassland again, as though looking for something. “I look at where I was two weeks ago and where I am now, and I literally can’t believe it. Sometimes I think I’m dreaming.”

“Good dream or bad?”

“Both?” Finn’s laughter is a little too sharp. “Sometimes I close my eyes and I’m back in the armor, afraid, and I think I dreamed of escaping. Then I open my eyes and I’m here. Which is real? Did I create this ranch, Poe, Rey, you, in my mind just to keep sane? Maybe the reconditioning happened and this is how it works, by keeping me in a waking dream.”

Finn catches his breath and looks at Kes with what he realizes is actual terror. “I’m sorry, I know I sound crazy. Please don’t tell- I’m really going to be locked up if I say ‘Captain Phasma,’ won’t I.”

“No one’s locking you up, you’re no danger to anyone but the guys who deserve it. Don’t lay about, CR, go do the next one.”

The droid, floating about as though enjoying the view herself, gives an indignant chirp before she flies away.

“Listen. Finn. You’ve gone through a lot in a very short time, and I won’t pretend to know anything about the life you lived before that.” Before he saved Poe, and in so doing became the second most important person in Kes’s life. “If you’re a little crazy from all that, well, who can blame you? Minds bend and break under strain, I can’t say I’m all that sane myself. Or my boy, for that matter. I’ve been doing some reading, and I heard it called a normal response to an abnormal situation.”

Finn nods slowly. “Normal. I like that.”

“But minds can be mended, too,” Kes puts a hand on the fencepost next to him. “Maybe they won’t be exactly the same as before, but enough to keep the beasties out and everyone to be safe.”

“Yes.” Finn’s smile is soft, bittersweet. “Poe is lucky to have you.”

Kes’s heart aches, as it does so often around Finn. What can he say to a loss like this, a gaping wound that sucks in the air around it and stops time, making life seem impossible sometimes?

“I’d say, and don’t let him forget it.” He adds in a lower voice: “I’m lucky to have him, too.”

His chest fills with the knowledge, that no matter how he might bleed and scream inside for Poe, no matter that he fears every day that he might lose his son to would-be Imperial goons, he had the privilege of raising his son to be a man. He had known chubby arms around his neck, scraped knees, gurgling laughter, the first glass of wine, the first broken heart. That was something Finn would never have in this deeply unfair universe.

“Here’s something else I know, Finn. You’re everything, too, to a family that never gave up on you no matter what.”

“That is, if they’re still…” Finn shrugs, looks out across the grassland in the fading light.

“No ifs. Do you think Shara, my Lady Bey, my fire among the stars, ever stopped loving our boy? Or her irritating man, for that matter?” Kes snorts. “Death would be too scared to get in her way.”

Finn bows his head and Kes goes to stand by his side, to see what the younger man is seeing, the sunset filling the sky over waving grass. “I hope your family is out there, looking for you. But if not, they love you and they always will.” In the stillness between them the wind rustles across the fields. “I also want you to know, though it’s no replacement, my home is your home and is open to you, always.”

Finn says nothing for a long moment, and Kes looks at him only to see a tear tracing its way down the young man’s cheek, glittering red in the evening light.

Kes lifts an arm, giving Finn plenty of time to pull away if he wants, and puts a hand to Finn’s back. When Finn leans toward him Kes puts the arm around his shoulders and pulls tight. They stand and face the wind together, in a world of light and the vast expanse, a crescent Yavin revealing itself as the light fades.

“And believe me, it’s not because you’re dating my son. You can dump him like a sack of sweetroots tomorrow, Force knows you can do better, and if you feel uncomfortable with him here I’ll kick him out.”

Finn chuckles as he wipes his face. “Thank you, Kes.”

“I mean it, try me! I told you before and I will tell you again, you need to play the field. You’re too young to settle.”

“Hey, lazy bums!”

They both turn to see Poe walking through the grass down a hill, spare fenceposts slung across his back, Rey behind him with a bag of tools.

“Told you we were going to beat you, Dad, droid or no droid.”

“Keep working like that, Captain Dameron, and you’ll ruin your back before you’re forty.”

“Commander. That’s Commander Dameron!” Poe puts down the posts he was carrying, which CR whisks away. “I was demoted for one day and you’ve been calling me that for a week.”

“A little humility never hurt anyone.”

“So that means you’re cooking, right, Kes?” Rey lets out a squeal. “I can’t wait!”

“Oh, it will be worth the anticipation, Master Jedi.”

“Rey.”

“Rey. Dinner is derloc caldos and roasted tip-yip, a genuine Ewok recipe, with candied slugfruit for dessert.”

“I don’t know what that is, but I know I’ll love it!” Rey turns to Finn and they scream at each other like six-year-olds.

Poe crosses his arms. “If you ever want real food you can always ask me to cook. Not that I will, as long as Dad keeps losing these bets.”

“Oh, a sore winner?” Finn pulls him by an arm around the waist, and they share a kiss and a grin. “I’m beginning to think Kes has a point about needing to play the field while I’m young.”

“Says the guy who was married at twenty-five?” The look Poe shoots Kes over his shoulder is one of pure betrayal. “You are the worst wingman and more importantly, what in space are you thinking.”

“Yes yes, we both know he is far out of your league, but what can I do?” Kes shrugs. “I have to tell the truth when I see it.”

Finn taps Poe’s chest with the back of a hand. “Come on, flyboy, bet I can beat you to the house.”

“First one in gets dibs on the yip-yip!” Rey runs ahead of them.

“Tip-yip,” Kes sighs. “I got the recipe from this Ewok tribe-”

“Not fair! You started first!” Finn runs after Rey, his feet pounding the ground.

“Um no, no! This is not the Rey you’re looking for?”

“Let’s get her, Finn!”

Kes watches them go in the fading light, the wind a cold whisper on his neck. “Come along, CR.”

The droid floats humming to his side and he starts toward the house, listening to the children shout and laugh–warriors all who have seen too much and walked through fire, yet they need to be children at times. He knows he needs that from them, too.

As he walks in Yavin’s light Kes listens to the night birds, the chirping insects, the wind, the sounds of home as the day cools to evening. His steps are steady and his heart is full.