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The planet of Deru was as lovely as everyone had said it would be.
Before their departure from the base, Rey had gleaned whatever knowledge she could from the considerably small circle of people aware of Finn’s intent to return to his birth planet.
Some of the pilots who’d been here prior to joining the Resistance had spoken of Deru’s harmonious yet deceptively complex architecture, the clever ways structures of all types melded within the mountains of the Sinndro Pass region to create a fortified haven for its political leaders and their families.
With a small smile, Rey remembers BB-8 whirring in excitement the day she came back to the Resistance outpost on Endor. Between the happy trills at her sudden return, he’d projected archived images of blood orange sunsets over glacial rivers, government-owned mansions built directly into jagged cliffs, and a glittering marketplace lit up like a beacon buried within the low valley of the Pass.
::You should go with him:: the droid had chirped in binary, thumping against each of her calves in turn.
::Go with Finn!::
And here I am.
Side by side in the Falcon’s cockpit, Rey glances over at her unusually quiet companion.
There’s no point in asking how he’s feeling. She knows every detail of his face as well as her own, could draw up a flawless re-creation of each cherished feature in her mind with her eyes closed, with hardly any effort at all.
Right now, the subtle shifting between hope, trepidation and outright terror in his expression reminds Rey of her first arrival onto Ahch-to all those years ago. She hadn’t been able to name what she’d felt back then, hadn't truly wanted to. But during that endless walk up those steps she had realized one thing: no matter what she found in that place - for better or worse - the fabric of her history would never be formless again.
Whatever truth Finn found here would fill in the gaps of his own history, too. She only hoped the answers he received would not mean trading his curiosity for something far worse.
At this thought, Rey finally rises from the co-pilot’s chair and steps behind Finn, circling her arms around his broad shoulders. She follows his gaze to the serene view spread before them.
“Sinndro Pass is this planet’s capital, right?” she asks after a long moment.
“One of them - the legislative capital,” he says.
For as far as Rey can see, a snow-peaked range of mountains curved in a wide arc above a frozen river winding throughout the brightly lit valley below. She knows from her own considerable research that the area was populated by a mix of wealthy, off-planet vacationers, various Deruvian political leaders and a coalition of traders who dealt in luxury goods. The setting sun - more of a crimson than the pale orange it had been when they first reached the atmosphere - casts the entire valley in a warm haze, in steep contrast to the purple, star-flecked sky above.
“My file said I was born in a private clinic somewhere down there, during the cold season,” Finn speaks up once more.
“I’m not surprised you come from a place so gorgeous.” She lets her cheek rest against his temple with an indulgent smirk. “And the weather here might explain your irrational bias against Jakku?”
His lips part a fraction before breaking into a soft smile of his own.
“There is nothing irrational about that.”
One of his hands curl around her wrist, his thumb absently stroking the skin there. It’s a simple touch, barely even there, yet the most contact he’s initiated towards her since she came back. It’s also enough to unexpectedly flood her with memories of the far less innocent encounters they'd shared over time, and it sends an uncontrollable flush of heat throughout her body.
“It’s stranger than I imagined, actually being here,” Finn murmurs a second later, oblivious to her reaction.
“How so?”
“After the Order finally turned over all of the Stormtroopers’ files, Connix must have pulled a hundred holovids of Deru from the archives. But nothing felt familiar when I watched them. No people, or places. It’s nothing good or bad I guess,” he clarifies in a rush, “it just...it doesn’t seem right not to feel any connection at all to the planet I’m from.”
Despite their bond, the barrier separating Finn’s emotions from hers through the Force had been perfectly impenetrable for over a year. It was a wall they'd built together (under the reluctant guidance of her father) to prevent any further emotional attachment, as physical distance alone had proven time and again not to be enough to weaken it. Except now, Rey begins to sense an undercurrent of dread seeping through around its edges that she couldn't ignore if she tried.
“Maybe you do feel something. Or even remember something.”
He looks up at her at the same time her eyes flick down. While most of his smile remains, it’s more puzzled than amused.
“Rey. I was barely three years old when the First Order stole me.”
“I know. My aunt forwarded me the Blight reports a few months ago.”
Their conversation lapses long enough for him to extract himself from her arms, exit the cockpit, gather up his duffel and head down the Falcon’s offramp onto solid ground.
