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Chapter Text

The chill of the sea air made her wish she had thought to bring something warmer to wear, but now that she had climbed those ancient stone steps and reached the top of the grassy slope, she couldn’t turn back. Too many people were counting on her and something - a calling of sorts - told her that she needed to be here.

In front of her stood a figure overlooking the sea. Staring at him, she wondered what she should do next.

Finally registering her presence, the figure turned around slowly. Face hidden under a cowl, Rey knew exactly who he was: Luke Skywalker.

Her father.

Pushing back his cowl, he squinted at her as if trying to get a better look. Then, with shock, his eyes widened, as if he had seen a ghost standing in front of him.

She had imagined this moment over and over since she remembered who he was and what he had meant to her, but now that this moment had arrived, she found that she couldn’t find the courage within herself to speak. What could she say to convey her emotions and fears at once? How could a sentence make up for all the years of separation? There was a lot she wanted to say to him but that fear that he would not like what he saw in her ate at her again.

But she did have something to offer him.

Reaching for the bag slung around her shoulder, she slipped the lightsaber out and with a trembling arm held it out to him. It was both a plea for help and a way to try to bridge the gap between them.

Taking a step forward, gently, Luke took the lightsaber from her and turned it in his hands. She noticed that the synthskin that once covered his mechanical hand was no longer there. Either he had removed it, or the materials had broken down and disintegrated after going for so long without proper care and maintenance.

He looked up at her again in disbelief.

“Rey?”

Not sure what she could say, she found that she could only nod to confirm her identity. She felt tears at the corner of her eyes and took a step to get nearer to him.

But instead of an embrace or even a grasp of hands like she had expected, she found that his demeanor changed almost immediately. He grimaced and shut his eyes as if in pain.

“No, she’s not here. This is just my mind playing tricks.”

Then without another word, he walked right past her, tossing the lightsaber to the side and into the sea grass. It rolled a little before the ring tuning flange at the top of the weapon brought it to a stop.

She waited for a moment to see if he would change his mind. When she saw him heading north, away from the cliff, she called out to him.

“Wait,” she pleaded, then paused. “Father!”

Ignoring her, Luke Skywalker continued on his path. She wondered if she should go after him, but she found herself frozen in place, unable to move her feet or make a sound. Her heart felt like something had grabbed it and squeezed it to shatter it into pieces. Her father’s rejection was her worst fear and if she returned to the Resistance without him, she would fail her aunt too.

Finally feeling like she could move again, she went to get the lightsaber, now circled by a group of curious, watery-eyed avian creatures. It looked undamaged from the fall, and with a sigh of relief, she tucked it back into her bag. Then, turning back to glance one more time to see if Luke decided to stop, she found herself disappointed to find that he was gone. With a deep sigh, she turned back the way she came, towards the Millennium Falcon and the warmth it offered her. The tears streamed down her cheeks as she made the hike back, but she made sure that her eyes were dry and no longer tinted pink when she got back.

“That laserbrain!”

Uncle Han was not happy with what Rey had told him, and neither was Chewbacca, judging by the low growl he kept making.

She sat at the dejarik table, poking her fork at a bowl of buckwheat noodles absent-mindedly. Maybe she should have gone after Luke. Han and Chewie were agitated and angry and it was making her anxious. Rey didn’t want to make anyone upset, but her being here seemed to cause all this and it was probably all for nothing. Her father didn’t want her, obviously. She wanted to go to bed, curl up in the thick blanket she found in a supply closet, and sleep until the next morning, or maybe until Han gave up and decided to go back to the Resistance without the last Jedi.

But most of all, she wanted Finn.

There had been no communication between the Millennium Falcon and the Resistance since they left the day before. While in the middle of evacuation, Aunt Leia had told them that there would be no open comms until they arrived at a secure location. It was a precaution, in case someone was trying to listen in. Rey understood the need for the protocol, but she was becoming desperate to hear from Finn. He had promised that he would send her a message the moment the Resistance was somewhere safe, and her stomach churned at the thought that the First Order might have caught up to them.

But even when Finn did contact her, she realized she couldn’t tell him about her anxieties without troubling him in return. Rey knew that her anxiety would turn into his anxiety and she didn’t want to add that stress on him while he was recovering. Distance would add misunderstandings and stress over things that might not be a big deal.

Han slumped down on the bench next to her and ran a hand through his gray hair. She could recall a time where it was a lot darker. Maybe. Memories were hard to find again, and she wasn’t sure if the ones that had resurfaced were not just created by her own desperation and wishful thinking. Wouldn’t it be ironic, she mused, if the memories that Snoke had planted into her head were replaced by more false memories of her own creation?

Sighing, Han looked at her. “Don’t take it personally, kiddo. He’s been here alone for years, probably. I would think I was going crazy too.”

“But what if he doesn’t want me?” she blurted out before she could stop herself. “I gave in to the dark side. Why would he want a daughter so weak?”

“If he thinks that, then he’s and idiot.” Han’s face darkened. “What I wouldn’t give for-" He glanced at Rey again and stopped, face falling.

Standing up, Han reached for his coat that he had tossed against a shelf. “I’m gonna go knock some sense in that guy’s head,” he growled.

Chewbacca roared and stood up. Behind them, R2-D2 emerged from his spot in the corner, acting like he wanted to go too.

“No, Chewie, Artoo. You two stay with Rey. I’ll be back for you, Chewie, if we have to drag Luke back here by the beard.”

Nodding, Chewie sat back down in his spot. R2-D2 seemed a little put out, but he retreated to his corner and remained there. Rey felt bad for the droid; in a way they were a lot alike in that they were both hoping for Luke to return and be back in their lives.

“Rey, finish your noodles. If you want more, I have some in the strainer.”

For all that she could recall about Han, him cooking had not been something she would have expected, though when she had asked him, he had said something about how being a spacer and a parent made you pick up a few things.

She stared at her bowl again. “Did you… make these for me before?” she asked quietly.

Staring up at him, she saw a flash of pain on her uncle's face, an expression she was starting to associate with whenever her absence and lack of memories caused anyone grief. She was hurting the people she wanted to love and knowing this made her feel guilty.

“Yeah,” Han told her. “A long time ago.”

And a little like how Luke had left her standing alone on the slope, Han quickly and quietly went to the loading ramp and disappeared into the evening light.

Going back to her dinner, Rey finished up the noodles and the bowl and noted the lighter taste. Some noodles that the First Order had served had been rough on her stomach for being too heavy or served with a thick sauce. This was served with a light, salty, soup base. This must be what comfort food was. It tasted like home.

“Has the Resistance sent us anything?” she asked Chewbacca, who just nodded in the negative.

Sighing, she decided that she wanted to go to bed. If she said she wasn’t disappointed, she’d be lying. “Well, if we get anything, let me know.”

Chewbacca wished her a good night, and she wandered through the corridor of the Falcon until she got to the crew’s quarters. She noticed two of those plump avian birds perched by the nearest viewport and wondered what to do about them before deciding the issue could wait. Slumping into the warmth of the blanket, she wrapped it around her and took a deep breath.

As she lulled herself into sleep, she imagined a life if she and Finn had just left to the Outer Rim from the start. She imagined they would have world hopped for a time and that they would have traded the transport they stole from the First Order for a new one. In her dreams, the freighter became a home to them, much like how the Falcon was home to Han and Chewbacca.

What she missed most about sleeping next to Finn was the warmth he offered and how he liked to curl up behind her and loosely wrap an arm around her midsection. She had never been one to consider herself affectionate or someone who longed to sleep next to someone else, but Finn had changed that about her.

That life was never meant for you, a cold voice whispered. It was bodiless and taunting. She had heard it before, back in the snowy forest of Starkiller.

“Oh, shut up,” she pushed back at it.

When she woke up the next morning, the first thing she did was go to the cockpit to check the messages. Still nothing and Rey felt she was holding in her breath until she heard from the Resistance again.

Han was back and waiting for her in the living area. She wondered when he had returned; she had not heard him come in last night.

“He’ll see you,” he told her. “But you’ll have to go to him.”

She nodded as she opened a pantry and dug out a protein bar from a crate on the floor. As much as she’d rather eat real food for breakfast, she wasn’t sure if her stomach could handle anything more than the nearly tasteless bars.

Unwrapping it, she popped it into her mouth and tore off a chunk. It had a light flavor to it, citrus-like, but not terrible. At least it would provide her with the calories she needed until she could eat again.

“There’s a village to the north of the island. Can’t miss it. A bunch of stone huts. Luke lives in the one towards the start of the settlement.”

Nodding again as she noted his directions, Rey pulled over a shawl she found had been left for her in a bag full of clothes. She wrapped it and hoped it would be enough to keep the chill off her skin.

“Hey, Rey,” Han stopped her before she made her way to the ramp. “It’s gonna be fine.”

And again, she nodded wordlessly as she went outside into the crisp air.

She wandered back up the slope and the ancient stone steps, this time, taking her time with the pacing. Pausing to look out at the horizon where the sky met the sea, she wondered of her visions of this island long before she remembered her father and her childhood. There had been so many nights where it felt like this island was calling to her and she wasn’t sure how to find it. Now she was here and a strange feeling of peace washed over her as she listened to the waves crash against the cliffs. She had come here for a reason and now it seemed like the island had always been calling to her. Perhaps, she mused, this was the Force at work. It was nothing like those visions of the future that Snoke had claimed to see. This was real and right while the Supreme Leader admitted that seeing the future was tricky and that he didn’t always see the correct future, whatever that meant.

On her way to the northern part of the island, she stopped to play with a couple of curious, chubby avian creatures that seemed native to the area. Their oversized eyes gave them the look of perpetual shock and Rey found them a sort of ugly-cute. They wouldn’t let her touch them, but one of them became brave enough to approach her and tug at the lacing on the back of her boots.

After she decided that her playtime with the little bird was enough of a rest, she looked up the slope to find that she was already halfway there. Trying not to think about what she might find at the top, Rey took a deep breath and took her first step up the stones again. No turning back, she told herself. She was meant to come to this island.

Finally, she saw a wall rise next to the stairs, passing through a clearing along the cliff. She could see the stone huts and she figured that she was at the right place. It wasn’t the abandoned settlement that she imagined either, but rather a lively one. There were creatures living here, amphibious in nature with grayish skin. Their clothing suggested that they were female and traditional in their ways.

As she gazed upon the creatures, she did not realize that she was in the way of a cart which promptly pushed into her.

“Oh!” she jumped to the side and looked at the creature pushing the cart, who also startled. The cart dropped, scattering stones that looked like they were used to repair the huts.

Getting to her knees, Rey hastily picked up the stones and lifted the cart back to stand. “Sorry,” she said as she put the stones back into the cart. “Sorry. Let me help.”

But the creature angrily spoke rapidly at her in a language that she didn’t understand and waved its arms. Rey might not know what the creature was saying, but she knew she was being asked to leave.

“I’m looking for Master Skywalker,” she told it as she moved out of the way. “Do you know where he is?” She had no idea if the creature understood Basic, but it was as good of a try as any. “Luke Skywalker?”

The creature continued its rant, but it pointed to a lone hut that still stood intact among a group of huts that looked abandoned. It was distant from the village and not surrounded by the stone walls that the creatures seemed to make to protect themselves.

That must be it, then. She wandered over to the area and stood in front of the entrance to the hut. It took a moment for her to realize that the makeshift metal door had once been from the wing of some sort of craft. A brief image flashed in her mind and she thought of an X-wing that seemed familiar to her. It wasn’t one of the Resistance’s starfighters, but much older. The name evaded her.

She looked around to see if she could find a damaged X-wing or other metal bits and bobs that would suggest that Luke had dismantled one to use the parts but found nothing.

Then, after taking a deep breath, she rapped on the metal door. “Luke?” she called. When there was no answer, she tried again. “Dad?”

There was shuffling from inside the hut, then with some effort, the door pulled open to reveal the face of Luke Skywalker. She couldn’t recall him with a beard quite this long before, he had always preferred being clean-shaven or a small amount of stubble. It made him look far older than he was.

His lower lip trembled. “Rey?”

She nodded. “Yes.” It was all she could think to say.

Leaving the doorway to come fully outside, Luke looked her over. There was sorrow in his eyes again, but for a different reason this time. She realized that he had missed a lot in her life and her growing up. She was almost as tall as him now, stronger, and adjusted to her adult body. The last time he saw her, she had just hit the early stages of puberty.

“Look at you,” he whispered.

Then, he wrapped his arms around her. It surprised her at first; she had not expected an embrace like this.

“I should have tried harder. I gave up.” Removing himself, Luke looked at her in the eyes and found so much pain in them. “Can you forgive me?”

A lump formed in her throat. She swallowed. “You thought I was dead. That wasn’t your fault.”

He frowned. “Han told me a little of what happened.” Luke didn’t elaborate further.

“And are you disappointed in me?” she asked. While she feared his answer, she realized she needed to know. Han and Leia could accept her like this, but if her own father didn’t… well, she wasn’t sure how she would react to that. “I did what I had to do to survive.”

There was a silence from Luke for a few moments. She saw an array of emotion flash on his face, but she wasn’t sure how to read that.

“I can’t say I’m happy about what happened to you.” He seemed to be trying to choose his words carefully. “But you’re alive and I think that’s all that matters.”

He embraced her again. “If you want to stay here tonight, you can. Han will probably know where you went off to. There’s another hut next to mine that’s in good shape.”

“Will those… creatures mind?”

Laughing, Luke showed her into his hut. “Caretakers. They’ve taken care of this island for generations. I don’t think they like me.”

Rey grinned. It was the first genuine one she made since she got to the island. “I think I offended one of them.”

With a matching smile, Luke once again offered for her to go inside. Shocking to her, he seemed to have accepted Rey readily, even after knowing what she had become. It was all she wanted.

“I think I’ll stay tonight,” she told him.

Finn watched from a medical cot in an open area underground as a group of volunteers heaved heavy equipment through the abandoned mine. He felt useless as he was. If his shoulder wasn’t being treated with bacta, he’d offer to help them move light equipment and carts. Even with one good arm and shoulder he could do that. But Dr. Kalonia told him to stay put, warning him that the bacta patch placed along the scar on his shoulder could slip if he made too much movement. So far, Finn was not fond of the gooey component, finding its briny smell unpleasant to his nose and the cold, mucous texture unpleasant against his skin.

He was recovering quickly, being as good of shape as he was in, but he was tired and he missed Rey. The Resistance had just arrived on a planet called Crait and he still could not send her a message. He felt a little at ease by the Resistance’s choice of a new base. In all his training, he had never heard of the world and that told him that the First Order did not think of it as important enough to keep an eye on it. That made it as safe as anywhere, now that the New Republic was in fragments, but he could tell everyone was uneasy.

It was strange to not be expected to do anything and it made Finn fidgety. Didn’t he owe them something for their help? If not for the hospitality that they showed him and Rey than at least for his medical treatment? Poe kept telling him he didn’t have to help because it was the least they could do for the guy that helped them bring down the Starkiller weapon, but Finn felt so unsure about the situation that it was making him agitated.

But Poe was out patrolling the area with his squad to make sure the First Order had not tailed them here. Finn found that everyone he had gotten to know was either in a position of command or a pilot and hence was very busy. Even BB-8 was gone.

He felt relieved when General Organa emerged into the area designated to be the meday, looking for him.

“Finn, how are you feeling?”

“Not bad,” he told her. “Shoulder’s a bit stiff, but if I work at it, it should heal up just fine.”

With a pleased smile, the general nodded. “That’s good to hear, but not the reason I came here.”

“And why did you come here?” he asked.

“To ask for your help. If you’re up to it. We’d like for you to look over a few things with us.” She paused. “Only if you’d like to.”

He stretched a little as he leaned against the bar of the hospital bed to help himself up. “The bacta’s secure,” he told her, though the patch felt a little slimy and unpleasant against his skin. “I’d do anything just to not be sitting.”

With a chuckle, General Organa lead him away from the medbay and through a series of tunnels. Crait’s red earth was striking, especially underground. Bright and almost blood-like, it reminded Finn too much of a battleground. He had heard a little history of the base and learned that it had been a salt mine hit hard by pirates until it had to be abandoned. Then the Rebellion had picked it up for their own use against the Empire, where a sixteen-year-old Alderaanian princess learned of her father’s involvement and felt compelled to join herself. He wondered how many people had died over these mines and he imagined that their blood and sacrifice had given color to the dirt.

General Organa took him to a building outside of the mines, towards the trenches which overlooked a vast salt field. He realized that this must have been a communications tower for either the mine or the Rebellion. Inside, the technology was outdated, but many of the comm systems seemed functional. The technicians were busy trying to set up more up-to-date consoles they were carting in.

A table was already put up in the room's center. Operations would be here for until a better place could be found for them. A group of people stood around it, looking over at a few holoprojected images flickering at the center of the table. Finn recognized General Statura and Admiral Ackbar along with a few faces from artillery, but a few of these people he could not recall seeing before.

He took another look at the room and wondered if he could ask to send Rey a message after this. As much as he worried about her, he knew that Rey was probably fretting just as much over him wherever she was. It would be nice just to check on her to tell her he was recovering.

Clearing her throat, General Organa announced him. “Finn has been kind enough to agree to listen in and offer whatever intel he can.”

She approached the table to take her place and gestured for Finn to stand by her. “Can someone fill him in on what we have uncovered? Vice Admiral?”

“Of course,” a woman agreed. She caught Finn’s attention right away. Her entire sense of style was eccentric. In all his time on bases, Finn had never seen anyone wear long dresses and jewelry the way she did. To many, this would seem impractical next to the uniforms and causal civilian wear of the Resistance. But what really made her stick out was her hair, dyed purple to match her dress – or maybe the other way around? He might not have spent much time on different worlds, but he was certain that purple was not a natural color in humans. It shocked him and fascinated him.

The woman – Vice Admiral, if he had heard correctly – pointed to the projected holograph of a statistics chart. “Yesterday, a couple of my agents uncovered some information about the First Order. Since our communications were put on hold, we did not receive their message until an hour ago,” she explained.

A new image with statistics came up on the screen. Finn could not tell by the image, but it looked to be of a tank of some sort of chemical.

The Vice Admiral began again. “We have reason to believe that the First Order is looking to buy new weapons, including this chemical that, when inhaled even in small doses, can be deadly.”

Finn furrowed his brow at the news. It didn’t seem quite right to him that the First Order would be interested in chemical weapons. Considering that stormtrooper helmets were not equipped to filter out poisons in the air, using any sort of gas was too risky. If a container of chemicals was mishandled or damaged, it could end in catastrophe to the ranks and the First Order would never want to risk that.

But there were two options that were still on the table…

He looked around to observe the faces of each commander and some of the artillery experts. All of them seemed lost in thought, except for General Organa, who was looking at him, waiting to see if he would respond.

“I think Finn has something he’d like to say,” the general observed.

With a sigh, Finn fidgeted in his spot before he spoke up. “I-" he began. “I want to remind everyone that I’m no expert and I could be wrong.”

“You were a great help to us with Starkiller, Mr. Finn,” Statura reminded him.

“Right,” he tried again. “Well, I’m not going to say this information is false, but it brings me to another conclusion. The stormtroopers aren’t equipped to deal with filtering out poisonous gasses, so it would be unlikely that they would use this while boots are on the ground.” He scratched at his neck. “Which tells me one of two things: either they’ve made adjustments to troop helmets or they plan to use this kind of weapon at long distance.”

With a frown, General Organa nodded.

“Why would they need chemicals like this?” asked Ackbar.

Finn faltered. This had never been easy for him to talk about. “The First Order has a go-to plan for extracting the resources they need. They blockade worlds that aren't capable of defense against a large army, starve them out. If that doesn’t work and the population fights back…”

“They exterminate them,” General Organa finished for him. “And this would make it easier for them to do this now that Starkiller is out of the picture.” She did not look happy. Not one bit.

The Vice Admiral hit a button to change the image again. She zoomed in on a head shot of a man that looked hungover.

“This is the man we believe is the buyer of the First Order. We recovered correspondence between them and a list of desired weapons and materials.”

Another image popped up on the projector, this time of statistics and what looked to be forum discussions on the HoloNet.

“We know that this man goes by the alias of DJ,” she continued, “and that he’s often sighted at Canto Bight. With a little more digging, we’ve found complaints from buyers in the past saying that he has a habit of betting investor money in sabacc tournaments.”

“So why does anyone want to keep doing business with him, then?” one the artillery experts asked.

