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Chapter Text

FN-2187 wakes in the night and feels like he has forgotten how to breathe. His chest is constricted. He is clammy and sweating. His heart is beating rapid fire in his chest.

He thinks:

He is trapped.

God.

He is trapped.

He thinks of Poe and puts his face in his hands.

-

FN-2187 is eighteen when his squadron is flown to their first ground mission.

FN-2187 is eighteen when he cannot fire his blaster at innocent villagers on some remote planet, where the First Order has been searching for Skywalker.

FN-2187 is taken aside by Captain Phasma, and his hands are shaking. He will be sent to reconditioning, he knows this.

But Captain Phasma looks at him and says, “FN-2187, you have scored consistently in the top first percentile in all categories. You are being considered for the command program. Today will be the first black mark on your record. Ordinarily, that would be grounds for reconditioning. However. Our data suggests that reconditioning is detrimental to the mental faculties required of top command positions. So. Perhaps a simple carrot and stick approach will suffice for your specific circumstance.”

She points at PO-E2711, who is standing at attention outside of the ship, in the regimented lines of the rest of their squadron.

“PO-E2711 is being assigned to our pilot program. If you ever want to see him again, you will, as they say, toe the line. In fact, you will not merely toe the line, but excel to the highest of your abilities. Do I make myself clear?”

FN-2187 says immediately, “Yes, Captain.”

He feels, perhaps, like he is dying.

A hand closing around his chest.

Only despair remaining.

She knew.

-

Only Poe has ever addressed FN-2187 by a name. Finn. His own name. The most precious possession that can be given to him by his fellow troopers. A name meant belonging. A name meant being of value.

The fact that no but Poe ever bothers to call him by a name: it only makes it all the more treasured when FN-2187 hears Poe say it. Poe calls the other man “87” when they are out on shift or in training. But in the barracks, Poe calls him Finn, and FN-2187 cradles the sound of it like a candle flame.

-

What everyone knows of the pilot program: its high mortality rate. TIE fighters do not have deflector shields. The cost is not considered worthwhile for the common pilot. Their commanding officers claim that it is to weed out the strongest. Those who survive even a handful of battles are given commendation. The psychology of the pilots end up being a strange one. They look down on the ground troops. There is a sense of superiority. It is true that those who survive are a class of their own, maneuvering the agile TIE fighters to their top capacities.

If Poe survives his first real skirmish against Resistance X-Wings.

If Poe survives.

FN-2187 would be allowed to see PO-E2711.

He’d be allowed this reward.

If FN-2187 were to show any other signs of nonconformity or, Force forbid, active rebellion, PO-E2711 would be remotely ejected into the vacuum of space from his starcraft.

-

When FN-2187 was sixteen, he and Poe kissed for the first time.

Secretly, swiftly. The two of them passing in the barracks.

FN-2187 had thought: secretly.

But the captain had known.

She had always known.

-

When FN-2187 is eighteen: he has learned the meaning of despair.

It is too late to hide his feelings for Poe, to turn away.

It is too late to protect Poe.

Or perhaps it was always futile.

All of them marching closer to death with every breath.

-

Poe flies with his squadron into their first battle.

Poe doesn’t die.

He survives.

He excels.

FN-2187 does not kiss Poe when they reunite.

FN-2187 cannot bring himself to touch Poe.

It is a long time until he can bring himself to touch Poe, when he has finally been driven past the point of caring who is watching them.

-

FN-2187 is twenty-three when he is promoted to captain. Captain FN-2187 has killed innocents. He is a loyal soldier for the First Order. He remains in the top first percentile. He is an excellent strategist. He excels. And yet. He has no name. No one calls him by name, only designation.

No one, but Poe.

-

When FN-2187 is twenty-three, he wakes up in the night, in despair.

He is trapped.

He is trapped.

There is no escaping this hell he’s been living in, watching Poe fly out into battle, knowing each day could be Poe’s last. Poe is only a lowly pilot. Even as the captain of his squad, pilots are expendable. Poe is valuable to no one.

No one but FN-2187.

No one but Finn.

-

That day, Phasma has been called away to a meeting with General Hux and Lord Ren, in regards to the operation of the Starkiller’s planet-destroying weapon.

FN-2187 is dismissed.

He has, he calculates distantly, exactly twenty-five minutes.

He feels a little like someone removed from his own body.

Watching with the precise, almost emotionless detachment of a strategist’s eyes.

He does not return to his quarters, or to the canteen. He goes down to the TIE hangar, where he knows that Poe’s squadron has just returned from training exercises.

Poe has taken off his helmet.

His hair sticking damply to his forehead.

When he sees FN-2187, there is nearly a moment of undisguised happiness that crosses Poe’s face.

It feels a little like cold iron in FN-2187’s chest.

If FN-2187 fails, he will be effectively handing Poe to Lord Ren himself for torture.

They’ll keep Poe alive, of course.

The carrot and the stick.

It will be a fate worse than death.

If FN-2187 fails.

He will shoot Poe himself.

-

FN-2187 requests to speak with PO-E2711, and takes Poe aside.

He says, “I need a pilot.”

Chapter Text

The TIE fighter is crashing towards the surface of the planet Jakku, spiraling.

FN-2187—no, Finn tries to reach around to grab Poe’s shoulder.

He tries to yell, “Poe, I lo—“

Debris comes loose from inside of the cockpit, smashing down.

Finn blacks out.

-

When they had strapped into their seats in the TIE, Poe had said, “Even if—whatever happens, Finn, promise you’ll keep trying to get out? Even if I can’t. There’s a life out there, Finn. Promise me—“

“Shut up, Poe,” Finn says. His hands are shaking as he grips the gunner’s controls. “Shut up, and let’s get out of here. Who’s kriffing captain of this ship anyway—“

Poe actually laughs then, as the engines roar alive, as Finn overrides the tether lock on the TIE, as they are actually shooting out into space.

“You are, Finn,” Poe says. “Damn. You are—”

Then they are turning the TIE guns back on the Finalizer.

It’s almost surreal.

-

Poe, I love you

-

Some immeasurable time later, everything comes to, shaky and awful,

Finn is lying in the hot sand.

He doesn’t remember ejecting from the TIE.

Then he scrambles to his feet, fighting a wave of nausea and dizziness.

“Poe,” he screams.

His eyes tracking the ribbon of smoke cutting through the blue sky in the distance.

When he reaches the TIE, he can’t see if Poe is still trapped inside. He can’t fucking see—and then the sinking sand takes the entire ship whole.

He’s screaming Poe’s name.

He’s screaming.

-

He climbs to the top of a sand dune.

He can’t see anything else out there, all around him.

He can’t see anyone.

His fault.

Poe.

Finn breaks down then, sobbing.

-

Time passes.

Maybe hours.

The girl finds him sitting in the sand.

He’s wearing only black under-armor.

He’s long since shed his white plates.

He feels like he’s dying.

He doesn’t care.

The girl stops her speeder and pushes up her goggles. She squints down at him.

There’s a droid with her, beeping and whistling.

“I feel like I’m regretting this already,” the girl says, “But do you need, ah, help?”

Finn doesn’t say anything. He barely looks at her.

She doesn’t go away.

She says, no-nonsense, with a peculiarly Coruscant accent, “Hmmm, you’re lucky I don’t make it a habit of murdering people through abandoning them in the desert, stars above—“

She hops down. Cautious at first, with her staff in hand. Then she’s kneeling down and pushing a water bottle at his mouth.

Instinct takes over.

He drinks.

She pulls back and then he finally gets a good look at the droid.

A BB unit.

Finn feels his eyebrows shooting up.

The BB unit Lord Ren is looking for. They’d already killed the Resistance pilot accompanying the droid, and now, here it was, ready to be plucked up.

Finn feels his mouth thinning, pressed into a hard line.

His mind already working rapid fire.

“We have to get that kriffing droid off this kriffing planet,” he rasps out.

“Wait a minute,” the girl demands, “Who’s we? Are you—are you with the Resistance?”

Finn feels himself cracking a dry, humorless smile despite himself. “Mm, you could say I’m a pretty huge deal with the Resistance.”

He doesn’t care anymore. He’s going to fuck the First Order one over for—for murdering Poe, and then he’s going to lie down and not care what happens to him.

He knows that’s not what Poe had told him to do, that Finn was supposed to keep moving on, but he can’t bring himself to care.

He simply can’t.

“Well, all right,” the girl says dubiously. “I suppose I could give you a ride, least I could do. I’m Rey.”

“Finn,” Finn says.

It feels right.

What Poe would have wanted.

Chapter Text

Rey, as it would turn out, is a charmer. For a scavenger. She’s smart and resourceful and kind and doesn’t want her hand held, literally or figuratively.

Finn finds himself reluctantly charmed by the BB-8 unit as well, the little trouble-maker.

BB-8 is wary of him, is what she is.

Finn has learned binary, passably; you had to, as a captain, to make sure you were on the level with the droids and the computer systems; and while Rey is selling off her scavenged parts, Finn tells BB-8, “Look, I know you know that I don’t know anything about what’s going on with the Resistance right now. Well, actually, that’s not true either. I’m not part of the Resistance. I’ll tell you that up front. Put away that taser, cheeky little droid aren’t you? I’m not with the Resistance, but I want to help you. I promise you, I’m a pretty big deal.”

Which is when the TIE fighters come flying in overhead.

-

It sort of goes crazy after that point. Rey being chased down with Finn and BB. Finn being fueled on by his lunatic revenge plots, or whatever it is that’s going on in his head. He tells himself that he’s in this for the revenge. He’s going to fuck the First Order over, Phasma and Lord Ren and General Hux and everyone who had anything to do with turning his whole life into this nightmare—

And he’s so distracted by these revenge fantasies and the explosions going around and Rey yelling at him, he almost misses it.

That impossible, miraculous mirage.

Poe, ducking for cover under the shadow of the tents nearby.

“Poe!”

Poe, Poe, Poe—

“Finn, what the kriff—“ Rey is yelling at him.

Finn won’t leave Poe behind.

Not in a million years.

Not ever.

-

Which is how they miss their first potential ride and get saddled with the garbage starcraft.

Finn knows this ship, this old shell called the Millennium Falcon, he’s seen it in the history holovids, studying tactics, watching holos of the Battle of Endor.

And now they’ve escaped to space.

Poe is lying down in the passenger area.

After their escape from the Finalizer, Poe had ejected from the TIE as well, was picked up by another alien scavenger. The scavenger had been trying to extort payment out of Poe, payment of the unsavory kind, when the TIE fighters came in. It’s just as well. After hearing Poe vaguely outline the details, Finn had gotten enough of the idea that he’d been about ready to murder that scavenger himself, given half the chance. He’s done worse for the First Order than cut-and-dry murder.

He needs to figure out what to do, now that he has Poe back.

He is sorely tempted to take Poe and run to the Outer Rim.

Get BB-8 dropped off somewhere where the Resistance can pick her up.

Then leave.

While Poe rests, Finn has gone up and is sitting with Rey in the pilots’ seats. They’re looking out at the stars, charting a course for Takodana.

Rey looks over at Finn sidelong. “Someone seems awfully tense,” she says. “For being such a ‘big deal’ with the Resistance.”

Finn grunts and doesn’t say anything.

“I like your friend,” Rey says. “What a hell of a pilot. You know, before he had to go lie down before passing out.”

BB-8 beeps something from the floor. Mostly noise. A reminder that she’s sitting right there too, don’t forget her.

Rey reaches over to pat BB-8, and BB-8 makes a noise like smug content.

Finn watches them and feels feelings.

The unlikely pair are… sweet.

A change from the First Order regiment.

Finn doesn’t know what to make of the sudden soft feeling he’s experiencing, watching the scene.

Like seeing something that needed to be protected.

In the old days, Finn had tried to protect the rest of his squad, mostly Slip really, and of course Poe, but then all of that protectiveness instinct had slowly been strangled out of him by the First Order. It wasn’t worth it. He would have died for Poe, but Poe was the only one.

“I’m going to check on Poe,” Finn mutters, and then slips out of his seat.

-

Poe doesn’t move when Finn approaches, but when Finn lays a hand gently on his, Poe cracks an eye open.

The look on his face when he sees Finn is tender.

They sit like that for a moment, before Poe says, “You know, I’m glad you decided to help them. Just like when we were kids. You always looked out for everybody.”

Finn grimaces, a little. “Don’t be getting any great ideas about me,” he says. “When I thought you had died, I was mainly being fueled by revenge fantasies, give the First Order the middle finger and then some by whisking away the droid.”

“I want to join the Resistance,” Poe says.

“What the hell, Poe.”

“I think we should join the Resistance,” Poe repeats. “I mean, if you want to.”

“What I want is to get this droid delivery run over with and high-tail it to the Outer Rim, that’s what I really want.”

Poe looks at him straight in the eye. “Captain Finn formerly of the First Order, cooling his heels for the rest of his life in the Outer Rim? Top of his class, and with all of that knowledge that can be used against the First Order, and doing absolutely nothing with it? Sorry, Finn, babe, but I just can’t picture it.”

“Babe?” Finn repeats, not quite believing the sound, but in a good way, and Poe actually looks sheepish.

“I, uh, heard someone say that in one of the smuggled holovids going round the barracks. I mean, I thought it sounded… nice…”

Finn kisses Poe. He kisses him and then kisses him again.

The touch feels like the ultimate luxury.

When they’re done kissing, Finn looks back at Poe and says, “I don’t know. I’ll… think about it.”

“That’s fine. I love you,” Poe says, simply.

Finn’s chest feels all funny and warm when he says, “I love you, too, Poe.”

“Umm, guys,” Rey says from behind them.

-

There’s a lot that’s suddenly going on. The Millennium Falcon kind of falling apart around their ears. A larger ship picking them up.

Finn doesn’t know what’s going to happen now.

Only a few hours earlier, he had been ready to lie down and die in the desert.

Hours before that, he had been… practically in another world completely. A bleak, hopeless one that seemed inescapable.

Everything is different now.

Surreal in the feeling.

Finn holds onto Poe’s hand as they scramble to get gas masks, to execute Rey’s plan, to face whatever is coming.

Finn holds onto Poe’s hand and thinks: he’s ready to face it.

Chapter Text

PO-E2711 dreams sometimes of a glowing tree.

Its light is a comfort.

Sometimes when he is scared or angry or sad, he thinks of that glowing tree, and the sound of a woman’s voice.

In his dreams she calls him Poe, and she is the most beautiful, wonderful woman in the world, even if he can’t see her face.

After shooting someone for the first time, Poe looks at that prone body.

For a moment, he nearly can’t breath.

He thinks of that glowing tree.

The woman who says, I love you Poe.

FN-2187 has lowered his gun. He hasn’t even fired. There’s a smear of red across the face of his visor.

Finn is the bravest man that Poe has ever known.

PO-E2711 wishes that he could be as brave as Finn, even as he raises his blaster to take another killing shot.

-

This is the story Poe has never told Finn.

On the day of their first mission, Lord Ren himself is present on the field.

Finn has been sent with the rest of their squadron to search the village houses.

Poe is standing outside, weapon at ready.

He is trying to breath steady.

He is trying to breathe.

Thinking of that glowing tree.

Holding it in his mind.

Lord Ren approaches and at first Poe thinks, hopes, Lord Ren is merely passing and then

suddenly he’s in Poe’s head there’s a feeling of something gripping the inside of his mind, and someone who is making pitiful noises like a wounded animal and then Poe realizes he’s fallen to his knees. He wants to whimper and beg for mercy, please, Lord Ren. Please.

The moment seems to last for an eternity, agony stretched out and

then it’s gone.

Captain Phasma is there, watching. Lord Ren puts down his hand and says, “This one has a slight sensitivity for the Force.”

Captain Phasma asks, “Shall I send him to reconditioning, Lord Ren?”

“No. His will is weak. Reconditioning will not be necessary, and. I have heard it said that Force sensitivity may, in some cases, increase one’s aptitude for piloting. I want this one in the pilot program. I will be keeping an eye on PO-E2711. If he proves himself worthy, I may have a use for him in the future.”

Poe still on his knees.

Trying not to sob.

Even as he’s dragging himself back to his feet.

Yes, Lord Ren.

-

The thing about the pilot program, about being a TIE fighter pilot: how quickly one can die. Barely a minute into a dogfight, and a TIE can be blown to pieces. A TIE does not have shields. A good pilot, a worthy pilot, will outmaneuver an enemy craft and that is when you have the kill. A TIE’s speed and agility in combat is unmatched.

If you survive.

Poe has not seen Finn for two months when he and his squadron are sent into their first battle.

When the hangar opens, Poe thinks: he is scared.

He is so scared.

He thinks, he will never see Finn again, and today he will die.

For a moment, he shuts his eyes.

He is crying, and he thinks of a glowing tree.

He thinks of the faceless woman who he wants to believe is his mother.

The TIE anchor tethers are released.

Space is yawning out before him, a black sea with distant, twinkling stars.

-

He doesn’t die.

When the surviving pilots return to the hangar, there are no congratulations, but PO-E2711 is called aside when the pilots are dismissed.

For a horrible moment, Poe thinks: they know that he was scared, that he had been crying. That he is unworthy. He will be sent in for reconditioning after all. First the bloodless terror of the battlefield. Now the promise that his life will be taken from him after all.

He is given a room assignment to report to, and it is in a part of the Finalizer that he has never ventured.

In the room that he has been sent: Finn is waiting. He is wearing the black pauldron of a sergeant. He has taken his helmet off.

Finn says, “Permission given to remove your helmet, PO-E2711.”

Poe scrambles to pull off his helmet.

Finn looks…

He looks at Poe with an expression Poe cannot read.

“Fi—FN-2187,” Poe says. “I don’t understand—uh, Sir.”

Finn says, without moving, without closing or lengthening the space between them, “Captain Phasma has—assigned fifteen minutes.” And then he doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t say anything else for fifteen minutes, and they stand there until Poe has to leave and he—he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand.