Rey eventually follows him out, considering for the hundredth time if it was a good idea to insist on making this trip with him.
Once she’s outside, she takes a moment to settle herself in their new surroundings.
In all her travels through the Galaxy, she’d never been to a place like this. It was almost jarring - the looming, peaceful outline of the mountains which surely stretched for miles, set against the winking lights of the bustling city so far below them. The skies had darkened to a deep indigo in tandem with the falling temperature, although the breeze was a blessing compared to the stale, recycled air aboard the Falcon.
“Why do you suppose you were taken at three, and not as a newborn, like the others?” Rey ventures, a plume of breath escaping her lips as she fastens her lightsaber to her belt. “You think the First Order might have targeted your family for some reason?”
“Yeah, highly doubtful.”
The reply was quick, but Finn’s deep voice had lacked its usual confidence as he busied himself checking and re-checking his custom handheld blaster - old habits still died hard with him, it seemed to Rey, as he’d simply slipped his own lightsaber hilt into his duffel bag’s outer compartment.
“We probably won’t know for a long time how many children were stolen in total, much less how or why. There were tons of redactions in the trooper files Blight recovered,” he tells her, then adds, “In any case, there’s no reason to believe I was the only older one. My parents were just low-level senators.”
“Any child past infancy would’ve been harder for the Order to break down and control,” Rey can’t stop herself from commenting, while flipping the switch to raise the Falcon’s off-ramp.
“True. Likely one of the reasons the reconditioning unit was formed.”
“Odd how you were the only one of thousands who defected entirely.”
Finn finally re-directs his attention from his blaster to her eyes, with a slight frown. There’s a defensiveness in his dark gaze Rey is torn between leaning into or retreating back from.
“Father taught both of us a long time ago that the truth can come to us in all sorts of ways. In dreams, or visions. Buried memories. Even when we don’t want them to,” she presses him.
Finn simply studies her with that curiously blank expression for a few seconds too many. If she closed her eyes, she knows it would feel like he wasn’t standing right before her at all.
Rey senses the beginning of a powerful headache at the prospect of another argument neither of them was equipped to win. Instead of pushing him further, she decides to set out towards a rocky path leading away from the bluff they’d landed the Falcon on.
After he’d given up on trying to drop her off on every passing planet on their early trajectory away from Endor, she and Finn had spent most of their journey to Deru in silence, woven through with the occasional strands of brief small talk. Safe topics - commiserating over the ion storms in the Inner Rim’s atmospheres and how they caused the lights to flicker throughout the junkpile ship they were on. Marveling over the pictures Jessika had sent them of her and Kaydel Connix’ newborn son. Basic updates on the status of Luke’s academy and his odd yet enduringly effective recruiting methods.
She and Finn had talked about everything except for the real reason why they were both here.
As they neared the end of the path, Rey didn’t need to see his face to know that no number of suspicious reports on the pair of humble Deruvian senators who also happened to be his biological parents could have kept him away from here. Virtually nothing could have stopped him from coming here. Nothing, she tells herself, silently justifying her choice not to share with Finn what the Force had seen fit to reveal to her again last night, after she'd dozed off in her cramped bunk.
The vision came again for the first time in months. It's dusk wherever she is, and her sight is blurred. She's running downhill, tripping over hidden tree roots in the packed snow and her own sprained ankle, but doesn't stop moving until she finds Finn on his knees in the snow, quietly sobbing. The face of the small child in his arms - our child, Rey realizes upon sight - is beautiful. And lifeless.
It was the same vision which led her to leave him with no explanation and return to her solitary Jedi duties, light years away from their home on Endor, over a year ago.
The same vision that tore our dreams apart.
Holding back a shiver, Rey ends that train of thought with a practiced precision.
When she looks at Finn again, it’s with her best attempt at a casual smirk. “It’s rude, you know.”
“What’s rude?"
She nudges his heavily cloaked shoulder, telling herself it was to preserve their body heat as they came upon a wide bridge. “Now that the war is over and everything’s starting to settle down...I risk a court martial from the New Republic Alliance to escort you to this likely treasonous planet, and you can’t manage a single thank you?”
Finn huffs out an incredulous laugh that’s also more than a little relieved, likely grateful for the change of subject.
“For what? Stowing away on this ship after the General denied your request to come with me?”
