Such a Hunger in Our Souls
by imp

Such a Hunger in Our Souls

imp

Summary

Finn just wants to keep his head down and prove himself in the Resistance. Unfortunately for him, he also has to deal with Kylo Ren haunting his strangely realistic dreams, accidentally getting General Organa as a teacher, and a spreading stormtrooper rebellion.

Notes

None

Chapter 1

Finn had nearly finished a low-level intel operation on Takodana when he heard the news.

Well, he was told the news, via the efficient channel of Maz popping up on his communicator and yelling, "They've got him!"

"Maz! I could have been in the middle of something!" Finn said, though he hadn't been; he was sitting in his room in the back of a treetop bar, making sure he had the datachips that would prove Senator Jilani's involvement with First Order weapons manufacturers before he headed off-planet. Maz likely knew his itinerary, though of course he hadn't shared it with anyone.

"You know you can't fool me," Maz said. "But they've got the boy. Kylo Ren. Netted him leaving Pamarth. He's on his way back to the Resistance base now."

Finn thought of General Organa, the rage and grief she'd been trying to control before Finn had left on assignment. "He'll be kept there?"

"Oh, I'm sure." Maz's voice went sly; she was concealing information she probably shouldn't have. "You'd better get a move on, then, bucko."

"All right, all right," Finn said. "Keep me updated if our, uh, friend, finds out what I've copied."

Maz blinked at him once in solemn assent, and his communicator went dark.

It honestly felt like the universe should have known, somehow. Maybe the sun should have gone dark, or his transport ship should have fallen out of hyperspace. Ren had been an extraordinarily powerful inconvenience for the First Order. Stormtroopers had calmly looked the other way while he destroyed equipment and, occasionally, soldiers; they'd also done their best to avoid him when he might be in a murdering mood. Finn had never been particularly aware of him, but feeling his power during that awful raid on Jakku had felt like doing generator duty: inches from a fiery ship's core, sweating, yelled at, losing his sense of self. In Poe's words, it had been fucking terrifying.

And now Ren would be on the same planet as Finn, almost all the time. Great, that was fine. Nothing to worry about there.

But Yavin 4 felt normal when he stepped out of the Resistance transporter. He went directly to the command center and gave his datachips to the spymaster's #1 aide, as instructed. Then - because he wasn't a citizen quite yet - he went to his barracks, and sat there.

It shouldn't have bothered him. Or - no. He thought of General Organa's face when they'd been informed he didn't have "complete trust" from the Senate just yet, two months after he'd been injured by Ren. She'd been furious, and had told him after the meeting that he ought to be furious too. So, okay, it should bother him. But he couldn't do anything about it; he had to wait. He just had to be patient with the questions, and the sidelong glances - the implications that maybe stormtroopers weren't quite people enough to defect for a cause.

"I have parents just like them," Finn had said one night, after too much of the wine Poe had sworn wouldn't get him all that drunk. "I - they - I almost died!" He still had the scars, too, twisted and tender under his shirt.

Poe had patted his back and said, "I know, buddy." Then he'd filed supporting petitions to match every single one of General Organa's. Finn would be fine.

"Two people are at the door, Finn," his room computer said. "Please provide information on preferred response." His holoscreen lit up to show -

"Let them in!" Finn said, leaping to his feet. He didn't know who the old guy behind Rey was, but that didn't matter. For the first time in almost six months, Rey was home.

"Finn!" As soon as the door slid open, Rey was in his arms, squeezing him so tightly he almost lost his breath. "You're here!"

"You're back!" Finn said, his words stumbling over hers. She broke away from him, grinning widely. She'd barely changed; her hair was longer, and she had a small scar on her shoulder, but she was still just Rey, one of his first friends.

"Oh!" Rey said, spinning around. "Finn, this is Luke. Luke, this is Finn, my friend."

"Nice to meet you," Finn said, shaking the man's hand. Then his brain caught up to his ears and he couldn't stop himself from blurting out, "Wait, Luke Skywalker?"

Rey's smile just barely faltered. "I did write you," she said. "Saying I'd found him."

"I know." It was one of the few 'mails he'd actually received on his holopad. "I just -" Luke Skywalker in his barracks. It just didn't seem possible.

But the older man in front of him did look a little like the General, and he smiled gently as Finn spluttered his way to silence.

"It's wonderful to meet you, Finn. I've heard so much about you."

Right. Legendary Rebellion general and Jedi Luke Skywalker knew all about him. "It's great to meet you too. Rey, something's happened."

Rey's expression went grim. "You've heard, then? I wasn't sure how quickly news would travel."

"About Kylo Ren, pretty quick." Finn shook his head. "You're okay?"

"I should be asking you the same question. We're still not sure how far his influence will extend, what he can do in proximity to others."

For a moment, a chill kissed the back of Finn's neck, and he remembered - too vividly - Ren snarling, Traitor! But he wasn't back on Starkiller Base; he had Republic citizenship to gain, work to do. He forced himself to smile. "I've just got a few scars, that's all."

Rey didn't look particularly fooled; she'd changed, Finn saw, during her months of training. Of course, he himself had probably changed too. Poe had told him, before his first mission with the Resistance, "This whole thing will turn you inside out. You can't go back to where you were before." Finn respected Poe too much to remind him that as a stormtrooper, he didn't have much to go back to.

"Of course," Rey said. She forced a smile. "I'll find you later? I have so much to tell you!"

Finn nodded. He made the mistake of making eye contact with Skywalker, then, and had to say, "Goodbye, uh, sir."

"Call me Luke," he said, still very gently.

Finn would rather die first, probably. "Uh huh. Uh huh. Okay, bye," he said, and retreated into his barracks as the door slid shut behind them.

The warning about being able to feel Ren put him on edge. He had work to do - paperwork to fill out, a deposition about the information he'd gotten to give, and even an interview with one of the Resistance's many Defection Intake officers. No one had really been able to explain to Finn what they normally did with recruits, and why Finn was different. They'd been happy enough to take his information when Starkiller Base needed to be destroyed, but now there were other considerations. "Politics," Leia had said with the grim weariness of a well-meaning politician.

Maybe it was Ren being nearby, a constant reminder of Finn's past, supposedly undetectable but invading the back of Finn's mind anyway. Maybe it was knowing they weren't anywhere close to shutting down the First Order for good. Whatever it was, Finn felt ready to bolt when the protocol droid arrived at his room, shortly before sundown.

"What did I do?" he said when he saw the General waiting for him in the command room. "Is it another mission? Or -"

"Finn." The General held up a hand. She was smiling, Finn realized, and didn't look angry at all. Maybe a little tired. "I've got some good news, and some bad news. Which do you want first?"

"Bad news, I guess."

Her smile didn't even falter. "Your new assignment for the next month will be to monitor Kylo Ren in captivity here on Yavin 4."

Ouch. "I hope the good news is really, really good."

"You could say that. The Council has approved your petition. Welcome, again, to the Resistance, Sergeant Finn."

Finn blinked. Then: "Sergeant? Seriously?"

"The Senate insists on the bureaucracy of citizenship applications for First Order non-nationals," the General said. Fancy speak for stormtroopers, not-quite-people despite the humanity of everyone Finn had grown up with. He knew that part already. "But we pushed for your immediate promotion to a rank reflecting your experience and skills."

He'd have been given a captaincy sooner rather than later, with the First Order. It was how they kept you close, made sure you were committed. His heart beat too quickly; the General looked at him with perfect calm, not expecting anything special.

She had no idea how different that was from where he'd come. "Thank you," he finally managed to say.

"We owe you thanks." She said it a little too sharply, in an imperial tone that, for a second, reminded him of Phasma. "Not the other way around. I'm sorry it took this long."

Finn nodded, not trusting himself to actually say anything. After that, he was free to wander around. He kept accidentally circling the part of the base that he knew was used to hold prisoners, like maybe if he got close enough he could, what, inoculate himself to Ren's bullshit? Not likely. The higher-ups in the Resistance must not have realized what kind of stuff Ren would be able to say to him. Not just calling him a traitor, but all the leverage of years and years of knowledge about stormtroopers, access to Finn's file specifically - he probably even knew about Slip. Finn walked a little faster, realized he was walking in the direction of the holding cells again, and circled back around.

He couldn't let Ren get in his head. Easier said than done, sure, but he'd managed it when he had the lightsaber, when he was trying to save his and Rey's lives. It was a chance to prove himself, to move forward in the Resistance. It would be fine.

It had to be fine.

-

He remembered Ren as an imposing, but also somehow ridiculous, guy. He wasn't nice, or funny, or interesting. He'd stomped around and choked people and that was pretty much it: he ruled by fear, and he seemed to like it. Finn expected basically the same Ren in captivity; maybe he'd be angrier, though that didn't seem possible when he thought about it.

His expectations crashed against the reality that was Kylo Ren in a guarded cell and absolutely disintegrated.

"Wow," he said before he could think better of it.

Ren glared at him through bloodshot eyes and pushed a lank piece of hair away from his face. "Here to gloat, traitor?"

Finn looked around. He'd made his way through three layers of guards already; this room had been specifically constructed to neutralize Force-users' abilities. Ren himself wasn't restrained, but his cell was only three meters square, the clear walls anchored by thick, ugly durasteel at each seam. Ren sat in the corner farthest from the door, glaring at anyone who might enter. Glaring at Finn.

"I asked you a question!" Ren snapped.

His voice wavered a bit. Finn had been staring, and it disconcerted him. Well, good. He could have a taste of what it'd been like, growing up as a stormtrooper. "I'm here to guard you, actually," Finn said. "It's weird, they think you might try something if you're in here alone all day."

"Alone. What a joke. You think I don't see the monitors? Feel them?"