He doesn’t understand until it happens again the next month.

And then again the month after.

He doesn’t understand until one day he looks at Finn’s face and realizes that expression is despair, and then he steps forward before Finn can stop him, no one is stopping them, can’t he see? And taken Finn’s hand.

Finn is the bravest man that Poe knows.

His Finn.

They don’t kiss, but Poe wants to.

Force, he wants to.

Chapter Text

As the TIE spirals towards the planet’s surface, Poe—when he doesn’t hear Finn responding to him yelling, he does the idiotic. He steers the ship to stop spinning as best he can, to take a direct path. Then he unstraps himself from his seat so he can climb over to Finn’s side and manually hit the eject button for Finn’s seat. The air whips around Poe’s face. Finn is gone. Safe. Poe's blinking back sudden tears. Finn’s going to be okay. Poe climbs back to his seat. Heart hammering. The ground is coming up fast. Too fast. He slams on the thrusters and braces for impact.

Finn.

-

He loses consciousness.

-

When he comes to, it’s to the smell of smoke.

Fire.

He doesn’t know where he is.

Or what’s going on.

He’s strapped down, and his hands scramble for the buckles.

He can barely drag himself out of the smoking wreckage of the—he can’t remember its name. He knows what it is, but the sound of the word eludes him, like smoke through his fingers.

He’s lying in hot sand.

He has to get away from the—whatever it’s called, burning up.

He can’t remember—

Finn.

That’s not his name.

Someone else—

“Finn,” he yells out hoarsely, before doubling over, coughing.

He can’t get to his feet without nearly falling over again in dizziness.

He manages to drag himself over the next sand dune.

Collapsing in the sand.

-

He doesn’t know how much time passes.

Someone on a shaggy animal approaching.

He looks up at the alien scavenger through blurring vision.

Then he passes out.

-

Consciousness comes and goes.

He’s being dragged onto the animal’s back.

His hands are bound.

Sometimes he sees the light of the sun against the sand.

It’s too bright.

Making his head hurt.

He shuts his eyes again.

-

He comes to when water hits his face.

It takes him a few minutes to get his bearings. Foul-tasting water in his mouth. The shadow of a tent. He’s so goddamned thirsty, it’s the first thing he’s begging for, dry tongue licking his lips for even a little of the water that’s left, even as he’s grimacing from the taste.

The alien scavenger makes a noise of distaste, and then tips a canteen of water into Poe’s mouth. He drinks it greedily, and then scoots back on his butt to take stock of his situation. His hands are tied. There’s an alien scavenger looking down at him.

“I don’t rescue strangers in the desert out of altruism, you know,” the scavenger says. “I like payment.”

Poe looks at the scavenger, and then round the tent, at the exit, and then back again. “How about you untie me first?” he tries, smiling as charmingly as he’s able.

The scavenger snorts. “That’s for my security, idiot.”

Poe lets out a breath, then says, “I don’t have anything. You can search my pockets if you want, but I don’t have anything on me except the clothes on my back. No money, no weapons. Bet you searched me anyway before dragging my sorry ass here.”

“I could sell you,” the scavenger points out, eyes narrowing. “A bit harder than selling parts, but not by much. Besides, I know that uniform. The insignia on your sleeve. First Order, flight suit. You think I’m an idiot?”

Poe feels something that is maybe a little like worry at that.

An inkling that it won’t be so easy to get out of this one.

The scavenger goes on, “First Order were just in the village over the hills. They slaughtered everyone. You won’t find a pitying soul for your lot this side of the planet. What were you doing all the way out here anyway? Were you a deserter? Didn’t know you lot had the brains to think for yourselves, wouldn’t take two steps any one way without a direct order to do it.” The scavenger looks at Poe in a way that makes his skin crawl, eyes flicking up and down. “‘Course. Could let you go easier, but there’d still be a price.”

Poe thinks of Finn out in the desert.

Stars above.

“How about,” Poe says slowly, “if I make it a…better deal for you, and then maybe. You can hook me up with a way to find a friend I’ve lost. Out there. Maybe even get you salvage from a TIE fighter while we’re at it.” Assuming the damn thing hasn’t blown up already.

He looks up at the scavenger with his head bowed slightly, licking at his lip very deliberately.

The only thing on hand he has to bargain with.

The scavenger nearly looks like they’re considering the offer.

And that’s when the explosions start outside.

-

He needs something to cut his bindings.

Something.

Has to find something.

He’s trying to make his way through the panicking crowd, what the hell is going on—

And then a heavy body is tackling him; Poe swings his elbow up to hit his assailant, and he’s caught in a strong grip, a familiar scent of sweat and the material of Stormtrooper under-armor hitting his nose as he’s held tight—

“Finn,” Poe sobs out, and he’s being turned around, and Finn catches his wrists and looks at the bindings like he wants to murder someone. Maybe several times.

“BB-8, some help with these—droid, please!”

-

Poe ends up co-piloting the garbage pile that’s left of the Millennium Falcon while probably, technically still concussed.

No big deal.

That girl, Rey, does most of the heavy-lifting anyway.

Poe’s grateful for that.

-

It’s a long day.

It is a long awful day, but it turns out all right, in the end.

Chapter Text

When they landed on Takodana, Rey was hanging back to talk with Han, and Finn towed Poe towards the lakeside. They had to talk. They seriously had to talk. Finn glanced back over at the crew by the Millennium Falcon, Chewie and BB-8, Han looking down at Rey with nearly a smile as he spoke to her, and Rey’s face all lit up with the exhilaration of their adventure. She’d saved Finn and Poe from the rathtars. She’d saved them, and Finn was grateful, but the longer their group stayed together, and the more time Finn had to work his thoughts over, the worse his fears and worries ratcheted up.

The pair got a little ways from the ship, and Poe was looking at Finn with such open happiness and adoration, even filthy and exhausted as he looked, as they both probably looked, but Finn was a captain. He took Poe by the shoulders, looking at him straight in the eye and said, “Poe, listen. I’d been putting it off, but now that we’re here, it can’t wait. How many Resistance fighters do you think you’ve killed over the last five years?”

Poe stared at Finn. He looked…Finn wasn’t quite sure. But this was something Finn had to do.

“What?” Poe asked.

“And how many do you think I’ve killed? That’s a rhetorical question, don’t answer it—my point is that I don’t know that you were thinking clearly, before. You’re still concussed. It’s okay, but I have to protect you. Do you really think the Resistance is going to welcome us with open arms? They’ll hate us. I’m not going to let you just march into their base, announce that you ran away from the First Order, but now you want to join them. Be realistic! Maybe not everything that the First Order told us about them is true, but maybe some of it is. If we end up prisoners. If we end up prisoners, if they torture us—if they torture you—”

Something stormy had come into Poe’s expression. “Finn, I’ll be straight with you, I don’t want to run away. This is the right thing to do, you know it is—”

“Running towards death isn’t right either!” Finn snapped back, his voice rising. He stepped back, hands clenched into fists at his side.

“You don’t know that’s going to happen.”

“You think I’m willing to take that chance?”

“I’m telling you,” Poe insisted, “we can’t just walk away from this; all the good we could do, maybe if we—”

“Stop talking like your head is still in the fucking sky, you don’t have a clue—”

Poe bared his teeth. “Well maybe if you’d actually listen for one goddamn second—”

“About what? About what, Poe?? About your kriffing glorious dreams of heroism and saving everyone, I know you, Poe. I know you’re alway escaping into this dream because reality is—it’s horrible, I know it okay? You think I don’t understand—”

“Don’t you try to put those kinds of words into my mouth, Finn, don’t you dare give into fear and thinking you’re above it all too just because—shit, Finn, why can’t you understand—”

Poe looked a little wild around the edges, a little lost, but also determined, and he was reaching towards Finn, to convince him, and Finn didn’t know if he was strong enough, if Poe tried to take his hand—

“Pilot, stand down,” Finn snarled, and there it was.

He’d lost already.

Captain FN-2187.

They’d escaped the Finalizer, but maybe Finn had lost already.

Poe stared at Finn, his mouth open slightly. He looked… angry. Hurt. His shoulders already drawn back, eyes down. The automatic posture of a First Order subordinate. Conditioned. Just like Finn.

Finn was breathing heavily. He could barely think from the fear and anger and shame racing through him, making him feel like he was shaking out of his bones.

He was thinking about all of the times they could have, should have died, just in that day alone.

He couldn’t take it.

He couldn’t take it anymore.

And now, was he losing Poe too?

Was he losing Poe.

Rey had come closer, BB-8 wheeling in behind. Chewie and Han weren’t far either. “Guys? What happened? Why are you shouting?”

Poe looked over at Rey. He glanced at Finn, and Finn—somehow he already knew what Poe was going to say.

“Rey, I lied to you, earlier,” Poe said, bluntly. “I’m not wearing a First Order flight uniform because I was on a Resistance mission. I’m wearing it because I was First Order. I’m not anymore. I ran away, and I’m never going back.”

Rey’s shocked and confused expression galvanized Finn into saying loudly, “Yeah, well me too. We escaped together.”

“Huh,” said Han, from behind Rey. “Well talk about one for the history books, eh Chewie?”

Chewie made a noise that sounded noncommittal.

Poe glanced over again at Finn, as if for permission to speak, and Finn hated himself a little bit more for that.

“Finn is afraid that if we try to join the Resistance, they’ll think we’re dangerous and lock us up. At best.”

“Well, yeah,” Han said. “He might not be wrong, kid. I mean, I could vouch for you, but well. I’m me. And my wife is a general, but there are limits, you know. It’s not like you blew up a Deathstar for them, or anything.”

Rey had gotten that look on her face. The one that said she was going to beat someone up now, because someone needed a beating. Her eyes open and her teeth bared a little. She demanded, “Why would you have to tell them anything? You can be—whoever you like! You’re my friends.” There was something in the sound of that last word; a word that was about something precious and valuable, to be protected.

She was a treasure, Finn thought.

This girl—maybe it was the Force in her. Maybe it was simply everything. She was worth more of a person than he would ever be.

Finn said, “When this is all over, don’t go back to Jakku, Rey. Just don’t. You deserve a million times better than that.”

The small and stubborn look came onto her face at that. The one that said, in her beautiful Coruscant accent: try and fucking tell me what to do, I dare you.

BB-8 beeped and toodled gently at her from beside her leg.

Han scratched his head.

“Umm, okay. Well, kids,” Han said, “As touching as all of this is, we really need to move this along. Time is of the essence, or however you want to put it.”

Chewie made a loud noise of agreement next to him.

Chapter Text

After the battle on Takodana, Finn found Poe standing over the bodies of the fallen stormtroopers. His eyes were far away. Before going into the cantina, he’d pulled down the top half of his flight suit, tying the arms around his waist to obscure the First Order markers on his sleeves and chest. He only had an undershirt beneath that. He was shivering a little in the wind from over the lake, and Finn was sorry that he didn’t have a jacket to give Poe.

It occurred to Finn that it had been years since Poe had been in a skirmish on land. He’d always fought from a TIE. Bloodless, in a way.

The expression on Poe’s face was ragged and faraway, as he looked down at the dead.

Finn waited only a moment, and then said, “Lord Ren took Rey.”

Poe jerked, and then looked over at Finn, wide-eyed.

Finn felt bone-weary.

All the life gone out of him.

“I’m—going to try to get her back. She deserves her own life. I’m going to get her out. And I suppose the Resistance will be wanting to destroy Starkiller base, anyway. So.”

In the distance, Han and Chewie were talking with the Resistance pilots that had landed, that had been looking for the droid.

When Poe and Finn made their back over, Han pointed at the two and said to the pilots, “And by the way, these two kids are with me, temporary crew.” He looked over at them, brow raised pointedly and asked, “So you two still want to join the Resistance, or what’s going on?”

“These two have Force sensitivity,” said a voice near Finn’s elbow, and he nearly jumped a foot. He didn’t even know how Maz Kanata had gotten there without him noticing.

She looked up at Finn and winked. Then she said to the Resistance pilots, “Not enough to be Jedi, possibly, but enough that you’d be fools not to have them along.” She patted Finn’s arm. “I’ll be coming along, I suppose. To vouch for you. Force knows you’re going to need it, and Solo here couldn’t vouch for anyone worth trusting; too much of a known scoundrel, that one is.”

“I’m only standing right here,” Han said loudly, while Chewie made a noise that sounded suspiciously like Wookie laughter.

-

Back on the Falcon, on their way to the Resistance base on D’Qar, they sat side-by-side in the cabin, and Finn said to Poe, “Poe, I’m sorry.”

“For what,” Poe asked dully, not quite looking at him.

Finn said, “I don’t have any right to—I’m not a commanding officer anymore, Poe, and never really was one for you, either. The hierarchy doesn’t work here. And I—I did what I set out to do. I got you out. That’s all—that’s all I ever wanted, Poe. I wanted to give you freedom, and now I have to live with it.” He smiled a little to himself, feeling bitter. “You should do whatever you want. Forget about me, I’d only get in your way—“

Finn was cut off when Poe moved swiftly on the bench to pin Finn to the wall. “You’re such an idiot,” Poe cut in harshly. “Captain.” Crushing their mouths together in a kiss. When he pulled back, he said, voice sounding wrecked, “We’re living on borrowed time, I already know that. You’re going to try saving Rey. I knew you would. You’re the bravest man I’ve ever known. And I’m going to fly a starcraft against the First Order, if I have to steal one myself. I know it’s going to happen. I know it like I’ve always known the vision of a glowing tree in my head, maybe that tree is death waiting for me. Maybe it’s death. But at least it’s death fighting for something better than myself. I’m sorry Finn. I’m sorry, too.”

“Glowing tree, eh?” Maz asked from the entryway of the cabin.

Poe rolled off of Finn, while Finn yelled at Maz, “Maz, you know I appreciate and respect you, but honestly—!”

Maz ignored Finn.

She was looking at Poe.

Her eyes huge behind her googles. Huge and scrutinizing.

“My child,” she said, her voice gone oddly soft, “I only know of one tree like that this side of the galaxy. Poor child,” she said. “There is someone I’d like you to meet at the D’Qar base. And I’m not talking about General Organa, though her too.”

BB-8 was snooping around behind Maz too. She toodled at Maz curiously and Maz said, “Well aren’t you the nosy little thing,” and Poe let his head drop back against the wall and he laughed.

“What’s going on Maz?” Finn demanded. “What’s a sly pirate like you scheming?”

-

When Han, Chewie, and BB-8 went off to meet Han’s wife, the general, they dragged Finn along with them. Insisted they needed him and his insider’s opinion on how to get into Starkiller base, that they’d try to keep the information of Finn and Poe’s background between themselves and Leia—top-secret, need-to-know-basis-only, you get me? After the destruction of the Hosnian System, entire star systems were counting on them, the entire galaxy! was counting on them!!—and he needed to come along!

Maz, in the meanwhile, was corralling Poe to meet the woman named Shara Bey. Bey, former pilot for the Rebellion, had come out of retirement temporarily to train the newest batch of Resistance pilots.

Finn looked back over his shoulder at Poe being lead away, and he caught a glimpse of Poe looking back too.

Their eyes catching, like an entire world, just between the two of them.

And then Poe was far away, past the movement of the Resistance ground forces moving through the base.

-

When the war meeting was over, Finn high-tailed it out of there.

He was vaguely aware of BB-8 rolling along at top speed at his heels.

He needed to find Poe.

He was going with Han and Chewie back to Starkiller base.

He had to find Poe, to say good-bye.

The old ache moved through his chest at the thought.

Like some kind of grief.

But he had a job to do.

Shut down shields from the inside.

And.

He had to rescue Rey, before they destroyed the entire base.

Even if he died in the attempt, he had to try.

When he finally found Poe again, he found himself brought short.

Poe was in the cockpit of an old X-Wing Fighter. He was leaning over, talking to a dark-haired, older woman, and also they seemed to be arguing with some other pilots, obvious in their orange flight uniforms.

“What do you mean, he’s never flown an X-Wing before, Shara, have you lost your kriffing mind??!?!??” one of the pilots was practically yelling.

Poe was yelling too. “I’ve never flown an X-Wing, but I’ve flown—never mind what I’ve flown, I’m telling you that I’m experienced. I can fly anything! And if nothing else—you need me! You need every pilot you can get on this mission, and—isn’t the Force with us? I’ll use the Force—“

“That’s not how the Force fucking works!!” the other pilot was shouting back; a young woman, with dark hair. “You’re not a fucking part of our squadrons, I can’t fucking trust you to follow fucking orders; I don’t! Need!! A fucking! Liability! On! My! Fucking! Hands!”

“Red Leader, calm down—“

The female pilot gave her compatriot the middle finger.

Poe looked down at her with a calm that worried Finn. That worried him a lot, fuck, Poe—!

He said, like Finn knew he would: “You need me because I used to be a First Order Pilot. I know Starkiller Base like I know the back of my hand. You need me. Maz Kanata and Han Solo will vouch for me. Oh, thanks BB. I knew I could count on you too.”

“And me,” the older woman said calmly. “I wouldn’t hand over my X-Wing to just anyone. Poe, she’s a bit of an older model, but she’ll fly steady. She’s the best you’ll be getting here, so try not to get shot down, you hear? I need this fighter back, and I need you to live long enough to meet your father, and hopefully then some.”

Red Leader’s yelled obscenities escalated through the roof, but Finn was not even paying any attention.

He felt as though all of the breath had left his lungs.

Poe’s family.

-

“How is this possible?” Finn demanded frantically, when Poe had climbed down from the X-Wing to meet him.

Shara was still trying to talk to Red Leader, named Jessika Pava, and also Pava’s squad.

“Maz arranged everything,” Poe confessed. “She said, the glowing tree I’ve dreamt about sounds like a force-sensitive tree—and there’s only two known surviving. One of them, Luke Skywalker spirited away somewhere secret. The other grows on Yavin 4. Behind Shara Bey’s house. Shara’s son was stolen by the First Order when he was four. They had a med droid do a DNA test on me and. And. Well.”