The Vice Admiral shrugged. “Sounds like he keeps winning the investments back and is always good on his contracts. But from what we’ve gathered, no one works with him long-term and there’s always new clientele for him to pick up.”

With another click of the button, an image of a casino front was shown. “We found that this DJ has recently entered a sabacc tournament with an initial bet of a large sum. Large enough to be a weapons investment.”

“It sounds like you have an idea, Amilyn.” General Organa raised an eyebrow.

“Perhaps.” A grin slowly spread on her face. “I’ve got a girl that’s a great sabacc player and has been bugging me for a real mission for a while.”

“Who?” The general looked weary. “And what exactly are you planning to bet with? No offense Amilyn, but I don't think we can pay them in salt.” There were a few chuckles, at which General Organa turned to say, "Don't humor me. I'm beginning to sound like Han."

The Vice Admiral tugged at one of her bracelets, readjusting them. “Rose Tico. And she’ll be betting some of my own credits. What better way to secure more funding than to take the very credits that the First Order wanted to buy weapons to kill us with?”

There was a pause of silence in the room once she said this. Everyone knew the idea was risky, even with the credits. Finn couldn’t envision the First Order allowing a buyer to walk around with their credits without someone to keep an eye on him. They likely had done their own digging when choosing a buyer and knew of his habit unless someone had been careless.

No, that wasn’t the way of the First Order.

“Do you have something to add, Finn?” the general observed again.

He decided to speak up. “Entering the tournament is risky. If this is the First Order, then someone is watching this guy.”

“How would you suggest us to proceed?” asked the Vice Admiral.

Pausing, he wondered even to himself what he was about to do. Originally, he thought he would just stick around until Rey got back and decide where to go from there, offering his help around base when he could. Now, he was about to offer help in a different way.

"Do I have to be a member of the Resistance to offer to help your player out?”

“What are you thinking, Finn?”

Shrugging, he glanced back at the images on the projector. “I could go with your player to keep an eye on things, sense if there's trouble. Gather some intel, maybe. I never had taken on special missions like this before, but I could try. As long as nobody recognizes me, it’ll be fine.”

But General Organa stopped him from continuing. “Can I speak with you?” she asked.

Agreeing, Finn followed her again, this time outside into one of the trenches that wasn’t being rebuilt by volunteers. General Organa lifted herself on to a box of supplies that was left there, looking out towards the horizon.

Looking out towards the salt flats himself, Finn found that the sunlight bouncing off the white landscape was almost blinding. He squinted to see the vanishing point and only when puffs of red earth appeared in the breeze did he see any other color. He thought of the history of Crait and all the violence it might have seen. The red reminded him too much of blood again, like it had watered the world and turned the soil the crimson color.

He saw the image of Nines out on the field, helmetless and bloody as he stared straight at Finn with dead eyes.

Finn shook the image away and when he looked out on the field again, Nines was gone.

“I want to thank you for all your help,” said the general, snapping Finn out of his thoughts. “You’ve given us more information than we’ve been able to gather on our own for years.” Then, she frowned. “But are you sure you want to do this, Finn? I don’t expect you to take on a mission for the Resistance. Especially with you shoulder still healing.”

He thought about the last couple of days and how awkward he felt to not be doing anything to help around the base. In his years in the First Order, no one got to just hang around and not be put to work. Laziness was culled from the ranks.

“Don’t get me wrong, General,” he began, “I believe in what you are doing, but Rey and I didn’t leave one army to join another. Starkiller was urgent and nowhere would be safe until it was gone. Really, I just want to wait around for her to see what she wants to do when she gets back. But I would like to help out where I can. I feel like I owe-"

“You don’t owe us anything,” the general stopped him. “You haven’t joined the Resistance and you’ve done more than you ever need to with Starkiller.”

Still, he felt like he needed to do more and when he didn’t respond, the general nodded and let the issue go.

“I wanted to give you something.” Tugging at her sleeve, General Organa pulled the fabric farther up her arm, revealing a bracelet. She loosened the tie around the band, allowing her to slip it off. “I think you should hold on to this,” she said, holding the bracelet out to him.

“A beacon?” He took the bracelet from her and looked it over.

“To light Rey’s way home.”

Looking up at her, Finn was almost at a loss for words. “Shouldn’t you hold on to it then? If I’m going to be at Canto Bight, it would lead her there.”

General Organa closed her eyes and sighed with a slight smile on her face. “Finn, you’re her home. She’s not coming back here for the Resistance.”

“But the beacon-"

“We’ll be sending the Falcon our coordinates soon,” she assured him. “They’ll know we’re here. I want you to hold on to this in case something happens. If the First Order shows up at our doorstep, I want you to get away so she can find you again.” Then, she placed her hands gently on his and squeezed slightly so that his hand wrapped around the beacon.

But Finn was also troubled by his thoughts. If he went with this sabacc player to go to Canto Bight, would that make him part of the Resistance. He still didn’t want to get involved in a war; he didn’t leave the First Order just to get involved in the fighting for the other side.

“If I go, does this mean I've signed up to be in the Resistance?” He was quiet as he asked this.

Standing up, the general stood beside him. “You are free to leave whenever you want, Finn,” she told him like she had read his thoughts. “We don’t force people to stay.” She sighed. “The only thing I want you to do is to hold on to that beacon.”

“So when do I leave?”

Chuckling at his eagerness, Leia patted him on the shoulder that wasn't hurt. “Not for a while. I want you to think it over first and I want you to meet Rose before you leave... I'm not sure she'll agree to the mission under these circumstances anyway... At the first sign of trouble, I want you to abandon the mission and come straight back.” She grimaced. “I just got my niece back, but I don’t think she’d talk to me again if I let anything bad happen to her boyfriend.”

Chapter Text

After she told her side of the story about what happened after the night the school was destroyed, Luke told her that he was going to go out for a while. She figured he wanted time to think about everything.

He had kept a couple of mementos of hers and she laughed when she spotted her old quarterstaff that she recalled in some earlier memories when she tried to teach herself how to use a staff. The weathered metal and wrappings felt like an old friend in her hands.

“You always preferred pole-type weapons,” her father had mused.

She gripped the quarterstaff and gave it a few experimental twirls around her body. It felt a little weightier than her lost saber spear, but the familiarity of it gave the odd reunion a lot more meaning. Even with the Skywalker lightsaber at her side, Rey felt like she would be a lot more comfortable using the quarterstaff for a while. Plus, she reminded herself with a smile, the lightsaber was for Finn.

When she finally wandered back outside, she made the walk up the slope to the nearest cliff overlooking the gray waters of the sea. Spotting Luke in a meditative position, Rey hesitated to step forward. She wondered if she should go back and wait for him. Interrupting the meditation of any Jedi was considered rude and she still felt like she was stepping on broken glass around her father. Worried that too much of the dark side or Ben Solo would show in her, she tried to keep her emotions calm, but in reality, she was doing the exact opposite. Her insides churned. She was a nervous wreck.

“Rey, you’re projecting. Come up here.”

Startling in her place, her heart raced, and she tried to calm herself as she walked the rest of the way up the slope. She approached him as he remained sitting on the ground, glancing at the gray sky and the murky blue of the water.

“Can I meditate with you?” she asked, feeling a little nervous to ask. “I might need you to lead me through, if you don’t mind. It’s been a long time since I meditated with a Jedi.”

“I don’t mind at all.” He waited for her to position herself, mirroring the way he crossed his legs and how his hands rested on his knees. Then, he took a deep breath and began. “Breathe,” he said. “Just breathe.”

This part was easy for her. Even dark siders knew how to calm themselves enough to meditate on the Force. She followed Luke’s breathing and found herself slipping into calmness.

“Now, reach for the Force. Call its light to you.”

And she really was trying, but this was the part she couldn’t get right. She could feel the initial warmth of the Force and the light it provided, like sunlight beating gently down on her face, but each time she reached to draw it closer to herself, she found that it was like she was running in place. Desperately, she tried to reach for it again and again, only to find that she wasn’t getting any closer to it.

But then she felt a chill against her skin, coldness that was not coming from the environment. She knew this feeling well, and sometimes, even the cold of the dark side could be soothing. It called to her to return to it, to embrace it again. She decided that if she couldn’t fully embrace the warmth that she was reaching to, she’d rather stay somewhere in the middle.

Yet the cold urged her to come back. It showed her an image of rocky flats by the sea. The ocean waves cold as they beat against the land. A dark hole in the rock…

“There’s something here,” she mumbled. “Beneath the island. A place. A dark place.”

She could hear someone calling her name, concerned for her, but it sounded far away. Then another voice, a very familiar voice, whispered in her ear.

“You can’t resist forever…”

Her heart began to race again. Maybe if she stayed between these two forces, she would suffocate as they pulled her apart.

“Rey?”

Then, releasing a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding in, she brought herself out of the meditation.

Worried of what she might have done, she wouldn’t look at her father. Instead, she clasped her hands together in her lap and stared at them.

“The dark side?” Luke’s voice wasn’t full of anger like she had expected, it was tender and soft, like he was trying to talk to her after a bad day.

She only nodded, ashamed of herself. “I want to feel the light again,” she admitted, “but every time I reach for it… The darkness doesn’t want to let me go.”

Gathering courage, she looked up at her father’s face. Wide-eyed and staring, he wasn’t angry at her but rather horrified. He turned away from her gaze and looked out to the ocean. A cool breeze skimmed their skin and Rey gathered her shawl closer to her to stay warm.

“There’s a sea cave west of here,” he finally spoke. “The Force is strange on this island; I’ve never experienced anything like it. But that cave was the dark side and it lured me in with promises of answers and to quell my curiosity.”

“And?” Rey waited to learn more.

“It was only a trick,” he sighed. “A trick to keep me there and drown me as the tide came in. That’s all the darkness ever seems good for: pain and illusions.”

Rey stood up and patted the dirt off her trousers. She understood where he was coming from, but her father had never experienced the dark side the way she had. “It’s not always evil,” she told him. “There’s always a choice and you choose how you use it. It’s powerful and sometimes raging, yes,” she would admit that, “but power and rage can be used constructively.”

“It sounds like you’re not against it,” Luke pointed out. There was no emotion in his voice and that troubled her.

“It’s had its uses,” she explained. “But I’m angry and I hurt for all that has happened and I think that’s why the light rejected me.”

He seemed to understand now. “You have to heal,” he acknowledged. “We all do. Maybe with time, you’ll be ready for the light again.”

Looking back out to the horizon, Rey only hoped that’s all it took. She thought of why exactly she needed to heal and a question popped into her head.

“Why does Snoke hate you?”

Questioning, Luke arched an eyebrow at her. It was a familiar gesture to her, for she had made the expression many times in her life.

Shrugging, she elaborated. “I figured there must be a reason why he specifically wanted to groom your nephew and daughter as apprentices. It would have probably been a lot easier and less time-consuming if he had chosen someone more willing.”

Luke nodded, seeming to understand what exactly she was asking. “You’ve seen his face?”

“Yeah?”

"Well, let’s just say he didn’t get those scars in a speeder accident.”

She winced. “That might explain a little.”

The silence that followed spoke volumes. His explanation, vague as it was, told her that he didn’t want to talk about it. Whatever it was, it had to have been bad enough for Snoke to spend years plotting revenge and slowly convince her cousin to kill a bunch of kids.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “And I’m not sure if I could tell it right just yet.” Then he grinned, “I’d much rather hear about this young man of yours.”

And while she knew he was trying to distract her, Rey could only beam at the thought of telling her father more about Finn besides the overall story of how they escaped. She’d have to leave out the more… private bits, of course.

It worried her that her father wouldn’t react so well to the Knight of Ren part, but she realized that she needed to be honest with him. So she began to when she first saw Finn, the cadet with a remarkable mind.

“…The Force is connecting us.”

At first, she thought she was back on one of the Star Destroyers of the First Order, until she turned around and found herself sitting on the makeshift bed she had made in an empty hut in the village. But in front of her were the industrial corridors she had walked down hundreds of times and standing in front of a viewport, looking out to the vastness of open space, was her cousin.

It was like space had morphed and the two places had molded into one. Looking down at the ground, she thought she would find some sort of seam to show where the two places tied together, but found that they blended in a way that made it impossible to tell where one place ended and the other began.

But she didn’t want to acknowledge Kylo Ren and turned away. She hoped that if she stayed on the side that was Ahch-To that he wouldn’t notice her.

“No, no.” He turned around with an arm outstretched and she found herself staring at a bacta bandage that had been fitted to a long scar running diagonally down his face. She had given him that the last time they had met, she realized. “I want to talk.” His voice was distorted, like he was trying to speak to her underwater.

“I’m not interested in anything you have to say,” she told him. “Besides,” she decided that she wanted to taunt him now, for a change. “You’re too late. You’ve lost.”

“You found Skywalker,” he guessed, pausing for a moment. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll find him soon and end this all.”

She rolled her eyes. “What, is this a destiny thing again?”

“If I kill him, the Jedi can never rise again.”

“You’re forgetting someone,” Rey laughed.

He smirked back at her. “You’re no Jedi. The dark side is still very much alive in you.” He took a step forward, now only a meter or two away from her. “He’ll learn that soon enough. He won’t want you then.”

Growling, Rey was about ready to throttle him, anything to make him shut up. “He’s accepted that part of me.”

Kylo took a step backwards as if he wasn’t sure if Rey wouldn’t go after him, but he continued. “Has he told you, yet?” he asked. “About the night I destroyed his school? Did he tell you why?”

She hissed and looked away. “I know what happened that night. Nothing you say will change the fact that you murdered my classmates.”

“Rey, I’ve talked with the Supreme Leader,” Kylo’s voice softened. “If you come back to us – if you tell us where you are – he’ll take you back. Please-”

And at the mention of Snoke, Rey realized that there was a slight pressure against her head. It wasn’t a headache, but she had felt it before when the dark side was being used against her.

They were trying to figure out where she was and whatever connection they created would lead Kylo and Snoke right to her. Snoke was probably listening in somehow, knowing him. In her sleep, she was more vulnerable. Perhaps it was the same for her against the Force.

But she also realized that this was a dream, whatever this was, and she firmly remembered laying down to go to sleep hours before. So, if she woke up, perhaps she would sever that connection…

“Skywalker will not want you after he learns what you’ve done. Solo and Organa won’t either.”

If she was already angry, now Rey was absolutely fuming. Blood boiling, she clenched her fist. “Liar.”

Sitting up suddenly, Rey looked around and found that she was back in the pile of blankets she was sleeping on. This time, she was in reality.

Anger filled her as she tried to adjust herself to the darkness of the early morning. Breathing deeply, she tried to calm herself. Then she worried that she shouted awake and might have roused Luke next door. These huts were not exactly insulated or soundproof.

She peeked her head outside the door, craning her neck to her right to see if she could see any signs of Luke awake. All was quiet and content with this, Rey pulled her shawl and boots on and stood outside with her quarterstaff. At first, she thought she might practice with it a little. There was no way she would go back to sleep after that. If Snoke was looking for this place, she didn’t want to just hand the location to him.

They might not be able to find it anyway; Han and Chewbacca had been the one to fly them here, she didn’t even look at the coordinates and she did not understand how Snoke was making his search. It hadn’t felt like he was probing her mind and she certainly knew what that felt like. Maybe he was trying to find her signature in the Force. While Rey found that even she could only find Finn at shorter distances this way, she had no idea how strong Snoke really was in this regard. Or perhaps he was simply trying to figure out the landscape of the island so he could match the geography based on knowledge, though that would take up a significant amount of time with how many worlds had similar landscapes.

The sky was clear tonight and she paused to take a deep breath and look at the stars. While she was unfamiliar with the locations of each star and planet and system from her current location, looking at all the dots in the sky, she felt a little less alone. She wondered if any of them were where the Resistance was, and she briefly felt a little guilty that she hadn’t gone to the Millennium Falcon for the night to check to see if Finn tried to contact her. Trying to imagine what he might be doing now, she wished that wherever he was, that she was there too.

She was trying to reach out to the light again, soundly in meditation while the morning mist surrounded her, when Luke finally emerged in the morning. With a sigh, she opened her eyes again at the sound of his footsteps.

Now it was his turn to look embarrassed. “I hope I wasn’t interrupting.” She recalled how as a child, he used to chide her for interrupting the meditation of the older students. Now he was probably worried that he was breaking his own rule.

“It doesn’t matter,” she sighed. “Nothing’s changed.”

To her surprise, he shot her a sympathetic glance.

“But there is something I need to tell you.”

He waited, expectantly. Fidgeting with the hem of her shawl, she wondered exactly how much she should tell him about what happened during the night. She knew she shouldn’t lie about this.

“Kylo’s trying to find us. I’m not sure how, but I’m worried.” The hard gaze that her father gave her, made her shudder. “I- he’s been trying to find you for years,” she tried to explain herself, but she was so nervous that she faltered. “The Force showed me him while I was mediating.”

Which was half true. She mentally kicked herself.

“See? You know you can’t tell him.” She distinctively heard Snoke’s voice in her mind, echoing. She almost shook her head to try to make the voice go away, but she stopped herself.

“The First Order’s military stock is massive,” she continued. “Aunt Leia’s estimates were not even close and without the Republic, they could control all major systems in a matter of months – weeks even. They’ll destroy the Resistance and everyone I love. Aunt Leia. Finn. We need your help. We need the Jedi Order to come back.”

But Luke only smiled and nodded his head. “I think I understand,” he said. “I thought you would bring this up, and while I won’t say it won’t be awkward to return after all these years, I’d rather spend time with my daughter and help my sister. I have a lot to make up for.” His demeanor turned grim. “I left knowing my friends were suffering because I was suffering. And if Ben is looking for this place…” He sighed, closing his eyes and he thought. “Yes, it’s time to leave.”

With a gasp, Rey excitedly rocked on the balls of her feet like a child. “You mean you’ll come back with us to the Resistance?” She was hopeful now.

Instead of answering, he held his arms out to her and pulled her into a hug. “Of course,” he told her. Then, letting her go, he smiled. “I have to pack a few things,” he said. “Why don’t you head back to the Falcon?”

That did seem like a good idea. After all, the last time she was there, the Resistance hadn’t contacted them and they wouldn’t know their location until they got a message. It would also give them time to prepare the Falcon for the flight and gather any supplies that they could get on the island.

She almost ran back, if it wasn’t for how the ocean spray making the rocky slopes slippery.

Back at the Millennium Falcon, Rey told everyone to get ready to pack up.

“He'll come back?” Han was a little surprised.

Rey nodded. “Yeah. Do we have coordinates yet?”

Swearing under his breath, Han pointed towards the cockpit. “Message light is on. Figured to wait for you to look at it. It's probably not for me.”

Her heart raced as she sprinted down the corridor. Han shouted that they probably wouldn’t be able to leave until the morning; they needed time to check everything over since the Falcon had not undergone all the repairs he had wanted yet. But in her excitement and anxiety over the little white light blinking on the console, Rey did not pay her uncle any mind. She checked the message count to only find one encrypted message waiting for her and she opened it, hoping to hear from Finn.

It was from Finn – sort of. Actually, it was from the technician Connix on behalf of Finn.

-Rey, it began.

I wanted to stick around on base until you came back, but something has come up and I am going on an errand for the Resistance. They really could use my help and I don’t like just sitting around. My shoulder is fine. Bacta took care of that. Will be gone only a few days, tops.

Take care of yourself,

Finn-

There were no coordinates left for them, and while Rey couldn’t expect Finn to wait around for her, she felt oddly put-off by the message. Slumping back in her seat, she fiddled with a loose wire she realized needed to get placed securely again. The freighter still needed more work done to get her back up to scruff.

She looked down at the beacon on her wrist, realizing that she would have to use that to find the Resistance again.

The console flickered to life, indicating that a holo message was trying to be sent through. Curiously, Rey hit a switch to receive it.

“Rey,” said the image of Maz Kanata. “You look tired, my dear.”

“Maz?” she gaped.

“I have coordinates from Leia to give to you. I will send them over encrypted.”

The console flashed again, showing a new location on a world called Crait.

“Perfect timing.” Rey grinned.

“I had a feeling you might be needing them.” She looked around curiously. “And where’s that boyfriend of yours?”

“He’s with the Resistance right now,” Rey answered, feeling a little sad as she was reminded that when she returned, Finn would not be there. “He couldn’t go with me. How are things for you?”

Almost on cue, a shot rang out in the background and Maz ducked down, taking the recorder with her. “Well, not great, exactly,” she cringed. “Union dispute.”

Rey’s eyes widened. “A union dispute? What kind of union are you guys?”