"I get it, you're powerful." Finn inched over to the desk situated in front of the cell. "It's just an assignment, it doesn't mean anything. I'm sure we can both deal with it like, you know, adults."

Ren snorted. "Stormtroopers can't deal with anything. Brainless -"

"Hey!"

"Brainwashed," Ren said with delighted cruelty. "We were going to order another reconditioning on you, you know."

Finn kept his mind very carefully blank. "Good thing I got away, then."

For a moment, he thought Ren had gotten into his mind. He looked a little sharper, a little more like a dangerous enemy. But the edge faded even as Finn noticed it, and then he was looking at the greasy disgrace to General Organa again.

"Fine, whatever. I don't care." Ren looked, very pointedly, at the wall behind Finn's head.

Finn sighed and pulled out his holopad. He might've preferred sanitation, at this point. At least the stuff he was shoveling down there was a little less unpleasant.

"What did they give you to get you here?"

Finn counted his breaths. One, two, three. When he was sure he could speak without shouting, he said, "I'm sorry?"

"To come here. To be...a member of the resistance." Ren didn't so much as twitch, but he looked sharper, suddenly. He was using the Force, or maybe he was just good at projecting an air of authority. His mother definitely was, though Finn didn't think Ren had inherited that much from her. "Explain."

Explain. Ha. What was there to explain? First he'd panicked, because killing people turned out to be really different from even the most realistic simulations. Then he'd done nothing, because it was easier to do nothing than openly rebel. Then he'd openly rebelled, because he knew - he could sense - somehow, he knew they planned to send him in for reconditioning.

And now he was in the Resistance, but in a really minor capacity. Freed from having to make decisions like exactly who to rebel against, and when, and why. "It was a series of events," he said. "That's all."

"A series of events." Even without the mask - which had been less intimidating than Finn thought Ren wanted - Ren managed to sound mocking in a very specific, creepy way. "Which had nothing to do with your own thoughts, or actions."

"I thought they taught you guys stormtroopers don't have those things."

"We call them deviations. Signs of a - spark."

We. Charming. "That's just how I am, how we are," Finn said. "I needed a pilot, so I ran. If you were subject to stormtrooper conditioning, you'd do the same thing." He remembered stories of the unimaginable cruelty. He remembered being strapped in a chair and...his memory faded then. But it was all horrifying enough. He knew he'd done the right thing.

It was just, looking at Ren now, he couldn't help but feel a little of the old vulnerability, the old pain. Ren dug up weaknesses in him that he was still denying existed at all.

Ren must have sensed a shift in his mood. He didn't say anything else, and after a tense moment of watching him, Finn returned to his holopad. He was on shifts, of course, so eventually another member of the Intel Corps relieved him. Finn nodded at the guy with military camaraderie - hey, I don't know you, we're all in this shit together. Especially when the shit was Kylo Ren.

He didn't remember his dreams, and no wonder; his sleep didn't last long. He woke up three hours into his sleep shift, and only lay awake for ten minutes or so before giving up and wandering the barracks.

The schedule on Yavin 4 wasn't diurnal. It was bustling as it had been during Finn's work shift; a few people noticed him and gave him the old "you shouldn't be here" eyebrow-raise, but no one said anything. He rambled to the outskirts of the base, staring at the forest, then went back to his room. Eventually, he managed to grab a few more hours of restless sleep.

It wasn't enough to deal with Ren greeting him by saying, "Hello, traitor."

He didn't say anything. It was on the tip of his tongue - it was so tempting - but he was, in theory, better than a snappy comeback. So he sat down and read the news again.

The Republic disavowed knowledge of the Resistance. The Republic was also funding the Resistance. The First Order had seized a planet in the Inner Rim. It was all messy; Finn wanted to get out there and do something.

What could you possibly do? a voice in his head whispered. It sounded a creepy amount like Ren; Finn did his best to ignore it.

He spent a week like that, reading in silence every day, and it didn't occur to him that his new lifestyle might be a little dysfunctional until he described it to Rey and she scowled in dismay.

"It seems awfully unfair to make you watch him. Babysit him! Like he hasn't done enough to be condemned -"

"He's the General's son, one of her only living relatives -"

"She would never attempt to subvert justice in such a manner!" Rey glared at him in pure fury and, okay, Finn agreed. But -

"He's valuable, though, with the whole - bloodline, the Force. His intelligence."

"Are they even questioning him?"

The golden goose of intel. "I don't know," Finn admitted. "I guess they must be, but I haven't heard - he doesn't say. And they don't do when I'm there."

"Well, they wouldn't. I imagine their tactics are unpleasant."

Finn had heard the Force could pry information from the most seasoned soldiers. He'd never given Ren, or any of the less powerful users, reason to experiment on him. "Yeah. I guess they wouldn't."

They lapsed into silence for a moment, and then Rey said, "I'm sorry. I really think you're being wasted there, on guard duty."

"Well, he's a really valuable prisoner, I guess."

Rey shook her head. "You wielded Master Luke's saber. Your potential -"

Finn forced a laugh he didn't remotely feel. "You know, Poe Dameron asked me about that."

Rey eyed him warily. "And?"

"I told him I'd never call some Jedi 'Master' anything."

Rey laughed. "Captain, perhaps?"

"I don't think of them as mentors." His mind flashed back to Phasma. "Obstacles, maybe?"

"Finn!" But Rey was laughing, happy. She had more power now; she didn't flaunt it, but there were rumors. Levitation, impossible sword-work. For all he knew, she could do the same stuff Ren could. They were totally different people in every way, though. For starters, Finn actually wanted to talk to Rey.

"It's not so bad," he said. "With Ren, I mean. Someone has to do it; it might as well be me."

"If you say so." Rey didn't look even a little convinced, but she let it drop. Still, her objection stuck with him, wiggling its way into his dreams.

Or, his nightmares. He didn't think of them that way, but he guessed they were. That night, he was back in one of his earliest classrooms, being taught basic quantum math by a droid. Their setup was bare-bones: a holopad for calculations, a metal one-piece desk fitted with the little shockers that would reinforce the need for correct calculations, and wan lighting overhead. He was with ten other recruits - they always called them that, in the early days, and Finn didn't understand why. It wasn't like the conditioning had made anyone forget the conscription. It hadn't made him forget.

"This is so depressing," said the kid - stormtrooper - next to him.

He turned to look, somehow unsurprised to see Kylo Ren. "Go away. I have enough to deal with here."

"This is a dream." Dream-Ren rolled his eyes. "You could change it any time you wanted."

The one thing worse than his brain deciding to present him with Kylo Ren had to be his brain deciding he really wanted to hear Kylo Ren's opinions on his coping skills. "Go away," he hissed, and returned to focusing on his math.

For a minute he thought it worked. The room went silent. But then the world around him faded, and he couldn't see - it was only white, white all around, white so bright it was blinding, white so featureless he wasn't even sure he had eyes anymore -

And he woke up screaming. Of course.

"Vital sign alert," his room droid said. "Heart rate elevated."

"I'm fine," Finn said. "I just had a bad dream."

"Should I make you an appointment with a mental health specialist?"

What a question. It helped a bit, he guessed, that the droid sounded completely disinterested in the answer. "Not right now," he said.

Not ever. He didn't trust anyone in the Resistance to really get what stormtroopers had gone through. Maybe when they retook more of the core planets, maybe when the First Order was destroyed. If the First Order was destroyed.

Until then, he did what he'd always done: bundled up the nightmares, tucked them away in the dark recesses of his mind, and lay back down, trying to force himself to go back to sleep.

It didn't work. An hour later, he let himself out of his room - past the protestations of his droid, which had a great understanding of the sleep Humans needed, and basically no understanding of insomnia - and started wandering the base. It would've been nice and appropriate-feeling if it was emptied out, but ships came in at all hours of the night. He was alone, mostly as he wandered from place to place, but there was always someone just down the hallway, or across the yard.

He was so used to seeing people out of the corner of his eye, in fact, that at first he didn't notice anything was wrong. The figure in the black cloak could've been one of a dozen intelligence officers, mechanics, or even a Senator. Except even as Finn watched, they darted behind a wall to hide from approaching patrol droids.

Right, then. Finn took a deep breath and began to follow.

Town the line of fighter ships, into the cargo bay. Here the Resistance kept its transport ships, its captured First Order passenger ships. It was to one of those that the person walked. He fiddled with the door release, and for a moment Finn thought he saw a glint of light -

And then the figure whirled around, its eyes fixed on Finn, and hissed, "Get back, traitor."

Finn knew him then, with a feeling like a boulder suddenly dropped in his stomach. Of course it had to be him. "Kylo Ren. You shouldn't be here."

"Neither should you."

It was on the tip of Finn's tongue to point out that he had every business being on the Resistance base when he realized Ren was desperately trying to distract him. He never went anywhere without a blaster after Jakku. Now, he pulled and fired in the time it took Ren to come up with his next attempt at manipulation.

He didn't actually shoot him, of course. But it was enough to make him duck, enough to set off an alarm. In minutes, a patrol droid had Ren pinned, and Finn was giving an incident report to his boss's boss, Captain Shen.

"Am I still on the beat, sir?"

"Guarding Ren?" Shen shrugged. "Possibly not, but I'd guess so. You did a good job here. He's escaped from powerful people before."

It had been luck, Finn wanted to say. He knew Ren's power. He still remembered that moment on Jakku when Ren had stopped Poe's blaster bolt, the roiling fury and hatred that had seemed to fill the air. "Thank you, sir."

"Get some sleep, Sergeant."

Right. He had a rank. And a name. And still, apparently, a job.