Shara Bey was yelling over at Poe that the squad was moving out, that he needed to talk to Jessika now to confer on the attack strategy—

“I have to go,” Poe said, distraught.

“I do too,” Finn said, not feeling any better. Han was waiting for him to get his ass over to the Falcon, they had a mission. Finn had a mission.

Poe dragged Finn in for a kiss.

“I love you,” he said, pulling away, whispered nearly against Finn’s mouth.

“I love you too, Poe—!” Finn gasped out, and then Poe was being drawn away, the two of them being pulled apart as the base prepared for the battle.

Chapter Text

Starkiller Base is destroyed, and Poe is shaking from the adrenaline, Jessica Pava had been yelling through the comm “you glorious, brave self-sacrificing fuck, you did it Poe—“ They’d called him Black One at the start of the mission. A unit of one; the pilot in the black First Order flight suit. The outsider. And now Pava is announcing through the comm that he better report back with Red Squad for the debrief and the celebratory drinks, you beautiful son of a bitch—

Poe’s hands are shaking. BB-8 is asking Poe what’s wrong from the back of the X-Wing, and he doesn’t respond. He’s thinking of unshielded TIE fighters blasted in outer space. He’s thinking of an entire Starkiller Base gone the same way. He’s thinking of entire star systems blown into dust.

The right thing to do.

He manages to force himself to unbuckle himself from his seat and climb out of the cockpit. BB-8 has already lowered herself to the tarmac and is rolling around in anxious little circles. She butts against his leg, gently. She’s pretty heavy, for such a little droid.

Then Poe sees the movement across the tarmac, the team of medics. Finn being strapped to a gurney and stabilized. Strapped face down. The angry slash of red.

Poe tries to make a noise, but the air gets strangled in his chest, punched out of him. He starts running across the tarmac, yelling, Finn. Finn

There’s all these images suddenly flooded his head. Stormtroopers left to die on the field. TIE fighters blown up in the vacuum of space. Spinal injury leading to paralysis. Even bacta can’t regenerate that degree of neural injury. Unsalvageable. Dead weight. Decommissioning.

Poe is screaming, don’t take him away, don’t take him, you’ll have to kill me first—

People are yelling at him, trying to restrain him. The wind knocked out of him and he lands hard on the tarmac.

His hands are cuffed behind him.

Voices talking at him.

First Order. Someone says, that one’s the pilot from the First Order.

Poe doesn’t move.

He’s having trouble breathing. And then he’s sobbing.

Voices are talking at him, but he’s stopped registering the sound.

Then Rey’s voice breaking through, shouting at everyone to “stop, stop it! can’t you see—“

Someone injects something into his neck.

Then he blacks out.

-

When he comes to, he’s lying on a cot in a medical bay.

When he tries move, he realizes that his leg is cuffed to the cot. There’s enough of a chain that he can shift around, but not so he can leave.

There’s also a BB-8 sitting guard by his cot. She beeps at him both happily and worriedly when she notices him wake up.

Finn is okay! she says immediately. She suffers him reaching out to touch her, and then says, They have him in bacta treatment. He’ll be okay, no permanent spinal injury, but he’ll need physical therapy.

Poe doesn’t say anything.

He feels like… he should be relieved.

But he just feels empty.

Hollowed out.

He can’t go on like this anymore.

He had so many dreams, but in the face of them.

Finn had been right.

All along.

Finn had been right, he had been right—only an idiot would listen to an expendable pilot over a captain, a strategist. Only a selfish, fucking fool.

He lays his hand against BB-8 for a moment longer, feeling the cool mental. Then he withdraws his hand, and then turns over on the cot. Was it better that he survived the attack on Starkiller. Was it better that he lived. Maybe Finn should have died too. Blasters to their heads, like everyone who had died on Starkiller. A feeling radiating through his chest like an almost visceral pain. Tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.

He should have died.

I wish I were dead, Poe whispers.

BB-8 whistles in alarm, and Poe can hear her wheeling off.

He finds that he doesn’t care.

-

Someone comes to talk to him. A doctor, maybe.

Poe responds, a little.

It doesn’t matter. He’s been stripped of his flight suit anyway, he’s in a patient gown, he doesn’t have anything that he can harm himself with.

Later, Finn is wheeled from treatment to the cot alongside Poe’s.

Finn hasn’t woken up yet.

He hasn’t woken since Starkiller.

Poe looks across the distance between then, at Finn’s prone form.

When the medical staff have left, Poe reaches out and puts his hand on Finn’s.

Full of sorrow and regret.

-

Shara Bey comes to visit him.

She looks at his face, and then slowly, gently takes his hand.

“Poe,” she says. “I’m so proud of you.”

Poe looks at this beautiful woman. The most beautiful woman in the galaxy. “I’m not your son,” he says. “I’m a stranger; stormtrooper number PO-E2711—”

Then he starts weeping, and he can’t make himself stop.

Shara Bey doesn’t leave his bedside for a long time.

-

General Organa comes to speak to him as well. She asks about his account of the attack on Starkiller, and his history with Finn. Organa is his superior. He makes himself sit up when he talks to her, and attempts his best to be clear and precise. His voice shakes only a little. He gives an adequate report.

When the general leaves, Poe lies back down and can’t bring himself to sit back up again for a long while, only when Rey comes.

Rey looks down at him worriedly, and Poe gives her a small smile, an attempt at reassurance, and tries to move to a more sitting position.

She glares at the cuff on his leg. “Me and the general are trying to get a work-around, you being a hero and all, but some people on base still don’t trust you. Bastards.”

Then she says, “I’m going to go find Luke Skywalker. We found the rest of a map to him. I—I’ll try to come back as fast as I can.” She looks so determined. Like sunlight in the room.

“I know you can do it,” Poe says, simply.

They talk for awhile, or Rey talks: telling the whole heroic story of Finn coming to save her with Han and Chewie, and about using the Force, and of Han’s death.

She’s quiet for a moment at that last part, grieving, but then she pressed on, finishing with the light saber battle and besting Lord Ren. “Finn was so brave,” she finished. “You would have been so proud of him.”

Poe finally quirks a smile at that, “I’m proud of you too, Rey.”

Rey’s smile back at him gets all sad and fierce, the way it sometimes looks on her.

Before she goes, she kisses him on the forehead, sweetly.

She does the same for Finn.

She whispers to Finn’s unconscious form, get better, I’ll be back before you know it, and Poe watches Rey as she leaves.

-

Pava visits too.

She kids around at him, teases BB-8 about being Poe’s little bodyguard, and has brought custard bread and tea from the mess for Poe. She puts it on the tray next to his cot.

“You won me over, you know. You saved my life in that trench run and not to mention diving straight inside the facility with your damn out-dated X-Wing on practically a suicide run—I saw it with my very own naked eyeballs, you can’t fake that. I believe in you, you silly, heroic twat. You wonderful, goddamn laser for brains.”

Then she pats his arm and promises “Red Squad has dibs on you if you stick around as a pilot. You know, if you want.”

She teaches him the X-Wing salute before she leaves, which manages to crack a smile out of him.

-

After three days, Poe is reevaluated. He’s un-cuffed from the cot but has to wear a tracking bracelet.

Finn still hasn’t woken up.

BB-8 bullies Poe into going out on a walk though.

Poe follows her as she rolls out through the compound.

It’s early afternoon.

The base is busy with the usual hum of Resistance activity. Poe follows BB-8 and avoids looking at anyone directly.

There’s a little place to sit, out behind the med facilities. An empty field. A view of the hills rolling out, and the blue sky overhead,

Poe sits down with BB-8 in the grass.

Quiet.

They sit together for a long time.

Chapter Text

Finn woke disoriented, slow to react. He was in a dimly lit room.

Slowly, he registered:

He was on a cot, in a medical facility. It was not a First Order base. Something of the scent in the air was different. Something in the air.

Then he remembered Lord Ren.

Rey.

He tried to sit up, gasping at the raw ache throbbing through his back at the movement. A medical droid wheeled up, beeping at him scoldingly, Patient Finn has been unconscious for three weeks, if Patient Finn would kindly wait for Dr. Kalonia to evaluate before moving—

“Three weeks??” Finn rasped out.

His mouth tasted awful.

His voice was rough and disused.

The droid tutted, and then wheeled away, and then came back with a glass of water.

There was another cot within arm’s length of his. Someone curled up under the thin blanket, but at the noise the person had shifted, turned over, and was looking at Finn with wide, waking eyes.

Poe sat up clumsily.

He reached across the distance between them—and then seemed to hesitate, to abort the movement.

Finn reached out to close the distance.

He took Poe’s hand.

Poe looked wide-eyed into Finn’s face.

Then after a moment, he looked away.

“Rey’s okay,” Poe said. “She beat Kylo Ren and got you off the base. She found Luke Skywalker, training to be a Jedi.” He wasn’t quite looking at Finn, but his fingertips moved softy against Finn’s palm. He looked terrible. Like he’d lost weight, like he’d been neglecting himself, or been neglected.

There was a metal bracelet on his wrist.

Finn frowned at it.

Then.

“I’m going to kill whoever put this on you,” he growled. “I did not fucking get you out of the First Order to become a prisoner of the Resistance—fuck, Poe, have they hurt you? I’ll kill anyone who touched you—“

“No one hurt me,” Poe said. “That’s just—it’s just to keep track of me, I guess. I haven’t been mistreated. I just. I guess. I’ve just been, very tired lately. Force, I’m so glad you’re awake, Finn, I’m so relieved—“

His shoulders had started shaking, and then Finn realized: Poe was weeping.

Finn tugged Poe closer and ignored the ache in his back as he moved, as he got Poe beside him on the cot and held Poe as he wept.

-

Doctor Kalonia came by to assess Finn.

Then BB-8 came by an hour after that to take Poe on ‘his morning walk,’ and then trilled and rolled around in delight when she saw that Finn had woken up.

She chattered at Finn. She happily told him all about the nice little walks and different places she taken Poe around the base in the last three weeks—and after indulging in her narrations about little wildflowers and shiny rocks and scurrying insects, Finn finally managed to shoo Poe and BB-8 away, practically ordering Poe out, it was clear the other man needed the air and the sunlight.

With the droid and Poe gone, Finn had a lie down and also made an attempt to wrangle information out of the medical droid on duty. Well, he tried to.

The insufferable piece of machinery said, I’m sorry Patient Finn, but all medical information on other patients is strictly confidential—

“Look, you, I’m all Poe’s got, all right? Doesn’t that count for something around here?” As captain, he would have never had this kind of trouble regarding a Stormtrooper’s medical file, for fuck’s sake—

The medical droid toodled at him scoldingly, and said, Patient Finn will have to secure release of health information permissions from Poe himself, before rolling off again.

-

Finn was not a good person, he already knew this.

He did the run around and talked to BB-8 instead of Poe, when she socialized with him during his first session of physical therapy. Poe had been there to watch and encourage for a while, but he’d looked so strangely tired, even sitting there on the bench, that Finn had told him to go back to his cot in the patient wing and rest. Poe had hesitated, but gone without even really arguing that much.

Oh, Friend Poe is depressed, BB-8 said, while a therapy droid assisted Finn. Finn was practicing inching along, trying to relearn walking while gripping a set of bars.

Finn scowled at his own sweating, snail-pace progress, and then what BB-8 had divulged registered, and he looked over at the little droid.

“What?”

Friend Poe is not feeling mentally well; Poe has lacked energy to socialize and adequately care for himself, even though Poe has been visited by Jessica Pava and the Red Squad and they have invited him to their social excursions and their training exercises; and! Shara Bey has been taking some meals with him, but Shara Bey also says she doesn’t want to over-stress Poe, sometimes Poe looks worse and not better when she tells him stories about his infancy on Yavin 4, and even though he has been seeing the one therapist on the base; they wonder if his kind of Force sensitivity also made his run on Starkiller base worse on him; I am very, very worried for Friend Poe—

Finn sat down, huffing a little. A sick feeling had settled in his stomach, and not from the exertion.

Back with the First Order, mental or emotional fatigue was “treated” with a routine protocol reconditioning, a so-called rest-reset. Poe had been in active combat for five years, since he and Finn had both been eighteen. For pilots of that caliber that lived this long, it was not unusual to have the routine reconditioning: a recalibration to ensure smooth functioning on the field, to alleviate the normal stress effects of TIE piloting.

A tiny, awful thought crept into Finn’s head; the idea that if only Poe could get that treatment, he’d be better now—but he shoved that thought down hard. He’d been a captain. He knew better. He knew that protocol of reconditioning had merely been a wipe and repression of so-called “stress experiences,” of trauma, to recover surface functionality. It wouldn’t have helped Poe. It would have hurt him.

Finn wanted to protect Poe. He wanted that with all of his heart. But in this state. He scowled down at his own traitorous legs, the muscles trembling from a mere ten minutes of exercise. The ache throbbing through his back. He couldn’t even help himself.

“Do you even wonder sometimes what we go on struggling to live for?” he groused at BB-8, “I can’t even believe sometimes, the things I put up with myself—“ he was saying, reaching for his water bottle, but to his surprise BB-8 gave a beep of alarm, breaking in with, Finn isn’t saying that he wants to self-harm too, is he?!

Finn stared at BB-8, feeling his eyes go huge. Then he yelled, “What the fuck do you mean, ‘too’?!?!!” while the therapy droid tried to shush him for unacceptable noise levels in the medical facilities.

-

Finn didn’t say anything to Poe about what BB-8 had told him, not that day, or that night. He was still trying to assess the situation, to figure it out.

What he figured out was that he was deathly afraid: he was losing Poe. Poe sitting right there, as they sat in that depressing patient wing of the medical facilities, eating dinner from beat-up metal trays. Poe could have gone down to the mess, but he’d said that he wanted to be with Finn.

Finn asked BB-8 to play some music, and she turned on something chirpy, something cheerful that was popular from Coruscant. It helped a little, but not much.

Finn stirred his spoon through thick brown stew, and sort of watched Poe. Poe who looked like all the light had gone out of him, even when he tried to smile at Finn. And across from Poe, Finn, whose body was so weak, who was tired from barely doing anything that day, who couldn’t get up and take Poe in his arms, and take him out of there and far away, outside under the starlit sky—

Finn ate the stew without barely tasting any of it. He ate all of his portion of dinner even though he didn’t feel hungry. Thinking of mending muscles, scarred tissue healing up. He couldn’t care for Poe while he could still barely care for himself.

Chapter Text

After two weeks, they released Finn and Poe from medical and reassigned them to new quarters.

As a captain, Finn had had the luxury of his own private quarters, but in comparison to the new room, his previous quarters had been a closet. There were two beds. Trunks for clothing and personal belongings. A single fresher unit. A window with grey, sliding curtains. Between Finn and Poe, the only belongings they really had were the few clothes they’d been given.

Finn put his clothes into the trunk and just sort of looked at the pitiful picture of it. So much unnecessary space. A tiny stack of worn clothes in drab colors. A lack of belonging, as well as actual material belongings.

BB-8 was sort of rolling through, inspecting the premises and chirping to herself.

Ever since the Starkiller Base, she really seemed to have attached herself to Poe. Never mind that she was probably technically property of the Resistance. Probably she would have tazed the first person to try to requisition her against her will, risks of decommissioning and droid wipe-reset be damned.

Poe had set down his clothes in his trunk as well. He was worrying at the metal band on his wrist.

When Finn had asked why Poe hadn’t requested a second eval and to have the band removed, he’d sort of looked at it, touching it with his other hand, and said quietly that it probably made some people on base feel safer, he didn’t mind it.

Finn himself was still struggling to hobble around, he wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry, but the fact that Poe. His Poe. Would suffer the humiliating mark of wearing a prisoner’s tracking band.

Finn turned away and then sat down on his new bed.

He lay down and stared up at the ceiling.

Poe was saying something about how Jess had shown him how to use the laundry facilities, when they needed to cycle through their clothes or sheets.

Finn stared up at the ceiling.

After a moment, he felt the mattress creak as Poe sat down beside him. He moved over, laboriously, making room for Poe.

Poe lay down and curled up into the space beside him.

Finn draped his arm around Poe.

Poe moved up, angling himself over Finn, and then their lips were touching.

Soft.

They kissed, for a while.

Finn often thought: Poe was very beautiful. He was very attractive in a way that was hard to ignore. That almost hurt to look at, sometimes. Finn was almost certain that there had been more than one occasion in which a superior had abused their power over Poe, sexually. The way that Poe looked sometimes. The way he seemed so aware. The scavenger on Jakku, who Poe had said nothing about explicitly, but with the words that had come out, Poe still concussed and a little out of it—Finn had guessed anyway.

Finn had sworn to himself that he would never hurt Poe in that way. Sex was… what was it anyway. Nothing. An urge. An impulse. Currency. He would never spoil what he had with Poe with something so base.

But Poe was making it very hard. Kissing Finn. His hand moving under Finn’s shirt.

Finn pulled away with a little whine, and Poe moved back instantly.

“Finn?” he asked, uncertainly.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Finn said, hating the broken sound of his voice.

Poe just looked at Finn, confused, unsure, but he nodded his head, looking away. He shifted as if to get off the bed, but Finn caught his wrist.

“Why don’t we talk, Poe? Let’s talk.”

“About what?” Poe asked softly.

“About everything. About how… I’m not your superior anymore, and no one here at the base is either, but you know and I know how hard it is to change who we are, the way things are. About how much I want to touch you right now, but I don’t want to think I love you any less. I love you so much Poe. I love you so much.”

Poe said, “I love you too, Finn.”

“What do you want, Poe?” Finn finally asked. “I’ll do anything that you want. Only what you want.”

Poe looked down at Finn.

Worrying his lip.

Finn wanted to suck on that lip, lick into Poe’s mouth—then he quickly tried to shut down that visual train of thought, feeling the heat in his skin, a blush under the dark coloration.

