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He's terrified. More frightened than he's ever been, trapped in a tin can in the middle of space with a man he's been trained to hate. He's terrified, but for the first time, he has a name. It's between one rabbitting heartbeat and the next, a single syllable, but he likes it.
Finn.
The controls at his fingertips are much more intricate than anything he's worked with before, and he's so out of his depth that he should have drowned long before, should have been lost amid the wreckage of the Jakku massacre if not earlier... but there's a surety in his grip now that wasn't there a moment before.
For the first time, he feels like a person.
It's the last thing in his head when the missile hits and the TIE fighter goes down.
+
There had been hope before the TIE sank into the sands, hope that had remained right up until the blast shook it out of him. Everything that had felt like a whirlwind before just comes to a complete stop and Finn can't find it in himself to care.
He stares at the smoking wreckage longer than he should, but there's an emptiness in his heart that cannot be tamed by the Sun on his back. For the first time that he can remember, he is alone.
Immobile and heartsick, he can't make his feet move forward even as he can feel the sweat prickling down his back. It's only the realization that he's mourned Poe Dameron longer than he actually knew him that gets Finn going.
Before Poe Dameron he was a number.
Jacket firmly in hand, Finn pushes the sorrow that's overtaken him towards the spot where his hope had been. It's only then that he takes his first step. Then, his second. He walks and he walks, and with each step he feels lighter. He sheds his armor like a skin until he's stripped of the shiny whiteness that made him feel so wrong.
All that remains are Poe's jacket and the under trimmings of who he used to be.
He's never been so alone.
+
Life without Poe Dameron shouldn't be any different than life before him. They had only shared a handful of moments, and the words between them wouldn't fill a single page. No, there's no reason for Finn to feel any different, but then Poe Dameron's in front of him like some kind of ghost and everything changes.
It's a little bit like the first time Finn deployed a missile. It was only after the ringing in his ears subsided that he realized how loud everything was and how much he had missed. Seeing Poe Dameron is like the aftermath of an explosion. It's a little too quiet and everything's a little too slow, but then their eyes lock and it's like the ringing just vanishes, and for what feels like the first time Finn can hear.
Poe's babbling about missions and jackets, and it's all too much to register, so Finn just watches his mouth. He watches the way it curves around Poe's words and it's like a physical jolt when Poe's bottom lip gets captured between his teeth.
If Poe Dameron's mouth is a distraction, the way that he looks at Finn is devastating. It leaves him feeling bared and vulnerable... and if the First Order taught Finn anything, it's to be cautious with his heart and his hope.
+
"Traitor!" Kylo Ren screams out as if it's his name. As if it were another designation to hang heavy on his shoulders.
FN-2187.
Cadet.
Traitor.
Any hope that Finn had held fled long ago, but what remains is fiercer than his sorrow and sharper than the loneliness that's crept into his veins. All that remains is the memory of Poe Dameron's lips as they wrapped around his name as if he were something special. As if Finn himself were worthy of the name. Of Poe's gift.
With Rey laid prone behind him and Skywalker's lightsaber in hand he stops running for what he knows will be the last time. He's not a hero, but at least he's not a villain anymore.
At least he's got a name.
+
He wakes up alone in a quiet room.
Well, after he takes a moment to blink the sleep from his eyes, Finn can see that neither of those statements are quite true. There's an incessant beeping and whirring that's pouring from the machines to his left. He wastes approximately half a second trying to prop himself up for a better view, but then everything's hurting and the noises get louder.
It feels like he's been through the sanitation compactors that he used to be in charge of, with a flare of heat that rushes along his back without mercy. Everything hurts, he's in more pain than he's ever known before, and it's as the blackness starts to close in on his vision that he realizes he's not alone.
The last thing he hears is Poe's voice calling out. Calling a nurse. Calling him Finn.
+
The first time that Finn hears the term soulmate happens to be right around the second time he manages to regain consciousness. This time there's a stark white curtain drawn around him, so crisp it looks more like plastic than fabric, and he is alone.