He used his newfound place in the world really stupidly the next morning. He didn't even mean to. He let himself into the outer holding cell and saw Ren sitting in the corner, looking for all the world like he hadn't moved from the previous day. Finn thought of General Organa's despair, of Rey's longing for a family, of his own sometimes-overwhelming loneliness, and he said, "Your mom doesn't deserve this, you know."

The rage that lashed out from Ren made Finn stumble backwards. He looked around wildly for a weapon - Ren was supposed to be damped in there. How -

"Don't worry, traitor," Ren said. "I can't actually do anything."

"But you -" You're so angry, Finn didn't say.

Ren raised his eyebrows. "How did you hide it?"

"Hide what?" Then Finn recognized the ploy. "Wait, no, hang on, we're not talking about me. We're talking about you. And I stand by what I said."

Ren sneered at him. "Do you know what makes a stormtrooper command material?"

"I get the feeling I'm about to find out, since I can't gag you."

"Mediocrity. You can't be too smart, or too skilled. Certainly not too sensitive to the Force. The commanders of the stormtroopers have to be a bit dim, or it's too much work for the citizens of the First Order to keep track of them all."

Every single word was calibrated to make him angry. Finn stared at the wall and didn't respond. For a guy who thought he knew how to push a former stormtrooper's buttons, he seriously underestimated how much they'd been trained to ignore people talking, to withstand almost-unending abuse.

"You've heard all that before." Half guess, half realization. How did he do that? How could Finn keep him out? "I'm saying you're sensitive to the Force, FN-2187."

"Don't call me that," Finn snapped.

"Why not? It's your designation."

He knew arguing with Ren was stupid. Somehow, he couldn't stop himself from doing it. "It's not my name."

"You really think you can just give yourself a name?"

It was given to him, but Finn wanted to keep that bit to himself. He needed to hold something away from Ren. The danger was clear now; he understood exactly how bad this could get, if he didn't watch himself. "Shut up, or I'll get someone to come make you."

Ren laughed softly, cruelly. "The First Order trained you well."

Finn focused on the wall, on breathing, and didn't answer.

He spent the next week doing the same thing, guarding Ren and occasionally yelling at him to shut up, grabbing dinner with Rey or Poe or the pilots as a group, enjoying his new status as a citizen but not really having anything to do yet. Oh, guarding Ren was technically a high-level job; it required clearance that his buddies down in maintenance didn't have. But in a way, that made it harder. It meant he couldn't complain without thinking about what he might reveal, or do anything normal like tell everyone he met exactly how terrible Leia Organa's son had turned out.

After two weeks of guard-the-brat duty, General Organa called him into her office.

"Sir," Finn said, saluting. "My weekly reports -"

"Don't worry, I got those. I apologize for calling you here, I know it's irregular. The Resistance's command structure is a little looser than you're used to, I imagine."

That was like saying a star was a little hotter than Hoth. "Yes, sir."

"Enough of the formalities. How's my son doing?"

Finn hesitated, because he wasn't sure how to say 'I honestly want to dump him in the nearest large body of water' in a way that wouldn't get him court-martialed.

But General Organa wasn't easy to fool. "You can be honest, Sergeant."

"He's a nightmare," Finn said, all in a rush. "I mean - I'm sorry, I know he's your - but he's frustrating. He's a jerk to everyone. I don't think he respects, um, that murder is bad? He's awful. I'm really sorry, but I don't know why we're still holding him."

General Organa's office was small considering her stature in the Resistance, which meant that when she stood up from her desk and walked to the far end of the room, it only took a few seconds. She looked out the window and took two long, deep breaths.

Finn, almost absently, felt his brain do the review stormtroopers were trained for: shoulders, both vulnerable. Chest. Neck. Gut. Knees, if he had to.

He had his blaster. He'd found it so hard to shoot on Jakku. No one would force him to do that again, not even General Organa. Not even her son.

"I love my son," the General said, still staring out the window. "But he is...deeply flawed."

"He's a murderer who's committed, like, a hundred war crimes," Finn said. "Uh. Sir."

General Organa snorted. "Yes, he has. I used to tell myself it was the Dark, getting to him before it should have."

"And now?"

"Now I think it's the Dark, and his piss-poor attitude." She glanced back, smiling apologetically. "My illusions that I can save my son might finally be dying, but unfortunately, you're still going to have to guard him: he has information we desperately need. Snoke is like nothing we've faced, and we're hopelessly outmatched when it comes to intel. If I can get him to talk, it would be invaluable to our effort."

Finn knew he should just say something like 'anything I can do to help, General', and leave it at that. He opened his mouth to say it, and -

"What if you can't, General? What if he never talks?" He winced. "Never mind, sorry, that's none of my business."

"On the contrary, it's a question I was hoping you'd ask. We don't have the death penalty in the New Republic, and so the Resistance doesn't, either. But he won't be let free. He is my son; that doesn't mean he can escape justice."

For a moment Finn tried to imagine what it must be like, to have your husband dead because your murderous, evil kid killed him, to have a brother you hadn't seen in years, to be fighting a war you'd thought you'd won twenty years ago. It must be miserable, but - well. He couldn't really imagine having family to lose. It was an awful future he didn't think he'd ever see. "I understand. I'll guard him as well as I can."

"Thank you. Dismissed."

He made it to the door before she added, half-jokingly, "I'm lobbying for you to receive hazard pay for this."

"Ha," Finn said weakly. "Thank you, sir."

It wasn't until he'd gotten almost all the way back to the holding cell, half a mile from the General's office, that he let himself breathe normally again. Her son might be evil, but General Organa herself had - practically a forcefield of her own, powerful and terrifying. It wasn't just Ren that had Vader's genes. He knew that, of course, but there was knowing it, and then there was knowing it.

A week later, his hazard pay deposited in his account. He bought the pilots a round of drinks with it and refused to discuss anything about guarding Ren.

-

The thing about Ren was that he was so boring that Finn let his mind wander often while babysitting him, and that generally led to Finn trying not to think about - certain things.

Things like how he'd been just old enough to remember it when Ren came to the First Order, eight maybe. They hadn't been kind to him, which Finn hadn't found unusual, since they weren't kind to anyone. It seemed, to Finn's memories, like he went from hostile and often-slapped to commanding First Order troops relatively quickly.

Finn didn't understand why a person would do it. He'd rarely thought about it back with the First Order. Conditioning ensured that asking a question like that would never occur to them, so Finn hadn't asked, had barely thought it. But now, seeing what Ren had chosen to leave - a loving family, a society that believed in free thought and action - he couldn't help but wonder why.

"Stop it," Ren snapped one day.

Finn very deliberately thought about the ginger snaps Testor had shared with him yesterday. "Stop what?"

"I can tell you're - thinking." Ren waved a hand. "The energy directed over here, it's distracting. So stop."

Well, that was persuasive. "I'm not going to stop thinking just because you're bored."

"It's distracting. And irritating."

"Well, someone has to be here to guard you. Maybe you should've thought of that before you ran off to join the First Order."

Ren circled his fingers in a crude gesture. "You think that's what it was? You think I ran off?"

Finn felt Ren's anger mounting before he saw anything. He put a hand on his blaster, getting ready to ward off an attack -

Darkness, crashing storms. Death, all around, worse than Jakku, like the first day's culling when recruits were brought back to the Order, death and terror and endless, endless sadness -

"Stop!" Finn fired his blaster into the darkness. Sparks leaped into his vision, and he watched as the bolt dissipated against Ren's shielded prison. Ren, breathing heavily, finally looked away from him. The furious pressure and horrible vision vanished as though neither had existed.

"What is wrong with you?" Finn said. "Seriously, what - why -"

"You don't actually want to know."

That was just close enough to the truth to be, well, almost true. Finn wanted to understand, but he didn't want to hear Ren's own explanation. The guy was selfish, ridiculous, didn't even realize all that he'd thrown away. No, Finn didn't want to hear from him.

"You could have been invaluable to the first Order," Ren added. "You threw it all away."

Finn looked over at him. His tone was - weird, off. He was staring at Finn like he had back on Jakku, like he knew something Finn hadn't yet realized.

"Maybe," Finn said finally. "But I don't care about your opinion: shut up."

Guarding an evil Force user just wasn't that interesting, though. After two more days, Finn felt like he was going stir crazy. He got up at regular intervals to pace, even though every time he did it, Ren made a snide comment. After Ren said, "You're acting like you're the one in prison," Finn finally snapped. "I'm going to get them to gag you!" he said, whirling on the prison.

But Ren only smirked. "I don't think you have that kind of pull. Or you'd have a real job, not boring guard duty."

"Oh, so you're admitting you're not that important? That's progress, at least."

Ren stood. Finn hadn't noticed he wasn't restrained. He walked to the edge of his cell, brushing a single finger over the particle shielding standing between him and Finn. "This is what's doing most of the work," he said as it sparked against his finger. It must've hurt, but Ren didn't so much as flinch. "This is what keeps him from talking to me."

I'm going to regret this, Finn thought, and said, "Who?"

Ren met his gaze. Something stirred in the depths of his expression - pain, anger. Finn couldn't tell. "My lord and master. Supreme Leader Snoke."

"Right." Finn had heard rumors. The Knights of Ren existed both at the center and on the edge of the First Order: central to its goals and firepower, but mysterious and half-rumored at best. Finn had no idea how many they were, or if this Ren was a founding member. He only knew the bits he'd heard about Ben Organa while with the Rebels, and his own, sometimes overwhelming fear of the First Order. "Well, that's good."

Ren's expression twisted. "For you."

"I like being alive. I like not being a stormtrooper. I like fighting for what's right, so, yeah." Finn forced himself to look away from Ren and let out a slow breath. The guy was a jackass, and Finn was never, ever going to convince him of how wrong he was.

