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Poe knew how his life was supposed to go and, so far, almost everything had been going according to plan. He trained as a pilot like his mother and became the best. He joined the resistance and dedicated the rest of his life to the cause. Obviously, he knew people fell in love in the resistance, but he fell in love with the resistance. His life was the cause and his life for the cause, that’s just how it was. If he died making a difference then it didn’t matter when he died. He never planned on becoming distracted. Almost everything had been going according to plan, but not quite everything.
There wasn’t anything he could do, he knew that. However, that didn’t stop Poe from spending his time split less than equally between supply missions and Finn’s bedside.
Poe wasn’t the kind for casual encounters, and when you already have ride or die covered in your professional life, it doesn’t leave much room for romance. Nothing was more important than the resistance, that was what Poe believed before he met Finn on the Starkiller base. No, that’s what Poe believed now. Finn had changed nothing. Nothing was more important than the resistance, Finn was just vital to the resistance. This was what Poe told himself as he fell asleep beside Finn’s pod for the fifth time this week.
Poe could repeat this mantra as much as he wanted but it couldn’t excuse the pure joy he felt when he saw his friend in a hydro suit, dripping and disoriented in the hallway. Poe wasn’t stupid, maybe a little stubborn, but he knew how he felt. It made sense, they had been through so much and well, have you seen Finn? Poe wasn’t blind either.
Finn’s first thought was ‘wet’ followed by ‘falling?’ then ‘ouch’. After these however, came ‘Poe’. He was barely able to understand where he was, but people are remarkably willing to help you without asking questions when you’re a war hero. Of course, Poe would be on the flight deck, he had work to do, surely he hardly noticed Finn’s absence. He was pushed off his shuffling course by a loud voice and firm hands, the same hands he was hoping to find. Finn allowed himself to be lead away by the loud voice that sounded so lovely.
People don’t love in the first order. That’s not what it’s for. The first order is a machine built specially for control. You are a cog with one purpose and anything beyond that is punished. FN-2187 already loved too much. His love for his brothers in arms caused his defection. By contrast, love holds the resistance together. Love for your fellow rebel and love for what is right drove these people to do what they did.
Finn loved Rey because he had to; because she was everything he was running towards, because they were family. Finn loved Rey as he had loved his fellow Stormtroopers. They were siblings and he knew he was stronger with her by his side. Finn would follow Rey to the end of the galaxy to keep this security close.
Finn didn’t love Poe like that. Finn loved Poe like he was the warmth of the sun. Every time Poe was around Finn simply wanted to stand right next to him, to have those steady hands grip his arms and pat his back. He wanted Poe to hold him in esteem, to tell him how brave he had been and how great of an asset he was. Poe loved the resistance, Finn had once been the resistance’s biggest asset and so Poe loved Finn, but not the way Finn wanted him to.
When Finn met Rose, he didn’t love her. Finn didn’t love Rose for a long time. He loved her when they both stood watching the faithers race and she said she wanted to put her fist through the whole town. He loved her more as they were both pushed to the ground ready to be executed. He loved Rose because she wanted to do what was right and was ready to do whatever it took. He loved Rose because she reminded him of Poe but he didn’t love her the same way, not exactly.
When Rose kisses Finn, he is scared. Not because he doesn’t love her, but because her words were so final. He drags her body a kilometre back to the mine so she can live, so she can take back her final words. Kissing is not something Finn has done before and he would perhaps have enjoyed it under a different circumstance. For now he files his messy feelings away like a good Stormtrooper should, to sort through later.
Kylo hates Rey. She is a thorn in his side and an error that he hadn’t thought to equate for. He hates her until he doesn’t. He doesn’t understand why the force has linked them but it also feels like it was supposed to happen. When you see someone through the force, you don’t see them as you see with your eyes. It’s abstract. Rey is there with her rolling dunes and sharp tongues of fire and he can’t explain the feeling. He knows her. This knowing only gets stronger as they spend more time talking through the force. He loves her. He knows this even before he reaches out to her. He loves her like an alliance. They will stand, hand in hand on the rubble of the Jedi. Together they will start again. No light and no dark, only power and strength.
He makes his choice. He kills Snoke. It’s not to save Rey, it is to further their vision. Both of them as joint supreme leader, bringing true balance to the universe. He loves her then, as his equal. She is his counterpart and his other half, and they together will bring balance to the galaxy. Perhaps it is because she is his equal that she refuses his vision. It was a dishonour to know that Snoke was one-step ahead of him one last time in bringing them together, that his love was a product of manipulation again. It is no matter, because just like every time before this, he will turn his love to anger.
Rey feels a hatred for Kylo like no other hatred she has ever felt before. When he appears to her, her stomach acid turns to poison and she spits it at his face in scathing remarks.
Situations are always more complicated than they originally seem. Kylo is not the evil man she thought he was. She feels the conflict within him and she knows that the light can still be drawn out. When their hands touch, she thinks something that she never thought possible. She loves Kylo. She loves him when she sees the light, the conflict, and the determination that reside in the deepest recess of his crackling fire, rocky mountain soul. She travels the galaxy to save him.
Kylo is the man she loved but she hates him for all the same reasons. His vision is an ugly one, full of control and fear. It was not the dark in him that she hated after all, but the conflict. He wished to have the world bend to his convenience, but Rey was not made to bend. She spares him because, though she cannot love him, she does not hate him.
Those who make it out alive count themselves lucky, because the rebellion is decimated. They hug each other in a secret bunker underground and they know that the worst form of love is grief. They do what they can but it is slow gathering reinforcements and spreading their message.
Rose is comatose for several months. Finn sits by her bed and thinks. Often Rey joins him and they tell each other of what happened while they were apart. Finn feels like it hangs heavy over all of his stories, the big choice he is supposed to make. He is not even sure what he is choosing, or why it has to be so soon. War has a way of making things seem both vitally important and incredibly trivial. What is love in the face of war, but what too, is war in the face of love? He loves Rey, but not the same as he loves Poe, not like he’s supposed to choose her over all else. He knows, even by Rose's bedside, what he will choose when the time comes.
Rey knows him, even better now after all this time together. Because she knows him, she knows something’s wrong. It always shocks him, the ways he and Rey are the same. They sat on his little bunk as she told him about Kylo and the way the force had linked them, about how she had loved him. The future was large and uncertain, the things they thought they knew were wrong, but Finn loved Rey, and that was enough for now.