He's alone, surrounded by cool white light that looks colder than it is, and Finn wants to run more than anything but he can't. He's strapped to the table and it's only as panic sharpens his senses that he realizes that there's someone on the other side of the curtain. He couldn't run if he wanted so he does the next best thing and closes his eyes and plays dead.
The curtain barely whispers as it's opened, but then there's the unmistakable scraping squeak of metal being pulled across stone, and Finn wants to open his eyes and bare his teeth... warm hands come to rest over his own where it's strapped to the table, feather soft and so careful that Finn thinks it must be a dream.
No one has ever been this careful of him before.
Footsteps ring from far away, but the hands never move. They don't move when the footsteps are close enough to reverberate through the room, and they don't leave when General Organa starts talking; her voice unmistakable in its smoothness, like weathered leather and hope. It would be easy to let her voice lull him back to an honest sleep, but then the hands are tightening around his own and it's Poe talking.
He's speaking about choice and names, how short his life could be and how it seemed like the best choice. How Finn - FN-2187 - seemed like the best choice.
Sleep overtakes Finn as they're talking, pulling at his consciousness like a mother tucking her babe to sleep, and that... that's not right. He's never known a mother's love and it wasn't part of his training, but he doesn't get much time to consider what it means before he's pulled under.
The last thing he hears is General Organa, a question on her lips.
+
He doesn't mean to blurt it out the way that he does, and from the shocked look on Poe's face this wasn't the best time. Of course, Finn can't think of a best time to ask what it means to be another man's soulmate.
Is it something to be asked over the mess hall table or is it something you save until you're alone? From the look on Poe's face, it's pretty clear that it may not be something you ask at all.
When Poe explains, it's without looking Finn in the eye, and that... that's nearly as obvious a brush-off as Poe's answer.
It's complicated.
The answer hurts more than it should. It's an answer to a question he didn't know to ask until the other day, but Poe's answer is sharp and dull at the same time. It aches inside Finn's chest, so he does with it what he does with everything these days.
He pushes it down into the place in his chest that had held his fear, and before that his sorrow, and before that his hope. He pushes his pain down until it's nothing more than something he carries and he turns his head away from Poe and closes his eyes.
Sleep finds him quickly, as it always does, and again Finn is alone.
+
The medics are better. They like to talk, they like romance, and for the most part they seem to like Finn. Especially the tiny Chadra-Fan Tili Ki, with her squeaky little voice that somehow never seems to carry, and a kindness that radiates from the inside out.
It's only a matter of time before she takes pity upon him, teaching him about the human concept of soulmates, how each person from birth carries the name of the one that completes them. Apparently it's very much a human affliction, something that makes Tili Ki sound more than a little wistful, but she's quick to assure him that each race has their own methods of choosing their one.
She never acknowledges Finn's lack of a mark. She never speaks down to him or treats him like he's less, but then, she wouldn't... she's not human. It's not applicable.
Some nights, as Finn lays in the darkness, he wonders about himself. Unmarked. Alone.
He wonders if he's human.
+
It's not long before the general comes to visit. It's something that Finn's expected. Something he's waited for.
In the First Order there was never downtime after a mission. You came home. You were debriefed and you worked. It was structured and it was rigid and it was nothing like the Resistance at all.
Instead of pushing at him for details, she starts by asking how he feels. The question alone is disarming, and that's all it takes for Finn to relax back into the mattress. They pass time like this, a little bit each day, as she tells him about life outside the First Order, and it's over the days and weeks that she teaches him about the best of humanity that Finn realizes he no longer wants to run.
He may not have a soulmate, but he's not alone. Not really.
+
It's a good thing that he's sitting down, because he would never have seen it coming. Of course, having spent time with the woman it makes perfect sense that she would wait until he was able to walk again to knock him off his feet.
She tells him about his mark. What it means that he doesn't have one.
She tells him about the First Order recruitment process and how they took children from their families when they were too young to remember them. How the First Order made sure to remove all traces of their lives before - memories, languages, scars, names - they took it all with the knowledge that allegiance can't be split if there's nothing else to fight for.
It was a process called polishing and it left them clean. It left Finn blank.