“I want to lie close to you,” Poe blurted out. “I want you to hold me close and let me press my nose against your neck and smell you and how warm you are and just be like that for as long as I want. I want to taste you. Is that… strange? I don’t know why I said that, but I want to kiss your skin and taste and know that it’s you, it’s Finn and you’re never going to let me go—you’re, you’re laughing—“

Finn caught Poe in his arms and pulled him down. And then made a noise of discomfort at the movement on his back and Poe scootched over.

“You’re wonderful. I love you so much,” Finn said. “I don’t want anyone else in this entire galaxy, only you, Poe."

Poe moved closer to kiss Finn again.

Pulling back, looking soft.

Warm.

Then.

His eyes going somewhere past Finn.

“BB-8, having you been sitting there and watching us the entire time?”

Finn shifted to see.

BB-8 was sitting very quietly beside the bed. She gave a very small, innocent beep.

Friend Poe and Friend Finn are very romantic. This is more wonderful than any holovid that BB has seen in all of the galaxy.

Then she turned on a projector to show a little home video of Finn and Poe lying together, telling each other how much they loved each other.

Then she switched it off.

Looked at them.

And then rolled out of the room.

“BB, the little shit,” Poe muttered. “She knows better. She knows. She’s intentionally screwing with us,” he said, starting to sit up, “I’ll go talk with her—“

“Talk with her later?” Finn suggested.

And then pulled Poe back down, laughing, loving him.

Chapter Text

After Finn’s afternoon physical therapy, they sat out together in the grass behind the med facilities, looking out at the view of the hills. Poe had gotten packets of dried fruit and crackers from the mess, and they were eating whilst sitting there, Poe had towed out a folded chair for Finn and was sitting at Finn’s feet, leaning against his leg. BB-8 had toddled off to look at butterflies.

Finn’s hand was scrunched through Poe’s hair.

It felt nice.

Poe closed his eyes for a moment, feeling Finn scritch gently at his scalp.

Then he said, “I don’t know if I can fly fighters anymore.”

Finn’s fingers stilled.

“Jess said she’d recruit me in a heartbeat, that’s not what I mean.”

Finn looked down at Poe in confusion. “You’ve been spending time down in the hangars, working with the techs and mechanics and pilots, I don’t understand.”

Poe leant his cheek against Finn’s leg. “Every time I try to imagine myself going out in a dogfight—I feel like I want to die. Like there isn’t any reason for me to go on living. I know it's selfish. All the pilots in the Resistance, risking their lives to protect innocents.” He tugged for a moment at the metal band around his wrist, and then let it go. He smiled, far away. “I don’t know how I got so weak. Feeling so scared. Or dull, so heavy and useless I can’t even get up.”

Finn was stroking Poe’s hair again, gentle. He said, after a while, “It’s called ‘being in the First Order.’ They use you up and spit you out. It’s not your fault, Poe.” Finn reaching down to cradle Poe’s cheek, and Poe leaned into the touch. “Do you know what it was like Poe, when I saw you. For five years. All I ever saw in your face was fear. There was bravery too. And love. But they were beating you down. They were carving you up. Both of us. Using us against each other. All this, after that? You’ve been so strong Poe. On the day we escaped, remember what you told me? You told me to keep moving on, to find a life out here, even if you didn’t make it. How did you protect your heart like that, Poe? How could you even manage it?”

“I had you,” Poe said simply. Whispered against Finn’s hand.

And he’d had the dreams.

A glowing tree.

His mother, Shara Bey.

Shara had been telling him stories about a ranch on the moon called Yavin 4. About a ranch with birds and livestock and an old A-Wing in the shed and a tree in the yard that glowed faintly even in the daylight. He’d even talked once, via holocom, with his father, Kes Dameron, although Poe had been shy and feeling anxious and hadn’t talked for long.

Being around Shara too long when it was only the two of them sometimes made Poe feel small and full of a prickling shyness, like he wanted to duck his head away and hide his face until the feelings stopped overwhelming him.

Other times, he simply felt gutted.

A life that he could have never even imagined, ripped away from him.

Sometimes, it was too much for him to even think about.

Poe said, “Shara said, she’s going back to Yavin 4 at the end of this week. She said, that I was welcome to go with her, and you too. But I said that you’re still in physical therapy, and wouldn’t be clear for travel for the next month, at least. So she said that we’d both be welcome anytime we are ready.”

“You don’t have to wait on account of me,” Finn said, but stopped when Poe ducked his face against Finn’s leg.

Poe touched the metal at his wrist and thought, he couldn’t imagine going anywhere, without Finn.

Chapter Text

This was the story that Poe had not told Finn:

A week before Finn woke up, Poe had a meeting with General Organa. He was telling her everything he knew from piloting for the First Order, about their training, their strategies. About the design of TIE-fighters. About what it was like to live and operate on the Finalizer and the Starkiller Base.

At the end of the meeting, Poe feeling very wane and exhausted, but trying to sit up straight and at attention—at the end, Organa looked at the band on his wrist and said that Poe had been cleared with the staff after this initial uncertain period, and that she could have the bracelet removed right then.

Poe found himself flinching, drawing his hand back slightly, as though just stopping the impulse to hide it.

Organa looked at him for a long moment, scrutinizing. Then she said, calmly, that she could also authorize BB-8 to remove it whenever Poe was ready.

-

Tracking bracelets of that model were built with biometric sensors, to prevent prisoner suicide.

It wasn’t just that.

The feeling that Poe didn’t belong in a place like this.

His lack of belonging.

Untethered.

Something to hold onto.

-

After that meeting, there were only two entities who were linked to Poe’s tracker—BB-8, and Dr. Kalonia’s assistant medidroid.

-

Poe couldn’t tell this to Finn.

He couldn’t bear to let Finn know the degree to which he was broken.

Worrying at the bracelet; knowing that his heartbeat, each breath, was being logged into a data bank.

BB-8 was rolling along with Finn and Poe as they took Finn to physical therapy, and Finn laughed a little, asking BB, “Are you sure you’re really an astromech? Are you sure you’re not a medidroid or therapy droid in disguise?”

To their other side, Poe was smiling at the joke, but also automatically tucking his right hand over his other wrist, covering the metal bracelet. Force of habit, now. Later, after the session, and waiting for Finn to finish using the fresher—he sat on a bench outside, and offered his wrist out to BB-8. BB beeped at him, and then delicately unlocked the bracelet.

Poe held the bracelet for a moment in his hand.

Looking down at it.

Then he turned it back over his wrist, and locked it again; cradling the metal against his palm.

A couple of soldiers were coming out of medical; men Poe didn’t know or recognize.

One of the guys saw Poe worrying at the bracelet, sneered, and said something about “wasting medical resources on prisoners” and Poe ducked his head down, looking away, but BB-8 reared up like the self-righteous fist of the Maker, yelling in binary, show some respect, Poe’s a hero and he’s got PTSD ya dumbfucks.

Poe startled, and then looked at BB, and then up at the Resistance soldiers, kind of wide-eyed. He could see recognition in their faces, but it wasn’t the good kind. Shit.

BB-8 must have realized she’d made a tactical error, because she immediately wiped out her tazer.

“Put that away, you traitorous bucket of bolts,” said one soldier.

And then another, “You’re the fucking TIE pilot; PTSD my ass, your kind blew up an unprotected Resistance transport just last month, you blew up the whole damn Hosnian System; go fucking jump off a bridge—you think doing anything else is going to make up for the First Order’s crimes against humanity? Fuck you—“ and then spat in Poe’s face.

BB-8 gave a yell that may have been you fuckers, you can’t talk to someone who’s already fucking suicidal like that, your ass is grass and Poe grabbed BB-8 before she could roll forward, taze a couple of people, and probably get dragged away for decommissioning.

He got tazed in his own arm for the troubles. Pulling back with a cry of pain, while BB beeped shrilly in alarm.

The soldiers were walking away, but not without a couple of insults thrown back their way.

Finn was standing not far away. He looked weak and haggard, and furious enough to kill someone.

Poe cradled his arm and looked away.

-

“What else haven’t you told me?” Finn demanded. “BB told me that you’d had thoughts of self-harm, but how serious is it, really? How serious has it been?”

“I’m… better now,” Poe said dully. “I didn’t want to burden you.”

“Yeah?? Yeah??!? Well how about this, you might have been okay ignoring it, but I’m marching straight to the General and demanding that we have this bracelet snapped in two—“

“She’s already given BB authorization to remove it.”

“…What?”

“Weeks ago. A week before you woke up. I wanted to keep it on. It was my choice.”

“So that someone could stop you if you tried to hurt yourself? To kill yourself?!? Is that what you really meant, every time I tried to ask? Because I’m not in any shape to chase you down if you get off somewhere? Fuck, Poe. Fuck all of this. You know what else this makes me think of? The other thing I know you’ve been hiding from me? How many of our superior officers hurt you, back in the First Order? You know what I mean.”

Poe went still, and then looked Finn straight in the eye. “Don’t think I got nothing out of that, in the end I could use it to protect you. There was talk about—how you were a liability. That you had a brilliant mind, but your attachment to me instead of the Order made you an unstable asset. I bargained to sweeten the deal. It was the only thing I had.”

“Fuck.”

Finn had jerked away from Poe, an expression on his face like horror.

“Stupid, wasn’t it,” Poe said, voice hollow. “Stupid that you ended up wasting your time on me anyway. Your affection. PO-E2711, all used-up. Worthless, garbage.”

“Don’t you fucking talk about yourself like that—“

“Why not, Captain? I thought I was free to do whatever I wanted, Captain.”

BB-8 was rocking back and forth, making little noises of distress.

Finn, looking as though something inside of him were crumpling.

Poe brutally went on.

He couldn’t make himself shut up.

“Stupid PO-E2711. Thought he could join the Resistance and be a hero but look at him. Dead weight. Useless.”

Finn snapped, “Poe, I love you, but that doesn’t mean I have to tolerate you saying—look, I have to—I have to have a minute alone. Fuck, Poe. I’m sorry, I can’t talk to you like this—“

Turning away, but not before Poe could see Finn start crying.

His strong, beautiful Finn.

Finn, who was in pain because of him.

Finn started limping down the path towards their sleeping quarters.

Poe remained on the bench.

Worrying at the bracelet on his wrist.

The metal biting into his skin when he applied enough pressure, red marks in relief against his skin.

Back and forth.

He was thinking: of everything he’d ever lost.

After a few minutes, he asked BB to unlock the bracelet.

He took the ring of metal in his hand and flung it into the empty field alongside the med facilities.

He thought: if it was going to cause Finn this much distress, he didn’t have to see it anymore.

Then Poe lay down on the bench, curled up in grief.

-

Shara Bey found Poe lying like that, an hour later.

BB-8 had gone to get her.

Shara sat next to him, and stroked his hair, and murmured to him in a language that he didn’t understand.

The way it made him think of his dreams.

I want to go home.

Mama.

I want to go home.

Chapter Text

Finn knew—he knew he shouldn’t have left Poe alone, but.

And he had—he thought he had known about what had happened to Poe. But somehow hearing Poe speak the words, and seeing the clear, visceral affect it had had on the other man, Finn had been overcome by such horror, and anger. He had broken down crying before barely even having the chance to turn away from Poe.

He was glad they had blown up Starkiller.

He was glad.

Those people who had destroyed their lives.

Who had destroyed Poe, snatching him away from the life he should have had.

Poe had always had these… visions. When the two of them were very young, on the occasions stolen in the barracks to whisper secrets to each other, Poe had confessed that he thought…he might remember something of his mother. An impression in his mind. Smiling small, then wider when Finn smiled back, Poe revealing that tiny gap in his front teeth.

The Force had given Poe visions, and probably was the only reason Poe was still alive after piloting for so many years. That feeling, like he knew things before they would happen. Not big things, but little things, little enough to save your life: like a reaction to the electric pulse of a muscle moving, a neuron firing, several hundred meters away, the enemy fighter approaching.

Poe had always been so sensitive.

Compassionate.

This sensitivity had made him weak.

Made him vulnerable.

Maybe in another life Finn would have learned how to wear his heart closer to his sleeve, like Poe. Maybe, that day so long ago, his first day on the field when he had been unable to fire his blaster on the innocent—maybe in another life, that act would have come to something more.

But in this life, Finn was cold, and angry, and calculating.

He could live with the cost of war.

Poe was his weakness. The gap in his armor.

And to hear Poe attack himself in such a vicious way, to blame himself for things that he’d been a victim of—it gutted Finn. Seeing with his own eyes how all along, there were so many things he couldn’t have protected Poe from, including himself.

Finn got back to their quarters and cried long and hard.

When he’d exhausted himself of his tears, he waited until signs of his weeping were no longer visible. He washed his face in the fresher (almost wishing for his Stormtrooper helmet and armor) and then went to the mess for a fortifying cup of caf, to stave off the exhaustion that had come with the crying, on top of the exhaustion of physical therapy. It was around the dinner hour, and Finn was hoping to catch Poe. Maybe Pava had coaxed him to dinner, or Shara, or maybe good old reliable BB-8 had hustled Poe along.

Poe wasn’t in the mess hall. Pava and her squad hadn’t seen him that afternoon. Shara was eating with the general, and said that she’d left Poe by the medbay, but—no, sit down, sit down, by the Stars, Finn was still recovering from injury, she’d have one of the younger pilots go fetch Poe for dinner. Certainly, she knew those trouble-makers could always use the exercise.

Finn sat down by Shara and the general and cupped his mug of caf and tried not to feel too self-conscious. Snap Wexley brought over some dinner for Finn, telling Finn, kindly though also in a pal-ish way, to stop trying to be such a self-sacrificing idiot and eat something, why didn’t he.

Finn shred a green roll into tiny, bite-sized pieces, but he didn’t eat.

He was waiting for Poe.

When Pava came back from the medbay, she looked—worried. “Poe’s not at the medbay,” she said to Shara. Then she glanced over at Finn, before saying, sounding reluctant, almost wary, “The medidroid tried to track Poe down, but he—he’d thrown his tracking bracelet into the adjacent field. We don’t know where he is. Finn, you need to stay put, you’re going to risk re-injuring yourself, I’ll take my guys out and we’ll search the base, BB-8’s with him, I’m sure he’s fine, we just need to stay calm.”

“I am calm,” Finn said.

And he was, strangely.

It felt like that day on Jakku, when he thought that Poe had died.

This was like that, but a thousand times worse.

(Had he ever told Poe about that? That he’d been willing to lie down and die without Poe in the desert? How could he have not told that to Poe).

(But he knew why. Because he couldn’t shackle Poe down like that. Told himself he couldn’t influence Poe’s decisions in such a selfish way, that Poe was free to do what he most wanted).

(Maybe Finn should have been selfish).

(Or maybe Poe had been right. How they’d always been living on borrowed time).

Calm down.

“If Poe’s not on base,” Finn said. “I want to borrow a speeder. No, never mind that, you can keep searching the base, but I still want that speeder.”

There was a lake not far from the base. Fifteen minutes walking. Finn and Poe had gone once, a few days ago. Slowly. Carefully because of Finn. But Finn had thought: it had been a nice morning. Poe had had one of his better days. They’d sat by the lakeshore and eaten sandwiches, and afterwards Finn had watched Poe take off his boots and his socks and roll up his pants and wade into the water. He’d waded until the water went past his knees, his thighs.

He’d stood out in the water for a long time, until Finn had yelled at Poe, his voice shaking only a little, to come back.

Poe had come back, and then sat up on the rock that Finn had been sitting on, and then lain down so that he could tuck his face against Finn’s lap. Drying out in the warm of the sun.

He’d sung a song, on their walk back. Soft, hesitating, but to Finn it had been the most beautiful sound in the entire world. A song they’d heard from the pilots.

Let me fly swiftly through wind and through rain,
Let all the stars gather round.
Let me feel deeply all loss and all pain,
Of the worlds which we’re bound.

Poe had said it was a pilot’s song for Alderaan. How they were flying to rebel against the empire in Alderaan’s memory. A hero’s song.

It had been a sad song, lilting, but Finn had thought, hoped, perhaps it was a sign that Poe was regaining hope and confidence in himself. That there was something out there worth fighting for again.

God.

If the Force really existed.

If there was anything left worth fighting for.

He wanted Poe to live.

All he wanted was for Poe to live.

And the stars did mourn Alderaan,
And the stars, they’re still crying.
And the stars did mourn Alderaan—
Yeah, that’s why we’re still flying…

Yeah. That’s why we’re still flying.

Chapter Text

The sun was setting. Red and gold and orange in the sky, darkening into blue and the stars and the moon.

Poe was floating out in the water.

Drifting between the water and sky, looking up at the stars.

He’d wanted to get somewhere away from people, where it was quiet. The sound of the water.

It was dark. Soon, he wouldn’t be able to see where the water ended and the shore began.

He was tired.

He was so tired, and maybe drowning wasn’t the quickest, the easiest way to go, but maybe a part of him had thought to come out this far, to swim this long, so that in the end he wouldn’t have a choice.

He shut his eyes for a moment, feeling the tears leak out.

Why was he so stupid and weak.

He was so weak.

Useless.

Nothing.

And he was so tired, it felt as though his muscles would give out at any moment, water lapping around his face.

When they had reached the lakeshore, when Poe had started stripping down to his briefs and waded into the lake, BB-8 had given a squeal of alarm, and followed him in, beeping insistently. She had followed and followed until her little head was barely sticking up out of the water.

Poe, it’s getting too dark!

Poe, it’s not safe to go swimming without anyone else! Wait until you can bring someone with you!!

Poe!

Poe!!!!

He had wanted to get away. Somewhere no one could get to him. Out in the dark and in the water and among the stars.

Drifting.

“POE!”

There was a voice howling his name from the distant shoreline. Anguished and despairing. Poe eyes snapped open, shaken by the sound. He thrashed for a moment. Swallowing water and coughing it back up.