More blaster bolts whizzed overhead, followed by a popping sound that resembled a flash grenade. “Not the kind you’re thinking of,” Maz laughed. “We’re a group of pirates, smugglers, crooks, you know. Ever since the New Republic was destroyed, some of my workers aren’t too keen to run errands for the Resistance. I’ve told them they don’t have to, but if they want to keep working under me, they will.”

“Err…” Rey began. “Do you need any help?”

Maz’s laughter echoed in the recording. “Just worry about yourself,” she advised. “This is nothing new to me. Get your father back to Leia and keep yourself out of the sights of the First Order. They’re looking for you and Finn; sent a couple of bounty hunters my way.”

“Bounty hunters?” Rey urged her for more details.

“Big guys with black armor. Both of them wore masks. They’re not typical bounty hunters; I sensed the Force with them.”

Knights of Ren. So Kylo sent them out to look for her and Finn after all. They would have to take more care to keep themselves hidden. Rey made a mental note to herself to teach Finn how to hide himself in the Force. Or maybe her father could help, she grinned at the thought. He might be more qualified for the job.

“Maz, be careful,” Rey urged. “And if you see them again, let me know.”

“Take care, Rey,” she said before the holoprojection cut off.

Slumping back in the copilot’s chair, Rey took a moment to think about everything. She looked at the coordinates on the screen, wondering what kind of world Crait was and decided that she would find out soon enough. But she was worried about just what lengths the First Order was taking to find her; Kylo and Snoke certainly were doing their best to trick her into giving up her location. The Knights of Ren could be expert trackers with the right skills and training…

She focused on the Force and her own presence in it. She could sense Han and Chewbacca nearby and one of the porgs exploring the area around the Falcon outside. But when she looked at how she presented herself, she didn’t know if she liked what she sensed. She was neither light nor dark now, but rather, somewhere in between. A gray area.

Maybe, she mused, she could use that to her own advantage.

Hours later, Luke approached the Millennium Falcon, looking winded with a bag that looked full slumped over his shoulder. He stood on the ramp and looked around the island, realizing that this could have been the last time he ever saw it.

But no one was more excited to see his return than R2-D2, who flew down the ramp and rolled circles around his old friend. Luke laughed, patting the droid on the dome while simultaneously apologizing to him for leaving him behind.

Rey ran down to greet him. “The Resistance sent us coordinates,” she told him, but she wasn’t happy.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“Well, everything’s fine, I guess… Finn went on some mission. He won’t be there when we get there. Oh, Han said we won’t leave until the morning.”

Suddenly, Rey didn’t feel as eager to get back to the Resistance as she had been. It felt awful for her to think that when they were in need of all the help they could get, but returning to Finn had made up a good percentage of what was drawing her back. It also surprised her because earlier, Finn had been adamant about not sticking around with the Resistance to avoid all the fighting. Had he changed his mind so suddenly?

Maybe there was something else wrong…

In any case, she was torn between wanting to leave and wanting to wait again. Han had been the one to make the decision in the end. They would leave as soon as possible. After seeing what their son had become, Han had grown more dedicated and attached to the idea of the Resistance and he wanted to help his wife if he could.

Luke placed his hand on her shoulder, taking her out of her thoughts. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.” The gesture was meant to be comforting, but it only made Rey more agitated. Sensing this, he hesitated as he tried to come up with something to break the tension. Then, he got an idea and rummaged through his bag until he found something.

Then, he held whatever he had been looking for out to her. Taking it from him, Rey gasped as she looked a small lightsaber over. A youngling saber for smaller hands; a first weapon for aspiring Jedi.

She knew this saber. It almost seemed to purr contently in the Force at their reunion.

“My first lightsaber,” she said this with awe and affection.

“After that night, I went looking for you. This was all I could find. I thought that was all that was left of you…”

The lightsaber had been a simple design, much like any youngling lightsaber. With a curved emitter and grip recesses, it had been perfect for a learner, though Rey recalled a time where she tried to attach it to a staff extension and almost made it explode.

There was a faded patch stuck to the front of the lightsaber, and Rey smiled when she realized that it was the remains of a starbird sticker from when she pretended to be a Jedi in the age of the Rebellion. Her father’s stories used to make her mind wander.

Around the time just before Kylo had snatched her away, she recalled thinking that it was time to rebuild the lightsaber to suit her growing body and switch the kyber crystal to it. She wondered if the crystal would still accept her as its master.

But there was something that was still missing from her recollection.

“What color was it?”

When her father didn’t answer her right away as he looked around the old freighter with fondness, then, registering her question, her turned around to look at her with sadness in his eyes. “You don’t remember?”

“No,” she sighed. “I suppose it doesn’t matter.” She didn’t plan to try to ignite the saber, it simply didn’t feel like the right time. “I’m glad you kept it.”

“You hold on to it now,” he instructed.

Gripping the hilt, she lowered her hand without another word. This didn’t feel like her lightsaber anymore, but maybe like the light, she just needed time to get reacquainted with it.

“I think,” Luke then began, “we need to talk about your mother.”

Unwilling to sleep that night, Rey wandered outside and to the top of the island where a meadow stretched across it. The full moon lighted her walk though she kept a glow rod with her. Lost in thought, she stared at the sea, quiet in the moonlight and wondered if this would be the last time she’d ever see it.

It wasn’t just Kylo and Snoke, however, that occupied her thoughts. She learned earlier that evening that there would be no mother for her to find and that the explanation behind Rey’s lack of memory of one had not been because of her days in the First Order, but because her mother had died when she was very little. She had been one of the first Force-sensitive beings that her father had met after the fall of the Empire, someone he taught and fought alongside to rid the galaxy of any Imperial remnants and ended up falling in love with.

And what killed her was not an accident or a disease, like Rey had initially assumed, but because someone decided that this new Jedi Order was a threat to them. Dwartii had rolled off of her father’s tongue before he snapped his mouth shut, but the word did not have much meaning to Rey and she pretended not to hear him, vowing to look it up later. She knew the Dwartii were a species of humanoids, but all she could recall about them were the Sages whose philosophies influenced the earliest days of the Galactic Republic.

While it saddened her because in her days in the First Order she had imagined a woman on the ship that left her on Jakku and because she had hoped to know both of her parents, Rey accepted the fact that not only had that never been possible, but that her mother would have probably wanted her to move on.

Somehow, in her aimless wandering, she ended up down the grassy slopes that led from the meadow at the top of the island to a flat stone that went on until it became a low cliff above the sea. It seemed familiar to her, but she did not make the connection of where she was until she saw a gaping hole surrounded by reddish moss.

Carefully approaching the hole, she recalled it from her first meditation with her father before she realized that Snoke and Kylo were watching her. She also recalled her father’s warning of this place and how it connected to the dark side.

Rey stared into the darkness of the hole, but she could see nothing. The wind blew around her, whipping the loose strands of her hair to the side as droplets from a wave that had crashed against the cliff in the low tide hit her. She thought she heard a voice calling to her.

But she knew better and turned around to head back to the meadow. Then, just as she made that decision, she felt her knee hit the stone painfully and slid backwards against the wet surface, down into the hole and the icy water that filled it.

The salt stung her eyes as she struggled to the surface, not being that good of a swimmer. Managing to find something solid as she blindly reached around, she realized that she had come across a flat surface that was long enough for her to sit on and close enough to the water for her to haul herself up.

Trying to wipe as much of the water off her face, Rey’s vision remained blurry for a moment as she waited for her sight to adjust again. She found herself in a cave – long and narrow – and was relieved to find that if she wanted to get out, all she had to do was go to the edge of the flat stone and lift herself back out of the hole. But the cave itself was marvelous, its walls weathered away by the sea and polished until it resembled an old, cracked mirror. The walls reflected her image, and the cracks repeated it over and over until there were a line of Reys in her sight.

Something in the Force quivered around her and the images in the mirror shifted without her making movements herself. Rey knew if she waited, the cave was bound to show her something – it had promised her that the moment she slid inside – but her brain kept warning her to look away, that if she stayed there she would be continually shown images to keep her staring at the walls until she drowned in the tide.

She reached her hand out to touch the surface of the wall, noting how cool it was to her touch and how it seemed to ripple under it like water until the surrounding darkness melted away and she was standing in a room that was too familiar to her.

Crimson walls surrounded her. She slid to her knees upon the reflective black floor of the Supremacy’s throne room. Too many bad memories had been made here, causing her heartbeat to speed up at the thought. Any moment now, Snoke and Kylo would appear, laughing about how easy it had been to trick her into thinking the last couple of days had been real and that she had been captured back on Jakku with Finn and Poe, who were already dead.

But as the throne room became more clear and vibrant, she noticed at the silver centerpiece of the room that someone other than Snoke was sitting there. She squinted her eyes for a better look, wondering who the slender dark figure was.

Rey walked closer, only to stop when she saw the dismembered bodies of her former masters splayed out on the floor.

Someone else entered the room and to her awe, Finn appeared, walking straight for the throne with purpose. Something was wrong though, she thought to herself. Why would Finn be back with the First Order?

Then, Finn kneeled to the floor, bowing to the figure on sitting on the throne. Rey looked up, shocked at what she saw there.

Herself. Sitting with one leg resting over the other to make a place for her saber spear to rest, Rey was on the throne, looking pleased with the turn of events. She had her lover at her side and her enemies dead at her feet. What could be better than that?

But she had never wanted to be at the helm of the First Order? Had she? Back when she was with them, just being a part of their ranks brought fear and loathing into her life. Leading them would certainly be worse, or would it?

Something wet hit her neck and Rey quickly glanced away, finding that the cave had flooded with water and that it was already over her shoulders. How long had she’d been there?

Panicking, she searched around for the ledge of the platform, careful not to accidentally walk off of it. When she found it, she looked up to the hole where water was streaming through and reached up to pull herself out, straining against the water and the added weight it gave herself. If all went wrong, she could wait until it filled up closer to the top, but the darkness that had brought her there was still a looming presence and it worried her that she had almost become its victim.

After a third attempt, she managed to find the strength to get herself out.

Shaking from the cold, Rey looked around and saw that the moon hung low on the horizon. It only took her a quick thought and calculation to figure out that meant that she had been in that cave for hours and that dawn was not long away. She looked at her state and how she was soaked to the bone. If anyone was already up by the time she got back to the Millennium Falcon, there would be questions she didn’t want to answer.

She’d have to hurry, then. Luckily being soaked and freezing was a wonderful way to convince herself to rush back.

Chapter Text

Canto Bight was a lot different from what Finn would have ever expected. Glamorous and glitzy, the sheer vestige of wealth, power, and luxury almost overwhelmed him. The bright colors and lights of the casinos were a stark contrast from the tones that the First Order and the Resistance preferred. This place certainly wasn’t a military base. He would be hard-pressed to find someone think about a war over all the excitement buzzing in the atmosphere. In a way, he could see the appeal of living here because it would hard to be bored in a place that always had something going on.

Finn would have been content to lie low, get through the tournament, and maybe sample a small bit of this lifestyle on the way, but his new partner seemed to have a different opinion.

“Look at all this,” Rose Tico growled. “Children in the galaxy are starving, and they just-"

While he knew that some people were more likely to express their opinions than others – he had been raised by the First Order, after all – he learned quickly that in Rose’s case, opinions fueled her inner fire. He was shocked by how quickly her mood one change. One moment, she was quiet, fidgeting in the back corner of the transport as she brainstormed an idea to distract herself, the next moment, she was growling in anger. This also made him nervous. Finn had never liked to be on the receiving end of someone’s anger. In the First Order, that was a bad thing and often meant that he would receive punishment. He worried that angering her could prove to be a problem for this mission.

To make matters worse, he was certain he had annoyed her on the transport coming here. Trying to make small talk with her had been fruitless and his lack of skills in piloting caused her to show him how to land the shuttle, only for her to lose some of her patience with him when he accidentally touched the wrong control. It was like walking eggshells around her.

Growing worried that she was about to draw attention to herself, Finn tried to calm her down in the only way he knew how. “Hey Rose, just remember that we have to blend in. For the mission. We won’t be here that long.” He hoped that she would remember what she was here for and make an effort to set aside her anger while she was here. If she didn't, she risked blowing their covers and her chance to ever be given a mission like this ever again.

She did not look happy, but Finn wondered if she was always like this. They had only known each other for a few hours, meeting in the Raddus to have a meal and chat to get on the same page about the mission and to get to know one another and then spending another twelve on a small transport to the world in the Outer Rim. During their first meeting, Rose was… awkward, to say the least. One moment she looked starstruck at meeting the guy that escaped from the First Order and gave the Resistance what they needed to destroy Starkiller, and the next she was making her hatred of the First Order know, causing Finn to wonder if she distrusted him for being raised by them.

Rose also seemed a little put-off because he was partnered with her. Obviously, she would have preferred her sister to be here instead. But General Organa had explained to Rose that Paige could not be spared to be taken off the bomber squad at the moment. Then, she had asked Rose if she could handle the mission without Paige around. This tipped Finn off to something about her emotional state; it implied that she was very dependent on her sister.

And now, here they were, standing in Canto Bight in borrowed clothing to look the part of a young heiress and her bodyguard.

Frustrated with styling her hair in a way that made her look glamorous and didn’t give away her more humble roots, Rose gave up trying updos and opted to let her hair hang loose and somehow figured out a way to make it shine. She at least looked like she could be an heiress that preferred simpler styles to the extravagant makeup and clothing that they were seeing around the casino.

But Finn had it easy. All he had to do was wear this set of armor loaned from a Mandalorian volunteer that was about the same size as him. The helmet covered his face, making the disguise perfect for himself as it would mean that anyone working for the First Order in the area would probably not recognize him as the stormtrooper that defected. The helmet made him feel a little claustrophobic and reminded him too much of things he would rather forget, but it would do. All he had to do now was carry a blaster and look official. His shoulder was still sore when he tried to lift his arm up too high, but he could manage with that. With his life of training, it wouldn’t be hard.

Vice Admiral Holdo had booked them two rooms next to each other, though she specifically stated to only use those rooms to use for the facilities. They were instructed to sleep on the transport, which they had hidden away in an outcropping near one of the private beaches. The tide would not get to it and Finn checked the area to make sure it was far enough out of the way to avoid any accidental discoveries.

There were eight competitors in all and while the dealer made a spectacle of shuffling the deck, Finn took in his surroundings. The room was private and oval in shape, with golden moldings and lights hung from elaborate ceiling sculptures. Each competitor was allowed three guests at the maximum though they would watch behind a mesh screen so they could see the players but they players could not see them and be able to concentrate. He felt underdressed because everyone here was dressed in high fashion that he couldn’t even dream of affording, but at least the Mandlorian armor gave him the guise of being there for a reason. The guests gave him curious glances, but no one said a word to him. The obvious amount of wealth around him bothered him though he wasn’t sure why.

Out of the three humans in the room, Finn recognized their target right away. He was a little taken aback by DJ’s disheveled appearance that made him so out-of-place here. While the holo had prepared him to recognize his face and favorite hat, DJ also seemed to prefer worn clothes that looked like they needed cleaning. Finn would have not expected this from a guy that seemed to make good money for himself. Even he would have wanted to make sure he looked a little more presentable.

He did not recognize the other two humans, nor could he recognize the species of two of the non-humans in the room. The other two players that he could name the species of were an Emente with his six eyes, and a Dabi that was putting her four arms to good use by holding a drink in two of them.

The first thing that happened was that each player announced their initial bet. While the obviously loaded Emente, offered up 10,00 credits up front, some were betting the minimal amount of 1,000.

“Five-thousand,” DJ called.

Finn watched as Rose fiddled with a pendant that she refused to remove when she changed into her dress. She was thinking for a moment.

“Five-thousand,” she announced, deciding to match DJ’s amount. Finn wondered if this would catch her opponent's attention and watched to see DJ's reaction. He didn't even pay Rose a passing, curious glance. Mirroring his starting amount probably wasn't obvious enough to make him realize that anything out of the ordinary was afoot.

Handed a single card by the dealer, Rose made a quick glimpse at it and then placed it face-down on the table again. She waited patiently as the dealer went around the table, then came back again to offer her another card.

The next step of game was for each player to call out the total that their two cards added to.

“Eight,” Rose called out.

The Dabi went first, being to the far left of the dealer. She asked for another card, then, apparently satisfied with her hand, placed them back down on the table.

And so went the game for the first round, with some players taking cards and some deciding to trade cards. Only one of the humans decided to place a card into the interference field this round.

Rose took another card. While Finn only knew the basics, he could tell that her hand was at decent odds for this round. One of the non-humans already looked anxious, his sabacc face obviously easy to break from.

A guest whispered that the variant of the game that was being played was Jhabacc, which Finn gathered was high-stakes and very stressful to players.

One of the humans had already reached 20 while Rose and DJ had managed to get 12 and -11 respectfully. Finn was already feeling a little lost by some of the rules, but he was keeping up. Rose, at least, was holding her own.

But then DJ decided stand up on the second round, looking up at the wall opposite to Finn nervously while he stretched before looking back at his hand. There was still a long way to go.

The next card brought Rose to 13. If she could get ten more points…

Her next hand, to the excitement of Finn’s heart, was nine. It wasn't bad, she still won money while DJ walked away with nothing.

With the end of the first round, Rose came to a total a total of 54,000 credits. There was a quiet and polite applause that rumbled through the audience, but it was likely that the players could not hear.

Finn noticed that one player waved to the wall opposite of where the audience was; the same wall that DJ kept glancing at.

“Is there another seating area?” he asked the Twi’lek woman to his left, who nodded. He frowned in thought, realizing that DJ either didn’t come alone or that someone was watching him, perhaps someone working for his investor. And that would mean that someone in the First Order was around.

There would be a brief break in the tournament, followed by the second round. The tournament was split into two days and the two players that had the lowest scores or the most losses, would be asked to leave today. Rose was probably safe.

The announcer told the guests that the round had ended and that they were welcomed to gather outside the tournament room to mingle and drink. On the house, he said. Finn walked out to another room that was set up as a bar and found Rose waiting for him.

“You’re amazing,” he told her.

She blushed, looking a little shocked that someone would pay her such a compliment. Then, to hide her embarrassment, she waved her hand to try to ask him to stop. “It’s just a game,” she said.

“If I had played, I would have lost,” Finn pointed out.

“I guess you’re right,” Rose said, sounding a little more confident. Then she sighed. “I wish Paige had been here to see this.”

He placed his hand on the counter, not touching hers, but as a gesture to mean his sincerity. “When we get back, you can tell her all about it. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled.” It’s true, he had never met the other Tico sister, but he was certain that Rose wouldn’t have cared about her sister’s approval and would have wanted her here if they weren’t close.

Smiling a little at the thought, Rose then gestured to the bar. “Are you ordering anything?”

“I don’t think it’s protocol for a bodyguard to be drinking on the job.”

“You’re not really my bodyguard,” she pointed out.

“Still…” He looked around at the guests, looking over at DJ, who didn’t exactly look happy. Already in danger of being excluded from the tournament tomorrow and losing the credits for the entry fee, DJ wasn’t exactly calm but he didn’t look like he was rethinking his choice either.

But then the man stood up and left the room. Finn felt a chill through the air and he wasn’t sure if it was his imagination or not. It reminded him a little of when he met Rey back in the First Order when she was covered by a mask and he had no idea who the human behind it was like. It made him wonder…

“I’ll be back for the next round,” he promised Rose. “There’s… something I wanna check out.”

Without waiting for her response, Finn carefully went in the direction that DJ had gone. He found himself in a place that was obviously for employees, for the glamor of the hotel had given way to a more industrial interior. He looked to be in some sort of corridor and wondered if the staff used it.

“Look, there’s nothing to worry about,” a low voice echoed from somewhere. “I just folded one hand. Better to take a small loss than a big one. The next round will be just fine.”

“It better be,” another voice hissed. “General Hux will not take to such an embarrassment lightly. We want what we agreed to.”

There was a slight intake of air coming from behind a group of pipes and Finn realized that someone had gasped. He looked around for a place to hide and found that the muted colors of his armor was perfect to blend in. Sitting behind a tower of machinery, he waited, watching as a figure swooshed past him.

Bulky and stout, whatever that thing was, it might not be human, at least not how Finn could see. The… thing was dressed in all black with a cape whipping behind him as he walked. He carried one of the largest blasters that Finn had ever saw, but what got his notice the most wasn’t the weapon, it was the helmet. Rounded and slotted only to allow the wearer to see, it reminded Finn of the helmet he wore now. The weapon itself was so massive that it had to be physically attached to one arm of the armor. He wondered if this was a Mandalorian. A real one.

