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Waking up is harder than it should be. It’s supposed to come sharp and quick; the years of conditioning to become a cog in the machine that is the First Order made the Troopers perfect in every way, right down to how they easily fall in and out of sleep, always less than a moment away from action or inaction. He doesn’t know why he can’t wake up now. He hears Chewie yelling instructions at the Resistance medics who take him onto their speeder; later, he hears Rey saying goodbye. He fights against whatever is keeping him asleep, screams within the confines of his own head that he just wants to say goodbye to her, that maybe he can make her stay, that he should go with her. Nothing works, and nothing changes -- he’s still not waking up.
Days pass; he hears life go on without him, hears the Resistance celebrate their victory, plan their next move, hears the whispers about whether Rey will succeed in bringing Luke Skywalker back. He hears it again, and again, and again, and he still has trouble believing -- Rey is off in search of the Luke Skywalker. He isn’t sure what his life has become. He knows -- knew, he corrects himself -- Han Solo personally. Has aided General Leia Organa in her crusade against the First Order. He’s flown The Millennium goddamn Falcon. And now, Rey, his Rey, is chasing down one of the biggest legends in the history of the galaxy. He wishes he could wake up and prove to himself this is all real, prove it’s not some elaborate dream he’s come up with. Maybe he’s still in conditioning. Maybe he’s going to open his eyes to a punishment. Maybe he died in that field, or perhaps in that village.
After a while, the voices around him become harder to make out; he can’t discern who’s talking, and sometimes, he wonders if they’re speaking an entirely different language now. With the diversity of the Resistance, he assumes that’s technically possible; they might have moved him somewhere more out of the way. Maybe the people around him now are ones he just can’t understand, the way he couldn’t understand Chewie like Rey did. He listens with as much intent as he can before he decides it’s better to leave it to the low hum it becomes if he doesn’t focus. So he stops. He stops listening, and he stops hoping. If this is still conditioning, that’s probably what they want. He just wants this endless nothingness to end.
It’s weeks before he hears anything other than a slight buzzing sound; it takes a few times focusing before he can figure out that there are actual words being spoken to him. The voice is low, like it doesn’t want to be overheard, barely above a whisper, but somehow it’s breaking through the fog. At first, it doesn’t make any sense. He catches mentions of Rey, of the Resistance, of the...weather? He can’t figure out why that would matter. Trooper conditioning would continue the mentions of everything he thinks -- wants to believe -- happened. The test would lie in whether or not he can fight it off. Whether he determines it’s all make-believe, whether he decides he’s against the Resistance once and for all. The training is precise; minutia of everyday life has no place in it.
And then he hears it, the low, impassioned plea, clear as a bell. Finn, come on. He’s momentarily confused, caught up in his belief this is all still conditioning. He doesn’t have a name. He has a designation. FN-2187. But there it is again. Finn, when are you gonna wake up, man? Again, and again, and again. Each murmur is like a breath of air he didn’t know he needed, like a bolt of lightning tearing through the fog. He’s not just a cog in some machine. He’s not just a faceless Trooper. He’s Finn and that’s Poe whispering to him and he has to wake up.
But...he still can’t. He tries and he tries and he nearly screams himself hoarse in his mind. But he can’t wake up. He’s ready to give up, ready to fall wholly into the delusion that this is conditioning, ready to let go of Finn if it means this torture will end. Which is precisely when he feels it. A soft graze. Momentary pressure. A huff of warm air.
They each ghost across his lips, and he hears one more broken plea. Wake up, Finn.
His eyes open, and Poe smiles down at him.