If Finn’s back had been well… Poe knew he would have jumped into the water and come for him. Fuck, even without a healed back, Poe had the sudden awful thought: Finn might try anyway in desperation. Finn wasn’t supposed to be there. He wasn’t.

Poe was so far from the shore.

He was so tired.

He thought, please, Finn, don’t come for me.

And it felt like a dream, like a hallucination, when he felt that touch against his mind, I can’t do that, Poe. The words breathed out like a sob. I can’t let you go. Please. Please please please. I can’t let you go. I love you.

And for a moment, everything went dark and—

-

When FN-2187 and PO-E2711 were very young.

When they were very young.

There were certain cadets in their squads that already had nicknames. Their marks of belonging. It sort of simply happened. The sounds catching on your tongue, sticking easier than a string of numbers. The ones who fit in. The ones who didn’t stand out like nails that had to be hammered back down.

Nines. Zero. Slip.

Poe.

Poe was the one who made you like him just by looking at you, smiling.

Poe.

When FN-2187 was very young—

When you are very young, you don’t have a name. Poe calls you 87, but it doesn’t stick. The other cadets don’t care for you. There is something about you that they don’t like. They don’t like you when you help Slip. They don’t like you when you excel in every class. There is something about you.

They don’t like you.

The loneliness hurts.

It hurts you somewhere in your chest, but you don’t say anything.

You don’t say a word.

One day, you are sitting on the edge of your bunk in the barracks—it’s your off-shift, you are free to watch the holovid being shown in the common screening area, or join some of the other cadets blowing off steam in the sim room, engaged in a round of lightning tag, or peruse the data banks of reading material—but you’re alone in the barracks.

Their squad instructor, Captain KT13, or Katar among his peers—Captain KT13 has told FN-2187 that sometimes there are cadets that don’t fit in. They never get a name. But FN-2187 shows promise. You won’t fit in among the other cadets, he says, but you have the potential to be a great leader, a great strategist. Count the isolation as life handing you a favor. It will make you stronger, in the end.

You say: yes sir, but your chest aches anyway.

The emptiness doesn’t go away.

It just feels bigger.

Poe is coming into the room.

You can recognize everyone in your squad by the way they walk when off-duty. The shift in gravity. The loosening of their muscles, their shoulders. Unique to each individual. Young cadets, at ease.

Poe takes off his helmet. The sleeping quarters are one of the few places that is permitted. He walks past his bunk. He walks up to yours.

“You’re so serious,” he says. He’s looking you in the eye. You can’t look away. There’s something in his face. Open, and holding secrets all at the same time. “Back here alone. Making plans to get ahead and become a captain already? Captain Finn? Sounds good, right? Finn. Captain Finn.”

You square your shoulders. “Come on, Poe. Don’t—don’t make fun of me—“

And that’s when you see it, the flash of a look on his face.

The moment of uncertainty.

He’s not making fun of you.

He… isn’t.

He isn’t at all.

You hesitate.

You blurt out, “Or, I guess. Finn is a good name. I like it.”

You test the name again, in your mind.

Finn.

You like it.

Poe smiles.

And you realize, like a stutter in your chest.

You like him.

-

You’re a stormtrooper.

So.

Your imagination has a limited scope, but after that day, you have plans. You have plans.

You’re going to be a captain.

Poe is going to be your second-in-command.

A lot of Stormtroopers don’t make it past their early twenties, but you know the way out. You’re so sure you know the way out. It’s to become a leader in the First Order. A strategist. A commanding officer. You’ve only seen hints of what could be existing outside of the cadet barracks and training facilities, but there’s got to be more. There’s got to be a way up. Pledging your loyalty to the First Order. Sacrificing your life if need be, but also being rewarded for your efforts. It’s such a small thing, a tiny chance, but you are young, and intelligent, and hungry for something more, starving for it. Captains have the power to protect their troopers, even if in only small ways. It’s the only way.

(Until the day your realize you can’t protect anyone).

(Until that day).

Until that day, you are falling in love with PO-E2711.

You are falling in love with Poe.

You don’t even have the words sometimes to describe it, but there is a hungry aching feeling. The tiny scraps and morsels thrown your way. Poe greeting you in the mess. Poe following behind you in a lightning tag sim and laughing, in the dark and the noise so that only the two of them can hear it, so serious, Captain Finn. taking your captaincy training so seriously…

The sound of his voice through the modulator of his helmet.

The unmistakable line of him when at ease.

A joke about that day’s kitchen shift kriffing up the lunch portions being served up, how anyone could make a hash of the insta-bread, but at least the sugar pudding looked normal, did 87 want his or what—

A kiss stolen in the barracks between shifts.

The taste of sweetness still lingering on the lips.

-

That day when they are both eighteen, when FN-2187 realizes there are no dreams for soldiers in the First Order. There are no dreams, no matter how high he tries to climb. His heart being carved out of him.

There are no dreams.

Poe.

Poe.

-
-
-

When PO-E2711 is eighteen, he is chosen to be a pilot.

-

When PO-E2711 is still training as a pilot, when Finn is not yet a captain, another one of his superiors singles Poe out. He says, I’ve seen Captain Phasma take you aside for cadet FN-2187. It doesn’t seem right, wasting you on a mere cadet. Not right at all.

And makes Poe get down on his knees.

He doesn’t leave any marks, because all soldiers belong first and foremost to the First Order. All soldiers are kept at peak physical functioning capacity for the good of the order.

No one physically… harms Poe, per say.

No one harms Poe, technically speaking.

Poe forces himself to stand straight at attention the next day, to still the shaking in his hands.

There’s a lesson in this, he tells himself.

If he is good and does what is ordered of him, they won’t harm Finn.

If he is good and does what he is told, they will be satisfied and look at him, not Finn.

If he is good, and does what he is told.

It didn’t hurt, anyway.

It didn’t.

Hurt.

And in the cockpit of a TIE fighter, anyway, there isn’t time

(to hurt. to weep. to shake out of your bones).

There isn’t time.

-

The world that Poe knows, at nineteen, is a bleak one.

A hopeless one.

Maybe Finn was right, about his mind escaping into flights of fancy, hopeless dreams.

But this is something that doesn’t escape Poe’s notice, even in the heat of battle, dogfights among the stars:

X-Wing Fighters have shields.

The enemy fighters have shields.

There is a world out there, where a pilot is given a shield.

Where a life is given some degree of greater value.

Somewhere out there, among the stars—

-

When Starkiller base is destroyed, Poe feels it wring through him like a scream.

Hundreds of thousands of voices crying out—then silenced.

-

This is what his mother tells him:

Shara Bey tells him—if she had known where they had taken him. If she had known. If she had known.

But the early roots of the First Order had disappeared into the endless reaches of the Outer Rim.

Impossible to track down.

Shara had thrown her lot in with General Organa.

She had thrown her lot in with the Resistance.

If there was even a tiny chance that her son was still alive, the First Order had to be hunted out and stopped before her son reached a soldier’s age.

Root out their fighting forces.

The only way to save him.

But the years stretched on.

They stretched on…

-

Poe became a soldier.

He became a pilot.

Too late to save, to late except—

-

A day out of the blue, Captain FN-2187 in the TIE hangars.

A stolen fighter.

I need a pilot.

I need a pilot.

Poe, I need—

-

(you)

-

Finn standing on the lakeshore, the sunlight on him.

Something in his face.

Sadness.

Or despair.

A song lifting through Poe’s mind, escaping his mouth.

He doesn’t know if Finn can hear him.

If it makes him sad.

Finn calls out to him, anyway.

Please, come back to me.

Please

Come back.

-

Poe doesn’t remember getting out of the water.

He doesn’t remember making it to shore.

He wakes up in the medbay.

Finn is lying in the cot next to his; fully dressed, maybe passed out from exhaustion.

Finn, Poe whispers, tries to whisper, weakly.

But the sound seems to carry because Finn jerks up immediately, making a noise, and looks over at Poe. He is at Poe’s side immediately.

He looks haggard.

Sorrowing.

BB-8 pokes her head up from the side of the cot.

She whispers, I saw it with my very own visual sensors. You were using the Force to get out of the lake. Both of you. Were using. The Force.

Finn makes a small, choked noise and says, “BB, I don’t think that’s how the Force works—”

I know what I know, BB-8 says haughtily. Poe wasn’t swimming anymore. His muscles gave out. But he made it back to shore. It was. The Force.

“BB, could we have a minute?” Finn asks, pleading a little.

The Force, BB-8 repeats again at them, and then slowly rolls on out.

Finn looks at Poe.

After a moment, he takes Poe’s hand and presses his face to his palm.

He begins to sob.

Sounding like his heart all wrung out.

When he’s done. When he’s calmed a little, his eyes red-rimmed but his voice steady, he says, “Poe, maybe you should go with Shara, when she leaves for Yavin 4 in two days. You can get away from all of this. Heal. They have a town near the ranch. Anything you need. It’ll be quiet, peaceful. You can reconnect with your family. Afterwards, I know you’ll be better. You’ll feel so much stronger, happier.”

Poe reaches out to press his fingers into Finn’s hair.

“I can’t go without you.”

“Don’t, don’t do this Poe—“

“Do what?” he asks quietly. “We’re both still healing, Finn. I’m not the only one. And who else could ever call me back.”

Finn lets out a shuddery breath. He doesn’t start crying again.

He looks quietly resigned.

He holds Poe’s hand and says, “Okay.”

He breathes it out again like a whisper, a prayer.

That everything would be okay.

Chapter Text

Over the next two days, Finn is busy. Poe is kept around the medbay mostly, for monitoring, and he’s only allowed out with supervision.

On the first day, Poe sleeps through the morning and through Finn’s morning physical therapy session, and around noon Finn comes back to gently coax Poe out of bed. They take lunch outside, sitting in the sunlight. Afterwards, Pava comes around and she goes with Poe back to where Finn and Poe had their temporary sleeping quarters, to get his and Finn’s few possessions.

Finn spends the afternoon with BB-8 and PT-079, a therapy droid who transfers Finn and Poe’s health records to BB’s data banks. BB-8’s not really a medidroid, technically, but PT-079 very seriously talks with BB about the therapy regime protocols that have been uploaded, the grand responsibility of being called upon to care for organic lifeforms.

BB-8 isn’t really going to be responsible for Finn’s therapy, but she wants to help. They’re going to find a new doctor and therapists on Yavin 4. A few weeks back, Dr. Kalonia had said that she’d want Finn to finish his therapy on D-Qar if possible, for consistency’s sake, and with his injury, he really wasn’t supposed to be traveling a lot until he was fully healed. But, well. That wasn’t going to be a possibility anymore. Finn doesn’t want Poe staying on the Resistance Base a day longer than he absolutely has to.

BB-8, on the other hand. Afterwards, Finn asks BB if this is really what she wants to do.

“You’re an astromech, Beebs,” he points out. “You’re—don’t you want to stay here? Maybe stay with pilots. Flying out with them again?”

BB-8 blats at him, a little rudely, and then gently bumps his side.

It occurs to Finn that he doesn’t… really know anything about BB-8’s past. He doesn’t know about what pilot she used to serve with, the one who was killed by the First Order. He doesn’t know all of that history.

“Are you really sure?” he asks again.

BB-8 gives him a long stare.

Why are you asking such fucking dumb questions, she wants to know.

Finn laughs at the unexpected crassness.

I can make up my own mind, you know!

Finn sits down on the floor so that he can look BB-8 in her visual sensors, eye to optical lens, and he says, “Yeah. Well, I guess you’re kind of like us too, aren’t you? You’re choosing your own life. Your own destiny, huh?”

BB tilts at him, and then makes burbling, whistling noises that aren’t really words in binary, just sounds. Feelings.

Finn puts his arms around BB-8, forehead to astromech dome.

“You’re a gift, you know that Beebs? A real gift. I’m glad you’ve been here, and here for Poe.”

BB-8 whistles at him, leaning forward lightly into his hug.

-

Finn tries.

But a lot of the time, he thinks: sometimes he doesn’t really know a lot about physical contact between people who are not Poe.

Not something that you can really put into words, or explain, sometimes.

On the second day, Finn goes outside in the late morning, looking for Poe, and sees that Poe is sitting on the bench outside the medbay with Shara.

Poe has his arms around Shara’s middle and has buried his face against her shirt. Shara is holding Poe, murmuring softly into his hair. Her darling boy. Her beloved son. She is so proud of him. She is so very proud of him.

Finn hesitates, and then goes back inside.

He goes back through and out a back entrance to sit out by himself and get his bearings.

He can’t explain the ache inside.

An empty, unbearable feeling of loss.

He scrubs at his face, and then sits back and looks out at the sun on the grass, and the distant forms of X-Wing fighters moving through the sky.

-

The other morning, sitting on his cot while Poe was still sleeping—Shara had come in to see how Poe was doing.

She sat with Finn.

She told him, a little bit, about her and Kes Dameron.

She said, “You know, all those years, Kes and I fought with the Resistance because we wanted to get Poe out. That was honestly the primary motivation, you know? Find the First Order. Find out where they were keeping the stolen children. Get Poe out.”

“Then one day, around the time Poe would have turned eighteen, I woke up one morning and thought: I can’t do this anymore. Years and years, a mother goes on, and now—I could have been flying into battle and shooting down my own baby boy. Maybe some people would say that would have been a mercy killing, or that my son was long gone. Indoctrinated. Brain-washed. A killer.”

“Kes and I left the Resistance for a while. Then I came back. I couldn’t tell you why. A few years of soul-searching, living life out in Yavin 4. Then I decided, I’d try to come back. Maybe it was the Force telling me, that there was still something out there worth fighting for. I don’t really know.”

“Kes couldn’t take it, though. He’s more like Poe. He’s tough, but his heart—there’s a softness in there too. A goodness. He couldn’t take being out here anymore. So he’s back on Yavin. Heads a small training camp for new Resistance recruits. Yavin’s out of the way. A real backwater. We keep a real low-key profile out there. On weekends, Kes does crafts and camping and survival training with the local kids scouts, Whisperbird Scouts. It’s been good for him, I think.”

In the dim light of the patient facilities, Poe looked small, and vulnerable, sleeping on his cot.

Poe had nearly killed himself, Finn thought.

His heart could barely handle the thought.

Poe had nearly ended his own life.

Finn looked down at his hands.

Choking back a fresh wave of despair.

After a few minutes, when he’d gotten control over himself again, he tried to say, “—Is it strange? Poe—you didn’t name him Poe. He’s not really—I don’t know how you manage,” he got out at last.

Shara said, “Lucas Dameron was taken a long time ago, and Poe came back. Maybe not really the same, but maybe it doesn’t matter. Poe needs a mother, too. Everyone does.”

And she looked at Finn, in a way that was clear and steady, and Finn looked away.

“I’m not really counting on my finding my family,” Finn said. “If they’re even alive. And I’m not going to be idealistic about it, either. I don’t think the world really works like that.”

Shara didn’t say anything.

But she put an arm around his shoulder, comforting, and Finn didn’t move away.

Chapter Text

This is a little bit of an announcement post, in the sense that I'm thinking of possibly doing something kind of different with this fic in a fifth part instead of ending it. But it may end up being a bit... different than what I've been writing so far, as far as the direction and focuses it brings up. So I'll be taking some time to think about it. In the meantime, I've done a couple of other multimedia things related to this fic.

First is a piece of music. I realized in the last couple of chapters that the atmosphere of the fic was putting me in the mind of folk music; so partly Oscar Isaac folk singing inspired, here's a folk song for this fic which pretty much sums up the general sensibility and major events of the narrative so far. I tried putting together a more polished recording of "Pilot's Ballad"--but I kind of like the emotion that came out in this recording? So that's the version I decided to share.

Second is a little sketch of eighteen-year-old Poe as a TIE pilot cadet.

I went down with my lover,
To the lakeshore wide and sweet;
We laid out in the sunlight,
Felt the pebbles beneath our feet.

I went out to the water,
With the sky so high above;
“Don’t leave me behind,” he called.
“Don’t leave me, my love.”

We’d lived so long in wartime,
Heard the gunshots hard and fast;
I flew so high in air so thin, thought
This life could never last.

I took his hand, let’s run away,
Let’s leave this world behind.
Come with me, my lover,
Come with me, be mine.

Thought I’d left the fight behind me,
Left the violence and the sorrow;
But I couldn’t shake the heavy weight,
Or see a life tomorrow.

I went out to the lakeshore,
Thought that here, my life could end.
But my lover came and held me fast,
Said with time, my heart would mend.

Chapter Text

Yavin 4 is small and quiet and out of the way. It isn’t close to any of the major hyperspace lanes. It’s a moon covered in jungles, with mainly villages and small towns. It was a territory of Yavin Prime of the Kuauac States before their planet and associated moons were conquered by Alderaan five hundred years ago. The monarchy of Alderaan had claimed that the territories were Sith-controlled and that it would be for the greater good of the Federation of Allied Planets that this territory come under Alderaan jurisdiction. The Kuauac people were weak-willed, superstitious, primitive, and prone to violence. Prime targets for Sith influence. Of course the Jedi Order should have no objection to this move to defend the Federation.

Over the next several hundred years, the Federation becomes the Republic, and the Republic becomes the Galactic Empire. Then the Empire fell, and the New Republic cobbles itself back together.

Yavin 4 is small and out of the way. It is covered in rainforests with some volcanos.

The Bey-Dameron Ranch is quiet and out of the way. It is fifteen minutes by speeder to the nearest town. It is twenty minutes by speeder to the Resistance training outpost.

Kes Dameron comes to pick them up from the starport—which is really just a large field that has been cleared for transports, with a couple of small hangers, and some cattle in the distance, watching them from just beyond a rickety fence.

Finn finds himself wondering, absently, how often they have to clear livestock that might wander onto the landing strip.

The air is warm, and heavy, and humid.

BB-8 trundles around, keeping close to him.

Kes is a handsome man with carefully trimmed facial hair. He also looks worn-away, and weary. Old.