That chill filled him again, and he thought something else.

Was this another Knight of Ren? He did not know what the other five of them were like, having only encountered Kylo and Rey during his time in the First Order. They had only been established as Snoke’s personal hands a couple of years prior. He understood now that they had been students of Luke Skywalker’s, which led him to think that none of them were very old.

Taking note of the man’s appearance, Finn told himself that he needed to ask Rey the next time he saw her to tell her about the other Knights. Had it been up to him, he would have been content to never encounter one of the others, but fate had dealt him a different hand.

If Rey were here, this would have been a lot easier.

Finn wondered if she had gotten his message and how she reacted. Hoping to give her enough time to rekindle a relationship with her father, Finn thought this mission wouldn’t have been an issue, but as time and distance drew them further apart, his heart ached more.

A few moments more of waiting showed him DJ walking back to the direction of the tournament, biting his lower lip as if he were trying to come up with a plan on how to get himself out of this situation. Had he’d been anyone else, Finn might have approached him to offer him help, but he was dealing with the enemy and unless the timing was right and he was sure that DJ wouldn’t turn on the Resistance, that couldn’t happen. Too risky, no matter what Finn’s heart wished to do.

He counted to sixty. After no one else came down the corridor, Finn decided it was probably safe enough to go back.

Rose was still at the bar though she was tugging at the sleeve of her dress nervously as she looked at the chronometer on the wall behind the counter. He made a quick glance of it and realized that there was only five minutes until everyone would be asked to be seated.

Finn had to make this quick.

“We need to be careful,” he whispered to her. “The First Order is here.”

Startled, she looked around suspiciously until she realized how that might look to a passerby and stopped herself. “What?” she asked. “Where?”

“Just one person,” he explained. “One dangerous person. A Knight of Ren.”

“I don’t know what that is,” she said, glaring at a pair of guests that glanced at her curiously.

Right, he realized there were a lot of things that volunteers that weren’t in the chain of command might not know. Besides Kylo, it didn’t sound like the Resistance had any idea that there were seven Knights of Ren in total.

“They’re… Force-users. This one has a blaster though. Are you familiar with Kylo Ren? He’s one of them.”

“And your girlfriend?” Rose asked.

“She was one,” he corrected. “Rey didn’t want anything to do with them.”

But Rose only scrunched her nose and glared. “And what makes you think she still isn’t one of them? You’re here pining for her and she’s off… doing what now?”

“She’s off on an important mission for the Resistance,” he told Rose, glaring back at her. “And I’m not pining.”

Rolling her eyes, Rose said, “Please. On the way here, you kept talking about her. You’ve only been separated for like, a day, and you’re acting like you haven’t seen her in years.”

“And you haven’t been pining for your sister?” Finn retorted.

Gaping, Rose stuttered, trying to find what she wanted to say. “T-that’s different. You have no idea what we’ve gone through together.”

“And you have no idea what Rey and I have gone through together. And even if you don’t trust her, I do and General Organa does. It’ll make more sense when she gets back.”

He looked around the room quickly, making sure that he and Rose hadn’t caught the attention of others. To his relief, everyone was either occupied with others or they were moving into the audience viewing rooms. On the inside, he was reeling with anger and frustration in a way he had never experienced before.

“I’m going to my place,” Rose told him without looking at him. She left her empty glass on the counter and went back to the game room.

A new gut feeling hit Finn as he rolled Rey’s beacon back and forth in his hands nervously. Regret. Remorse. Maybe even guilt. He wasn’t sure what he should do in this situation because well, had Rose not been the one to be critical of him this wouldn’t have become an issue. He was so used to everyone just doing what they were told for the sake of completing a mission that he didn’t know how to move forward. Finn’s instinct told him to apologize and try to move on, but his head told him that he hadn’t been the one in the wrong.

Quickly, he forgot about the situation when the man in the helmet passed him, going into the room for the audience on the other side of the room. He debated his choices now and realized that the riskiest might also not be the best, but also he thought that he probably wouldn’t be in that much danger if the area was high-security and the guy was just there to bully DJ back into line.

So, mind made up, Finn followed the man into the room.

Chapter Text

When the Falcon finally touched down hours later on the base on Crait, Rey sighed heavily and looked around, realizing that the one face she wanted to see had not been there to greet her.

What also added to that hurt was that when her aunt ran to the makeshift landing field to greet them, promptly glaring at her brother, she then looked at Rey and her face softened as she bit her lower lip. It was obvious that she was going to give Rey news that might not sit well with her and Rey suddenly felt her heart race at the thought. Bad news to her usually meant that someone died or that she was about to be hurt again. She braced herself.

“Finn’s not here,” Leia said gently. “He offered to help the Resistance on a mission. A short one,” she added. Seeing Rey’s face fall, Leia tried to remedy that. “He’ll be back soon,” she promised. “A few days at the most. I’m grateful to him.”

Then, after patting her niece on the shoulders, she turned to her brother again and glared daggers at him. Han retreated back into the Falcon, knowing that this might not end up pretty.

“And here you are,” she growled. “No word from you for five years. Some of us thought you were dead. Your own daughter escaped the First Order and came back, what’s your kriffing excuse?”

At least Luke had the decency to look ashamed. “I’m sorry, Leia… I was just… I couldn’t…” He sighed. “I thought I had lost everything.”

Leia offered him no sympathy. “I lost my world that night, too, Luke,” she reminded him. “And here I've been this whole time.”

The reunion between the siblings made Rey feel agitated again, and she decided that Uncle Han had the best idea of the bunch. Instead of waiting the confrontation through, she decided to go somewhere quiet and made her way blindly into the base’s massive entry, built under a massive rock – or was it a mountain?

Look how unhappy they are now, Snoke’s voice tutted, now that you’re back…

“Well, if it weren’t for you, this wouldn’t have happened,” she snapped. Then, realizing she said it out loud, she gasped and looked around frantically, hoping that no one had just witnessed that. The last thing she needed was someone to spread a rumor that Luke Skywalker's daughter could hear voices in her head. Luckily for her, this part of the hangar was vacant.

And the more she thought about Snoke somehow figuring out where she was, the more paranoid she became. She kept telling herself to tell her father about this because maybe he could help her, but every time she tried to broach the subject, she suddenly shied away, ashamed at her own weakness.

“Oh, hey,” a familiar voice called out to her, but she didn’t notice it right away. “Rey? You ok?”

At the feeling of someone being too close registered, Rey startled and looked into the face of Poe Dameron. With dark circles under his eyes, Rey could bet that the last couple of days had been sleepless for him. Being a commander could be great and all, but a good one often found themselves taking on the most exhaustive work and became prone to overtaxing themselves.

“You look like you could use some sleep,” he commented.

“Have you looked in the mirror lately?” she retorted.

He shrugged. “It’s been hell around here.” But then his eyes softened. “I’m sorry that Finn’s not here to greet you,” he said. “Even I had no idea that he would volunteer for this.”

“That’s Finn for you.” Rey shrugged. “Did he go alone?” She worried about that. While she didn’t doubt that Finn could handle himself, she worried about him getting into trouble and being by himself.

“He actually volunteered to make sure one of our own wouldn’t go alone,” Poe added. “Rose Tico is her name. Great engineer. This is her first mission.”

She didn’t want to admit that the twinge that had sat in the base of her stomach since the day before changed into something else. Rapidly, it rose to her chest, as she thought about Finn being somewhere without her and with a total stranger. It also hurt a little when she thought of how he didn’t even wait to hear from her again before venturing off. Rey had always had her doubts that Finn would want to continue to be by her side after they left the First Order, but she didn’t think that she would be facing them so soon.

Poe’s forehead wrinkled as he looked her over again. “Hey,” he said, “are you doing all right?” Urging her back out to the landing zone, he tried to convince her to go lie down somewhere. “You can take one of the bunks if you want…” He paused. “Actually, I think the general might have already made arrangements for you and Finn.”

Rey went wide-eyed at the sight of the Mon Calamari Star Cruiser; she had never been on board anything built by the legendary engineers of the aquatic race - at least, not that she could remember. Poe explained to her that the Raddus was temporary living space for now, along with some other larger additions to the Resistance fleet that had touched down on Crait. Poe showed her where the facilities were and where to get food as he explained that the Resistance group based here might break off and move to other factions and bases around the galaxy though there were not many. The First Order had been largely ignored as a threat up until a few days ago, and even in the days of the Empire, the Rebellion started small and only grew bigger as time went on.

She also had Poe catch her up on what was going on in the Resistance in the last couple of days.

“I’ll admit, we got into a tight spot, but Pava got us out fine.” He was emitting frustration in the Force and it was making her uncomfortable. Then, he laughed. “So, you’re a Skywalker. Can’t say I should have been shocked, but man, was I glad when the General announced that you were alive. I met you once when you were a baby. Mom was gone, but your parents were on Yavin and stopped by to show you off to my dad. You were such a smiley baby.”

“You met my mother?” she asked, pausing in her steps. “I don’t remember her…”

“Yeah! I-" he saw the look on her face and changed his tune. “Oh, Rey, I’m sorry.”

Deciding to drop the subject, she shook her head. But he still seemed frustrated and Rey had noticed that Poe liked to talk when he was upset. “Something else is wrong,” she observed. “With work?”

Poe scratched the back of his head. “Ah, yeah. Not agreeing with my new boss, you see. I don’t think she likes me. Pitched a few missions and recruitment ideas and she shot down each one. You know how bosses can be.”

Indeed, she understood his situation far better than he probably thought.

“Ah, here we are.” Poe indicated at a door towards the center of the ship, away from all the hustle and bustle but close enough to the action if someone needed to get there quickly. He waited until Rey entered a code on the keypad next to it – which they had gotten from the quartermaster on the way there – before he said goodbye to her.

“Get some sleep, Dameron,” she yelled back at him.

As the door slid shut behind her, Rey looked around at what seemed to be an entrance to a shared living space. As she turned a corner, she found a sparsely furnished living room with enough seating to host five, she counted. It looked nice, but she could tell that the sofa and the chairs hadn’t been splurged on, not that she minded.

She found a room marked Finn and Rey in small letters, and she traced the print with a slender finger, finding she liked how the two names looked together. She wished that he was here.

“Perhaps he has found someone better,” the voice of Snoke purred into her ear. “You know he’s afraid of you, deep down.”

Sighing, she padded into the room and dropped her bag on the floor. Balancing her quarterstaff against the wall and placing both of the lightsabers in her possession on the bedside table, she then slumped almost face-first into the mattress. As much as she wanted to sleep for the next couple of days, she had a feeling that her old masters would not let her do that, so she settled for setting the nearest chronometer alarm for an hour, figuring that she and whatever unpleasant sound it made would become very acquainted.

After finding that she simply felt too exhausted to even sleep, she decided that maybe she could mediate to try to lull herself into calm so that when the alarm went off and she reset it, she could finally get herself to sleep. She could even mediate while lying down; she had done it before though she would imagine that her father would tell her that it wasn’t the best way to go about it.

Even though she wasn’t trying to meditate on the Force this time, she unconsciously reached for the light again. It felt like an invisible warmth again and Rey wondered what it would be like to wrap herself up in that light and vanish into it. Almost desperate, she tried to force all of her emotions towards it before it snapped away from her again.

Rey wasn’t sure if she was actually hearing him this time, but she could have sworn Snoke laughter was echoing in her head.

Feeling defeated, Rey turned onto her side and stared at the chronometer. It felt like all the rest of the energy she had went into the tears sliding down her cheeks.

It was by a stroke of luck that Finn had sat at the bar when he saw it happen the afternoon of the final round of the tournament. Rose had made it to the final three along with DJ and the Emente. This particular round was winner-take-all, and the excitement was high as the participants had already won a large sum of credits from the earlier rounds. Rose did not plan to bet her winnings in this round but she was pretty positive that DJ might over the chance that it might influence the other participants to do the same. Though he was still technically on bodyguard duty, Finn got to enjoy the sights of the casinos that were so new and strange to him. Even the fathier racing, which he didn’t think he would enjoy all that much, had been a jaw-dropping two-minutes for him before Rose pulled him away and inspect the stable.

While Finn couldn’t claim he was a fathier expert, or even an enthusiast, Rose had been visibly upset by the care the animals got and he started to understand why. Shocked with rods to be urged to run faster and kept in stalls unless they were out running, the fathier’s daily life had looked to be miserable. What got Finn the most upset, however, were that there were three children working for the nasty stablemaster. They weren’t his children, and the way the stablemaster treated them had made the fathiers look like beloved pets.

“Could we… do something for them?” Finn had asked.

Rose had only shrugged. “I don’t see how. We’re in the middle of a war and I can’t promise that any world we put them on will end up being any better for them,” she then had sighed with resignation. “At least they have food and a roof over their heads.”

That felt a little like an excuse to Finn and he had felt uncomfortable with how Rose thought. There was something that gave her words a bite, like she was speaking out of experience that left her bitter, but Finn could not relate. Sure, the First Order might have thought of him and thousands of others as cannon fodder and a string of numbers, but maybe he shouldn’t have complained so much. At least he had food and a roof over his head. Then his thoughts turned dark as he thought to Rey, recalling that there had times where the First Order wouldn’t even give her that.

And with the First Order lurking around the corner, Finn felt like he was on his guard at all times. So when he saw one of the serving droids pour a white powder into a clear drink, watching it dissolve as if it were never there, he was automatically suspicious.

Finn followed the droid into the tournament room where the last three players were prepping and watched as the droid placed the drink on the coaster next to Rose’s spot. He waited until the droid was gone before he went up to her.

“I’ve gotta tell you something, but make it look like you’re writing me down orders or something while I talk, ok?”

“Ok?” she obviously didn’t seem to understand, but she pulled her datapad out of her purse and entered in information. “I’m listening.”

“Don’t drink that,” he warned. “Just leave it there. Actually, just don’t drink or eat anything until we get back to the transport.”

“Now you’re sounding like a bodyguard, but I’ll take your word for it.” She almost turned her head to stare at her drink, but caught herself before she did. “Wish me luck,” Rose told him.

“You don’t need it,” Finn promised as he walked back out to the main room to go to the audience rooms.

He thought about going to the room where the Knight of Ren preferred to sit, but thought better of it this time. Yesterday, while he was sitting behind him, Finn gathered no new information because the man refused to speak to anyone. With that blaster attached to his arm, no one was going to talk to him anyway. If DJ lost, Finn wanted to stay as far away from the Knight as possible. If Rose won – and he grew both excited and nervous at the thought – he would have to herd her back to the transport as quickly as possible, where BB-8 waited patiently for them with orders to fire it up if when he saw them for a quick getaway.

Holding his breath the whole time - figuratively, of course - Finn watched the game with his nerves on edge.

As quick as rounds were, the players were obviously taking their time and thinking their options carefully. At the fourth card that she was given, a slight frown formed on Rose’s lips and Finn felt his stomach drop. They couldn’t lose now, not when they were so close.

Finally, cards were being counted and some of the audience members sat on the edge of their seats with anticipation.

“Negative nineteen,” the Emente said in his native language. He looked disappointed as he set his cards down.

DJ went next. “Twenty-two,” he called, looking a little pleased with himself.

And when Rose came up, Finn had to keep himself from fidgeting. There was a dramatic pause before she sat her cards down, something that she seemed to have done on purpose for the effect.

“Twenty three.”

Finn looked up at the screen to show the audience the cards, and his stomach dropped for a completely different reason this time.

The Idiot, two of Sabers, three of Coins…

An Idiot’s Array.

By complete luck, Rose had managed to get the best hand to play and one of the hardest to get. That meant that she automatically won the tournament. The credits were the Resistance’s…

But as Rose was handed the credit stick while the audience was politely applauding her, Finn noticed that DJ all but fled the room while looking fearful and alarmed.

…He had to get Rose out of there, but would the Knight of Ren attack in front of a whole group of people or would he give chase? And what about DJ?

Waiting with a note of impatience, Finn entered the tournament room hoping that he looked the part of bodyguard coming to collect his charge. He supposed that was somewhat right. Right now, all he wanted to do was to wait until it had been long enough for the audience to watch Rose collect her earnings so it wouldn’t look too suspicious, then get them both back to the transport and back on their way to the Resistance.

“I think it’s time to get out of here,” she finally whispered to him, a huge grin plastered on his face though Finn couldn’t tell that it wasn’t forced.

“I think I agree.”

After shuffling through a crowd that had quickly lost interest in Rose and her winnings – Finn guessed that these people were so wealthy to begin with that the sum she won might as well have been loose change to them – they got outside the casino and headed back toward their transport. Finn commed BB-8 ahead of time to tell the droid to get everything ready for them to make a quick getaway.

They turned around an alleyway only to find themselves staring straight at the person they hoped not to see again.

DJ crouched to the ground against a wall, panting and with eyes full of fear. Looking more disheveled that he had before, he kept checking both entrances of the alley as if something could show up at any moment. Well, actually, Finn realized that was probably right and if that was probably right, then he and Rose should probably find another way to their transport.

“I think we should-"

“Hey, you two,” DJ shouted at them. “Could you help a guy out? Got some nasty people on my tail.”

Rose almost swore as the man approached them and took a better look at them. “Well, well,” he smiled. “If it ain’t the person that got me in this mess to begin with.”

“I didn’t get you into anything,” Rose growled. “Just because you can’t keep yourself from betting your investors-" Realizing what she was saying, she stopped herself and began to mumble. “Selling weapons to the First Order… I wish I could put my fist through this whole lousy town.”

Looking at the pair with interest, DJ hummed, “What was that? I didn’t quite hear that last part.” Then, almost half-laughing, he threw his head back. “You’re not an heiress, are you? No, I should’ve known. Resistance, right? That’s why you were interested in this tournament: for the First Order’s money.” He looked at Finn this time and grinned. “And you? You’re not a Mandalorian, not with that armor. It barely fits you.”

He drew closer again and Finn felt that his personal space was being violated and took a step backwards. He could see the metal letters sewed into the man’s hat. Don’t Join.

Finn wondered if DJ was his real name.

“If you are with the Resistance, you can take me with you. I can… give you guys some stuff that might interest you.” If he wasn’t trying to hide his desperation, Finn could tell that he was almost to the point of begging. He almost felt sympathetic to the guy, knowing how cruel the First Order was, but he didn’t trust DJ and knew that he was the one that had gotten himself into this.

It gave him a sense of power here. “Why would I want to take a guy with a Don’t Join plate on his hat to the Resistance?”

“That’s just a personal motto of mine,” DJ defended. “Better not to get involved with just one side, you know? Not when there are opportunities on both.”

Yeah, Finn didn’t trust this guy one bit. A guy like this would likely be friendly to the Resistance just to get back into the good graces of the First Order later. The problem was that he felt guilty to leave the guy for the First Order to tear apart.

“I’ll tell you what,” Finn tried to reason. “You can come with us on our transport and we’ll drop you off somewhere.”

That seemed to satisfy him enough. “Great. That sounds great.”

Rose led the way down the alleyway quickly and with caution. “Someone’s following you, right?”

“Unfortunately.”

But just as they turned the corner again, they came to a sight that Finn had hoped they wouldn’t encounter.

It was obvious that the person that was approaching them was a Knight of Ren, but it wasn’t the same one that Finn encountered during the tournament. No, this one was just as menacing and towering as the other one, but he wore a humanoid mask that had an unsettling, staring face, and he carried and axe at his side.

When he ignited it, the edge of the blade began to glow a crackling red, reminding Finn of blood on an executioner’s axe. Rose yelped and backed away while DJ paled at the sight.

Finn and Rose ran in the other direction before they were blocked by the other Knight, the one with a blaster attached to his arm.

“What luck,” she said, to Finn's shock. “All the people I am looking for together in one spot.”

“Kriff,” Rose swore, and she looked back and forth down the street, looking for some sort of escape. “What now?” she whispered to Finn.

“Look for a way out,” he murmured. “Any way out.”

The Knight with the plasma axe approached DJ to apprehend him. “General Hux would like to meet with you in person,” he said calmly. “The First Order treats its guests with hospitality.”

“The hell they do,” Finn said under his breath. If DJ were lucky, Hux would just kill him right away and get it over with. But a guy that bets First Order credits and loses it all didn’t have a shot at that sort of mercy.

Finn had to hand it to DJ. For a guy that didn’t seem to be the most athletically inclined, he made an admirable effort at escaping the Knight of Ren by kicking him in the shins. The problem was that the Knight was covered from head to toe in armor and DJ’s boots provided him little protection when the two materials met.