"I like being alive, too."

He meant to imply that Snoke would kill him if their gross bond was broken. Finn got it. He understood how the First Order, the Sith, and all of that worked, and he wasn't even special for it: most stormtroopers did, had to, because if you got in between the wrong two Force-users, you could die, and you'd just be a deactivated column in some personnel database.

Some of that must have bled through. For a moment, a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, Ren looked almost sad. Fury replaced any other nuance almost right away, though. "You don't know anything. You have no idea."

"Neither do you," Finn said. He felt - not angry, exactly, it was more distant than that. Cold.

He felt like he was about to do something stupid, actually, so he stood and said, "You know what? Let's go on a walk."

"Did you just - not hear anything I just said?"

"Oh, I heard," Finn said grimly. A forcefield wouldn't stop him from shouting at Ren until someone found out how unprofessional he was being. He wasn't going to have that kind of red mark on his record, not with the Resistance.

And anyway, the Resistance was the humane organization. Finn could take Ren on walks if he wanted; it was in the file, complete with directions on how to ensure he couldn't use his powers. A valuable intelligence asset would be handled carefully.

"You were so obedient," Ren complained as Finn led him, blaster trained between Ren's shoulders, down a deserted walking path out near the boundaries of camp. "I reviewed your file. What happened?"

"Before or after Jakku?"

"It's not like flipping a switch." Now Ren sounded condescending, great.

"I meant when did you review my file."

A huff of irritated breath. Finn kind of wanted to see the expression on his face; Ren hadn't re-learned how to hide his emotions. He'd relied on the mask, apparently, a weakness Finn had trouble believing the First Order allowed in its commanders. Well, maybe the impossibly powerful ones. "After. When you were identified as a troublemaker."

"I escaped then."

"Yes, well done." Not a drop of sincerity. "You'd never been sent for reconditioning, your post-conditioning test showed no abnormalities, you were being groomed for command. You were so obedient," he said again, and he sounded really and truly bewildered now.

"I was a person. Idiot," Finn added for good measure. "I am a person, still, but - it's people under there, you know that, right?"

"Very well-conditioned people. Programmed."

"Oh, like you are?" That was a low blow, but Finn didn't care; this whole conversation felt like a low blow to him.

"I'm the leader of the Knights of Ren. It's a bit different."

"I don't know, one of us has a blaster and one of us spends most of his time in a cage, so -"

He saw the blow coming. He expected it, even. They were walking along the edge of the lake that supplied a lot of the camp's water; this far out, only droids did ground patrol, and they didn't pass by often. Ground cover was thick. Ren had no chance of escaping the camp's various security measures, so it was operationally safe, but if Finn had wanted to mete out a bit of violent revenge, this would be the perfect spot.

He dodged, so Ren's blow only glanced off his hip. But he was ready for another one, advancing rapidly on Finn, clearly intending to use his size and reach.

Finn had been trained past the point of breaking. He'd learned to fight during a year that saw one of every ten members of his cohort killed. He was equal to the challenge.

He wouldn't have been, maybe, if Ren used the Force - but it didn't seem to even occur to him. He was trying to grapple, kept grabbing at Finn even as Finn dodged. Ren finally had to move in himself, punching Finn in the shoulder, then aiming for and again missing his solar plexus.

Finn charged him and brought him down. His balance was off; he was clearly unaccustomed to fighting without his saber. His lack of balance made it easy to roll them, punching Ren hard in the side - once, twice - and then, when he was wheezing and shaking, to grab his arms and pin him, knees digging into the ground, thighs locked, inches from -

Inches from Ren's face, Finn realized, as his breathing slowed and he came back to himself. Ren's weirdly calm, unappealingly sweaty face.

"You've allowed me to assess your weaknesses," Ren said. "Very foolish of you."

"Oh, so this was a grand plan? Very sneaky of you. I was right to be afraid of you."

Another almost-obvious, half-buried flinch. Finn wanted to chase those expressions to their almost certainly disturbing conclusion. Maybe he should beg the General for another assignment: this one was really driving him to the edge.

"You can move now," Ren said. "Unless they have you suffocate your teammates like this."

Once, only once, Finn had struck one of the trainees with a multi-carbonite rod. She'd died instantly. "You absolute bucket of bantha vomit, you worthless, cowardly -" He smacked Kylo's shoulder, fury roiling through him, then went to get up. "Just - space yourself, why don't you."

"I would, if only you all would let me! It would certainly be less painful than being around all this disgusting disorder, all the time."

"Disorder, right. As opposed to throwing tantrums and breaking control panels on your own ship - that's how the organized people do it."

"Go kriff yourself," Ren snarled.

"Gladly, if it got me away from you. Come on. Back to your cell."

"I'd have preferred to stay in there to begin with," Ren hissed, and swooped past Finn, radiating indignation.

That night, Finn's dreams dropped him back in the middle of the fight.

He once again saw the movement coming, but its end goal didn't make sense, didn't even occur to Finn, until Ren's lips touched his, Ren's hands pulling Finn back down to straddle his hips.

It was just a dream, but it still felt disgusting, Ren's huge hands on his waist, his lips against Finn's. But somehow, maybe because of the dream logic, Finn found himself kissing back.

He felt ridiculous, even in the privacy of his own mind. But he still didn't even hug people often. Any kind of touch still felt a little like the first sweet drink of clean water had after Jakku, something he desperately needed and would question the origin of later.

So, desperate was a good word for how he felt just then. Dream-Ren tried to touch his cheek, and Finn knocked his hand away but then followed it down to the ground, pressing it against the dirt. He could feel Ren shaking under him, just a little, and it fed into Finn's own pounding heart, gave him that much more reason to kiss back, bite at Ren's lip, press against him and feel. Yes, yes, he almost said, more, harder.

Ren made a sound. It was just an almost-moan, so quiet Finn almost didn't hear it, but it functioned like a blaster butt to the side of his head. He leaped away, falling onto the ground and then springing upright, fumbling for his blaster. "This is a dream. A stupid dream. This just a dream, you should go, I'm - I need to wake up."

"You're repeating yourself." Ren looked calm but he wasn't calm, Finn knew that much. But he also wasn't real, Finn reminded himself. He was so hard he ached, and easily half his mind still thought going back to the dirt and finishing what the dream had started was a great idea, the best he'd ever had. Ren's fingers were so long, what would it feel like if -

"Stop," Ren said with a strangled voice.

"You stop! Get out of my head."

"I thought you said this wasn't real. Does it matter, then?"

Finn looked around. The forest disappeared after a few yards, smudging into nothingness. Even the dirt on his hands didn't manage to stay consistent. Ren, though, looked up at him with clear eyes, maddeningly cohesive.

He'd escaped from dreams before. He screwed his eyes shut and began counting until the world around him disappeared.

-

He knew, after that, that he'd gotten way too wrapped up in his guard mission. He saw Ren locked safely into his no-Force cell, then went to the canteen for some caf and a good, long brooding session.

But the canteen wasn't known for being quiet. He'd barely made a dent in his drink when Rey plopped down across from him and said, "I think it's awful, you know."

Finn blinked to cover the panic running through him. Had someone seen? Overhead something? Had Ren told people? Oh no, Finn had fought a prisoner, that was so unethical, even if the prisoner could technically choke him to death, even if the prisoner had started that - fight - whatever it had been.

"Poe having to go back to Jakku," Rey said. "I know it's important, to help the survivors, but -"

Finn had heard a bit about the mission. It sounded mostly routine, cleaning up after the First Order's murder and torture. That meant it was horrifying, of course. "Yeah. It sucks."

"I'm sorry. I - I don't forget you defected, but I suppose sometimes I just..."

"Forget? Don't worry about it." He smiled at her, really meaning it, knowing she'd pick up his emotions. She was so good at that, almost scarily good, but Finn was happy for her. It helped her, he knew, after so many years in isolation. She could react to people better, know how to act or what they were thinking. She was trying so hard to learn what her childhood had lacked.

"You are, too," Rey said quietly.

He flinched.

She didn't apologize this time, only picked up his hand, running her fingers over the calluses and scars from years of stormtrooper work. "I was thinking, Luke and I have to go do a recon mission, but when I get back...would you want to take a few days' leave and go to the hot springs? We could get a group together, it might be nice. The General says the fighting is likely to ebb until the Republic Senate takes a recess."

Because fighting during a Senate session was inviting more legislation to fund the Resistance, of course. Finn thought about it: relaxing by the warm water, friends all around him, food and drink readily flowing for once. He couldn't quite picture it, but - "Maybe," he said. "If I'm not still stuck on babysitting duty."

Rey made a sympathetic face. "Is he that bad?"

All in one big, awful moment, Finn realized his mistake. Embarrassment raced through him, and he had to look away from Rey's sympathetic, too-perceptive gaze. Don't think about it, he told himself, and felt his palms get sweaty. "Um, well, you know. He's evil, and brainwashed, and whiny."

Rey made a face. "He offered me...lessons."

"They like to recruit by brainwashing." Finn thought about his own - a big room, he barely remembered it. Pain. "And General Organa says the Force can be used to corrupt people."

"Master Luke says that too." Rey's eyebrows wrinkled with her anxiety. "Do they really think they can cure him? He murdered his own father."

Finn would never forget that moment, the emptiness in Ren's expression, the sheer disbelief he felt when Han Solo, traitor to the Empire - hero to the Rebellion - a liar who'd given Finn the first honest advice he'd ever received - fell to his death. "I don't know," he said finally. He felt like his words came from far away, like he'd floated away from his body a little. "I don't want to think people are just - bad."

"Some are. The people who stole you -"

Finn shook his head. "Just people, like me and you. Different set of choices, different set of beliefs. Still people."