Kes shakes Finn’s hand, firmly.

Then he looks over at Poe.

“My son,” he says and takes Poe into his arms.

He clasps him tight, and after a moment, lets him go again.

It’s hard to read Poe’s face. There seem to be at least a hundred things, as he looks at his father, and then all around. This entire planet. The air pressing down, wet and heavy.

Kes’s face is easier to read. It is lined with pain.

Kes takes the duffel that Poe is carrying, and then grimaces when Poe confirms that this is really all that he and Finn have.

Shara kisses Kes, and then asks how everything has been at home.

“Oh, same old, same old,” Kes says, still grimacing a little. “Been getting new recruits, now that—well, you know. The kids—they’re doing fine too. Want to know where Tía Shara went to, of course I tell them it’s top secret, need-to-know basis. They’re doing fine. Well, anyway.”

“Should we stop in town for anything—“

“Shara, yakuntik. I thought you had faith in me, I’ve got supper prepped and ready at home, all the guest amenities, I even remembered extra toothbrushes and toothpaste. We’re ready for anything, and I mean it. We’re going straight home.”

Finn can almost hear it, the unspoken finally that is never breathed out.

Then Kes finally seems to notice BB, because she beeps at him noisily.

“Huh?” he asks. “Hey, weren’t you Tillak Mun’s BB unit?”

BB-8 blats at him.

“Oh, so you’re with these two now, eh? The day that droids start picking and choosing where they go themselves, I never—No, no, don’t you sass me, you little pest, go on ahead, go wherever you want, I’m not stopping you.”

BB-8 rolls on past like she's absolutely the boss of all of them.

Finn can't stop his smile at that.

-

The Bey-Dameron ranch is small and quiet and out of the way. There are a few chickens, and a couple of goats. Once, there had been a few gaupa, for riding, and also cattle, but that had been long ago, when Poe had been an infant. There is a hangar with an old A-Wing. A garage where they keep the speeders, and a charging station where BB gets settled in.

There really is a glowing tree in the backyard.

It is evening, and dripping rain out, but Finn can see the faint glow of the blue-green tree even in the darkness. It’s kind of creepy. But it also kind of isn’t. It’s a soft light. Like the sunlight soaked up, then quietly reemitted. It makes it feel like just at daybreak, in that corner of the yard.

Finn has never had supper like what Kes had prepared. The sheer quantities of it. The unfamiliar and rich flavors. He feels warm, and full, and sleepy with it. He sits at the window, Poe curled up against him. It’s a nice bedroom. Bare, except for the furniture, and the woven rug on the floor, and the couple of illustrated pictures of birds and flowers on the walls, painted onto real paper instead of holoimage. The room feels like its meant to be lived in, that it was made for people to live in, in a way that the barracks of the Resistance and the First Order—well, it was just different, really.

Poe has his face tucked against Finn’s chest.

His eyes are closed.

He hasn’t really explored the house.

Finn isn’t sure Poe has really looked at anything.

-

In the night, Finn wakes up and doesn’t know where Poe is.

In the first moment, he tries not to panic. Poe wouldn’t. He wouldn’t. Maybe he went to the fresher down the hall. Maybe—anything. Went for a glass of water.

Finn climbs out of bed.

He thinks he’s about to check down the hall, but something makes him change his mind. He goes to the window.

It’s stopped raining, and everything is wet.

Poe is outside.

He’s put on a shirt, but he’s barefoot in the grass.

He is under the glowing tree, his arms around it, loosely, his forehead pressed against the bark.

Finn doesn’t know what to do, or what to make of this. He thinks about going down, to get Poe, but there’s movement in the darkness.

Kes is out there.

He’s going out to Poe, gently putting a hand to Poe’s shoulder.

Speaking to him.

Finn watches for a moment longer, before stepping away.

He lies back in bed.

He doesn’t fall asleep until Poe comes back, a long, long while later, and when Poe comes back, Finn closes his eyes, pretending to sleep.

Poe climbs back into bed, tucked up against Finn’s side.

Finn finds himself thinking: they are twenty-three-years-old. Far too many years too late, in this quiet ranch that doesn’t fit the lives of a former First Order captain and pilot at all… but he has to try. For Poe’s sake, he has to try until maybe there’s nothing left to try for.

Chapter Text

The first week was quiet.

Shara took Finn to his physical therapy sessions, and Poe to his therapy sessions as well. BB-8 came along with Finn and played silly, dramatic motivation music that helped get through the humdrum routine. Shara went on walks with Poe around town while waiting.

When they weren’t at therapy, Finn worked through the piles of data that the General had sent along with him, doing analysis, and he had meetings with the General and her staff via holocom.

By the end of the first week, Finn was starting to go a little itchy out of his skin. The ranch and the town were too quiet, too peaceful; too rural. At the Resistance base, there had always been hundreds of people all around, activity ratcheted up. Finn had felt restless sure, not really being in the heart of activities like back in the First Order, but it hadn’t been like this.

Kes watched him sitting at the kitchen table one morning, Finn looking probably all pent-up and cooped in, and Kes smiled with his eyes narrowed a little, and said that Finn would get used to the different pace of things out on Yavin. And once Finn was cleared for more demanding activity, he was free to join the rest of them at the training outpost, or even go back to D’Qar whenever he felt ready, or wherever he wanted. He was free to do whatever he wanted, it was entirely up to him.

Finn nodded, and sipped his caf, and didn’t say anything.

Finn thought, he’d exile himself to ranch country for a million years if it helped Poe. Hell, hadn’t that been the initial plan, anyway? Run away to the Outer Rim. Disappear among the stars. Well, he’d finally gotten what he’d wanted, and he was bored out of his mind.

He felt his mouth twitch a little to the side, the thought entering his mind: that Poe had been right all along. The only thing keeping Finn feeling completely tethered to the real world, off-planet, was the work he was doing for General Organa.

Funny, how that had turned out.

-

The other thing he didn’t like about the ranch:

That damn Force Tree.

Lately, Poe had been spending a lot of time around that tree.

He’d lie under the tree, looking up at the glowing leaves, and the whisperbirds flying overhead. He’d climb up into the branches. He’d take naps curled up against it.

And lately: there was a faraway look coming into Poe’s eyes. Distracted, and distant. Almost half-awake.

Kes would look out at Poe in the yard, and say that he was glad to see it. “That’s a special tree. It’ll help Poe heal, being out there, in the natural air, on his own home soil, under that tree, a saasil che’. I’m damn glad to see him getting some peace out there.”

Finn didn’t blurt out, that the tree gave him the creeps sometimes, and he wanted to bundle Poe up and carry him out from under it.

He didn’t talk about how he’d gone out there that morning, before anyone else was awake, he’d woken up from nightmares of the First Order and gone outside to get some fresh air.

Then he’d looked at that tree, glowing in the early morning light.

He went up under the boughs and looked hard at it and said, “Don’t take Poe away from me, you hear? Don’t you dare take him away.”

But maybe it wasn’t just the tree. It was that whole world, the whole situation.

Kes took a day off, and him and Poe went hiking into the forest, just the two of them. They were gone all day, going as far as the old temples built by the Kuauac.

“They’re not Sith temples, for fuck’s sake,” Kes had said when Finn had asked. “Do you really think the Rebellion would have built a base under the auspices of a Sith temple? Or lasted at all, if they’d been fool enough to make that move? My people don’t call it the Force, and maybe our practices aren’t quite the same as the Jedi Order’s had been, back when there had been a Jedi Order, but that doesn’t make them evil in the heart of them.”

So Kes had went hiking with Poe out in the forests, and they came back when it was dark, and Shara and Finn had been sitting around in the kitchen, waiting for them to come back, supper on the table.

Poe came back with Kes, looking tired but maybe a little happy too, and sweating and smelling like that humid, alien rainforest, all the smells of it completely unlike the Resistance Base, with its tarmac and machinery, or the plastic, durasteel, clean chemicals of the First Order base and barracks.

His hair was getting longer, and curling.

He hadn’t really shaved in a few days, the shadow of it darkening his jaw.

Finn had let his hair grow out a little, too, but nothing crazy, nothing dramatic. He didn’t look in a mirror and not recognize who he was.

After supper and all the dishes had been cleared away, Poe went out again to the tree. There was that absent look on his face again.

His hand reaching out, rubbing his fingers gently against the trunk.

Finn followed behind him and finally asked, “Why are you doing that, Poe? I mean, it’s a nice tree, I guess, but.”

Tried to joke, “What, is it talking to you? The tree is using the Force to talk to you, is it?”

When Poe didn’t answer right away, Finn felt it like a coin dropping, and he couldn’t stop himself from blurting out, “Kriff, I was joking, but it is, isn’t it?” He had the sudden crazy urge to drag Poe away from that tree.

Poe turned around and took Finn’s hand, the way he liked it.

That comforting touch.

“It’s not what you think,” Poe said. “It’s just—calming. Sometimes, I feel like I’m dreaming about my childhood, when I’m under it. Like the things that the tree saw, it’s—maybe, it’s sharing them with me.” Then he looked away, suddenly self-conscious, “I don’t know, or maybe I just like to think that. Imagining it.”

Finn felt his mouth tighten into a bit of a frown, and he tried to smooth it away, to be reassuring. “No, I believe you.”

He looked up at that tree, and with the sudden feeling that it could hear him, he thought, halfway between snarling and begging, Help Poe, but don’t take him away from me. Please.

The wind moved through the branches, and there was the sound of birds and wildlife, and nothing else.

Chapter Text

Kes told Poe stories, as they hiked through the forest. He told Poe about how, when Kes was a child, the Galactic Empire had additionally funded the old Alderaan education programs designed to wipe out the old Kuauac languages and traditions; except, instead of emphasizing Alderaanian, the Imperialists had taught Basic and spread propaganda targeting recruitment of Kuauan youth to join the stormtrooper infantry program.

Kes said, “I joined, because I thought: it was the only way to get off this planet and see the galaxy. As evil of the treatment you got as Kuauan child in these programs. They treated us like dirt under their shoes, and we were, God, we were just these little kids!—but you have to understand, there were few jobs and opportunities on a backwater moon like this, certainly nothing outside of farming and livestock. They made you join the Empire if you wanted to do, well, anything. I joined up, and then eventually defected for the Rebellion. That’s how I met your mother.”

They had climbed up a hill, to a little outcrop. You could see the cleared fields of the ranch in the distance, as well as the neighboring properties.

“I’m telling you this, Poe, because I want you to have this chance to hear about where you came from. The evil of what happened to you. All of these Galactic powers—the Old Republic, the Galactic Empire—and now, even the weak complacency of the New Republic—in some way or form, they’ve all tried to smother us down. To kill who we are. And then they took you. The First Order took you. And I can’t give you back what you lost, but me and your mama—we can at least try.”

Poe stood next to Kes uncertainly, and then said, “I can’t be the son you lost. I’m just, not. I’m sorry.”

Kes looked over at Poe, and then clapped a hand to his shoulder, squeezing. “Even if we didn’t have the bonds of blood, which we do and don’t underestimate that—you’re a good man, Poe. Just look at you! Escaping the First Order. Blowing up the Starkiller Base. You’re a gift to this world. You are a gift.”

Kes let go of Poe, looking at him in that sad, proud, wistful way he had of looking at Poe, and moved to start back up the trail. But Poe said, “Kes, why don’t you like Finn?”

Kes stopped and looked back, startled.

Poe said, “He—he’s the same as me. I wouldn’t be alive, several times over, if it weren’t for him. I love him. Why don’t you like him?”

“I like him fine,” Kes said.

“Kes.”

Kes rubbed his jaw a little, and then said, “He’s a bit standoffish, isn’t he? Your man Finn. He sets himself apart. And also: he doesn’t like the saasil che’, which in my book counts for a lot. How can you trust a person that doesn’t like a Force-sensitive tree, it’s like a person saying they don’t like water. A bit unnatural.”

Poe nodded, and then looked down. He said. “Finn’s like that, because he had to be. To survive. You should have met him when we were kids. He used to—he used to be so—“

Then the memories seemed to overwhelm him, and he had to stop. Choking back the need to cry.

Kes looked at Poe, the distress obvious on his face.

“I’m sorry,” Kes said. “My son, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” Poe whispered. “God, I’m sorry.”

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for,” Kes said. “Me—I’m a bitter old man, is what I am. A bit of an asshole.”

“Finn can be too, sometimes, but I still love him,” Poe said, a little wetly. “I want you both to get along. I’d like that.”

Kes smiled, sadly, and then said, “Well, I’ll try. I’ll try to get along with your former-captain-of-the-stormtroopers boyfriend, what is this world coming to. What is this family even coming to.” He patted Poe’s arm again, and then gestured down the path. “Come along, there’s still so much I want to show you.”

Poe breathed in, shakily, and nodded, and they continued the hike.

-

Poe sometimes didn’t even know what he was doing, back there on Yavin 4.

Sometimes, he thought: he had a hard time even looking at anything. Afraid of what he’d see. Afraid of figuring out—how much he didn’t belong.

All of these strange stories.

All of these strange sights.

He’d stopped shaving for a few days, and then looked in a mirror one day and barely recognized who he saw. Back in the First Order, such facial hair would have never been allowed. His skin was tanning under the sun of Yavin 4. His hair growing out. He was starting to look like—what the First Order would have called the primitives of the Outer Rim. The savage half-breeds.

He knew Finn could see it too, that feeling out of the corner of his eye.

But Poe wasn’t—

He was a liar.

But he wasn’t allowed a razor without supervision, anyway, and he found that he couldn’t bring himself to ask Finn to help him with that. Not in that moment. Maybe when the beard had grown long enough that the sight of his own ugly face in the mirror disgusted him into action.

-

He lied to Finn.

He lay under the Force-sensitive tree to forget.

Letting the tree soothe him with the hazy memories of an infant being raised by a younger Shara and Kes.

He drifted in and out of these memories.

Sometimes, he let himself fall into the current of the Force, the way the tree carried it. Half-forgetting himself. Like he was a part of the tree, and the soil, and the forest. That he wasn’t Poe at all.

The Force let him forget.

Then it made him remember.

-

He woke up in the middle of the night, on their eighth day on Yavin 4.

Finn was lying beside him, but tense in his sleep. Moving, making these pained noises.

Poe reached out and put a hand on Finn’s shoulder—

And then, all at once: he knew.

A terrible sadness, and feeling of loss, and loneliness. Aloneness. The weight that Finn carried.

Poe felt the tears drip from his eyes, but Finn had woken up. Bleary at first, but then sharply awake. Stopping Poe from getting out of bed.

“What’s wrong, Poe?” Finn asked, his voice rough with sleep. “Please, what’s wrong.”

“Finn,” Poe gasped out, “why didn’t you tell me you were in so much pain.”

“What?” Finn looked completely at a loss.

“I felt it, in my heart—“

Finn put his arms around Poe, “Shhh. It’s okay. It was only a dream. Whatever you imagined—” And then he smiled at Poe in the darkness, the weight of it not reaching his eyes, “—I’m strong enough. I can carry it. Whatever it is you imagined. Everything is going to be fine.” Finn’s voice hitching a little, almost imperceptibly on that last word. “You’re all I need, Poe. You’re my whole world.”

Poe sucked in a shaking, wet breath.

He didn’t say, you should have let me go, at the lake.

You should have let me go.

He had all of these thoughts, all at once, like a vision.

Of Finn mourning Poe, but finally moving on.

Going to join Rey.

Being a part of the Resistance, in his own right.

Surrounded by people who were whole, and full of light, who could help him move on.

Finn had not made any friends at the base, the entire time they had been there.

Had it been Poe’s fault?

Had it been Poe?

This rabbit hole of thoughts, sucking him in, dark and endless—

And Finn was saying his name, over and over again.

Putting his hands around Poe’s face, crushing their mouths together.

“Come back to me,” Finn kept whispering against Poe’s mouth. “Come back.”

Poe pulled away a little, and said, feeling like he was hearing his own voice from a great distance, like through water, “I’m fine.”

He said, “I want to protect you Finn. I want to make you happy.”

And the pain in his heart was so great he thought it might kill him.

-

They lay back down together in the darkness, Finn’s hand curled gently in Poe’s hair, and Poe said, “We could—we could run away, together. Just like you wanted.”

Finn kissed Poe’s forehead and whispered, “We can’t. I’m—I’m not strong enough to protect you, Poe. I never was.”

And neither of them spoke of the tears sliding down Finn’s cheeks, Poe pressing his mouth to Finn’s skin, kissing the tears away.

Chapter Text

Shara was teaching Poe and Finn how to make Alderaanian frixuelos crepes for breakfast.

Finn helped to cut up fresh fruit, and while Shara stood with Poe over the stove, Finn went to go find BB-8, to say good-morning.

BB-8 wasn’t on her charging station.

She wasn’t in the garage.

BB was in the yard investigating the chickens. The chickens mostly ignored her.

Finn sat down on one of the plastic chairs out back, and BB-8 rolled over, toodling hello.

BB-8 had been a very busy droid, as of late.

When she wasn’t assisting Finn in physical therapy, or hanging around Poe, she went with Shara out to the training outpost to assist in running the flight sims for the potential pilots. She did routine maintenance and repair of the the old X-Wing they had out there, and also the A-Wing in the ranch hangar. She updated training programs. And when she wasn’t working, she was rolling over the hill to the farm one field over, to socialize with the neighbor droids.

The farm cat next door just had a litter of kittens, BB told Finn very solemnly. You should adopt one. Small and cute animals are very therapeutic for humans.

“I don’t know, BB,” Finn said. “I don’t even know how long I’ll end up staying here, or what’s going on. I can’t take care of a kitten.”

Excuses, excuses, BB-8, blatting at him.

“Anyway, I have you. You’re a pretty adorable droid,” Finn joked.

Blehh, BB-8 beeped at him.

Then she rolled around him in a little circle, and then came up close to bump his knee.