His yelp, however, drew the other Knight’s attention for a short moment, but it was enough for Rose to drag Finn into the nearest building.

It turned out they were back in the stable that they had toured in before, the musty smell of hay and fathier. Finn wasn’t sure if this was such a great environment to use to his advantage, but Rose seemed a little more sure of herself. One of the child workers was busy sweeping the aisles, and she approached him to whisper something to him.

“Come on,” she told Finn when she returned. “Got an idea.”

They hurried out to the practice track, sprinting when they heard the first sounds of a commotion coming from inside, no doubt that the Knights were on their trail. Rose ran into one of the chutes for loading up the race fathers, almost delighting at the fact that a fathier had already been loaded up for a run and had poked his tan head up to see who was near.

“Perfect. Let’s see him catch us on one of these guys.”

Finn caught on to what she was planning and stammered as he tried to come up with something – anything – that would be a better idea than this. But Rose urged him on to the animal after her by climbing onto the rails inside the chute. He wrapped her arms securely around her waist and the saddle’s metal bits pressed into his skin with a pinch.

“Ready?” she asked.

He almost told her no, but a sudden blast to their right startled them both as a pile of boxes blew apart and fell into slivers of broken material. Without reaffirming her idea, Rose hit the emergency lever with her leg, opening the chute as Finn clutched on to her for dear life as the fatheir took off running.

Rose was also holding onto the animal’s neck in an effort to not fall. She had no idea what she was doing or even how to steer this thing after making a weak attempt to use the reins, but it quickly got them away from their pursuer and that seemed to be the only thing that mattered at the moment.

There was a grin on her face. The first genuine smile he had ever seen her make. “Stop enjoying this!” he shouted, shocked that she was happy now, of all times.

When a blaster bolt barely missed them, the fathier made a whining sound and bolted away from the track, towards an open gate that led out to the city streets. It was exactly where they needed to go.

Finn figured out he could urge the animal into the direction that he wanted to go by applying pressure with his legs to the fathier’s belly. It wasn’t a surefire plan, but it at least seemed to help. For one, the Knight hadn’t been able to catch up with them yet.

But there was one thing they forgot, and that was that despite the Knight preferring blasters to plasma blades, she could still use the Force. With a screeching sound, the nearest structure of construction work – nothing too large, but it was a renovated front to a casino – bent and broke off the building, crashing near them and almost blocking their path.

To their amazement and fear, the fathier jumped the wall of metal, pushing its passengers forward as it landed.

Finn whooped with relief.

They were nearing where they wanted to be and so far, there had been no sign of the Knight of Ren after that display on the casino front. Finn could see the beach where their transport was hidden and his stomach churned with excitement and relief, yet at the same time, this felt too easy.

And it had been, for the Knight suddenly appeared in the street, holding her blaster ready to shoot the fathier down. The creature skidded to a halt and Finn found himself uncomfortably pressed against Rose’s back to keep from flying forward. When the animal righted itself again, the Knight was waiting patiently, knowing she was the victor in this chase.

As unpredictable as animals could be, the fathier proved to be a saving grace one last time as it reared up out of fear and Rose fell off of its back, taking Finn with her. He got away just in time to watch the hoofs of the animal strike the Knight of Ren down and heard the metal of her armor vibrate against the pavement.

Blaster smashed, the Knight did not move again.

“Do you think she’s really-?" Rose didn’t finish her sentence.

With a frown at the scene, Finn added, “She might have been a Force user, but she’s still a human. At least, I think she was a human.” He cringed at the thought of being trampled to death by a creature as large as a fathier, but even if she was still alive, Finn didn’t think she would be able to follow them any time soon.

They didn’t check to see if the Knight was still alive, and after Rose removed the saddle from the fathier and patted him affectionately on the nose before shooing him away, they went back to the transport where BB-8 was waiting for them. Glad was an understatement of how relieved Finn was to see the transport ready to go already and when they were up in the air and about to leave atmo, he went into the cargo space in the back to calm himself down.

But Rose seemed to have a similar idea, and they almost ran into each other on the way in.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m still a little… figety.”

“Me too,” he agreed. “I’ll sit in the passenger area, then.”

It took about a half-hour of pacing and deep breathing for Finn to finally calm himself down. He imagined Rey’s voice coaxing him through the motions like she had back in the First Order and followed his memory of her. Then, he reminded himself on a happier note that he might get to see her again soon.

When Rose emerged from the cargo space, she had a small grin on her face.

“Now, that’ll be something I can totally impress Paige with,” she laughed.

Chapter Text

Touching back down on the white salt fields of Crait, Finn’s anticipation to return to the Resistance only grew by the tenfold when he saw the Millennium Falcon parked just outside the mine hangar. That meant that what he was hoping for had come true. Rey was back.

But he wasn’t the only one anticipating their landing. Next to him, Rose was practically jumping in her seat, tapping her foot up and down on the transport floor. She changed back into her mechanic’s uniform, feeling far more comfortable in that than she had in the dresses on Cantonica. The mission made her feel a little bigger to the Resistance, but it had taken her far out of her comfort zone.

Even BB-8 was excited to go back to being a regular astromech droid, ready to take up being Poe’s partner again. Rose translated, but the little droid told them he hoped that Poe hadn’t found another droid to replace him. Finn only laughed at this and assured BB-8 that Poe liked him too much to do such a thing.

So almost immediately after the doors to the transport opened, the trio practically sprinted outside, into the blinding light of the sun as it hit and reflected off the ground.

There were four people to greet them. Vice Admiral Holdo was the easiest to spot with her purple hair, obviously wanting her credits back and ready to hear any intel they had. But to his surprise, Han Solo was there too, grinning at Finn in a way he would imagine a proud father.

Almost knocking him over, BB-8 rolled straight to his partner, beeping excitedly.

"Beebee-ate, my buddy!" Poe exclaimed as he knelt down to rub the droid affectionately like someone might a pet. "Did you take good care of Finn and Rose?" He looked up at Finn with a wide grin.

"Couldn't have done it without him," Finn answered back, reaching for Poe's hand and pulling him into a half-hug. "Thanks for letting us borrow him."

"You guys just did one of the craziest things we've done undercover." Poe shook his head in disbelief. "You're almost as crazy as me."

There was an excited chatter that interrupted them. Finn guessed that the other woman who Rose launched herself into the arms of was her sister. When they broke apart and grinned at each other, he could see a resemblance, though the eldest Tico sister was a little taller.

“Welcome back, you two. And good job.” Holdo's smile expressed that she was pleased with them.

“Err… well, can’t say it went flawlessly,” Rose confessed.

Paige ruffled her sister’s hair. “You came back in one piece and like, a billion credits richer.”

“Eight-million,” Rose corrected.

“Still, impressive.” Then, Paige frowned. “I was surprised to get here and find that you were already gone. When General Organa told me what was going on... It didn’t seem like you.”

“Maybe I’m growing up,” Rose laughed.

“You’re already a grown-up, but sometimes, even I forgot that,” Paige confessed. “I mean, just two weeks ago, Fossil couldn’t even get you switch bombers unless I was on it.”

After pausing for a moment, Rose pushed away from her sister. “If I recall, that bomber blew up that day.”

Finn flinched, wondering if the sisters were going to end up in an argument. He guessed that one reason Rose might have been so insistent on taking on a mission with Holdo had been because she wanted to seem more independent to her sister. Even he got a feeling that her dependency was a problem after only knowing her for less than a day. Their conversation implied that there something more to this, but Finn reminded himself that it wasn't his business and left it at that.

He turned to Han, who was still grinning as he patted Finn on the back. “Good work, big deal.”

“I didn’t do much,” Finn shrugged. “Rose did the hard part.”

“Still, you made off with the credits of the First Order. Swindling your enemy out of his money,” Han half-laughed. “Sounds like something I would have come up with.”

“You would have been a help to us, had you been there,” Finn admitted. He kept glancing over Han’s shoulder for any glimpse of the one person he wanted to see.

“And I would have given anything to see it.” His expression changed, like he could predict what Finn would say next. “We got Luke to come back,” he said, “but Rey’s been… Well, we’re not sure if she’s sick or not, but she rarely has come out of her room since we got back and refuses to go to the medbay.”

Poe nodded. "I talked to her yesterday," he added. "Didn't seem like herself. She just... didn't look good."

Finn’s heart felt like it flipped in his chest and suddenly all he could think of was finding Rey and helping her – if she needed his help. Old habits died hard when the only thing you cared about for so long was a single person in secret. It reminded him of his final stormtrooper days when he found out Rey had returned from a mission and something wasn't right about her. His legs move without a conscious effort though he didn't know where Rey was being housed.

“Hold on,” snapped Holdo. “Debriefing first.”

If obedience for orders like this hadn’t been so ingrained into him, Finn might have argued with her, but he knew that she was right and debriefing was often better right after a mission. He would just try to make it quick. There was something more important for him to attend to.

General Organa was the one to give him the location of his shared quarters with Rey on the Raddus, knowing he was familiar enough of the layout of the ship to not need an escort. There was a noticeable difference in her niece since she had left to find Luke and the moment she got back, everyone could see that there just wasn't something quite right about her. She appeared exhausted and acted moody, but what was very un-Rey about the whole situation was that she passed up on eating dinner the night before and had only been seen at breakfast for a couple of minutes before she slipped back away almost unnoticed to the Raddus.

That observation worried Finn because in all the time he had known her, Rey had never been one to skip out on meals. Letting food go to waste when she might not be given any the next day would be unthinkable to her. It sounded like she was sick and reverting to her old self where she trusted no one to help her and the idea of her being alone and scared made Finn want to find her room and promise her that he wouldn't leave her side again.

He found the private suite easily enough, but it shocked him to see a man sitting pensively in a chair in the main area. Looking lost in thought, Finn wasn’t sure if he should bother him or not and he glanced around confused, wondering if he walked into the wrong corridor.

“Err…”

The man snapped his attention towards Finn, like he'd been asleep the whole time. Suddenly, he eyed Finn up and down and the exact moment when recognition set in could be pinpointed by how wide his bright, blue eyes became.

“You must be Finn.” He stood up, hand outstretched in greeting, which Finn took firmly. “Luke.”

Finn’s brain suddenly imitated a droid's programming short-circuiting as he stood there, stupidly gaping at the man in front of him. “I-" he began. “I… it’s an honor.”

“The honor is all mine,” Luke smiled widely. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

It was easy to guess who told Luke about him. Finn peered over at the closed door across the room sadly and with eyes full of questions.

“Rey hasn’t come out in a long time,” Luke whispered. “Something’s wrong… but she won’t talk to me.”

Saying nothing as he approached the door, Finn knocked twice to let her know he was there before he hit the button to open the door.

“Rey?”

Worried by what he would find inside, he found that while the room was neat and tidy, Rey was not. Face-down on the bed and curled in blankets, her hair lay tangled and messy. He couldn't see her face, but he guessed that she probably looked exhausted based on what everyone else observed

She turned her head to peek out from the crook of her arms and Finn noticed how dark the circles under her eyes were. It was almost like she hadn’t slept in days.

“You’re back,” she croaked, reaching her arm out for him with a soft smile. Her fingers ran against the smooth leather of his jacket, which he had changed back into on the trip back. “You fixed the tear?”

He understood that she meant the tear that Kylo’s lightsaber had singed through the shoulder. Looking down, he put his other hand against the heavy staples that held the material together.

“Poe did that for me. Best he could do without the right materials.” Finn recalled how embarrassed Poe had appeared when he presented the newly patched jacket to him, mumbling under his breath about how he wasn’t much of a sewer and that they would have to find someone who was an expert with leather repair later.

Reaching for her hand, Finn sat down on the bed next to her, noticing how it slumped with their combined weight. His kissed the back of her hand and held it between his. “When was the last time you slept?”

She didn’t answer him.

“Rey?” he tried again, concerned by how she seemed almost unresponsive.

“…A few days ago?” she relented, though Finn was under the impression that she was unsure of all this herself.

And that was concerning too, for Rey usually could get to sleep, it was staying asleep that was the problem.

“Do you need help?” he finally asked. “There’s a doctor in the medbay, she might be able to get... sleep aids or something.”

But Rey only shook her head and buried her face back into the pillow. “No,” she whined. “No one can help this.”

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he pleaded. “Please.”

There was hesitation in the air. She almost resembled a scared child, he thought. “You can’t tell my father,” she insisted. “Promise me.”

So there was something wrong. But why hide this from Luke, who was outside the door hoping for his daughter to either come out or request his help? He didn’t seem like someone who needed to have things kept from, not after being separated from Rey for so long and obviously longing to have a place in her life again.

“I promise,” he murmured.

For a moment, neither of them spoke, but Finn found that he could not keep himself from touching her, just to assure himself that she was really there. As much as he hated seeing her like this, he'd rather have Rey with him than to know she was dealing with whatever this was on her own.

Quietly, so much so that Finn needed to lean back in to hear her, Rey confessed, “Snoke and Kylo are talking to me. In my head. Somehow.”

If it weren’t for the fact that both were powerful Force-users, Finn might have believed that she had gone off the deep end. The problem was that he did not understand exactly how the Force worked or where the dark side was limited in power. If Snoke manipulated Rey’s memories, surely, he could do something like talk to her from long distances.

“And he’s preventing you from sleeping?” It sounded like this was the case, but he wanted to confirm it.

She nodded. “And he tried to use that while I was sleeping to find the island where my father was. I think it has something to do with being easier to get around mental defenses when someone is sleeping. I think,” she reaffirmed. “So I’m worried…”

“That he’ll find the base if you sleep,” Finn guessed.

Nodding again, Rey slumped to her side and huffed. “I can’t let that happen.”

He wanted to agree with her, but somehow, he felt that her running on no sleep would end up counterproductive. It was likely that the First Order was already searching for the base and if that eventually they would be found. Crait was a great spot because of how isolated the world was, but eventually, even that wouldn’t stop the Order from finding them. Rey had a point that giving them the chance to find the base with little effort on their part wouldn’t be good news for the Resistance, but he wasn't sure how she could keep her own defenses up for long if she didn't sleep.

“Do you know how he’s doing it?” asked Finn. “Tracking you, I mean?”

Rey shook her head. “The Force, I guess. It’s always the Force.”

Finn couldn’t argue there.

“Would there be a way to block him out? Maybe your father-"

“No,” Rey snapped. “He can’t know.”

Finn found himself in a rough spot with Rey. His gut told him that Luke might help and that he would have been glad to if it meant keeping the Resistance and his daughter safe, but Rey was so adamant to keep him out of this was clear and Finn had no idea why.

So, he let it drop, for now. Rey wouldn’t be able to stay awake forever and he was positive she knew this.

“I helped cheat the First Order out of an investment,” he told her, hoping that the change of subject might brighten her mood.

“Oh?” She acted interested.

“Yeah. Met this girl named Rose, great sabacc player. She completely swept them under the carpet.”

He retold the mission again, just as he did during the briefing, though Rey didn’t ask questions as she listened. It wasn’t until he got to the part about the Knights of Ren that she sat up with a gasp.

“Tora and Aryu,” she breathed.

“Friends of yours?” Finn joked.

Rolling her eyes, Rey eyed the two lightsabers on the table next to her. Finn wondered where she got the second one, noting how small it was. “Can’t say I really knew them,” she said. “Tora always had preferred blasters to sabers, but she was thorough in everything she did. Snoke liked to send her out to investigate and force people into line.”

“That seemed to have also been the case here.” Finn recalled how she terrorized DJ into behaving himself, causing him to realize that he had made a big mistake in betting First Order credits, though to be fair, it was a very stupid mistake. “And the other one?”

“Aryu was… scary. He showed up once to taunt me when I was put into isolation for a few days.” She shut her eyes and grimaced at the memory and Finn was almost sorry that he brought them up. “He had a thing for appearances. He wanted to look like death itself.”

“Hence the axe and the human face mask,” Finn guessed. "He reminds me of a more terrifying Executioner back in the Order." Which he had never thought was possible.

“Yeah. Creepy, right?”

“I’m pretty sure that one of them is dead. A fathier stomped on her.”

Rey flinced. Really, it didn’t seem like a good way to go to Finn either, but he wasn’t very sympathetic to that Knight.

“I have a question, Rey.”

“Yeah?”

“Who comes up with all these names?”

She laughed. “Snoke, of course. When you no longer need a master to follow around, you are reborn as a Knight. I’m sure he doesn’t put that much thought into it.”

Their laughter echoed throughout the room.

After being coaxed into eating something by Finn, Rey felt a little better and her family seemed relieved to see her out and about. He'd taken to Luke already, chatting about his adventure in Canto Bight, though her father didn’t seem too happy about the part with the Knights of Ren and kept glancing nervously in Rey's direction throughout the conversation. However, Han watched proudly on as Finn detailed his escape on the back of a fathier, laughing and shaking his head at the audacity of it all. “If I were just a decade or two younger-" he began.

“Try at least three,” Luke barked back, and Rey found herself giggling despite all that was on her mind.

But the evening didn’t last and Rey found herself back in her quarters, this time with Finn at least, which was some comfort to her. She would admit that even with only being separated from him for a few days, loneliness had overtaken her along with the crushing feeling of being powerless against Snoke. There were just some twinges of hurt in the heart that Han or Chewbacca or Luke couldn’t soothe, not how Finn could.

Finn changed out of his clothes and into a pair of Resistance-issued sweats before he tried to convince Rey to sleep beside him. She was hesitant to do so, worried that her being awake would bother him and that being warm and safe in his arms again would cause her to slip into sleep. But the thought of just being near him was too tempting and so she slipped into bed next to him, planning to get up later once he fell asleep.

As much as she hated pulling herself out of bed, Rey debated if what she was about to do was stupid or not and peeked her head out of her door to make sure that no one was still out in the sitting room. Leia might come in at some point, being so wrapped up in everything that she was finding it difficult just to have a time devoted to sleep, but Rey figured that she could just tell her that she woke up and couldn't get back to sleep.

She thought about Finn’s run in with the Knights of Ren and it worried her that a group of Force-users would be able to outmatch the Resistance with only one Jedi Master and his wayward daughter. She wasn’t sure how they could fight that unless they could pick each one off one by one. And even with her defecting and Tora was dead that still left five of them plus their leaders, and she knew Kylo and Snoke would still be the greatest challenge.

There had to be a way that Rey could change the tides of battle.

And as much as she hated to admit it, the best way to do this would be for her to do it herself while their guard was down. A small part of her advised against it, blaming her sleep-deprivation from preventing her from having well-planned ideas, but she ignored her own advice.

Meditating on the Force, she hesitantly reached out for the person she was seeking. If Snoke could talk to her and see her in her dreams, surely Kylo could too. Perhaps, there was even a remnant left over from the familial bond they once shared. It was hard for her to think about it, but she was beginning to recall a time where she identified her master as her cousin; a time where she would childishly urge him to play with her when he was supposed to be studying and her delight when it never took a lot of effort for her to get him to do what she wanted.

“I need to talk with you,” she urged, though only through their connection.

He almost appeared to be in the room with her, but everything looked disoriented from his side. “Can you see my surroundings?” he asked.

Rey didn’t answer him.

“I can’t see yours,” he continued. “I’m surprised you would reach out to me.”

“Not out of want,” she insisted. Her cousin wasn’t wearing his mask again, revealing features that often reminded her of her uncle. The awareness made her sick to her stomach.

“Of course not.”

Wanting to make this brief out of fear of being discovered and out of disinterest to speak to him longer than she needed to, Rey decided to get it over with. “The dark side keeps calling me,” she began. “And as much as I hate to admit it, the light will not accept me.”

“You don’t belong with it,” Kylo explained. “Not someone with your talents.”

“Can you help me then?” she pleaded. “Tell the Supreme Leader that I know I was wrong? I can lead you to the Resistance.”

Kylo appeared interested now, but he scanned her face to confirm that her intentions were true. “I’m not sure if the Supreme Leader will ever forgive you,” he said. “But I will try. Giving up the location of the Resistance might be a step back into his good graces.”

“Then let me talk to him myself,” Rey insisted. “Make him see I deserve redemption. Even you have admitted to being torn between the light and darkness.”

A pause then, and something in Kylo’s face showed hesitance, if not sympathy towards her. He sighed.

“Fine,” he relented. “I’ll tell you how to find me.”

Finn awoke the next morning feeling refreshed and with a plan in his head. Rey was at his side when he opened his eyes, but although she looked exhausted and defeated, she insisted that she had gotten a few hours of sleep before waking up in the middle of the night. He knew she was lying, but he didn't want to argue with her.