"You don't have to tell me! Master Luke likes to talk about how we could go dark side, any of us, any time. He says General Organa stopped learning the Force for whole months at a time because she felt the pull of the dark."

"It's hard for me to believe you'd ever go dark side, Rey."

"Flatterer." Rey's mouth quirked up in a half-smile. "But if Ren gets better...it might be good. For the General, and for Master Luke."

He saw what she was trying to do, because he felt similarly: they were both doing their best to learn to react to others, to avoid reflecting the privation they'd faced in this new, safer world. He returned her good wishes, and they hugged before going off to their separate duties.

Later, he'd wonder why he didn't notice that something was off. He knew the First Order's military strategies, had in fact shared them with General Organa. He should have noticed the unusual cloud cover, the darkened atmosphere. The sudden lack of noise in the treeline, the heightened electromagnetic activity that any trained stormtrooper could detect by his own pulse, sweat, the hair on his arms rising - he failed to notice all of that. He thought it was just an ordinary day, didn't think anything was off at all, until Ren lifted his head in his cell and said quietly, "They're here."

And then it all really went to hell.

The First Order favored brief volleys of aerial attacks, following up with massive deployment of stormtroopers. The first blasters landed on the prison building before Finn could ask Ren for an explanation. They had maybe five minutes until the stormtroopers landed, if this was a normal attack. A normal raid.

Sure, Finn thought, they only found the Resistance's top-secret base; it's definitely a normal raid, probably. "We need to move."

"This cell is protected -"

"Yeah, because you're the highest value prisoner we've ever had. They're here for you. Move."

Ren sneered. "How exactly do think you'll force me to do that? Maybe I like it here. I've gotten used to it."

Finn opened his mouth to - argue, beg, he wasn't sure. It didn't end up mattering, anyway. He reacted to the sound of a blaster charging outside the door just in time to dive to the floor as three stormtroopers, led by a commander Finn didn't recognize, entered the room.

"Kylo Ren," said the commander through the thick black mask. "You're coming with us."

"You have to get me out first."

"You there." Gloved hands clamped on Finn's arms, lifting him upright. He looked away from the commander, but it didn't help: he could tell by the intake in breath, by his captors' grips stiffening, that they recognized him. "FN-2187, what a surprise. I didn't think the Resistance would concentrate its valuable objects like this. Tactically sloppy, don't you think?"

He wasn't an object. He didn't respond.

"He's worthless," Ren said in that odd, colorless voice of his. "Get me out of here, and I'll go with you."

"Ah-ah, we have our orders," the commander said. "FN-2187 is a wanted fugitive."

"I thought I was an object," Finn said before his self control could catch up.

The commander slapped him. "Keep quiet."

Apparently the Resistance had trained him to do the dumb thing. Finn licked blood from his lower lip and opened his mouth to respond. Before he got a sound out, a low humming filled the air.

Finn looked over at the cell at the same time that the First Order flunkies did. While they gaped at the sight of Kylo Ren freeing himself, Finn kicked one of them in the shins, right at the joint of the armor where he knew it was weak.

"Thank you, master," Ren said, and raised his hands.

Power surged through the air, and the cell disappeared as though it had never existed. Ren began to advance. Finn took advantage of the moment to roll away, hitting the floor, his mind only on escape - until the moment one of the stormtroopers yelled, "Halt, traitor!" and shot him in the shoulder.

Ah, no. Not again. But yes, again, because burning pain rocketed through him, so strong and world-erasing that Finn didn't even realize he couldn't move until the stormtrooper raised their blaster again, aiming to kill.

Something whispered, Hello.

Ren screamed, "No!"

The stormtrooper who wasn't trying to kill Finn and their commander turned together to regard Ren with bemusement. The other stormtrooper fired, but the blaster bolt never reached Finn. It froze in midair, trembling, only a few feet away from Ren's outstretched hand.

Interesting, hissed the voice only Finn could hear. The hold on him disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared, but he held himself still, afraid.

"Get out," Ren snarled. "Now, Giata, before I'm forced to make you."

"By the order of Supreme Leader Snoke, I hereby apprehend you both!" The commander's - Giata's - voice shook. And he was slow, Finn realized, too slow for what Finn knew he had to do.

Moving against orders still felt like trying to climb up a cliff in 3x gravity. But he moved. He disarmed Giata and watched as Ren killed him and the two stormtroopers.

Then he threw up.

"You've seen death before," Ren said, still in that horrible distant voice.

Finn gritted his teeth. The impulse to answer was so deep in him, inexorable and always painful to ignore.

"Answer me."

"No."

Ren's lip curled. The power in the room crackled again, and Finn became very aware that Ren was free, and could probably kill him right now, and he wouldn't be able to do anything.

Ren raised his hands. He smirked, looking like - Finn didn't even know. Like someone was occupying him just now, like the Ren in front of him wasn't the one who'd wrestled him, who'd...

Don't think about it, Finn told himself, watching in numb disbelief as Ren backed into his own cell, raised the protections again, and sat there like nothing had happened.

Resistance officers found them soon after that. Finn gave a heavily edited version of events; they didn't ask Ren. They wouldn't trust him enough to take his report seriously, which was, Finn knew, wise.

Don't trust me, he wanted to say. Don't trust me when I don't know how to trust myself.

After they'd left, he looked over at Ren, who was staring at the far wall, face angled away from Finn. He had a crooked nose and bloodshot eyes and Finn wasn't at all certain he couldn't break out of his cage again, if he really wanted to.

"I have the power my master grants me," Ren said, like he could hear Finn's thoughts. "Which, right now, is limited."

"That's creepy," Finn said. "And my shift's up. Don't - don't do anything stupid."

He wasn't sure if it was a plea or good advice; he left before Ren could respond. He had thirteen hours, then, to eat, sleep, and decompress. The person who'd debriefed him - Lara? Lyra? Finn couldn't remember - had told him about the med droids who could provide psychiatric care. She'd implied he should get some sleep for his post-traumatic stress. Finn hadn't tried to explain how unlikely any of that was.

He tried to sleep but it didn't work. He'd lied about so much, and he felt kind of guilty, but if he'd told the truth, he knew what would happen next. Interrogation, debriefings, long lines of questioning by people who didn't quite believe that a former stormtrooper would tell the truth. He believed in General Organa; he didn't believe the Resistance, in general, wouldn't snatch back the citizenship they'd only just offered.

It wasn't until he fell asleep and woke barely an hour later, heart pounding, breath coming too quickly, that he realized what was going on. He'd gotten this back with the First Order, too, and there he'd had to lie in bed and wait for it to pass. The bad time, he'd thought of it as a kid. Now he knew it was some kind of stress, but he still couldn't think about it head-on, was a little worried about what might happen if he did.

As a kid he'd been able to volunteer for extra patrols. Now, he got up and wandered the edge of the camp.

There was where he'd gotten drunk with the pilots last festival. There was a tell-tale impression in some leaves that signaled a site of fighting earlier. There was a blown-out tree trunk. There was - augh. There was where he and Ren had fought, where Finn had dreamed about them kissing.

Kissing. It was appalling. Finn felt like he was losing it, really losing it the way everyone had been waiting for him to in his first few months with the Resistance.

He stopped a hundred yards down from where he'd hit Ren and stared at the sky. Yavin 4 had three moons and never got quite dark enough to see the stars. It was nothing like the blackness of space that he'd been mostly raised in, and also nothing like nighttime on Starkiller Base.

He was so far from where he'd been raised, and infinitely far from wherever home had been. A damp, overly warm breeze blew through his shirt, and he sighed and sat down on the ground.

The moment when he'd been frozen and Ren had stopped the blaster bolt kept replaying in his mind. Snoke had been there, or had been close enough to reach Ren. Had it been Snoke who held Finn still? It didn't seem possible, but Snoke's primary interest was in Ren, they'd established that. It followed logically that the psychic whatever that had happened would be related to him.

But the Force wasn't logical. None of this felt logical, actually. Ren had saved his life and gone back into captivity: why? He still felt drawn to Snoke, that much was obvious. Why didn't he just go with the First Order? Why didn't he let them kill Finn?

None of it made sense. Maybe it would've if Finn could let himself think about his own - whatever. Maybe, he forced himself to think, maybe it would have made sense if Finn was someone that people rebelled for. But he wasn't. The First Order was all-encompassing and terrifying. They had a nearly infinite supply of cannon fodder - ground troops - stormtroopers - and they controlled most of the Force-users in the galaxy. What hope did the Resistance have? None, he thought, staring at the moons above him.

None at all. And yet, here he was, and he knew he wouldn't go back.

"I wonder too, you know."

He didn't shout, but it was a close thing, especially when he realized that the person behind him wasn't just some random night officer, but instead was General Organa herself. She moved to join him at the forest's edge, smiling ruefully, like she knew what he was thinking. "Apologies. I thought you'd heard me approach."

"I was -" Panicking? "Thinking. Sorry."

"No apology necessary." She smoothed her shirt, looking at Finn speculatively. "I received your report."

"You read it?"

"It concerned my son, so yes."

Of course. Finn let a breath out, tried and failed to relax.

"It seemed, how should I say this? Edited."

Finn's mind slid away from the events of earlier. He thought of his report and the events that had precipitated it. It wasn't true, but it was true. In the part of his mind he thought others could see, on the surface, it was true. "I'm not sure what you mean."

General Organa narrowed her eyes as she examined him. Finn thought of lining up to get his breakfast with the First Order, being beaten by a baton, conditioned to not even tremble if pain was applied to him. Cells and nerve endings, he reminded himself, flesh and blood and bone, none of it mattered. The mission mattered.