Why is Friend Finn out here with BB instead of inside with everyone else?

“Oh, you know. I just think Poe needs space alone with his family.”

They’re you’re family too, Finn.

“I’m pretty certain that’s not how it works.”

…Finn doesn’t try. BB-8 said, reproachfully. Finn didn’t try on the base either. Finn only spent time with Poe and BB-8, and maybe BB-8 should have made you come with her to hang out with the pilots, just like Poe.

“Well, there’s not really any point in trying, is there?” Finn said, suddenly feeling defensive. “People…no one ever really likes me. Or—you know, I would have liked Rey. I like Rey. But she had responsibilities, to go train with Skywalker.” He grimaced. “You’re a droid, so you wouldn’t understand. There’s all of these unspoken rules, with people. Or, they aren’t interesting. I lose interest. Poe’s the only person in the world who’s ever been able to put up with me, for this long. But I’m cold, BB. I’m cold like a rock. There’s…always been something wrong with me. It’s a miracle that Poe cares for me at all.”

“I didn’t know that you could string that many heartfelt words together into a sentence,” Kes said from behind Finn, and Finn shot to his feet, whirling around, and feeling himself go tense with humiliation.

“BB, why didn’t you warn me?”

BB-8 whistled at him, low and hurt, hey, I didn’t notice Kes either.

“Feel free to get mad at me,” Kes said, almost cheerfully. “But I swear I’ve only been here a second. I only meant to get you inside for breakfast, but you seemed preoccupied. Hey, BB-8, why don’t you go inside too, they’ve got your favorite music turned on.”

BB rocked back and forth for a second, looking at the two human men, but then wheeled inside.

Kes stood where he was on the porch, and Finn felt nearly caught in his gaze. But Finn had been a captain, after all, and he squared his shoulders, and look Kes back in the eye, not backing down.

Kes walked over closer, and said, more quietly, almost seriously, “Finn, now this isn’t any of my business, so feel free to ignore me as an asshole—but with the First Order, did they ever.” Then he stopped abruptly. Blew out a long breath.

When Finn didn’t say anything, feeling guarded, Kes went on, “Look, I’m no expert, in anything, but I’ll speak my mind here, if that doesn’t bother you.” He said, “When I was your age, I enlisted with the Galactic Empires infantry. They targeted youth from poor areas. Made empty promises of opportunity. But there was some fucked-up stuff going on. In my time, it became, huh, kind of the popular trend to identify and weed out ‘undesirables.’ Humans with cognitive problems. Or social learning problems. They weeded them out and stuck them in the lowest ranks as cannon fodder. My cousin—all of us kids always made fun of him, a little, he was so awkward, I’m not proud of it now—but we knew there was something different about him. He was family, but he was different. And the stormtrooper program diagnosed him and stuck him with the cannon fodder. I—I don’t know, it was a bad time. An evil time. I got out, all right. I got out, not long after that. The way they treated him.”

“You’re not the same situation, that’s not what I’m trying to say. But Poe wants me to put a little effort into welcoming you around here, so that’s something I wanted you to know. We might not talk on the same wavelength, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you here, with us.”

Finn felt his mouth working, slightly, but he didn’t know what to say.

He closed his mouth. Looked away.

And then back at Kes.

He said, quietly, “Thank you.”

Kes clapped Finn on the shoulder, that tactile way of his, and then said, “Well, like I was saying, breakfast is ready. Better get in there before BB-8 eats everything.”

“BB-8 can’t eat anything.”

“Jokes, Finn,” Kes quipped back, but not unkindly. “You need to learn how to take a joke.”

Chapter Text

The weeks passed, slow and quiet.

By the end of that next month, Finn had finished his PT, and was going with Kes and Shara to the outpost to train new Resistance recruits. It was…honestly, it was a bit of a relief, to get back into a routine like that. He knew what to do, when training foot soldiers. It was something familiar. And by that time, he’d already divulged most of the pertinent intel he knew to the General and her staff, from his being a captain; so Poe had slowly taken over more and more of the bulwark of Finn’s data analysis, sorting and sifting through the information, picking through the patterns, and then giving them over to Finn before before they were sent back to the Resistance.

Also by this time, the Resistance primary base been moved to a new planet for the sake of stealth of movements and safety.

The war kept moving on.

There was a bigger galaxy out there, with so much still going on. So many terrible things.

Finn thought sometimes, about going back.

But Poe couldn’t handle the return to any kind of major military base. Finn didn’t even want to bring up the possibility, Poe could barely handle the idea of getting back into a starfighter’s cockpit, for fuck’s sake.

They’d been sitting around in town for lunch, at a table outside and eating hilachas and drinking spiced caf. Poe had just finished a therapy session, and they were talking it easy.

Poe poked at his food a little, and then said, glancing up at Shara, and then down at his plate, “I was talking to Leilaz today about—about flying, about being a pilot, for the First Order. I don’t think I ever realized.” He stopped for a moment. Quiet. Then, “I don’t know if I ever thought, that I wanted to do this. That I wanted to get into that cockpit. Even though: I could do it. That it’s my primary skill-set. But you like it, don’t you, Mama?”

Poe had been trying out that phrase, lately. A little. Mama. Small, like someone stealing something. Stealing crumbs. Starving for them.

Shara said, gently, “I like it, but no one ever forced me to fly the way you had to.”

Her voice was gentle, but there was something in face. Finn recognized the look. He’d felt that way too, plenty of times, on Poe’s behalf.

Finn said, “If anyone tried to make you fly again, they’d be kriffing sorry they ever opened their mouth, I’d kill them myself.”

That got a chuckle out of Shara, “I like you, Finn. We’re of the same mind on that one.” Flashing him a smile that showed all her teeth, crinkled her eyes. Beautiful and fierce. A real war hero.

Finn smiled back, the way he smiled.

He wondered, looking at her, if in another life, Poe could have had that same appearance: wild and full of life. Cutting through the sky in a fighter, nothing holding him down. No one using his talent against him, twisting him, mangling him up.

Finn forked through his meal, restless, and thought: perhaps it was better, not to think of such things.

They finished lunch.

BB-8 came rolling back in from wherever she’d been roaming. Wheeling around the table and bumping up against Poe, cooing and whistling.

Poe patted BB a little, and then moved to dust off where mud had gotten on her dome.

-

Poe did Resistance data analysis.

He’d also started learning how to garden, him and Kes puttering around in the little plot of land out back they’d started cultivating. Kes had a special calendar for growing things that he consulted, that had to do with his religion or something. It all sounded needlessly complicated to Finn—you put seeds in the dirt and watered them and made sure the wildlife and weeds didn’t kill the sprouts, how complicated did you need to make this.

He said all of this to Shara, and Shara guffawed, and said, “You know, you’re not alone. Kes and I—we differ a little in this whole business of beliefs. I grew up on Alderaan. Working class family, nothing fancy, but Kes is a Yavin farmboy through and through. His family has a lot of traditions, a lot of little rituals. I’m just along for the ride.”

They watched the two men putter around in the soil.

So. Poe did data analysis, and he started gardening, and he even started going along with Kes to activities with the Whisperbird Scouts (and looped Finn in to join them as well) and Poe also adopted two kittens from the next-door farm.

Poe didn’t make Finn adapt the kittens too, per say, but what else could you do when you had these little balls of fur scurrying around, underfoot, climbing you like a tree and meowing like the spoilt little bundles of fluff they were when you were trying to organize feeding them.

They sort of ended up being named Patchy and Furball.

Kes might have looked halfway between amused and pained when he heard the names, and Poe said, low and kind of defensive, “Papa, we’re former stormtroopers, forgive us not being experts on Yavin naming practices—“

But Finn was not sure that Kes had even heard most of that, at the name Papa, Kes was grinning so huge and sad and happy and proud that maybe Shara should have carted him away before he embarrassed himself.

But the moment passed.

Kes said, “No, no, you misunderstand. Those are in fact, excellent names, and I am very happy for you.”

Poe made a small dissatisfied noise, and jerked his head slightly towards Finn.

Kes’s smile, if possible, broadened even further. “Oh, I’m happy for Finn too, believe me if I were unhappy with Finn, I would have booted you,” he said to Finn, “out the door the day you finished physical therapy, time for you to move on in the world and out of this house, farewell my friend—“

“Papa.”

“It’s fine, Poe,” Finn said, touching Poe’s arm in reassurance, whilst also trying to extricate Patchy from clawing through his pants with the other hand.

Him and Kes—they were just very different people.

But after all of these weeks, that didn’t seem like such a bad thing, anymore.

-

Poe still spent way too much under the glowing tree, in Finn’s opinion, but he was slowly coming to peace with that.

Poe would sit out under the tree with his datapad, scrolling through the banks of information.

But the sun was doing him good.

And the fresh air.

He was shaving again, on the regular, but he let his hair grow long enough to curl around his ears.

Sometimes Finn looked at him, and thought, his heart aching: that Poe was so beautiful.

He was still quiet, and fragile in many ways, but he was gaining a bit of weight, and his skin was taking in the sun, and he looked so beautiful.

Finn hoped: that Poe was healing.

-

In the third week of their second month on Yavin 4, Shara got a message on her holocom.

It was evening. They’d all been lounging around in the living room, watching a new Coruscant mystery holoseries about a lady detective and her trusty partner—when Shara looked down at her holocom and said, “Huh. Rey and Luke will be landing the Millennium Falcon in a field about a mile from here, in half an hour. They can’t get any closer, on account of the farms and ranches and forests. Duty calls, I suppose.”

Kes snorted, and then said, loudly, “I’m coming with you, Shara; you know these Skywalkers. Trouble always following them.”

“I’m coming too,” Finn said. Then looked over at Poe, curled up next to him. “Poe, stay here, okay? Stay with BB, I don’t want—please, just stay. I want to make sure it’s safe.”

Poe was looking at Finn, wide-eyed. He looked like he was on the cusp of actually arguing, of saying no.

But then, after a few, long, seconds, he closed his mouth and nodded.

-

Finn grabbed a blaster from the ranch storage unit, and a jacket, and then went back to look in at Poe.

Poe was still on the floor by the couch with BB, knees curled in close and a blanket covering his legs. The holovid was still on, but he wasn’t really watching it.

Then Finn heard Kes yelling at him from out front, and Finn turned away, leaving Poe and BB-8 behind.

Chapter Text

It was, maybe the half hour after everyone else had left—and Poe was alone in the house and BB-8 was with him, and the kittens sleeping in their favorite box in the kitchen, and outside the tree and the goats and the chickens—

Poe had curled up on the couch, the holovid turned off, lying there feeling small, and useless, when he felt—it was a cold feeling. It was a cold, frightening, all-too-familiar feeling.

Poe sat up and ran to grab a blaster.

BB-8 followed, whistling in alarm.

“Fuck,” he was saying. “Fuck, fuck, fuck—”

He was terrified, but his hands were steady. His First Order training kicking in, but he knew even that training wasn’t going to save him if—

“We have to get out of here,” he told BB-8 urgently. “We have to run as fast as we can, if we’re caught—“

Poe had to stop, suddenly, and choke back the wave of sheer terror that overwhelmed him.

He shoved on his shoes and a jacket and went out the side entrance to the garage, where the second speeder was.

Poe punched opened the garage door, and—

The second he saw the dark shape getting off the black speeder in the driveway, Poe whipped up his blaster and fired.

And then he couldn’t fire again.

The blaster bolt had froze in the air, vibrating only minutely in white and blue.

Lord Ren stood outside, his hand out-raised.

Poe tried to move, to wrench away from the grip of the force being wielded against him, but he couldn’t, he couldn’t—

Lord Ren drew closer. “The Force-sensitive pilot,” Lord Ren said. “The traitor. Well, well, well. You have no idea, the pleasure it will be to finally deal with you personally. And, ah, that nuisance of a BB unit.”

Lord Ren had not frozen BB-8, and she had rolled up to Poe, beeping in alarm. Now BB whipped out her taser, whirling on Lord Ren.

Poe choked out, “No, BB-8, stand down.”

And that’s when he felt Lord Ren dip into his mind. Cold. Dark. Violating him.

Those pathetic, whimpering noises were him.

Wounded, hurt noises.

Lord Ren said, “How… pathetic. You would risk your life for a droid. A hunk of metal. It’s not even alive. Is this what a stormtrooper does when he tries to pretend he has a mind of his own? I’ve never seen anything so insufferably idiotic.”

He dug in hard, carelessly brutal with his use of the Force.

“You—you would really bargain yourself over to spare the droid.” Lord Ren inclined his head, oh-so-slightly, and then he laughed. “Fine. The BB unit can stay and tell your traitor scum of a former-captain that Lord Ren has taken his precious pilot. I’ve taken the pilot and let him imagine what he wants of that. I’ll break you, PO-E2711. Don’t you doubt it.” Poe couldn't stop his scream then, when the feeling inside his mind seemed to rip through him, cold and bloodless.

At that, BB-8 made a shrill noise of rage and bowled straight for Lord Ren.

And Lord Ren used the Force to rip her dome from her body.

Poe fell to his knees, trembling.

He stared in horror at the two dismembered parts of BB-8, where they’d been tossed aside.

Lord Ren said, “You will take me into the forest to the savages’ Force temple.”

Poe heard himself choke out, through a gray fog, through a horrible distance, “I will take you into the forest to the savages’ Force temple.”

And then he stood up.

And then he began to walk.

Chapter Text

When Rey came down the ramp of the Millennium Falcon—

Honestly, Finn had forgotten how it felt, to look at her. She grinned hugely, looking like she was over the stars and the moon and the sun happy to see him and then they were running at each other, had grabbed each other into a huge hug. Finn might have swung her around a little, like in the holovids, while Rey yelled at him and beat at his shoulders with her little fists. She didn’t do it hard. If she really were mad, she would have broken his nose with the flat of her wrist, probably. The sensible thing to do.

Chewie came down too, yowling in Shyriiwook. R2-D2 came down as well, that foul-mouthed droid, telling Chewie that they fucking knew already that it was important to get a move on, stop being so dramatic. Like fucking Skywalker was being dramatic, kriffin’ hell—

Finn was still hanging onto Rey like a lifeline when Skywalker descended the ramp as well. The light shining on him from the ship. Straight-backed, and throwing back the hood of his robes to survey the party that had come to meet them.

Shara yelled, fondly, “Luke, you’re such an ass.”

Luke chose to ignore that, coming down and then he was embracing Shara and Kes, and looking sorry, finally, when they yelled at him for his disappearing on everyone, by the Maker, what the fuck was wrong with him.

Luke smiled a little, ruefully, shook his head, and said, “I’m sorry. Truly, I am. But I’m sorry for upsetting everyone, not because I had left. I had to. Rey and I have been at the old Jedi temple, training, preparing ourselves—oh, and this must be the Finn I’ve heard so much about—”

Finn let go of Rey, finally, and then came over and held out his hand to Luke, the way he’d learnt that people did in greeting. But Luke just hugged him instead. It was nicer hug than Finn had been expecting. And Luke said, quietly, “I’m sorry, for everything that the First Order took from you. I’m sorry that we failed you and all of the other children they stole.”

Finn stepped back and shook his head. “No, don’t take their blame. There’s only one party that needs to be sorry, that made their own choices, and it’s not you, Master Skywalker.”

Luke smiled at Finn, sadly. “Yes, well. And Master, huh? You’re very well-mannered, I can see.”

Finn looked at Luke, puzzled. “Isn’t—I thought that was the title for Jedi? What I’ve seen in the records.”

Rey said, “I’m never in a million years calling him 'master.' That is going too far.”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Luke admitted. “I’m too much of an old and pretentious fart to be going around called ‘master’ of anyone.”

Kess snorted, his arms folded, and then said, “All right, Skywalker, so what are you doing here on Yavin 4 anyway. Not that we aren’t always happy to see you healthy and alive, but let me be honest, I’m not exactly happy to see you here. Who do we have to shoot? If you brought the fucking First Order down on our necks, don’t think I won’t kill you myself. You’re endangering—you know that my son is here. Our whole lives are here. What fascist garbage or bounty hunting trash has followed you here, Skywalker?”

Luke looked troubled, and sorry. “Well, ah. To be frank.”

Rey supplied, “I’d been having a dream. About a temple in a wet forest. And—a man, a man I didn’t recognize. And also Kylo Ren. I’d been having this dream, and we thought—Luke thought we ought to come here, that something important is here, at the Yavin temples—”

Kes had gone practically ashen in the face. He turned around and started running back towards the speeders. Shara looked back at Luke, almost angry, and started running after Kes too. “Come on, you idiot Skywalker, we left Poe at the house,” she yelled over her shoulder. “Fucking Ben Solo, if he’s here—“

There was a feeling in Finn that he didn’t recognize. He couldn’t put words to it. But he was already running, and Rey had taken his hand, and he’d thought, he’d thought—

-

The doors of the garage were open.

BB-8 had been pulled apart, discarded on the concrete. And Poe was… Poe was…

BB-8’s damage wasn’t that horrible, but it still took Rey seven minutes to put BB back together, replacing some ripped wiring. When BB-8 came to, her lights flashing on, she rolling about and started yelling, Poe, that rat bastard Kylo Ren had taken Poe.

There was a swimming feeling in Finn’s mind, a feeling that had been growing since he gone through the whole house, yelling Poe’s name, Poe nowhere to be found.

If Lord Ren—

No, no, fuck that, if Kylo Ren had taken Poe. If he took Poe back to the First Order. Finn had sudden, horrible, monstrous visions. Poe tortured. Reconditioned. Forced back into a TIE fighter as a pilot. No. No, no, no—it would be worse than death, a thousand times worse than death—

Finn heard Luke say from a great distance, his voice too gentle, “Finn, you need to calm down. Don’t do anything foolhardy! Ben is very dangerous, and my understanding is that he nearly killed you, before, even with all of your strengths, your determination.”