Before they parted after breakfast, he admitted to himself that Rey was not acting like herself and seemed jumpier than usual. At first, he wanted to just blame sleep deprivation, but as the day went on and he saw her wandering almost aimlessly around the base, he wasn’t so sure about that anymore and made a mental note to himself to keep an eye on her.

But he needed to find someone today, and while he didn’t look forward to speaking with him, it was something he needed to try.

“Is Cardinal on this base?” he asked General Organa when he found her inspecting the mines.

She seemed a little surprised by his question. “He’s on the Raddus,” she told him. “But why?”

“I thought of something earlier,” he explained. “Might be a way to start to pick the First Order apart from the inside. But in order for it to work, I think I need his help.”

“Cardinal isn’t exactly interested in helping us destroy the First Order,” the general reminded him. “He’s here for his own interests.”

“I understand that,” Finn clarified. “But I think this would be in his interest.”

“Go on,” she urged.

Within the hour, he stared at a door to another private quarter on the Raddus. Finn knew any room that they gave Cardinal would be far smaller than anything a group of troops would have. No one was allowed to share a cell with him and the only people allowed in needed to be given clearance.

So Finn had to wait outside until a woman with dark skin and bleached hair entered the hallway.

“Finn, right?” She smiled, offering her hand. “Call me Vi. Special Investigations,” she said.

He found himself curious about her because he hadn’t met someone whose job description comprised of investigations. It might have been nice to talk to someone like her before he went to Canto Bight.

“I’m glad you could meet me here,” replied Finn.

“General Organa filled me in. I think your idea is brilliant.”

Feeling a slight blush arise to his cheeks, Finn stammered, “Well, not if Cardinal doesn’t agree.”

“Oh, I think he will,” announced Vi. “Sounds exactly like something he’d agree to. He and I have gotten to know each other pretty well the last couple of months.” Then she counted on her fingers. “Let’s see,” she hummed. “We got you, an ex-stormtrooper. Myself. Cardinal… Oh, and an old friend of Phasma’s…”

Finn furrowed his brows. “Wait a minute,” he realized. “Were you the person that convinced him to leave?”

She waved her hand. “Not really convinced him,” she clarified. “More like, Phasma made it clear that he wasn’t going to live long if he stuck around. I just happened to be there at the same time. So we’ve got four people to testify, and that’s not a bad number.”

“I’m pretty sure that the only testimony that will hold weight will be Cardinal’s,” Finn predicted.

“You haven’t met her old friend,” said Vi.

Pressing a couple of buttons on the keypad, Vi unlocked the door and knocked twice to let Cardinal know they were coming in. “Hopefully he’s not in a mood to be difficult,” she whispered.

The last time they met, Cardinal hadn’t exactly shown a sense of comradery to Finn. He made it known he judged Finn as a traitor. It was still odd to him that Cardinal would join up with the Resistance just to want to return to the First Order later, but perhaps he didn’t understand all the problems within its ranks. Finn just made another mental note to himself to not mention anything security-sensitive to the Resistance and to not take anything Cardinal had to say to him personally.

Like the last time, Cardinal was sitting quietly at a table, sipping at a cup of caf while he read whatever articles he found of interest to him on a datapad. He glanced up briefly before his face soured and he went back to reading, acting like he was trying to avoid acknowledging them.

“We’ve got a favor to ask,” started Vi.

“I don’t do favors,” he replied. “Negotiations first.”

“Oh, but I think you’ll be interested to hear this,” she insisted.

Huffing, he sat the datapad down. “And why do you think I would be interested in anything that has to do with him?” Cardinal looked pointedly at Finn.

Finn couldn’t keep himself quiet now, feeling his stomach warm from anger. “Because it might get rid of Phasma for you,” he snapped.

Pausing, Cardinal glanced at Finn with curiosity, like he was really looking at him for the first time. He pursed his lips before running a hand through his black hair.

“I’ll listen,” he agreed.

After standing in front of a droid all afternoon, Finn returned to his quarters only to find that General Organa put in a request for him and Rey to meet her in the Operations room. Sighing because he was hoping to squeeze a nap in, Finn dropped off what he didn’t need and went back into the mines.

Rey was almost half-asleep as she was hunched at the table in the center of the room. Her family glanced at her with concern and then went back to their business when Finn sat next to her and placed a hand on her back.

“After this,” he said, “let’s go to the medbay and get some sleeping aids.”

She frowned, but she didn’t argue.

To his surprise, they were not only joined by the key group in the chain of command but also Rose and Paige, who looked a little nervous, if not out-of-place. Finn wanted to go over to their side of the table to talk with them, but the meeting began first.

“Finn and Rey have provided us with information that may be a risky gambit, but one worth hearing,” General Organa began. To her left, Luke glanced at his daughter and her boyfriend with shock and uncertainty. Finn had not filled Luke in about his plan and he wasn’t sure if Rey had either. Then again, he had no idea what her plan entailed, come to think of it.

General Organa urged Rey to speak first.

“I did some searching through the Force,” she began. “And I know where Snoke is now.”

Luke arched an eyebrow while Leia calmly waited as Rey typed in a set of coordinates to bring up an enlarged star map up on the console. She pointed at a spot where the lines intersected.

“The Supremacy should be here,” she explained. “And on it will be the First Order’s leaders and some of their best technicians and officers.”

Admiral Ackbar stood up and inspected the map. “I’ve never heard of it,” he confessed.

“It’s their flagship,” Rey added. “A mega-class Star Destroyer.”

“It’s massive,” Finn voiced. “There were never any world-based settlements until Starkiller. Everyone was based on Star Destroyers. If the fleet is their homeworld, then the Supremacy is its capital.”

“And both of you have been on it?” asked Luke.

Rey sighed and didn’t look at him when she spoke. “It was where I was taken at first for my training.”

“And I was also based there as a cadet for a while,” added Finn.

This was where General Organa took the meeting over. “Finn has made a plan to bring down one of the First Order’s commanders. By tomorrow, we will have a vid spliced together and if we can get it shown on every screen in the First Order’s fleet, we might find ourselves watching a mutiny unfold.”

Glancing at each other, Finn realized that Rey was catching on to why they were there. She was clearly nervous, but he wondered if it had to do with the plan meaning going back to the First Order.

“So, I’m guessing this information goes hand-in-hand?” asked Luke.

“Exactly.”

“What do you have in mind?” General Statura spoke up.

Leia grinned. “Have a team get on board and get that vid broadcast. We’ve already got two volunteers that know how to handle the systems.”

Rose and Paige waved their hands shyly.

“And we’ve got two people who know the inner workings of-"

“No,” Luke spoke up.

No one said anything to argue with him. Furious, but in a calm way, he continued.

“Leia, I will not let a group of kids get killed over a scheme like this.”

“We’re adults-“ Rose started, but Paige stomped on her sister’s foot to quiet her.

Luke huffed. “Children,” he repeated. “And I can’t in good conscious let Finn and Rey go back to the First Order. Haven’t they done enough these last couple of days?”

“Dad-" Rey squeaked.

“I’ll go instead. If Snoke’s there, he and I have to settle something.”

Rey’s face reddened and finally, she stood up, looking more awake than she had in days. “Dad!” she shouted. “You’re not going. I’m going because I’m the only one that knows how Snoke thinks.”

“I already lost you once,” he shouted back. “I will not lose you again.”

She fell silent while she contemplated everything. Then, she found the courage to speak up again. “I know why you’re worried,” she stated. “But I have to be the one to do this. I know the layout of the place and if the Knights of Ren are there… well, I know them well enough to know how to fight back.” Then she gazed over everyone else in the room and said, “I’d rather go alone. It’s dangerous and just my being there will put everyone at risk.”

They came to a standstill, and no one dared to voice their opinion further. Finn was worried that this would cause an issue with his plan, after all, he just hoped to find someone to hack their systems long-range and put the vid out.

General Organa frowned as she tried to think of something. Sighing, she seemed to make a choice.

“I’ll think it over and let you know of my decision tonight. Everyone,” she sighed, “just get some rest.”

Chapter Text

“Well, as much as I hate to admit it, you look good in that officer’s uniform.”

Finn pulled at the cuffs to make sure they hadn’t folded in when he put the coat on. Once on board the Supremacy, he, Rey, Paige, and Rose found themselves securely hidden in the Star Destroyer’s laundry facilities where humans rarely went. The droids paid them no mind as they continued working, nor did they fuss when the team pulled freshly laundered clothes from the clean pile, hoping to find something that would fit each of them and let them blend in.

The clothing decided what their undercover roles would be. Finn’s black uniform signaled an officer at the beginning of his career, while Rose’s navy uniform made her a major. Paige found the uniform of a communications technician and believed this might make her job a little easier.

But Rey, however, had forgone a uniform in favor of her old Knight of Ren garb. She was not happy when she pulled it on, already finding she was favoring the clothing the Resistance issued her. She had to hold her breath when she first put the helmet on, suddenly feeling claustrophobic as it covered her face.

“Are you sure you don’t want to take the lightsaber?” she asked Finn. “Just in case.”

Again, Finn refused it. “It’s not like officers have them,” he pointed out. “Besides, you’ll need it if you meet with Snoke or Kylo.”

“I’m betting I will,” she mumbled. She wanted to get this over with. As much as she planned to not leave this Star Destroyer without someone ending up dead – preferably Snoke – Rey still didn't know how she would pull an escape off. She straightened Finn’s hat for him, as she had watched Paige do for Rose. “You look handsome,” she affirmed.

He winked at her, which almost caused her to blush. It wasn't a way he normally behaved; maybe he wanted to distract them from the task ahead of them. “I think I’ll get my hands on a Resistance uniform when I get back. Maybe earn the title along with it. Gotta keep my girlfriend happy, right?”

Paige, overhearing this, snorted.

Rey gently smacked his arm, trying to get him to be serious again.

“If you guys can’t find me and trouble starts-" she began.

“I’m not leaving without you. Paige and Rose can go, but I’m not leaving.”

Frowning, Rey argued, “Finn, don’t be an idiot. The Resistance needs you.”

He made no promises and Rey’s heart both warmed and hurt at the idea that his loyalty to her might mean he’d rather die here than return without her. He was far too good for her and she was wondering why she ever thought she deserved him.

Lifting her helmet up partly so he could kiss her on the lips, he mumbled against them, “Just try to get back, okay? So I don’t have to go looking for you.”

In the corner of her eye, Rey saw Rose whisper something in Paige’s ear, making her giggle.

“All right, you two,” said Paige. “Maybe it’s time to, you know, focus on the mission?”

With her helmet in place, Rey mentally tried to prepare herself for what was ahead. She waited for a moment as Finn coached the sisters on how to walk through the Star Destroyer and what to be on the lookout for. Rey tried not to think this might be the last time she ever saw Finn.

A sudden push at her ankles got her attention.

“Yeah, Beebee-ate, I’m all right,” she told the droid, almost forgetting he was there. Then she remembered something. “We can’t let you roll around like this,” she explained. “We need a disguise for you too.”

Everyone searched the facility for something to cover the droid with and when Finn held up a trash bin when no one else came up with a better option, BB-8 beeped with displeasure.

“You’re kidding, right?” groaned Rose.

“I don’t see you having a better idea,” Finn pointed out.

So the team of five headed out on their own, with Finn leading the way as Paige and Rose followed. Rey breathed deeply and counted seconds to give them a head start, hoping her presence would draw any unwanted attention from them on to her.

“Beebee-ate,” she commanded, “wait until I’m out of eyesight, then follow Finn. I know I will be spotted quickly, so I should be enough of a distraction for you to catch up to them safely.”

The droid hummed at her, and Rey crouched down to touch her hand to the dome of his head. “I hope so too,” she whispered.

She followed behind the group, hoping her hunch was correct.

At first, the lack of eye contact ingrained into the culture of the First Order served her well. Quietly, she could pass by unnoticed while she could see the backs of the heads of her teammates. Finn was leading the sisters toward Communications, but Rey knew they would be caught once they got to the department without something to distract everyone. That was where she would come in, she hoped.

As orderly as the corridors and the commons of the Star Destroyer were, Rey could easily see how chaotic it would become once all hell broke loose. She waited now for someone to recognize her and she wondered if the entire First Order knew of her and Finn’s defection. Likely, she thought, Finn’s disappearance had been covered up. Hux was far too proud of his stormtrooper program to admit there were flaws in the system.

It didn’t take long. One gasp and a point was all it took before a group of stormtroopers swarmed her.. She held them off by using the Force to push them away, hoping to not use the lightsaber except as a last resort. Rey knew Kylo had taken her saber spear from her, but she did not want to make it known she had her family’s lightsaber at her side.

Finn’s lightsaber, she reminded herself. It was meant for him.

She glanced his way, knowing he was worriedly watching the scene and wishing he could help her. Their eyes met.

Then she saw Finn say something to the Tico sisters before they nodded and hurried toward Communications. He would not leave her even if he couldn’t risk being caught himself.

Soon something worse came around.

The sound of plasma ignition shook Rey from her initial instinct to only throw the stormtroopers away from and she turned around distractedly to see a plasma axe in her line of sight. The man wielding that axe was hidden under layers of robes and a mask with a human face which made her feel uneasy.

“We thought you might come back.” He swung the axe at her, causing Rey to duck as the blade barely missed her head.

She couldn’t hide the lightsaber any longer.

The hum of the blue blade gave her a little more confidence in herself, but Rey quickly realized days of sleep deprivation made her wobbly on her feet and caused her connection with the Force to be weak. She couldn’t trust herself to let it guide her. While she wasn’t as physically strong as some Knights, Rey prided herself on how swift in battle she could be, finding that could be an advantage when her opponents hit heavy. So, she decided this might be the best thing for her now.

When he next swung at her, Rey slid out of the way and found she had the perfect angle to hit his ankles with the lightsaber. Her father might have called it a cheap shot once when she was still a young student, but she assumed that had more to do with trying to keep her from injuring her classmates than trying to keep her from using the technique in a real battle. She would do anything to avoid being chopped in half by the axe.

It was when Finn used his blaster to help her at the same time she remembered she was not alone. For the first time, they were fighting side by side.

The armor protected Aryu from the bulk of the blaster bolts and the lightsaber only made a slash through it, melting it. She would have to hit that exact spot again to get anywhere near the flesh and bone.

But when she saw the strap of the armor to the Knight’s chest plate, she got another idea.

She rolled out of the way from the axe, Rey raised the lightsaber and aimed to cut through the strap. Searing it, the chest plate slung off his shoulder, exposing his body to attack.

“Finn,” she shouted.

Thinking fast, she kicked her leg out just as Aryu moved again. Tripping, he fell to the floor before Rey held him halfway in midair with the Force.

Understanding what he needed to do, Finn aimed his blaster true. He fired a bolt that lodged itself in the spot where the chest plate was no longer covering, underneath Aryu’s shoulder. He tensed up from the impact and Rey let go of him, running the lightsaber diagonally through his chest at his exposed point. A convulsion, a gasp for breath. His body went slack.

The mask wobbled off of his face and slid forward. Glancing down, Rey gasped when she saw the face behind the mask for the first time. Wrinkled and prunish, the face was not human. She only knew the stories of Crawlites as shapeshifters, but never thought she had ever met one before. Yet this man had been an older peer of hers once, both under the tutelage of her father and then under Kylo. The entire time, she assumed he was human.

Rey looked away when Finn approached her. Readying his blaster for whatever was coming next, Finn scanned the crowd of oncoming stormtroopers.

“Quick thinking,” he praised.

“Thanks,” she panted. “Good aim. As always.”

But before they could try to get away from the crowd, the stormtroopers stood to the side, making way for two towering figures in masks.

“So good to have you back,” Captain Phasma purred.

Finn’s face probably reflected hers, especially when she saw the person behind Phasma was none other than Kylo himself. She knew she would encounter him sooner or later, but she had hoped that it would be alone and not with Finn at her side. Finn’s involvement complicated matters because while Rey didn’t care what happened to her anymore, she most certainly cared about what happened to him and if she wasn’t there to protect him, she couldn’t be sure he was safe.

She held the lightsaber close again, igniting it as a warning.

A chuckled could be heard coming from Kylo’s mask. Then, he unclipped his own lightaber from his belt and did the same thing. His message was clear to her. They outnumbered her, and he held the power here.

“The Supreme Leader is expecting you,” he declared. “Now, come quietly.”

Phasma cued for her troops to aim their blasters directly at Finn as Kylo waited on Rey to move. She made a quick glance for anything that would give them a chance to escape, but finding none, she realized the position she was in meant she was trapped. If she didn’t comply, Finn would lie dead on the floor. If she left, Finn might be led straight to his death. But maybe if she was quick, she could make sure they all got out alive.

Rey wanted no one to know she was crying under the mask. Suddenly, she felt stupid for even thinking this plan would work. She was going to get everyone killed all because she was desperate to get Snoke and Kylo out of her head.

“Stay alive,” she told Finn before she deactivated the lightsaber and walked towards her former master. She didn’t look back.

As Finn was marched to the hangar of the Supremacy, he began to think Rey had been hiding something from the Resistance from the get-go. For one, Kylo seemed to have expected her and two, Rey was so adamant about coming here alone that Finn was starting to get suspicious there was a reason for that.

Seeing Phasma again was a disappointment to Finn though he would admit he had doubts she would remain in the trash compactor on Starkiller as it imploded. She probably either possessed a comm link hidden somewhere in her armor of some sort of tool in her utility belt that would help her get out. That was one reason he had his idea to create a vid, and if she had turned out to be dead the whole time, at least he could further slander her name and add a sense of uncertainty among the chain of command.

Ordering her troops to stand him on a platform, Phasma then gestured for a couple of other stormtroopers to approach. Finn almost groaned out loud when he saw that Rose and Paige were being brought in to stand beside him.

“Not you too,” he whispered.

While Rose did not look so happy about her situation, it surprised him when Paige caught his eye and winked at him. It was almost like she knew something he did not.

He had a hunch of what was about to unfold and didn’t like the thought. When Phasma ordered two stormtroopers wearing helmets with a single black strip down their right side, he knew his hunch was correct. Executioner duty was never a favorite duty to any stormtrooper with an ounce of sanity, but everyone knew the concept was said to be a great honor was enforced as such. Saying anything resembling a refusal would likely get you into trouble. But Finn knew from personal experience and from the other stormtroopers that almost everyone dreaded to be drawn randomly for the duty each day and when they were unfortunate enough to be assigned to it, they waited each day out hoping they would not have to actually perform the duties. He had heard enough cries in the night from those that were forced to carry the weight in silence, terrified anyone could overhear how the duty affected them might turn them in for their weaknesses. Very few stormtroopers and officers had the hardened heart to do so.

The platform began to raise from the floor with the use of hydraulics. Stormtroopers gathered in neat lines and rows around them, watching the spectacle about to unfold. And at the head of the troops, Finn noticed General Hux watching on, curiously.

Phasma stood proudly at the center of the platform. “We have caught a special kind of intruder. The Resistance kind.” Finn knew if he could see her face, she was probably smirking.

Some troops below booed, reminding Finn of all those days in the mess hall where they were encouraged to bleat and howl at the slander of the New Republic. He wondered if he had met any of those onlookers in the past and what they would think if they knew that.

“And what do we do with Resistance scum?” she asked.

The roar from the crowd was deafening. They may have all been out of unison, but Finn knew there were cries for torture, for humiliation, and death.

“Blasters are too good for them,” she announced. “Let’s make it hurt.”

“And for you,” she hissed to Finn. “We have special punishments for traitors.”

He gulped, knowing exactly what that meant.

Reconditioning.

It surprised her that she hadn’t been subdued before being brought to the Supreme Leader. Earlier, Rey would have betted anything she would have been cuffed and rendered almost useless, though her lightsaber had been removed. Kylo was looking it over almost like a beloved pet and she waited to see if he would pocket it for himself.

“I loved you,” she spat at him. “I looked up to you.” She waited until he caught her eye. “I trusted you and you betrayed me.” Heat in her voice, Rey wanted to make her anger known. Guilt him, if she could. Everything that had happened to her, it was because he was willing to turn on the people who loved him for the dark side.

Kylo turned his head to stare blankly at the doors of the turbolift. He stiffened slightly.

“I did it to protect you,” he defended, gulping. “The Supreme Leader, he told me he would spare you if I brought you to him.”

She glared at him. “And look what he did to me.”

“I know when the moment comes, you will realize that it was the best choice.”

The turbolift came to a stop.

Without a word, Kylo ushered her out and into a corridor. Outside the door of the throne room, two crimson Praetorian guards kept watch. Eerily still, they reminded Rey of statues.