The mission, right now, was reminding himself that his report was true, for as long as it took. He stood still and made his mind placid and didn't even breathe until General Organa looked away.

"Interesting," she said, but she didn't press. Finn relaxed bit by bit.

"He's very powerful."

"Ben?"

"Um. Ren."

"Kylo." General Organa snorted. "I suppose it's harder to join up with the dark side if your new Master calls you the same name your father did."

"I don't...understand," Finn said. "I'm sorry. But it seems like he had everything. I mean, you're famous. Why would he - how did he think it was a good idea?"

Why would he kill his father? he didn't say. Does he have any idea what he's trying to ruin? What will he do when you finally give up on him?

General Organa sighed. "Why did you join the First Order?"

Something in Finn creaked, near to snapping. "I didn't! They kidnapped me!"

"But you stayed."

"I was a baby!"

"Precisely," General Organa said. "That's when Snoke targeted Ben, too. I could feel it. I had hoped we could negate his influence...I hoped I was crazy, honestly. I told myself I was inventing it, borrowing trouble."

"And now?"

"Now, I just hope he's not lost." She pressed her lips together, looking up at the sky. "And I hope I don't have to stop him."

"Rey brought Luke Skywalker back, so -"

The General's laugh held no small amount of bitterness. "Oh, Finn. If anyone sends Ben back to the universe, it won't be Luke."

It struck Finn, suddenly, how weird the whole conversation was. He tried to imagine General Organa saying this stuff to a pilot, or a mess server, and his brain sort of blanked out instead. "Um."

She glanced at him. "My apologies. It's not really your place, is it?"

"Well," Finn said, because he didn't quite feel comfortable telling one of the Resistance's legends to stop talking to him.

"I think you're good for him, to be honest. That's what I came out here to tell you. That, and you should get some sleep."

Irritation sparked in him. "I know that!"

"And yet, here you are."

"It's hard. Impossible. I feel like - like I'm drowning." And oh no, Finn hadn't meant to say any of this at all, but once it started he couldn't stop it. "All I know is the First Order, and now that I'm free everyone expects me to be happy - and I am, but - my whole life! Every time I slept, woke up, everything I ate, all the education I got, I can't just throw it off. There's no, I don't know, second personality waiting for me to put it on. And people watch me, and I have to live up to my - clemency - and I just, I don't know. I wish he'd shot me. I don't know. I'm sorry."

Sometime in the middle of his fractured speech, General Organa had turned to face him. When he clicked his teeth shut and looked at her, he expected censure, or punishment, maybe. Instead, she took his hands and said, "Finn. Whatever the New Republic tries to do, whatever the Resistance says. People like you are why we're fighting. We need you desperately, you, not an inspirational holodrama. Do you hear me?"

They were words he'd heard before, but coming from her, they felt - more, somehow. Different. He felt power here, now, kind of like when Ren had broken down his prison, but also totally different. He couldn't help but respond, his panic ebbing away. He nodded to indicate he'd heard, then said, "Are you - you're not a Jedi."

She dropped his hands and half-smiled. "No."

"But..."

Her expression sharpened. "You know, if you sense anything right now, I hear Luke's got the time to take on a second student."

Finn all but fled after that, making excuses that all added up to 'please, one terrifying thing at a time'. She'd been joking, anyway.

Well, he was pretty sure she'd been joking.

-

Their whole shared near-death experience did not make it any easier for Finn to guard Ren. If anything, it was harder now. He wanted to ask Ren all of the questions he'd bugged the General with, even though he knew the odds of Ren answering him helpfully, at all, were so low they didn't merit thinking about.

He's a jackass, Finn reminded himself, and you don't like him, and his own mom might have to kill him to keep him from hurting more people. There's nothing there.

But Finn still wanted to understand. He couldn't quite crush that part of himself, didn't quite want to. He didn't realize any of that attitude was obvious until Ren said, "You need a hobby."

"Excuse me?"

"I can feel your thoughts." Ren waved a hand. "It's irritating."

Finn looked over at him. He'd washed his hair more recently; it was no longer quite so dirty and gross. He still looked tired, and pathetic, and evil. "Why are you like this?"

"I'm following in my grandfather's footsteps, of course."

"Okay, well, that's really stupid. Your mother wants you to get better, you know."

Ren sneered. "General Organa wants her son to return to her. She doesn't understand that he's dead."

Finn stared at him. When he didn't slap his forehead and say, 'wow, I'm dumb', he said, "That's one of the craziest things I've ever heard."

"You didn't hear many of the speeches about Starkiller Base, then."

"No, I was busy working." Had Ren known they were crazy? They were worse than crazy, really: they were malicious, dangerous, awful. He couldn't believe anyone would look at footage from the destruction of Alderaan and think, "that, but bigger." But one of the drivers of that whole - everything - sat in front of him.

His curiosity drained away; for a terrible moment he just felt sick, of himself, of his curiosity, of the whole awful fight. "Keep quiet," he said. "Or I'll escalate, and whoever guards you after I'm gone won't be willing to talk at all."

"Promises, promises," Ren muttered. But he fell silent after that.

Finn knew he needed to get out of his own head. He had leave the next day, and instead of spending it drinking with the pilots or reading up on New Republic history in his room, he wandered the base instead, hoping to meet someone new, or pick up a new skill - or even deal with a sudden emergency, whatever. Anything that would distract him from the stress of being Ren's designated babysitter. He'd be done in a week, with the initial assignment, at least. He briefly entertained the idea of begging General Organa to reassign him. It couldn't possibly be healthy to daydream this much about returning to sanitation.

On his third circuit of the base, he came across a kid sitting on the ground. She must have been walking around, because she had a wagon full of random things - bits of droid, whittled wooden planks, local-looking sticks, even a few durasteel springs.

Her tiny face was held carefully blank, but Finn could tell she was distressed. Sensitive to the Force, said Ren's mocking voice in his head, but he ignored it in favor of kneeling in front of her. He didn't mind using - whatever it was - to comfort a kid. "Hi there. I'm Finn. What's your name?"

She stared at him with wide brown eyes and chewed her lip. "Miara."

"Is there anyone here to watch you, Miara?"

"School." She shrugged. She looked thin, even for a little kid, and kind of - sad. The base did have refugees, he knew, and kids whose parents spent more time in the field than planetside. "I don't like it."

"What's wrong with school?"

"Rules. Boring stuff. You don't look like a pilot." One little finger reached out to poke the designation on Finn's - Poe's - jacket.

"I'm not, actually. I'm a Sergeant with the ground corps."

"My daddy was a spy, but she might be gone now."

Two Outer Rim planets that Finn was aware of had matriarchal, three-woman-family households as a standard. One of them had long since been laid waste by the First Order; the other was heavily occupied, its inhabitants barely more free than the average stormtrooper. Miara's parent was probably in pretty bad trouble, even if they weren't dead. "Were you going to build something? I could help."

She gave him a Look then, a real gimlet-eyed 'I know you're changing the subject' kind of look. It didn't quite fit her face; he did his best to look honest in the moment, ready to listen and help.

They were in the middle of building a hover-platform when Finn felt too-familiar prickling at the back of his neck. He looked up to see Ren, under guard from two Resistance ground fighters that Finn didn't recognize. He might've introduced himself, asked their names, except Ren was staring at him, looking torn between anger and - something else. Finn wasn't going to guess about the inner lives of evil Force cult people.

"Ren," he said instead, hoping Ren would take the hint and be civil in front of Miara.

"What are you doing?" Ren said, harshly enough that Finn saw Miara flinch a little. She'd already gone through some rough stuff, was his guess; as soon as Ren spoke, she looked down at her project, didn't even say hi.

"Just building a hover-platform, nothing fancy," Finn said. "It's my day off."

"So I noticed."

Which, okay, there was a clear implication there that Ren cared about who was guarding him. Or was capable of telling the difference between two different people. Don't be ridiculous, Finn told himself, and forced a smile.

"This is Miara. She lives on-base."

Miara looked like she didn't trust Ren at all. Good instincts. Ren looked at her with wariness, like she might be hiding a blaster or deadly Force powers. "She's really just a kid," Finn added.

He meant it to be a subtle cue, don't treat the kid like an enemy combatant, but Miara and Ren both gave him weird looks then - and saw each other doing it. Finn expected Ren to stomp away, but instead Ren said, "It's - nice to meet - you," sounding like every word had been pried out of him.

"You look bad," Miara told him.

"I am bad."

"Well, fix it." And, apparently having decided Ren wasn't as interesting as a hyper-coil, she returned to her hovercraft project.

Finn almost laughed out loud at the look on Ren's face just then. Half the First Order avoiding Ren like he had Naboo plague was one thing; seeing a kid just outright dismiss him was even funnier.

"Ouch," he said when he was confident he could talk without breaking out in laughter. "Well, anyway. I'm getting a new assignment tomorrow, so you shouldn't go looking for me."

"I didn't," Ren snapped. "I'm walking. For health. They've got me on a system now. It rewards good behavior."

"I get stickers when I do my multiplication tables," Miara said without looking up.

"Oh, wonderful," Ren said, and stomped away.

Miara chewed on a stick thoughtfully. "He wasn't very nice."

"No," Finn said.

"Do you like him anyway?"

Of course not. "Oh, you know. He's fine. Let's see if we can make this propeller work, okay?"

Chapter 2

It was really, really stupid that a seven-year-old's question would be sticking in his mind three weeks later, as he collected schematics of a First Order refinery from a sketchy asteroid vendor.

The question wasn't even that complicated. Did Finn like Kylo Ren anyway? No, not really. He was a bad person, and selfish, and someone who might have to be killed by his own mother. No, Finn didn't like Ren. When he thought of people he liked, he thought of the pilots, of Rey, of Slip, who should've been free along with the rest of the stormtroopers. He didn't think of Ren, who'd had every chance to grow up normal and happy and had thrown it all away.