Finn’s hands had clenched into fists. His heart was—and the tremor in his hands—

Kes had grabbed Luke by his robes, practically shaking him and shouting, “If it weren’t for you and your idiotic dramatics—why didn’t you tell us you thought that Ben might come here? Why? If I had known, if my son has been stolen from me again, there won’t be anything in the galaxy that can save you from me—“

“If you did anything to confront him yourself, you wouldn’t have survived it, Kes,” Luke protested. “Please. I’m sorry. I thought we would arrive before Ben, that we could talk in person, none of this panicking—“

“Fuck you, Luke! Fuck you and your complete inability to get anything right—“

Shara wasn’t even stopping Kes, Finn thought distantly. Maybe she wanted to kill Luke too.

“Everyone, please!” Rey shouted. “We need to get to—Kylo Ren is still on the planet. I can feel him. So we have to go! We have to go to the temple and maybe we can stop him.”

There was a kind of look to Rey. Her jaw clenched, and something of her entire stature unshakeable. “I can take Kylo Ren down,” she said. “I’ve done it before, I can do it again. I know I can. But we need to go. We need to hurry.”

Finn felt the grip on the blaster in his hand.

He didn’t have a lightsaber.

He wasn’t a Jedi.

Kylo Ren had stopped him before, so easily.

Finn didn’t know what that feeling was, choked up inside of him.

He—

Was it hopelessness.

Helplessness.

“Rey,” Finn said. Practically a whisper. “Please save Poe. Please.”

“I will,” she said. She gripped his hand in hers. “We will. Together!
"

But Finn had always been helpless to truly protect Poe. He knew that now.

He had always—

Chapter Text

There were three Yavin temple structures in the rainforest, but Poe had taken Lord Ren to the largest one, the same temple that the rebel forces had once used. Ren placed a light out on the stones, the light of it filling the space around them.

It was not clear to Poe what Lord Ren was looking for, or waiting for.

He kept pacing back and forth, his red lightsaber in hand.

Then he turned to Poe, who he’d made to kneel on the stones.

He said, using the Force in his voice, “When your friends arrive, when your captain finds you, I want you to look him in the eye, tell him, with feeling, that you don’t feel your life is worth living anymore. Then I want you to take this blaster—“ Ren walked forward and placed it in front of Poe, “and shoot yourself.”

Poe stared up at Ren. “Why are you doing this,” he forced out. His mouth felt like it was filled with cotton. It was a struggle to speak, a struggle to move. But the tears were starting to burn at his eyes. He couldn’t stop that. “Please, don’t make me do this. Why are you doing this—“

Ren stared down at Poe. “My Master wants me to bring ruin on the Skywalkers. And, I owe your captain…ah, repayment for his betrayal. I’ve looked into your mind. I know what he fears most. What would break him. And to do it when that girl is there to see it. Perhaps she can yet be tempted to the Dark Side—so pick up that blaster. And when you see your captain, you will tell him that you escaped me, but that your life isn’t worth living anymore, and then you will shoot yourself in the head.”

Poe…picked up the blaster.

He slowly repeated Ren’s orders, his voice thick.

It was like watching himself from a great distance.

And then Ren was in Poe’s mind again, dragging him back down. Dredging up—everything. The years spent as a TIE pilot, being told that if he died in battle, he deserved it. All pilots who could not fly proficiently enough to survive did not deserve to live. Worse, they failed the gunners who served with them. Deserved to die. Worthless.

Flashing through his mind,

All the Resistance fighters Poe had shot down.

The transports loaded with hundreds of passengers.

Soldiers, but also civilians.

The villages of innocents fired upon.

The day of the battle above Starkiller Base, when he’d been instrumental in killing thousands of stormtroopers, men and women who had been stolen as children. All of them dead. Their voices crying out.

Why was he fighting?

To kill and kill and kill.

To die, horribly.

This wasn’t a galaxy worth saving.

His wasn’t a life worth living.

It wasn’t worth it.

It wasn’t worth it.

He heard the words echo over and over in his mind. His own voice. As he knelt on the stones in front of the temple. The gun in his hand. Tears trickling down his face.

He did not know how long he knelt there.

Or when Ren was no longer there, gone into the temple.

A man appeared, at some immeasurable point. A hallucination. A man with a scar by one eye and gold-brown hair. He looked down at Poe, his mouth moving, but Poe couldn’t hear him.

The man disappeared.

Poe knelt on the stones, alone.

Time passed.

Maybe hours.

There was movement at the edge of the clearing.

Poe felt himself rise to his feet as Rey, Finn, his mother and father—as those familiar faces were approaching.

Poe straightened and raised the blaster to his head.

“Poe, no,” Finn screamed, and began to run towards him.

Ren was in Poe’s mind again, in the Force moving through his muscles, keeping him rigid. His mouth moving, “I’m sorry, Finn, but I can’t live like this anymore—”

Finn tackled him, but couldn’t pry the blaster from his hands. That rigid feeling.

Bruised flesh.

Everything hurting.

Finn sobbed, shouting, “Fuck you, Kylo Ren, I know this is what you’re doing, this isn’t Poe, Poe, please—no, no, no no--”

Ren in Poe’s mind, gripping him tight. Poe suddenly smiled a little, tears on his face. Seeing, he thought, something good to come out of all of this suffering. He said, “It’s okay, Finn. You’ll finally—you’ll finally be free.”

“No, I won’t—Poe.” Finn seized Poe’s face. Looking at him. His face full of despair. “Poe. I promise. I’ll follow you, wherever you go. If you shoot yourself now, if that will really bring you peace—I’ll follow you. I’ll take this blaster, and I’ll kill myself too, I’ll follow you.”

Poe could feel the Force on him like durasteel bindings. A pressure on his hands, to pull the trigger.

It hurt.

God.

It hurt.

Finn didn’t let go of Poe. He smiled at him, broken at last, and he said, “It’s okay, Poe. I’m here. I can’t protect you, but I’m here. It’ll be okay.”

Poe looked at Finn, at that despair-lined face, and then he closed his eyes.

He could hear Finn sob.

Poe closed his eyes, breathing out, shaky, letting go and—

He had the feeling, of being inside is body. His breath. The beating of his heart.

He had that feeling.

All alone inside his body.

Not alone.

Something else there, dark and heavy, full of rage, full of pain. Inflicting pain on others.

He followed the thread of that, light as a bird. As a mouse. Barely touching. Barely there.

Kylo Ren is in the temple, half his attention on Poe, half his attention on—he’s in a large hall. Maybe a religious ceremonial hall. He’s pacing, back and forth. He’s waiting for something. He’s thinking of—why he’s there. Encountering Poe had been merely by chance. Petty, cruel vengeance. Kylo Ren is there for something else. He’s been having these dreams. Haunted by them. By the idea that all along he’s had Snoke in his head, too. Lying to him. He’s never had visions of his grandfather. That those had been lies. His entire world, warped. Death. Bloodshed. A galaxy not worth living in, only worth destroying. Nobody to be trusted. Not even his own senses, his own perception of the world. Snoke in his head.

Poe watched all of this and thought, and said, You’re not strong at all, are you? The realization dawning on him. Full of cracks. Even me. I could enter you head. I can see all of this—

Kylo Ren finally, finally catches wind of him. Howling with rage, humiliation, trying to reach out and crush that presence in his mind, that weak, worthless presence, how dare, how dare he—

And somewhere far away, a blaster fires.

The bolt burned into centuries old stone.

A voice crying out.

But Poe is kneeling there, his arms around Finn, holding him tight.

The two of them collapsed against each other. Shivering.

Murmuring into Finn’s hair.

Wordless.

That it’s finally over.

Finally.

It’s over.

-

Kylo Ren kneels on the stones inside the temple, panting, full of turmoil, full of rage and hate and despair.

A man is standing in front of him.

Cool and distant, a scar by one eye, and wearing robes. Glowing faintly. Translucent.

Kylo Ren can’t quite perceive the sight of him.

But he can hear his voice.

He hears him.

Kylo Ren, would you truly swear yourself to Darth Vader as your sole master, him above all others?

“Yes,” Kylo Ren pants. “I—I’m strong enough! I’m worthy. To finish what he started.”

Would you trust him above all others, placing your power in his hands, a vessel for the Force—

“Yes, yes.”

A long, measuring pause.

Then, We’re not so different, you and I. Grandson.

Kylo Ren is nearly weeping with his overwrought feelings, practically prostrate on the dirty stones, his hands clenching and unclenching. “Grandfather, I knew you would be the only one who understood me. The only one who would value me for who I am.”

Yes, well. A soft sound. A current moving through the still and dark place. Unfortunately, sometimes it really does take shared life experiences to build empathy, and it is now my grandfatherly duty to save you from yourself.

“—Grandfather?”

-

When Rey runs into the temple hall, lightsaber raised and at ready, followed by Luke Skywalker, they are greeted by the sight of Kylo Ren laying unconscious on the floor and—

“Father, what are you doing here?!?”

I’m finishing what I started, Anakin Skywalker says grimly, from where he kneels over his grandson.

Chapter Text

“I am not fucking allowing that piece of shit under my roof,” is what Kes said, when he saw Kylo Ren’s unconscious body in the temple.

Luke looked at Kes for a moment, and then when the words fully sunk in, he laughed. But it was a kind of tired laugh. A little pained on the edges. “Kes, my friend, it’s all right. I think, my father will need Ben to stay here for a few days anyway, to make sure—to make sure that everything has worked out, and that it’s safe for Ben to leave the temple grounds. Or, well, relatively safe. Safer than before. We’ll bring supplies, fetch R2 from the ship, Rey and I will stay here as well, keep an eye on Ben. Although I don’t know, ahh, what Chewbacca will be wanting.”

Shara’s mouth quirked into a smile, “Oh, Chewie can stay with us, that’s fine. Isn’t that right Kes?” and Kes just grunted, his arms crossed over his chest. He was still kind of glowering down at Ben. “What’s happened to Ben?” she asked, coming to stand over Ben too.

“Well, my father’s here,” Luke said, waving at Anakin. Anakin was kneeling over Ben still, staring down hard like there was conversation going on between only the two of them, grandfather and grandson, in their minds. Probably, there was. “Force-ghost, you see. Well, probably you don’t see, but, he’s here.”

“Are you fucking kidding me—“ Kes started to say loudly.

“He’s made a contract with Ben,” Luke tried to explain. “I’m not sure what you’d call—not quite possession, really—“

Kes swore again, and then muttered something, maybe a prayer or protective words, something of Yavin 4, and even the look on Shara’s face sharpened, as she asked, “Luke, you’re really allowing this Dark Force work here?”

Luke said quickly, “It’s not possession! I think. My father is just—going to keep a close eye on Ben. And counter any attempts by Ben to use the force by—uh, being present around his mind and stopping him at that level. Also keeping Snoke out! Pretty useful. Father will be at his strongest, here on the temple grounds, in the beginning. Until he gets used to being around in, uh, Ben’s form.”

“That sounds like the damn Dark Side to me,” Kes spat out. “Evil work. Luke, you’re not really being reassuring here, for the last Jedi.”

“Well it’s the best we’ve got,” Luke said. He really was feeling tired now. Bone-weary. “It’s the best we can do, and I have nothing else to offer right now, I’m afraid.”

Kes turned to look at Rey, who had been watching all of this quietly, seriously, and focused. “Rey, even you—“

Rey nodded. Her hand was closed lightly around her staff, weapon at hand.

She said, “It’s this, or—I suppose keep him unconscious. Kylo Ren is dangerous. Very dangerous. At least this way—it’s what he always wanted, isn’t it? His grandfather. Well he got what he wanted, and I hope he’s happy.”

For someone so young, Luke thought, she sounded so sure. Unyielding.

Luke sighed to himself, and hoped that he wasn’t utterly failing again at being a teacher. He really hoped.

-

Of course, eventually, Ben woke up.

But he couldn’t use the Force.

And it sounded to Finn as though Ben’s grandfather wasn’t exactly holding back with his disciplinarian grandfather routine, when Ben went on a raging and ineffectual tantrum, but couldn’t leave the temple because his grandfather kept using the Force through Ben’s own body to drag him back.

Rey had plenty of stories to tell, when she came round to the ranch a few days later, when it was clear it was safe to leave Ben with Luke and R2 and the Force-ghost holding Ben down. She told them the stories over the dinner table, her mouth full and her hands gesticulating, but Kes just guffawed at all of the odd little stories she related and kept pushing more food onto her plate like she was the daughter he’d never had, and Shara seemed satisfied too, and Finn was all right with this turn of event as well, he supposed. He wouldn’t have minded being allowed to kill Ben, cut him down at last, to be honest, but this was all right. It was acceptable.

Poe didn’t say anything, as he ate his dinner and listened. But Finn thought, Poe looked as though he was content with where everything had gone, too. It looked that way.

Rey ate until it looked like she was ready to burst from all of the delicious home-cooking, and then she sat back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling, patting her stomach. But after a while, a little while later after digesting, and dessert was coming out, Rey was also frowning a little, and then she admitted, “I don’t know if this is the right thing to do.” She said, “It’s—I’m not going to lie, it’s kind of creepy. Anakin tricked Ben. Would it have been better to kill him? He didn’t agree to this, Anakin being in his mind too. I don’t know. But Anakin said that he’s doing this because he never really worked to atone for what he did. That the burden of it would keep being passed on through his family. So he’s here now. And he’s going to work with Ben, so that maybe the Skywalkers don’t have to keep carrying the burden even into death and beyond death. So maybe it’s okay. I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

And she looked troubled, thinking about it.

But her eyes lit up again when she saw the fried pastries Kes had brought out on a big plate.

And then laughing when Chewie made a swipe for a pastry and Kes yelled at the Wookie to fucking wait for him to put the plate down, for star’s sakes.

-

After dinner, Rey went out into the yard to inspect the Force tree. Then she shimmied up into it, and sat in the boughs and looked utterly contented in a way she really hadn’t the entire time she’d been on Yavin before, so it was probably all right.

Finn looked up at her, until Rey yelled at him to come up too. So he did, climbing up onto the next thickest branch near hers, nearly leaning up against her in proximity. Poe was inside the house, with his parents, helping with the dishes. BB-8 rolling underfoot. Poe seemed all right, now. He seemed all right.

“Poe was very brave,” Rey said, when she tracked his gaze back to the kitchen window. “He resisted Ben’s Force control. For someone who’s not a Jedi, against Ben—that’s amazing.”

“He’s still so quiet, though,” Finn said softly. When Rey looked down at him, expectantly, he went on, “You know, even with the First Order—he used to talk more. More brashness. I think it’s because he still had that dream, somehow—that there was a better world outside. That he could be a pilot for the Resistance, after we’d escaped together.” He looked down at his hands, at the glow of the tree. “I know why, but also sometimes I can’t understand what about the attack on Starkiller affected him so badly. I have no problem with the troopers I killed. It was the only way. The only honorable death, if you can call death honorable. But Poe saw all of that, and somehow it broke him. He’s told me he felt all the deaths on Starkiller—but you, you’re more Force-sensitive than either of us combined! You—you’re fine—”

“I didn’t know or care about anyone on Starkiller,” Rey said simply. She waved her hand a little up at the sky. “I didn’t grow up on that stars-forsaken rock. I didn’t know anyone’s faces, or care for anyone on it. So. It wasn’t the same kind of evil to me, in that moment. The death of thousands of stormtroopers. Death no matter which side I’m on.”

“So I’m the monster, after all,” Finn said, and Rey shook her head, kicking him a little with her foot, her face all scrunched up in what seemed like sincere fondness. “No! You’re my friend. And you’re so brave, just like Poe.” Then she said, kind of yelling out like at the stars, “And I’m so happy here I could burst with it—so don’t say anything about being a monster Finn. Then I’m a monster too, with my Force-weapon of destruction, lightsaber-staff that I made with my own to hands to cut people down, then I’m a monster too.”

She let Finn sling his arm around her shoulders, a little.

And Rey seemed happy, grinning so that her teeth showed, her face lit up in the glow of the tree. She really did.

Like she’d found her own home here, too.

When Finn tried to kiss her on the forehead, the way he’d seen in a holovid once, Rey spluttered and nearly shoved him straight out of the tree.

But on the whole, she didn’t seem to mind it, really.

Returning the gesture with a clumsy-fond kiss to Finn’s cheek too.

The two of them up in that awful tree that Finn was finally getting to tolerate, maybe a little. If it made his loved ones so happy.

-

Some days Poe seemed so far away, and other days, so close that Finn’s chest felt so tight with the love he felt, seeing Poe being happy.

Being around Rey put a smile on his face too, the two of them lying out in the grass of the yard under the tree, cloud-gazing or whatever it was they were doing, Rey telling all the stories of her adventures and training with Luke, and R2, and Chewie, waving her hands above her at the sky. BB-8 rolled around them a few times until she’d found the perfect little dip in the earth to settle in.

Playing music.

Everything so soft and contented.

-

A few days later, Finn woke up in the night, and Poe wasn’t asleep beside him, and he wasn’t in the house, or under the tree.

Finn finally found Poe in the large shed out back. The door open. Here, where Shara’s A-Wing was kept.

Finn stood at the door, and Poe was inside, just standing by the A-Wing, and BB-8 at his side, burbling at him. Poe was talking quietly to BB, something about Shara, and the stories she’d told him. Laughing softly at BB’s little quip back, and then he reached out to touch the A-Wing.

There was a soft look, sad and longing, but also, almost reverent.

Finn watched the scene and then quietly stepped away from the shed. Thinking of maybe how there were things inside Poe’s head that he could never fully understand, even with their shared backgrounds, their childhood together. Things that he couldn’t help Poe work through. Was Poe finding something in himself? To help himself heal? There was a feeling deep in Finn’s chest, like and unlike mourning, like sadness, and he found himself crying, and then sobbing quietly to himself.

Of course Poe heard him then.

Poe came out, and saw Finn, and then rushed to put his arms around Finn, and Finn held him as well.

The two of them, together, under the stars.

Together.