“Chalk it up as payback for that fake hostage situation on Naboo four years ago,” she mutters, eyes carefully scanning the mostly deserted durasteel bridge they now walked on.
“You never apologized for that, by the way.”
“Look, Rey - you needed a vacation and I made it happen.“
“By claiming you’d been beaten, imprisoned and held for ransom by a Kanjiklub remnant?!”
His lips quirk up with zero remorse. “Finn, I swear this has to be the best idea you’ve ever had!” he says, in a heightened exaggeration of her own accent. “Hmm, maybe my father won’t care if we stay another day or two?’ ‘Oh fuck it, let’s never leave this resort, Finn.’”
At her silence, Finn returns her nudge. “Should I go on?’” he gently asks her in his own voice, with an accompanying smile that makes Rey’s belly flip. Any further protest she may have had died on her lips.
“Don't bother,” she quietly mutters.
After passing the sharpest curve in the bridge, Rey is able to see in her periphery that nearly a mile back, Chewbacca’s cloaking upgrade on the Falcon was holding steady without a hitch. Finn had parked the ship on a relatively flat overlook halfway up the northernmost mountain. She’d been tempted to ask why it wasn’t possible to park the ship on his family’s property, but decided he likely wouldn’t tell her anyway.
At the end of the bridge lies an unevenly cobbled road, slick with either rain or melted snow; the lingering chill in the night air made Rey think it was probably the latter. The road is flanked by some sort of vegetation, although it’s too late in the evening to make out its specific texture or shade of green. Rey takes the chance to kneel and run her fingers through thick grass at their feet. Not much different than Endor’s, she thinks, though much heartier. She closes her eyes as a mild current of energy thrums through her fingertips and spreads beneath her chilled skin.
“The weather is usually a lot warmer during the day,” she dimly hears Finn comment from several feet away.
When she opens her eyes, she’s not surprised to see his smile has returned in full force. He’d always been fond of her obsession with anything that sprouted from the earth.
“There’s tons of old-growth forests beyond the Pass you could explore if you get bored with the family reunion,” he suggests.
No thanks. I’m not planning on letting you out of my sight.
“I might just do that,” Rey nods. Finn doesn’t answer, simply looks away as they continue the trek to his family’s homestead, already visible despite the remaining distance to get there.
The home, if it could be called that - fortress was more of the description that popped into Rey’s mind - had been built right into an interior ridge in the upper third of the mountain. The entire front facade consisted of an opaque glass dome with upper and lower balconies fixed to its surface. The glass itself was a material Rey had learned was native to Deru, and could be heated artificially to become clear with the flick of a switch.
A winding network of roads seemed to connect his family’s home to a series of similar mansions, some built into ridges below and others even closer to the top, stretching for miles, all overlooking the still-bustling city burrowed in the valley.
Soon, they approach the first of what she guessed to be three guardposts leading up to his family’s property. One guard dressed in dark blue scans Finn’s left eye, then his right, while the other performs the same actions on her.
“She’s not been cleared by the New Republic Alliance to enter,” her guard states, immediately raising his gloved hand to a comm device fastened to his collar.
Rey sighs. “You will drop your hand, allow passage and welcome me as an authorized guest.”
The guard’s answered nod is stiff but certain.
“Welcome to Bel-Crest manor, authorized guest.”
By some unspoken agreement, neither she nor Finn so much as breathe a syllable until they’re a quarter mile past the post.
“You could have tried stopping me there, you know, but you didn’t. Father told me your mind trick blocks have gotten quite good,” Rey can’t help but smugly point out, as she slips her hands into her cloak’s inner pockets.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Finn cross his arms. “They're adequate,” is all he says.
“Father says you've thought about going back to training full-time. He hopes for that all the time, Finn.”
She realizes a second too late it was absolutely the wrong thing to mention. Their easy vibe immediately slips away, leaving only a strange tension in its wake. It’s clear Finn is thinking about what else she might have been discussing with Luke in the time since they'd separated.
“I wonder if he knows why you dropped everything to make this trip with me,” Finn says several minutes later, confirming her suspicion, his breath a plume of white as he stared straight ahead.
“Because I still have no idea why you left me.”