When she was presented to Snoke, helmetless and without a weapon, Rey knew the chance of her leaving here alive was slim. Had he really offered her a chance to redeem herself, Kylo would have allowed her to keep pretenses to preserve her dignity. She walked into a trap, and while a part of her had already acknowledged this possibility, she told herself that she would not die before taking someone with her.

“Well, well.” Snoke smirked from his place on his throne, surrounded by deep red walls and guards with equally red armor. It almost hurt Rey’s eyes to gaze at it all. “Sira Ren. It didn’t take you long to come back to us.” Though he was slouching in his spot, looking like the ancient Dwartii he was – yes, Rey knew that about him now with a little of her own research – his gaze was strong, piercing, and hungry.

Rey said nothing, not wanting to give her intentions – or her fear – away.

“So much strength, Snoke observed. “So much darkness. And light to meet it.” He glanced down at his former apprentice, who was glaring daggers at him. “I knew the day would come when one of you would have the courage to defy me, but I did not think this day would arrive so soon.”

She made a quick glance at Kylo, who stood silently by again. Briefly, she recalled another time when she stood at the foot of the throne in defiance, though she had been far younger and naïve then. Her cousin had also stood in that spot, proudly watching on as she was presented to his master.

This would not be the same. She would either leave this room dead or with someone else lying still on the floor behind her.

“Come closer, child.”

Snoke beckoned her forward, pulling her in with the Force to make her step up to the throne, though she tried to fight against it.

“You see my face, Sira?” Snoke asked, gesturing his hand to the scars. “Skywalker did this to me. Many years ago.” He studied her face. “I can see so much of him in you. He looked at me almost the same way on the day he killed my masters.”

Waiting, Rey stared at him squarely in the face.

“Perhaps it’s time to tell you the truth about your father.”

“I think I know the full story,” she retorted smartly. “One that you won’t tell. All this began when your masters murdered my mother and decided they wanted to rule the galaxy.”

Finn was restrained on the platform by two stormtroopers, forced to watch as the Tico sisters were lined up in the center of the platform and pushed on to their stomachs. While Paige kept a calm face, he knew that she was probably as frightened as Rose next to her, who was shaking with tears streaming down her face.

“On my command." Phasma held her arm out.

The two executioners stood in front of them, readying their weapons by holding them out for all the onlookers to see. There were a couple of cheers from the crowd. Finn noted the executioners lack of enthusiasm as they seemed to mechanically move through their duty. He wondered which stormtroopers were unlucky enough to have their call sign drawn today and be forced to wear the helmet with the black stripe. Certainly, Finn had gone through his few weeks in the ranks hoping each day he would not be drawn. The vibro-axes were unsettling to him, not for the humming noise when activated, but also how they killed their victims. He could not imagine the pain the executed must go through for the axes did not just behead them, they also emitted a nasty, powerful shock through the body. “Make it hurt,” was too simple of a statement for what the First Order planned for Rose and Paige.

But as the executioners were about to swing, the hangar’s lights dimmed, distracting everyone from what was supposed to happen.

The screens in the hangars suddenly flickered on, followed by a mass projection in the hangar's center, almost right where the platform was.

“Captain Phasma has had an… interesting life,” the voice of Vi Moradi sounded echoed. “She wasn’t raised into the ranks, but she has made questionable choices to prevent anyone from knowing her roots. Ever heard of a place called Parnassos? Yeah, I bet you haven’t. It’s a dead world. Uncivilized, you could say. That was where Phasma hails from – a tribe of warriors. Killed her own parents and her brother to ensure her own survival.”

Now, an image was being projected. A woman with silky black hair stood with a boy that had probably just entered his teenage years. Both pale in skin tone and too skinny to be healthy, Finn assumed the woman was probably a lot younger than he originally thought but her circumstances and experience aged her.

“Phasma was a… co-leader of the Scyre, you could say. With her brother. When Brendol Hux crash-landed here, she saw him as a means to escape. I couldn’t blame her for that. But she left me to die in a radiation field when she went with them. I was pregnant…” The woman turned to behold her son.

That must be the “old friend” Vi had been talking about.

Meanwhile, the troops below turned their heads to stare at Phasma, who was standing uncomfortably on the platform. No one moved while the video continued.

“It was Phasma that lowered the shields at Starkiller,” Finn’s voice and image projected, he sat in a corner of the mine on Crait, the red walls of earth behind him. “Didn’t even put up a fight. After that, we pushed her into the trash compactor.”

Now, the troops were speaking among themselves, some of them even pointing to Finn up on the platform in recognition. He wondered if any of them were having second thoughts about their commander.

Then, what he was waiting for finally came.

“I know that my disappearance has been covered up. Some of you might even think I’m dead,” Cardinal began, back in his stormtrooper gear in a dark room of the Raddus. “But I left the First Order on my own accord to protect it from itself.” He paused for a moment before he took a deep breath. “I once thought Phasma was an honorable soldier, just like the rest of us. But I’ve learned that isn’t true.” He named off a few call signs. “You might recognize these numbers among our fallen, some of them were even cadets that died in tragic accidents. The thing is, those incidents are covers and you need to know the reason they are dead is that Phasma decided that they knew too much about her life before the First Order or learned something about her that she didn’t want getting out.”

A few of the soldiers in the crowd screamed for justice for their friends. Finn wondered if they had known any of those call signs personally. Slip could have been added to the list, he thought bitterly, but Cardinal determined the best route was to use the call signs of those that he knew were dead directly because of Phasma. There was no proof, but Finn still believed she sent Slip out that day on Jakku knowing he would likely not come back alive, so obsessed with culling the herd of a weak link.

“But what people have failed to see is that Phasma has betrayed us all in one way or another. Brendol Hux didn’t die of a disease, as much as it would be liked to be believed. No, Phasma used a toxic beetle from her homeworld to make his death untraceable. The toxin disintegrated his organs from the inside out. He died in a bacta tank.”

Phasma readied her blaster, looking around to see if anyone dared to make a move against her. Even the executioners were no longer interested in Rose or Paige, no matter how much Phasma tried to get them to do their jobs.

“Get back to your posts,” she shouted. “All of you.” Phasma glanced down at the hangar floor where some of the troops were approaching the platform and leaving the hangar with disgust.

Her shouts for order went ignored.

“Murderer,” one stormtrooper on the ground screamed.

“Child killer,” hissed one of the executioners, to Finn’s shock.

He gazed over at the Tico sisters, who stood up on their feet. Paige appeared content with the outcome of this. The vid feed went dead – cut out, probably – but it had done the damage that was intended. Finn wondered if the feed went farther than the Supremacy and if so, how was the rest of the fleet reacting to this?

Then, he was shaken out of his thoughts when he heard Rose cry, “Beebee-ate, now!”

Around them, a series of explosions went off and Finn searched around for the source, spotting a walker aiming for anything that looked important to the internal structure of the Star Destroyer.

Feeling the stunned stormtroopers loosen their grip on him, Finn shook them off, pushing one off the platform before he reached down to grab a blaster that had been dropped and used the butt of it like a club to swing at the other one. Glancing around, he noticed the executioners fell off the platform along with Paige, though they were no longer interested in going after her. A slight shake of the platform as it lowered, though it was now slanted at an angle, told him the hydraulic system had been damaged.

“Finn, c’mon.” Rose beckoned him to her, peering over the ledge and realizing the platform had been lowered enough for them to jump down safely. The chaos that the hangar erupted into was giving them a chance to escape, the smoke providing them with enough cover to move away unseen.

The walker shot at a series of pipes in the ceiling, which caused him to lose his footing. He lost his grip on the blaster and watched as it slid off the platform and fell to the floor.

But as Rose jumped off the platform, Finn noticed a sheen of chrome armor right behind him.

“Finn!” shouted Paige.

He dodged a blaster bolt and looked over his shoulder to see Phasma aiming at him. Without a weapon, Finn felt like he was cornered. If he jumped, she could have an open shot at him. Frantically searching around the platform for anything in the debris that lay at his feet, he noticed one of the executioners’ axes lay on the platform next to him and he lunged to grab it.

Finn intended to take a swipe at her neck but she stopped him by holding up her blaster to take the attack for her. As the weapon vibrated at the impact, it caved in from its center and Phamsa shouted in frustration as she tossed the useless halves of blaster to the side. Finn saw this as an opportunity to strike her again, but before he could reach her, Phasma reached into her utility belt for a small metal rod she pulled on to make it expand into a simple, narrow spear. She pointed it at him.

“You were never anything more than a bug in the system,” she spat.

“Really? After all you’ve done?” Finn almost wanted to laugh. “I think the real bug here is you.” There was no way that this revelation was going to pass by the ranks now, not when so many stormtroopers left the hangar after hearing the contents of the vid feed.

“Let’s go!” he yelled, swinging at her again.

As their weapons made contact with one another, Finn searched desperately to find a weak spot in Phasma. The problem was she had taught him almost everything he knew, and she likely had a few tricks of her own up her armor. He needed to find her weak point, but Phasma was such a skilled fighter that it seemed she had none.

“You were always disobedient,” she snarled. “Disrespectful. Your emotions make you weak.”

Just as she was about to send a killing blow his way, the sound of blasters being prepped for use stopped her in her tracks. She glanced down the platform and saw four blasters were being aimed at her. Two held by Rose and Paige, but the other two held by the executioners.

Growling, she looked around the platform for an escape. “You were always scum,” she said, coldly.

“Resistance scum,” Finn replied.

The floor shook again before the platform collapsed. Knowing he had to make a jump for it, Finn threw himself to safety off the platform.

A couple of blaster bolts flew behind him, catching his attention while he tried to figure out if anyone was shooting at him or at someone else.

“Don’t let her-" one executioner shouted from under his mask.

Finn saw just in time as Phasma ran into the nearest untethered TIE fighter and jumped into the pilot’s seat. Open to escape, she started its engines before drifting into space and entering hyperspeed almost immediately after.

“Coward!” the other executioner shouted.

But there was nothing anyone could do as Phasma disappeared into the darkness of deep space. Silently, all five of them stood watching as the hangar of the Supremacy burned around them.

“Young fool,” Snoke chuckled.

As Snoke pushed her body to the floor using the Force, Rey cursed herself for not seeing this coming. They would never offer her forgiveness after she humiliated the First Order. No, there hadn't been any plan to offer her a spot back. They had lured her here so they could kill her, and she wouldn't be given the opening to fight.

And once again, her cousin stood and watched the whole thing unfold, doing nothing and saying nothing. Rey felt sick with herself for ever loving him the way she did when she was a child. Snoke saw an opportunity to have two Force-users of Skywalker blood at his disposal and used one to coax the other to his side.

Snoke smirked, knowing what she was thinking. “So, you’re figuring it out.” She gasped because now he must have been probing her mind and she didn’t even realize it. “Aren’t you clever? Yes, I saw the connection between the two of you and tried to use that. But you, Sira, are so very stubborn. Even when I bridged your minds – our minds - you resisted.”

If she wasn’t held still and felt like an invisible hand was squeezing her neck, she would have said something snarky at him.

“And now, you will give me Skywalker and the Resistance.”

There was a tug at her mind, one she recognized all too well. Like when Kylo invaded her head, Snoke was trying to do the same now, intending to search her memory for a location. She tried to fight him off like she did back on Starkiller, but she found her mind was already tired and that likely their taunting of her in her head the last couple of days had a purpose to wear her down so she could not resist anymore.

But then, there was a shot of pain that traveled down her body, causing her to freeze up at the familiarity. Her mind might not have been able to remember, but her body did.

Snoke intended to kill her after he got what he wanted and he wanted to watch Rey stuffer every step of the way.

It didn’t take long for him to find something of use to him, but Rey had one last trick up her sleeve as she allowed him to see the island. She wanted him to believe Luke was still there, abandoning his family and the galaxy when it needed him the most.

“Well, well,” Snoke purred. “How the mighty have fallen.”

“You underestimate him,” she warned.

A laugh, short and unamused, echoed throughout the throne room. “Have I?” he asked. “I can see your past and your future, Sira, and it doesn’t look so good for you. Your own father has decided that you are a lost cause and you are no Jedi.” Snoke tutted. “And you could have been so great. Such a disappointment and a waste.”

More pain. Increasing by the tenfold as each moment passed. For what seemed like an eternity to her, Rey guessed only minutes had gone by. She managed to flick her eyes to the other person standing in the room, feeling disgusted with him as he stood by and watched again. Not that she expected anything more from him.

You wait, she projected to him, hoping he would hear her loud and clear just as she had heard him the last couple of days. One day, you will outlive your usefulness to him and you will be the one here.

She thought she saw him shift in his spot uncomfortably. Good, she wanted him to hear.

The pain felt like it was dulling, but she believed this had nothing to do with Snoke lessening his hold on her. It felt more like what she could recall on the days when he refused her food when he kept her in confinement. At first, the ache of hunger was loud and ripped through her stomach until it gave way to acceptance that she would not be eating that day. After, the aches dulled though her body had continually grown weaker until at last, a guard would bring her a packet of protein rations. As nasty as those things were, starvation was not picky about what she was putting into her mouth.

But now there was an added ache in her mind, like someone hit her head against a wall over and over and left bruises behind. She felt wet above her upper lip and wondered if this was causing her to bleed from her nose. It wouldn’t have been the first time.

Yet, she managed to break through his hold long enough to say one more thing. “I hate you,” she gasped.

Snoke stopped inflicting pain on her for a moment before he leaned his head back to laugh. “Such spunk,” he mused as he let his grasp on her go. “Perhaps I underestimated you, Sira. Of the two of you, I thought Kylo would be the one to defy me first, yet here he is, still standing loyally at my side.”

He beckoned his apprentice forward. Kylo kneeled at the foot of the throne.

“My faith in you may be restored yet,” Snoke said. “Give her back her lightsaber.”

At first, Kylo hesitated because it seemed like he didn’t quite understand the order, but he relented and gave Rey her weapon.

“And now the two of you shall settle what I have wondered for a while: who will be victorious, the heir of Darth Vader or the daughter of Luke Skywalker?”

Rey stared Snoke in the eyes as she ignited the lightsaber to life. Tired as she was, she felt like she had just enough strength to try to fight her cousin back. Even if it killed her, she would try to take him with her. Snoke was old and not as strong as he once was, someone else – her father perhaps – could finish the job.

Kylo ignited his own lightsaber and twirled it in a circle as he sized Rey up and waited to see if she would make the first move. Like the last time they battled, when she did not, Kylo rushed at her. Rey reached out with the Force and trusted her instincts, but she found once again that her connection with it was weak and this worried her. As Kylo swung his weapon to strike her, Rey used the lightsaber to block the attack and pivoted to try to get an upper hand.

Even with his face hidden by his mask, she knew their eyes met for a moment. Rey met him again with her lightsaber, their weapons interlocking near their emitters. She growled as she tried to push his weapon away, but he twisted his grip and made her own arm twist uncomfortably.

The crossguard of his weapon hit her right shoulder, reminding her of Finn and the injury he sustained when he faced Kylo the last time. The shoulder seared with pain, but tried to push off the attack to preventing it from causing further damage. But now with the way Kylo was positioned, his weapon was pointed so that the other crossguard only had to be angled slightly to hit her neck.

“You seemtired, Sira.” Kylo smirked. “Have you been having problems sleeping again?”

And as angry and tired as she was, even the Force could not have the same impact as a hard kick to the shins. As Kylo howled in pain and stumbled away, she found herself free to move around again and tightened her grip on the lightsaber.

Snoke snarled and slammed his fist against the throne’s arm.

When Kylo approached her again, she swung the lightsaber in a circular motion, mirroring him – he had taught her a lot of what she knew. She struck as his blade came towards her, but missed dodging it a second time.

Upon contact with her arm, she yelled out in pain.

Kylo returned the favor by kicking her in the ankles to force her to the floor. He was excited, and he didn’t try to hide it in the Force. With his lightsaber now pointed fully at her neck, Rey knew she had lost and closed her eyes, waiting for the end.

But it never came.

“What are you waiting for?” shouted Snoke. “End her!”

Yet Ren made no move still until he stared down at the lightsaber in Rey’s hand and forcibly grabbed it from her. At first, she assumed he would strike her down with it, ending her life and her father’s legacy along with her. Then, she wondered if he would pocket it for himself, having been so interested in it before.

When he ignited the saber again and hovered it in the air with the Force, Rey braced herself again.

No strike came to her, but with her eyes closed, she heard the distant hum of it along with impact with something solid, followed by a groan.

Opening her eyes, she saw that the lightsaber was no longer in the general area of her and her cousin. Searching the room, she came to a standstill as she saw the lightsaber firmly impaled into the stomach of the Supreme Leader who looked as shocked as she did.

The lightsaber tilted, further opening the wound in Snoke’s stomach. He took one last gasp of air and slumped forward. The lightsaber deactivated and sat neatly in his lap.

Rey gaped at Kylo as he approached the throne and four of the red Praetorian guards charged at him. With little effort, he dispatched them by forcing their own weapons against them, cutting them through with their whips and spears. Uninterested in their bodies and they fell to the floor, he stood at the throne and pushed Snoke out of it, causing it to slide to the floor with a sickening slack in his limbs.

Kylo held the lightsaber in his hands before placing it on the arm of the throne and taking his seat.

“Now then,” he said. “We’re finally alone.”

“I-" Rey began, stammering. “Ben, what did you do?” She hadn’t meant to use her cousin’s name, long abandoned and no longer deserved by the man who sat on the throne, but it just came out.

He put a hand to his face and removed the mask, setting it down next to the lightsaber. For the first time since she arrived on the Supremacy, Rey saw the human behind the mask looking straight at her.

“You were right, Rey,” he said, no longer trying to use her alias. “Snoke was no longer an ally to me. Likely, he would have killed me soon, once you weren’t around. So I realized it was time for the apprentice to overtake the master.”

It sounded like he was referring to the old Sith rule of only a single master and apprentice duo existing at any given time, with one of them eventually killing the other in a grasp for power. But the Knights of Ren were not Sith, just as the First Order was not the Empire. But a small part of her mind wondered if Kylo was no longer interested in either.

“Then you can end all this,” she insisted.

Smiling, he told her, “Oh, I intend to. As we speak, our spies are searching the galaxy over for the Resistance and all of their holdings.”

Even though she already knew they were not on the same side, this only confirmed it.

“Rey,” he pleaded. “Help me. You and I, we’re stronger together. We’re family and this-" he waved his hand out at the large viewport in the room, looking out to space and all the stars and worlds that glimmered in the darkness. “This is our birthright. We can finish what our grandfather started.”

“I’m pretty sure Anakin Skywalker wouldn’t have had this in mind,” she said.

Kylo ignored her and continued. “The galaxy is a mess. Unorderly. The New Republic could not truly unify it and fell back to its old ways of corruption within a few decades. It was going to fall anyway, even before Starkiller took care of it.”

“You mean exterminated it,” she muttered.

“It was necessary. And now that the First Order reigns supreme, we can bring true order to the galaxy. Democracy is just an illusion. So many of those worlds are incapable of making the right choices for themselves. The First Order will make it easier for them.”

Then he stood up and approached her as she tried to back away. “Rey, join me. Together we can rule the galaxy.”

Once, she might have been tempted to under the guise she would no longer be ruled under Snoke, there even were times where she had imagined herself in Kylo’s place, where sitting on that throne. She sensed Snoke foresaw this and found the two of them to be a potential burden later on, hence why now he seemed more interested in killing them than letting the Force do its work. Already, this reminded her too much of the image the cave on Ach-To showed her. If tempted, would she kill Kylo to have the throne to herself? Give herself back to the dark side? She already tried so hard to get herself on the path to light.

The problem was now she was not so sure of what she would and wouldn’t do.

Yet when her cousin outstretched his arm, urging her to take his hand, she backed away again.

“There was once a time I might have wanted to join you,” she confessed. “But now that I remember how I came to be with the First Order and how you took me away from my family, I can’t forgive you for that.” She shook her head. “Find someone else.”

Reaching out to the Force to retrieve the lightsaber, she ran for it. Almost like he was expecting this, Kylo stood up, igniting his lightsaber and getting ready to give chase. Rey was exhausted from their last fight and she was not sure if she had to strength to fight him a second time.

“Running away, again?” he said as he approached her, calmly, but with his saber raised and pointed at her. His lack of anger was strangely uncharacteristic of him, and that terrified her all the more. “You are such a disappointment, Rey. You have always been.”

She kept backing away, trying to keep distance between them.