But -

Okay. Very occasionally it had kind of seemed like there might be something vaguely worth it, buried deep in Ren's psyche. The guy might be funny, or interesting; he was powerful, and he could've used that power to change the whole world if he wanted to. If he had, then he'd be someone Finn liked. As it was...

As it was, he was someone Finn sometimes fixated on, for no real reason. Maybe it was the height, or stormtrooper training had actually scrambled his brains a little more than the Resistance doctors had been able to detect. He just kept thinking of him, at random moments.

And dreaming about him.

The dreams were worse than the passing thoughts, really. They kissed again, but unlike the first time, they didn't fight first. And Ren was kind to him, in the dreams, laughing at his jokes and asking about his thoughts. Finn woke up with his chest tight with longing, which always became self-loathing before he'd even finished in the 'fresher.

Obtaining the schematics took longer than he expected. The First Order's data rooms were guarded at all hours of the day by pairs of stormtroopers. Finn had only tested them once, pretending to be a lost tourist, and he'd almost lost his illusion mask and been arrested. They were elite, scarily so. He coordinated with the local Resistance cell to borrow some bodies to case the place, hoping a break-in would be possible, but they all reinforced his worst concerns: the place was borderline impenetrable, locked down and very unlikely to relax security even if someone told them a Death Star was pointed at them.

Finally, with the help of two local informants, Finn obtained what he needed to finish the job: nap gas, so named because it knocked you out for anywhere between thirty minutes to seventy-two hours.

Or forever, actually, if you messed up the dosage. But Finn was careful. He set off the gas, ran into the data room with a breather on, obtained the right files, and ran out in under twenty minutes. He sent his success signal to the Resistance and went straight for his ship, ostensibly a prawn farm from a nearby moon system. When he got there, he took a few minutes to check over his ship, then closed the landing bay to take off -

And right before the doors shut, one of the stormtrooper guards leaped inside, tackling Finn to the ground.

It was too late to shout for help. He'd already given the orders to jump into hyperspace. If he didn't win this fight, the ship would arrive at camp having given away their location, and Finn would be dead.

He punched the stormtrooper in the weak stomach armor, then rolled, pulling its helmet off. There was a woman underneath, with close-cut black hair and skin a little lighter than Finn's. She snarled when she saw him. "The traitor of Starkiller Base. I should have known."

"You can stand down," he said. "This ship is on its way back to the Resistance. There's nothing that says it can't arrive with a new recruit."

He wasn't expecting her to sneer. "Do you really think that will work? We were warned about you. Trained against you. Lying filth, traitor! Too much of a coward for the First Order!" She spat at his feet and then, before he could argue, charged him.

For a moment he didn't fight back, paralyzed in mind and body. We were trained against you - did that mean another round of reconditioning? Had his brothers and sisters, his teammates, his - not his friends. But something close, as close as it could be with stormtroopers. Had they been tortured because of him?

She got a hit in, striking his solar plexus once and then again when he didn't move quickly enough. He dodged after that, pushing her back and blocking her blows. She was so frenetic that she didn't even have time to pull her blaster - and when Finn noticed it, he formulated a plan that became action a breath later. She aimed to hit him with a stiff palm, and he let it happen, absorbed the blow, and used her forward momentum to trip her just far enough off balance that he could grab her blaster himself.

She froze. He took five quick steps backward, blaster trained on her with a steady hand.

"We're going back to the Resistance," he said again. "I'd rather not arrive with a body in the cargo hold."

For a second he thought she would make him kill her. His heart twisted; his breath came in unreliable bursts. He knew that if she charged him, he'd let her disarm him, might even be too slow to keep himself alive.

Slowly, with murder on her face, she raised her hands in surrender.

After securing her in the hold, he sent word ahead that he'd be arriving with a prisoner. The dispatcher asked him to identify the woman, but he only sent back, "Designation class likely TK." They'd either figure out that meant a stormtrooper or not.

As the ship descended into the trees, he took long, deep breaths. He'd known this would happen - confrontation with the stormtroopers. He'd been quizzed on readiness long before the New Republic granted him citizenship. He might feel weird about delivering another stormtrooper into the Resistance's not-so-gentle embrace, but he knew he had to do it. She was guarding some of the most valuable chemical formulas in the galaxy; she had information Finn hadn't. She was a valuable asset.

Finn really, really hoped they'd try to avoid hurting her.

His ship docked and was met by two privates. One of them went with droids to remove the stormtrooper to a holding cell; the other escorted Finn to the war room. "Subtle," he said as they walked down the long hall.

"That's the goal, sir," the private said. Finn glanced at her chest, but she didn't wear a nametag.

Right, then. He took a deep breath and walked into the war room.

General Organa stood at the far end; Rey and Luke were against the wall, watching the tableau. And it definitely was a tableau, because three Senators stood around the big round holo-projector, and Poe stood near General Organa, almost in the shadows, directly behind -

Finn blinked once, twice, took a deep breath, tried to clear his mind.

Kylo Ren stared at him across the distance. The air between them didn't suddenly go solid; it didn't spark. Neither of them shot lightning. All of that, and the resultant almost-painful arousal, was in Finn's head.

"Finn, thank you for coming," the General said.

The door slid shut behind him as he nodded acknowledgment. "I'm guessing you got the news of my prisoner."

"A stormtrooper." the General raised an eyebrow. "In addition to the plans we asked for. Very impressive."

Suddenly, it seemed of utmost importance to explain. "I didn't mean to, actually. I just - she was there, I couldn't - she snuck onto the ship. I had to fight her."

"Why didn't you kill it?" Ren said.

Rey hissed furiously. Luke frowned. The General pressed her lips together, none of her emotions escaping that Finn could see or feel. "Ben, I told you that your sitting in on this meeting would be conditional on good behavior."

"Kind of feels like he broke that rule a while ago," Poe said. He had his usual light, I'm-probably-joking tone, but Finn could see beneath it now: Poe was furious.

The General said, "Everyone, I apologize for my son, but I will also remind you that he and Finn are the only assets we have who might have any idea what the First Order's plans might be. Ben, don't talk again. Finn, what do you think our odds are if we try to compel her to talk?"

"Compel?" Finn said.

"We have truth serums, bribery, psychological trickery. Nothing that would do lasting harm, of course, but -"

But, the Resistance had people who could read your moods. Technically, they had at least one - Finn glanced at Luke. Okay, two people who could crack your thoughts like a rednut and rummage around the meat within. "She won't give anything up willingly."

"They don't have to be willing," said one of the Senators, a thin Human woman.

"No, that's not what I mean," Finn said. "I mean she probably can't. It's programmed into us - them." He swallowed. "It's possible that if she starts divulging secrets, classified stuff, her heart will fail. Or she'll pass out. It's a complicated thing, but I've seen it happen. They made sure we knew it would work." He glanced at Ren then, almost in spite of himself. "First Order officers have also seen demonstrations."

"Of course I have," Ren said. "I told them as much. But they seem to think you disprove the training of thousands of Stormtrooper units."

Finn shook his head. "I don't, trust me. It can fail, or you can push through it. But it's not a sure thing. You might not get anything from her."

"Like I said," Ren said, addressing his mother this time. "You might as well just kill it."

For a moment, everyone in the room tensed. Finn could feel the roiling fury and frustration of every single person, even Luke. But it was General Organa who turned to look at Ren, her expression impassive. When she spoke, soft and deadly authority gave every word weight.

"You will not goad me into killing her, or you. I understand that you would prefer to die rather than continue being cut off from your Supreme Leader. What you do not understand is that the Republic I have given my life to building has rules, regulations, and rights for all members, even defectors, even non-citizens, even traitors. There are things we will never do here. There are things Vader himself could not force me to do. If you continue to try to provoke me, all that will happen for you will be a quick trip back to that cell you begged me to leave. Do you understand now, Ben?"

Ren had flinched throughout the speech. Now, his harsh breathing was the only sound in the room. He opened his mouth to reply.

"General - Princess - General! Kylo Ren has escaped! Oh, I'm so sorry. Dear me. He's right here, isn't he." C-3PO stopped dead in the entrance. "I'll just be going, then."

The Human Senator who'd spoke to Finn before snorted. "Leia, you could always make 3PO be a chaperon. He's skilled at it."

"Indeed." Slight amusement lit the General's expression. She turned away from Ren without an apparent second thought, saying to Finn, "I didn't introduce the Senators. This is Lisset of Fest, Vitari of Devaron, and Siboja of Tangenine."

Each Senator bowed. Finn, feeling like a prize idiot, bowed back.

"This is my war council, more or less," the General said with a wry smile. "I'd welcome your feedback on what we should do with the TK-class stormtrooper."

It was weird, Finn thought, that he could hear the space where she would use a name - where she clearly thought she should be using a name, even though stormtroopers were trained to reject anything but basic classification. He didn't think even Luke Skywalker believed in his moral code as much as General Organa believed in hers. "I guess we should question her," he said. "And hold her. There's not much else we can do."

'We.' That felt good, even if he could feel Ren's disdain from across the room.

"Then so we shall." The General nodded. "Rey, I'd appreciate if you can confirm the stormtrooper is being held in humane conditions. Luke, Lisset, I'd like to speak with you both about a separate matter. Finn and Dameron, escort Ren back to his quarters, please."

Quarters? Not a cell?

"That's right," Ren murmured as Finn fell into step with Poe. "You won't get to torment me in that little bubble anymore."

"He's being a hell of a pain in the ass about it," Poe said, "but this is good news. It means Snoke can't reach him anymore."