Ignoring the second part of his statement, Rey insists, “Come on. Everyone knows Deru has harbored Imperial sympathizers for decades and your birth parents - ”
“Were no such sympathizers. They'll be tried and cleared of all crimes by the New Republic Alliance courts,” he interrupts. “They were victims. Just like thousands of other people who had their children taken from them,” he adds, returning the nod of a small group of traders heading in the opposite direction.
“Finn...look at me.” Of course, he doesn’t.
Rey bites her lips, then angles her body in front of him, effectively halting his steps.
“Finn. I know exactly what it’s like to want this. I waited more than half my life in the desert believing blind hope would bring my family back. We both know it wasn’t that simple.”
“No, it wasn’t,” he agrees. His dark eyes soften a fraction as they hold hers.
“But I’m not you, Rey. Fact is, nothing I do now has anything to do with you.”
“It doesn’t?” she challenges. Her fingertips glance across his broad, calloused palm with no resistance, and soon, she’s threading their fingers together completely, holding tight.
“You want to know why I dropped everything to come here with you? Why I snuck onboard that ship to come with you? This is why.”
Rey is too selfish to look up from their intertwined fingers, not when she knows the fresh pain she was responsible for reigniting in him would be plain on his face.
“No matter what, you will always be my best friend,” she whispers instead.
“We’re stronger together, like this. Tell me you still believe that.”
There’s a suffocating weight in his silence, the lack of response in his body to her touch. Deep down, she realizes she shouldn’t have expected anything different than this.
It’s exactly what she’d asked him for.
“I’ll always respect your choices, Rey. Please respect mine, and leave.”
Finn releases her now limp hand before continuing up the road, not looking back.
*
It’s almost full dark, and his family’s manor is still a fair distance away.
Even so, Finn has no desire to stop walking. That would require giving into a fear that had planted itself in the back of his mind the moment he’d finished reading FN-2187’s recovered electronic file, just one month ago.
Retrieving it had been a minor miracle in itself. Leading up to their final stand against the New Republic Alliance, the First Order had done everything in its power to destroy evidence of their crimes, big and small, throughout the galaxy, including ones perpetrated in collusion with their numerous and often covert political allies.
Operation Blight had been formed by the General with the sole intent of exposing anyone related to the abduction and acquisition of the thousands of children who’d comprised the Stormtrooper conscription program, and bringing them to full justice.
“You don’t have to take part in investigating the Bel-Crest senators,” Organa had reiterated, laying a gentle hand over his own as they sat in the otherwise empty conference room at the base. “You don’t have to take part in unraveling that mess.”
Except, they both knew he would.
“How did you come up with the operation name?” Finn had numbly asked.
“The First Order is guilty of a multitude of crimes. Their terrorism will be felt for quite some time. But on a fundamental level, I can’t imagine much worse than children being torn from their families and made into living weapons. The Stormtrooper conscription program was a cancerous disease, a blight on the galaxy in every sense of the word. We can never allow that to happen again.”
Now, standing before the final guardpost standing between him and the gated entrance of his family’s property, Finn can sense the energy he’d recognize anywhere, approaching him from behind.
“How long have you been standing here?” Rey asks him.
“Not very long.”
“Are you scared?”
“No.”
It was a lie, and he knew she didn't believe it, either.
He doesn't tense at the contact of Rey’s hands on his cloaked shoulders, Finn savors it. Allows himself to temporarily give into his need of needing her here beside him, to face what would surely be the greatest sorrow of his life, no matter what truths he uncovered next.
“General Organa told me at least one of my parents was covertly aligned with the First Order. At least one of them made the choice to give me away. If they find out that I’m not really here for a happy reunion, my own mother or father might..." He swallows, then whispers, "Instead of surrendering, I wonder if they'd rather see me dead.”
He hears Rey’s sharp intake of breath. Soon, all he can feel are her warm tears on his cloak collar as she buries her face there, wrapping her arms around him from behind.
“After this is over, Finn, I'll leave you alone," she finally responds to his earlier request.
"Just don’t ask me to do that right now. Please don't.”
They both clear the final guardpost with no complications.
Just beyond the post lies the manor's ornate front gate, and a stunning view of the top half of the imperious home his parents had lived in without him for over 25 years. Finn follows the movement of two figures as they exit the dual-level glass entrance and slowly make their way towards him, their expressions unreadable given the darkness of the night, and the distance still between them.
This time when Rey's fingers thread together with his, Finn doesn't let go.