Long after the general leaves, he stays in his chair, alone with the knowledge that the First Order took everything from him. They took his family, they took his name, and they took any chance he would ever have at finding his soulmate. It's only in this moment that the reality of his life truly sinks in.
He escaped the First Order, but Finn would never be made whole.
+
Finn hears BB-8 long before he sees Poe, but he's lived on base long enough to know that where one goes the other often follows. He's been here long enough to know that if Poe Dameron is coming his way, it's certainly not to see him.
It's something he's known since the last time he saw Poe. Anything between them that Finn had felt - the sorrow at his 'death' and the swooping, searing, tickling joy at their reunion - it was nothing compared to what Poe must feel for his soulmate. His one. Anything between them was nothing more than a kindness.
He's so focused on everything that he can never have with Poe Dameron - with anyone - when there's a hand clapped to his shoulder, squeezing gently before turning him around, and then -
+
Kissing isn't something they taught cadets in the First Order.
Luckily, Poe Dameron, best pilot in the Resistance, has no problem filling in the gaps in Finn's education.
+
He doesn't see Poe's soulmark for the first month of whatever it is that they've been doing. He doesn't ask to see it, can't bear the idea that there's someone out there that fits Poe better than he does.
Poe doesn't volunteer the information.
They kiss and they talk and sometimes hands wander, but they don't talk about what they are and Finn does his best to not think about what they aren't.
They don't talk about it, but then Poe's peeling off his flight suit and unbuttoning his shirt, dragging Finn's hand up to his chest so that he can feel Poe's heart beating under his touch.
So that he can trace his name, the name that Poe gave him, under the pads of his fingers.
Finn.
There are some around base that don't hide their marks, and while it took every bit of Finn's discipline to not stare, that didn't mean he never looked.
Marked across wrists and necks and forearms and once, very memorably, across a rather full breast were names. First and last, some in cursive and others printed carefully. Some were scrawled and others were dainty, but they all carried the warmth of connection.
Poe Dameron's mark is nothing like the others. It's just four letters printed in a blocky font reminiscent of the one posted upon his bunk back when Finn was FN-2187 and the world made more sense.
This mark makes no sense, and it's with a feeling of dread that Finn pulls his hand back.
He wants to ask who Finn - the real Finn - was. He wants to ask if he was named after a dead lover. He wants to ask why Poe would name him after his soulmate.
There is so much that Finn wants to know, but then Poe's pulling him closer and his lips are on Finn's and everything that he needs to know tumbles out of his head.
"I chose you," Poe breathes against his lips before dipping in for another kiss.
+
They talk about it after, when they're sated in Poe's bed and wearing nothing but the lingering promise of more.
They talk about the whys of it, how Poe had never met his mate, how he had never planned to. They talk about how short the life expectancy of a Resistance pilot is and how that can change a man's perspective on fate and love.
Poe maps every inch of Finn's skin, leaves no inch uncharted as he talks. He talks about a brave Stormtrooper he once knew, how beautiful and kind and terrified and strong he had been. He tells Finn that in that moment, he made a choice. Poe had made a choice when he heard that this gorgeous, heroic, foolish man had no name.
With the First Resistance after them and a former Stormtrooper at his back, Poe offered the man a name and the man had liked it.
Just like that, Poe made a choice that few others were able.
He saw that man's weaknesses and he witnessed his strength and he chose him to be his.
+
Later on, when the lights have been dimmed, Finn wraps his arms and his legs and his heart around Poe Dameron as he snores in his sleep.
He clings. He clings to the man that's given him everything and he thinks about his life.
Finn thinks about the way that the First Order polished him 'til he shined. He thinks about the life he could have had if he had never been chosen and he thinks about the life he would have had if he hadn't escaped.
He thinks about his skin. Unmarred but for the long, jagged scar down his back, the first mark he can remember carrying.
There's freedom in being a blank canvas and with Poe in his arms it no longer feels like a marker of a life in solitude.
No, with Poe Dameron by his side it feels like a dare and it feels like a promise.
It feels like a choice, and he chooses Poe.