“Without me, you would have been nothing. You are nothing. You always will be nothing.”

He poised himself to lunge after her.

“Really, Ben?” a voice came from behind them. “A disappointment? Have you looked in the mirror lately?”

With a startle, Kylo turned to glance behind him while Rey made a quick glance to see who else was here. Her eyes darted to the doors, planning to make a run for it, when she glimpsed of a figure she was shocked to see here.

Her father stood in the center of the throne room, clean-shaven, unlike the last time she saw him, and angry. She almost couldn’t believe it herself that he was here.

From the sound he was making, Kylo couldn’t either.

“How-?” he began, trying to regain his composure. “Was this all a plan to get you here? Did you come to redeem me like you did with my grandfather?”

“No,” Luke’s answer was simple. “You seem to not understand what that means. You obviously don’t want that.”

Kylo pointed his saber in Luke’s direction. It crackled dangerously as its owner snarled.

And Luke did the same with his, a brilliant green blade emitting from the hilt. The two men regarded each other, sizing each other up.

“You never did learn how to control your temper,” observed Luke. “I’m disappointed in you, Ben.”

He glanced over at Rey with a stern look, then his eyes flickered to the door, reminding her to run. She didn’t want to leave her father alone with Kylo, but she didn’t feel like she would have another chance to get out either. And she had people to find and get home.

Then, screaming with his rage, Kylo raised his lightsaber high before striking straight through his uncle. Rey paused for a moment as she passed outside the doorway, watching as her father laughed at him before vanishing, leaving Kylo looking like he met a ghost.

Continuing to make her escape, there was no time to process what happened. Soon, Kylo would get wind of her escape and go after her.

On her way out, she ran into someone who she was shocked to see. General Hux, pale-faced and frantic, exited the turbolift and stepped into the corridor.

Rey slid to a stop. “I-" she stuttered. “You-"

“I knew that you would return one day.”

“Not to stay,” she explained. Actually, she was surprised Hux seemed to know who she was. He had not seen her without her mask before. “Kylo-"

Hux searched her face and then seemed to come to some sort of realization. “The Supreme Leader is dead, isn’t he?”

She nodded.

Sighing, Hux began to make his walk to the throne room. “The Supremacy is damaged beyond repair,” he explained. “You need to get out of here.” He hesitated for a moment before continuing. “Your friend, FN-2187, has caused an uproar among my men. I bet he’s looking for you right now.” Hux definitely did not seem happy about this.

Confused by his reaction – she expected he would definitely call guards in to subdue her – she nodded to say she understood his orders, but asked, “Why are you helping me?”

“Snoke had been a good leader when we were still in the galactic wilds,” he explained. “But he was not the leader that we needed anymore. And Kylo is not that leader either. We need someone to direct the galaxy’s industries, nurture their innovations, and command the respect of its citizens.”

“So then, you?” Rey smirked.

He didn’t deny it.

“We have a common enemy now, I think,” Hux continued. “We may have use for each other yet. I was going to approach you about this, but you up a defected on me, traitor.” Rey could not understand the smile on his face, but she realized he was right. No, she couldn’t trust him enough to tell him anything about the Resistance, but if they could agree on focusing their attention on Kylo for the time being, it might prove to be an advantage.

They could fight each other again later.

“Well, lucky for you, I just happened to be here.” Rey grinned. “I’ll be in touch.”

That strange smile again. “I’ll be waiting.”

Chapter Text

Rey was almost where they had left their shuttle before she promptly ran into Finn, Rose and Paige. The three of them were still in their First Order disguises though Paige lost her technician hat and her hair was a mess and Finn was carrying a blaster now.

Two unfamiliar faces were tailing them. Helmets off, Rey noted they were two young men in stormtrooper gear, though they carried no weapons. One of the men caught Rey’s attention with a small scar that streaked down his face. The skin here was lighter compared to the rest of his body.

She embraced Finn quickly before the pain in her arm and shoulder made her back away. Paige was the first one to notice her wounds.

“You’re bleeding,” she gasped.

“It’s nothing,” Rey tried to deny, but Finn glared at her as he moved the singed piece of black cloth away from her shoulder and frowned.

“Is this-?”

She nodded, knowing what he was thinking.

“We need to get bacta on that,” he finished. Finn would know the extent of lightsaber wounds far better than anyone else standing here. She thought of how she recalled reading somewhere that not only did lightsabers cauterized wounds, they also continued to burn nerves and muscle until treated properly. She wondered how much damage had already been done.

Nodding again, she turned her attention to the two strangers. “And these are?”

The man with the scar on his face went first. “Zeroes,” he introduced himself. “Eight-seven and I are… old friends.”

Rey recalled Finn telling her about this squadmate of his. While he wasn’t close to Zeroes, he got along with him well enough to consider him almost a friend. She wondered if Finn’s defection was known in the ranks after all or if Zeroes figured it out and kept it to himself.

The other man, tall but slenderer than the First Order usually desired spoke up this time. “Squad called me Nerf,” he laughed.

Rose knitted her brows together. “As in nerf herder?” she asked.

He laughed again. “Something like that,” he admitted. “Can’t say I’m the brightest person in the room.”

Rey glanced between the two men. “So, I’m guessing this means you two are going with us?” She looked at them before glancing at her friends.

“Phasma abandoned ship and some of the stormtroopers are up in arms,” said Finn.

“We were set to be executioners for them,” Zeroes confessed. “And well, I’d rather not be called in for interrogation later, if you know what I mean.”

She did, though she was not happy about the idea of her friends almost being executed. Not sure how to speak to the two stormtroopers now, Rey opted to be silent and listen.

Continuing their path to the shuttle again, the floor trembled under them, though faintly.

Rose's eyes were wide with fright. “I think those explosions are starting a chain reaction in the engine,” she commented. Then she launched a glare at BB-8. “You’re terrifying, you know? Does Poe know his partner is a murder droid?”

BB-8 squawked indignantly at Rose in protest.

“Snoke?” Finn whispered.

But Rey shook her head. “I’ll tell you later. There's a lot to say.”

“Yeah, I think you do,” his tone of voice was a warning and Rey gulped, wondering if he figured out her original intent to be here. Guilt swelled in her as she realized not only had the idea been stupid, but she lied to Finn and brought back nothing to show for it. Snoke might have been dead, but Kylo was still around and an even bigger threat than before.

She made a list of names of who she needed to talk to when she returned to the Resistance and in what order. Uncertain of who might be worse to speak with, Finn or her father, dread sat in the pit of her stomach.

“We’ll probably keep you in confinement for a while, until the Resistance trusts you,” Paige explained to the defectors.

Zeroes and Nerf looked at each other. “I’m not sure if we want to join the Resistance,” Zeroes spoke up.

“I don’t want to keep fighting,” Nerf confessed. “I’ve already killed too many people.” He choked and stuttered before hitting his fist into his chest a few times to calm himself down.

“General Organa will honor that,” Finn assured them.

“But you joined,” Zeroes pointed out.

Shrugging his shoulders, Finn replied, “Not exactly sure when, but I guess I did. The Resistance has been good to me and Rey since we found them. And they won’t force you into anything. They have a few other defectors in voluntary captivity.” He didn’t mention Cardinal by name, not when he still wasn’t sure where his true allegiance lay. It was likely the Resistance would want to keep Zeroes and Nerf away from him no matter what they decided.

“You were a stormtrooper?” Zeroes questioned Rey, who continued walking and refused to look at him. “A technician?”

“Yeah,” she replied, obviously uncomfortable with the questions. He kept talking to her, but Rey gave no extra details. She was shocked that her clothing hadn’t given her away, though without the mask, her garb wasn’t attention-grabbing.

Relieved to be on the shuttle, she slumped into the nearest seat, exhausted and hoping this would all be over soon. Finn hovered close by, checking on everyone and trying to treat their injuries but always keeping an eye on her. He only sat down when Paige asked him to when they were about to hit lightspeed.

Given the all-clear, Finn tapped Rey’s good shoulder and nodded in the cargo bay's direction. She understood he wanted to be alone with her for a while and though she was exhausted, Rey determined it would be better to get talking to him over with.

There were seats in the cargo bay that could be folded up to stay out of the way. Really, they were there in case of an emergency or if the shuttle hit turbulence. Finn put the seats down and sat, patting his leg so Rey knew that he wanted her close. She stretched out on the other two seats, placing her head in his lap as he carded his fingers through her messy, sweaty hair.

“What happened?” he asked, after a moment.

She paused, before reaching down to unclip the lightsaber from her belt. “Kylo killed Snoke,” she told him as she held the lightsaber out to him. "And my father knows because he did something in the Force to appear in the throne room and scare Kylo so I could escape." She rambled hysterically as she tried to push the lightsaber into Finn's hands.

He took it absent-mindedly. “Wait…” he took a moment to think about it. “So is Kylo-?”

“Not sure,” said Rey. “Is Supreme Leader a title that can be forcefully taken? He seemed to think so.”

Finn shrugged. “Dunno. Then again, I used to think Snoke wasn’t more than a myth.” He looked down at the lightsaber in his hands. “What’s this for?”

“It’s yours,” she urged.

“But you don’t have one.”

She sighed and pressed her nose against his leg. “I’m not sure I want to be a Jedi,” she told him.

He laughed. “But you told me you aren’t one.” He hummed. “The dark side?”

“I’m not that either, really. I couldn’t even harness my hate for Snoke to help me kill him.” She paused and Finn could feel a spot of wetness against the material of his pants where Rey buried her face.

“You’re sleep-deprived and this was a terrible idea,” Finn pointed out with a bite in his voice. “But I think I see your point.” He furrowed his brows. “Is there… something in between?”

“What do you mean?”

“Not a Jedi but not of the dark side. Not light but not dark. Is there something like that?”

Trying to recall what she knew of the history of Force-users, she replied. “I think there has been and there have been plenty of unaffiliated Force-users before.” She wondered what her father would think of it. He seemed to have accepted that Rey would not be returning to the light soon, even if she wanted to. But after that stunt, would her father turn her away? She betrayed his trust.

She wanted to sleep, but there was something else she needed to tell Finn.

“I didn’t want you to come on this mission with me – you, Rose, and Paige – because I thought I would kill Snoke or Kylo and die.”

Finn quit stroking her hair. “I thought so,” he said. “And I’m not happy with you. What were you thinking?”

“That Snoke would not let me sleep until I either showed him where the Resistance was or I offed myself. He bridged our minds. Kylo’s and mine, and his. They were entangled together.”

“And now that he’s dead, is the connection broken?”

That was a good point and Rey still didn’t trust herself to not accidentally reveal anything to Kylo if he was watching. She stopped for a moment and searched her own mind, finding the pressure that had been against her brain no longer felt like it was there. She tried finding Kylo in the Force, the way she reached out to him in the throne room and found no trace of him.

“I think it is.”

And for the first time in days, she felt relief lift in her chest.

Though he knew what to expect upon entering the throne room, nothing could prepare Hux for the sight of a dead Supreme Leader Snoke on the ground while Kylo lay sprawled on the floor next to him. Hux wanted to roll his eyes at Kylo’s antics, knowing this was all for an added dramatic flair.

But what made him clench his jaw in frustration was that this unexpected turn of events had foiled all of his best laid plans and now he needed to rethink them through, analyzing every potential gain and shortfall Snoke’s death could bring. The First Order was strong, but as it was, it was inefficient with too many variables clashing with his ambitions. While Snoke had not exactly been the best in terms of leadership, he was smart enough to give Hux room to make his own choices, knowing the general was more knowledgeable than he was in certain subjects. And, added on top of everything else, Hux was growing frustrated with the senior leadership. The Empire fell because of multiple weaknesses in its own internal structures; with the way some of the older generations behaved, they were opening the First Order to those same weaknesses.

A rumble beneath his feet reminded him why he was here.

He knew what Kylo was up to and it was of utmost importance that Hux make sure he did not get in the way. Hux knew what conspired here; the girl made it clear and at least seemed to be willing to form some sort of alliance with him, even a weakly forged one. When Kylo was out of the picture, they could be enemies again.

As Kylo feigned coming to, Hux swallowed his pride, knowing he had to play along for now. Maybe the right opportunity would come up sooner than later.

“What happened?” he inquired, trying to appear curious.

Kylo shook his head and lifted himself off the floor, brushing off invisible dirt from his clothing.

“Sira Ren returned to us, claiming she wanted forgiveness. She lied to us. And now, the Supreme Leader is dead.”

Hux waited to see what Kylo would do next and when the man did nothing but stare at him in wait of a response, he decided to ask the question he was dreading.

“But without the Supreme Leader, who will we-"

“The title will fall to me,” Kylo interrupted him. “It’s what the Supreme Leader would have wanted.”

Hux was growing annoyed with this game quickly and he had to hold back the urge to roll his eyes again. The game was changing and the two were at odds with each other. While Hux had never been under the impression that Kylo played terror to his advantage, he was not sure if fear alone would keep everyone in the First Order under his command. Hux, at least, had earned that respect and was confident Kylo could not defeat an entire army on his own if push came to shove.

But even with Sira gone, there were still four Knights of Ren loyal to Kylo and they were also a problem to take account for. And now, to make matters worse, several stormtroopers were questioning their places, causing an uproar as an evacuation attempt was being made. Hux was not sure if he would find himself with a smaller number of soldiers or if he would have numerous troops going to reconditioning.

FN-2187 certainly turned out to be more of a problem than anyone would have imagined.

Kylo soundlessly walked to the throne and turned to sit down. While the gesture did not please Hux, he reminded himself that catering to Kylo for now might turn in his favor. Even if it made him angry, he could not fight a Force-user such as the man on the throne on his own and expect to win. He’d come back with an army later.

Hux knelt to the floor, and though his words were empty to him, he knew Kylo would not realize this yet.

“Long live the Supreme Leader.”

Rey’s family, along with Poe Dameron, were waiting for the group’s return. The moment they touched down on Crait, Rey glanced out the viewport to see her father with a grim look on his face.

The stormtrooper defectors grew nervous, worried about what might happen now they were at the mercy of the Resistance. Nerf began to pace the aisle of the shuttle, almost on the verge of a breakdown.

“Zeroes, Nerf,” Paige tried to calm them down. “I promise, nothing will happen to you. We’re not like the First Order.”

“You’ll see,” Finn added, hoping his input would hold to them better.

And true to their word, there were greeted without hostilities. Luke even pulled Finn into a tight hug after he embraced his daughter and panicked over the state of her arm and shoulders. Rey was rushed to the medbay to get bacta on to her shoulder by Han, leaving Finn, Paige, and Rose alone to talk to the last Jedi and the General of the Resistance.

“Well done, you three,” the general congratulated them. “I trust none of you are hurt?”

“Just a few cuts, General, but nothing too bad,” Rose assured her.

Still, General Organa studied them with concern. “Maybe check in with Dr. Kalonia later.”

Finn planned on stopping in anyway, since Rey was there. He honestly hoped the doctor would see how poor Rey’s health was and give her something to sleep. A Rey that was out like a light for a day or two was far better than a moody and sleep-deprived Rey.

But her father and aunt, while pleased with how the three standing with them had done their work, were not happy with Rey.

“What Rey did was stupid,” Luke growled. "All of you could have been killed for what she did."

Rose and Paige looked to each other in shock. They knew that the plan to put the vid on the air was dangerous, but they had no idea what Rey had planned and that it put them into an even more dangerous situation. They had almost died for it.

Despite that, it seemed none of them wanted to rat her out, but their silence spoke volumes. When the general lifted her brow in a way that made Finn nervous and Poe shot him a look that told him to blab, he found himself trying to defend Rey:

“She’s not well-”

“Don’t make excuses for her,” snapped Leia.

Finn chose not to speak anymore. Honestly, after the last couple of days, he just wanted to sleep too and maybe rethink this Resistance stuff. With a sigh, Luke slipped away from the group and headed inside the base. Finn had no doubts of where he was heading.

But first, he had a few people to introduce to each other.

He cleared his throat. “General Organa, this is Zeroes and Nerf. Zeroes was an old squadmate of mine.”

“More defectors, Finn?” Leia grinned.

“You could say that,” said Zeroes. “We’re not into the idea of joining another army,” he explained. “But we don’t want to cause trouble and we don’t want the First Order to find us.”

She nodded. “I think we can help you,” she assured him. “And we don’t mind if you don’t want to join us. Now that we understand where the First Order gets those troops, we couldn’t force you to keep fighting.”

Poe got closer. “Ma’am, if you don’t mind,” he began, “I could help get these two settled.”

“I appreciate that, Poe.” She turned to the defectors. “Boys, this is Commander Poe Dameron. He’ll get you sorted out and I trust that he’ll answer any questions he can.” Then, she stared at Poe. “Our quartermaster will know what to do,” she told him.

“I’ll visit you as often as I can,” Finn shouted at them. He knew that now being an active member of the Resistance meant he would probably keep a busy schedule, but he wanted to personally make sure any stormtroopers that found their way to them was looked after the way he would have wanted. Finn had the extra support for being the boyfriend of General Organa’s niece; had he come here alone, he might not have been given the same amount of attention.

He would see they were treated fairly and comfortably. Not that he had any doubts.

When Finn arrived to the medbay, Rey’s arm already was bandaged and her shirt was partially slipped off so a bacta patch could be applied to her shoulder.

“You might wanna wait a few minutes,” Han warned, sitting in the corridor of the Raddus outside the spare room that had been quickly turned into a medical facility. “Luke’s having a hard time with her and Rey’s having a hard enough time as it is.”

“I’m not sure I’ll able to ever understand what she was thinking,” Finn confessed.

“Sometimes, you’ll find that you never will but you’ll love her anyway.” Han sounded like he was speaking from experience. Come to think of it, Finn recalled hearing stories of a certain rebellious and reckless princess in her youth. Maybe she and Rey had a lot in common in that regard.

A couple of minutes later, Luke left the medbay. He sighed and patted Finn on the shoulder, as if silently wishing him well. Luke looked exhausted, but Finn chalked it up to him probably being worried about his daughter while she was away. Finn wondered exactly what had gone on between father and daughter the last couple of minutes. He knew Luke probably tried to at least discuss what had happened on the Supremacy with her, but Finn also knew Rey had a way of being stubbornly quiet when she wanted to.

“Hey,” he said when he found her sitting up on a cot.

She turned to face him and though her face was red, she tried to smile for him. “It wasn’t a bad wound, really,” she insisted.

“Trust me, I know exactly what this is like,” he pointed out. “We match now.”

And they did. Both shared lightsaber wounds on their shoulders from where Kylo pinned them, though Finn’s wound was on his left and Rey’s was on her right. It felt oddly nice to have someone who shared that experience with him now, even though the memory was not a pleasant one.

“Dad’s angry with me.” It was the first time he had ever heard her call Luke that.

He smirked. “I think I understand why.” And while he wasn’t sure if he could quite forgive Rey yet, Finn did not see the point of holding a grudge with her.

“Leia’s sending us away for a bit, to a safe house.” She moved her hand back and forth, indicating the two of them. “And my dad. She wants us to spend a few weeks in quiet and Dad wants us to train with him.”

“That sounds nice,” Finn began. “We really could use time to- wait,” he finally registered that last part. “Train?”

She giggled at his reaction, smiling. “Dad found the old Jedi texts on that island. We’re gonna go over them together. I don’t know how it will work out for me,” she said. “I’ve already been trained one way and it might be hard to untrain me on some things, but you can learn this Jedi stuff – if you want to. I know you can.”

Finn reached to his pocket where the lightsaber hilt rested. It probably wasn’t the best place to put a lightsaber and he was nervous about igniting it on accident, but Finn believed if he tried, he might be able to even the playing field. And it would give him time to be with Rey and get to know Luke. Maybe it was too sentimental of him, but Finn wanted to know her father because he already felt like a part of this strange and ever-expanding family that Finn had found in only a week. Once, he only thought of Rey as his family. Now, when he reflected on the word, the faces of General Organa, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca, Poe Dameron, and BB-8 appeared in his mind. He could even see Rose and Paige becoming part of that image.

“You know, I used to think if we ran away, we could avoid getting caught up in all this fighting,” he confessed. “And now I know that wouldn’t have been true. The First Order, they’re everywhere now and they’ll always be around the corner looking for us until this ends.”

Rey smiled sadly at him as he reached to take her hand.

“But I think if we both make the choice to fight just a little longer, we might actually be able to make a difference. And if I’m with you, I think I’ll be fine with that.”

“And if I’m with you, I’ll make an effort to do better,” Rey promised.

He would hold her to that.