"He can hear you," Ren said in what Finn thought of as his professor-on-trial voice, long-suffering and supercilious.

"Yeah, I know that, Ben," Poe said. "It's great news. The best."

"You don't care."

Finn glanced at Poe. It wasn't true; that much was obvious to him, shone through in all of Poe's actions. He cared a lot, even if he didn't want to anymore. Finn could relate.

"Maybe I don't," Poe said easily. "About you, anyway. But the General, and the Resistance, need the First Order to be as weak as possible. Snoke no longer having his pet wannabe-Sith is good for that, so as far as I'm concerned, I'll throw you a liberation party."

Ren snorted - Liberation, Finn could imagine him saying in that condescending tone - but he didn't keep arguing. Poe led them to one of the smaller barracks. Ren's room was slightly larger than Finn's, but only so there was room for three-sixty surveillance. Finn's room computer, like all of them, would erase or heavily encrypt all his data within two hours. Ren's data was being livestreamed to the perimeter monitoring room.

Finn noticed more than he wanted to in the minute it took them to drop Ren off and check him in. Like how Finn had a few little knickknacks on his bureau, and Ren had nothing. His bed didn't even look slept in. It might as well have been his old cell, for all the personality he'd failed to add to it.

"It looks pretty bleak in there," he said as he and Poe walked back towards the mess.

"That's how he likes it, I guess."

Finn struggled against his ruder impulses and lost out. "What happened? Between you guys, I mean."

"Nothing."

He spoke too quickly for it to possibly be true. "But I mean - you knew him, right? Growing up in the Resistance?"

"Sure, we all knew each other. But he was pretty powerful early on, so it's not like...I mean, we weren't best buddies or anything."

Finn knew he was prying but he couldn't help it. There was something there, some information that might help, hidden just past what Poe was saying. "But you wanted to be?"

Poe stopped dead in the hallway and looked at Finn sharply. Suspicion flared between them - no, it was Poe's suspicion, Finn realized. He could feel it as clearly as if it were his own.

"Been doing that a lot lately?"

"Doing what?"

"Using the Force."

"What? No!"

Poe had a flirty demeanor, normally. Finn understood that about him; it was a pilot thing. But right now, he looked deadly serious and honestly pretty mad. "Then you're using it without realizing. You're right, I was friends with Ben, and we hung out. It's a long, complicated, messy past, and it ended with him trying the tricks you're doing right now."

Finn didn't - couldn't - reply.

"You should talk to Skywalker," Poe said. "Or the General. Don't rummage around in people's heads like that. It could get you in serious hot water, and beyond that, it's rude."

"I know that." But it was a weak protest. He did know, of course he did, but - he'd done it anyway, and it had felt natural, not at all unethical or illegal.

"Yeah, I know you know." Poe smiled a bit then, clapping a hand on Finn's shoulder. "See you at the fish bake?"

Day after tomorrow. More than enough time to throw himself at the mercy of Skywalker and beg for help, or forgiveness. "Wouldn't miss it."

-

Luke stared while Finn stumbled through an explanation, doing his best to emphasize his lack of knowledge of the rules he'd been breaking. When he finally wound down into silence, Luke said, "Hmm."

Finn waited. When more wasn't forthcoming, he said, "Please tell me that doesn't mean you're going to throw me in a holding cell."

"Like my nephew, you mean?"

It was said mildly enough, but for just a second Finn thought he might pass out.

"I was thinking, you see," Luke said. "I've taught a lot of pupils."

Most of whom were dead. That was - not really how Finn wanted all this to go. "I'm sorry," he started to say, but Luke waved him off.

"I don't mean that in a censorious way. It's just that what you describe is, hm, different from my area of expertise. Have you talked to my sister?"

Another screech-and-pivot moment happened in Finn's brain. "Have I talked to General Organa about breaking the law with the Force? No, I have not."

"Well, as the chief authority on the Jedi Council, I'm going to have to order you to."

Finn's throat went very dry. He couldn't even get a squeak out.

"She'll be able to help you better than I, unless your goal is to become a Jedi, which I've been reliably informed is not the case."

By which Finn assumed he meant 'Rey re-enacted my long story about the various ways I'd rather die than become a Jedi'. "That's right, I don't."

"Talk to Leia, then. Please."

Finn just couldn't process Luke Skywalker, Master Jedi, standing in front of him and saying 'please'. He'd learned about him in school, as a stormtrooper! He was a living legend, someone Finn had sometimes doubted the existence of, just because that much power in someone not under the Supreme Leader's control seemed impossible. But, well, here he was: Finn couldn't deny it anymore. Luke Skywalker was real, really powerful, and asking him for what amounted to a favor.

Accordingly, he booked a meeting with the General. It was suspiciously easy to do, like Luke had called ahead. Finn thought of Luke saying, 'hey, can you clear your calendar for Finn? Yes, the former stormtrooper' and had to calculate the hyper-velocity of the Millennium Falcon for a few minutes before he could go to dinner.

Rey, of course, pounced on him in the mess line. "I can't believe you didn't tell me!"

"Really?" Finn said, but he felt bad about it when her face fell. Ren was a bad influence, apparently. "Okay, I'm sorry, it's - yeah. It's kind of scary, that's all."

"Well, you won't get Kylo duty again, at least. Not 'til you've learned to control yourself." Rey was grinning at him, flushed, like she hadn't just casually mentioned Finn breaking the law.

Wait. "Kylo duty?"

"You know, making sure he doesn't suddenly contact Snoke again. You can't do that if you're learning to control your abilities. It makes you an easy target." Her expression turned troubled. "He's very powerful."

Finn had known that, but - "He tried to tell me. Well, I thought he was just being a dick."

"Oh no, Finn. Are you sure he didn't do anything? Get inside your head?"

Immediately, humiliatingly, Finn thought of the dreams he'd been having. No, they couldn't possibly be related. Ren would never make him imagine so many - ugh - kisses. "I don't think so. Hopefully not. I would've noticed, right?"

"I'm sure you would." But Rey was clearly offering the opinion of a loyal friend, not a Jedi apprentice. "I'm glad you'll train a bit. For your own safety."

Sometimes it seemed like they were moving impossibly far away from each other, even though they'd only been friends a little while. "I'm glad, too," Finn said.

And he meant it: he was. But he was also terrified, and frustrated, and a million other not-so-positive feelings that he didn't quite feel like he could share with anyone.

General Organa had him ushered into her office with all the fanfare Finn assumed she reserved for diplomats. After her protocol droid - which had 3PO-esque manners, but a bit more tact - left them caf and sweet buns, she sat down across from him and said, "Let's start with what you think Luke has told me about you."

Finn took four deep breaths. Before he finished with the fifth, his panic had subsided a bit. He said, "I'm not sure what you mean."

The general gave him a speaking look. "Don't you?"

"I broke the law," Finn blurted. "I mean, that's not what I think he told you, I think he was probably nicer about it. But that's what I did, that's the truth."

"Hmm. Is it?"

"I pried around in Poe's mind. He's my friend, I didn't mean anything by it, but - I did."

"You know, I became a Senator very young. I was trained well by my parents, of course, but after I found out the truth of my parentage, I'm sure you can guess what I thought." She looked at him with a calm expression. He felt it. The realization was as abrupt as a Force grip and about as welcome.

"How do I turn it off?"

"You don't." Said with regal sympathy. "You can learn to control it, of course, but you'll never stomp out the part of you that can pick up on moods, thoughts, inclinations. I doubt you'd want to."

Of course he did. "And you'll teach me how to control it?"

"If you won't have Luke as a teacher, I guess I'll have to do."

For a moment, Finn thought of Ren. He looked at General Organa, at Leia, and knew she was thinking about him too.

Different thoughts, though. Force, Finn was in so much trouble. "I'm honored that you're willing to teach me."

She smiled, compelling and forgiving. "Let's get started, then."

He left her office two hours later, so exhausted the hallways wobbled a little as he walked back to his room. He was ready to sleep for the rest of his shift, at a minimum, but when he got to his door, he found it blocked by -

"Why didn't you tell me you were seeking a teacher?" Ren snarled.

Maybe it was good that he was so tired. He didn't really care, right then, about the distant or not-so-distant possibility that Ren would murder him with lightning. "I don't really talk to you, because you're a prisoner, and I don't trust you. Where are your handlers?"

"I can roam the halls freely, thanks to my good behavior." Ren smiled, cold and creepy. "I could also teach you in a manner more efficient than Skywalker, if you want."

"I definitely do not want." And he wasn't going to tell Ren that it wasn't Luke teaching him, either.

But Ren was better than Finn had realized, or more nosy. Even as Finn thought it, Ren's eyes widened with rage. "My mother?"

Oh, toss it all in a volcano then. "Yes. She's actually really good. She taught me how to control the flow of my thoughts, and how to tell when I'm messing around in someone else's head."

Ren made a noise kind of like a depressurizing cabin. Finn, still too tired to care about being suicidal, added, "She's amazing, really incredible. I'm so honored she's teaching me."

Ren moved. Finn got his arms up in time to block, but it didn't matter: Ren didn't try to hit him. He only crowded Finn against the far wall, glaring down at him with bloodshot eyes.

He looked awful, like he hadn't slept in days. Finn didn't think of the not-mussed bed. He didn't think of Ren's broad shoulders, inches from his. He didn't think about Ren's long fingers, wrapped around his shoulders.

He didn't think of anything at all, and so Ren didn't say anything. He only bent his head, sniffed - like an animal! What was wrong with him? - and then stalked off, all swirling black cape and invisible Force storm cloud.

-

Finn had been right: they didn't get anything from the stormtrooper. Multiple members of espionage tried, and Rey did too. She came to hang out with Finn afterwards, her expression closed-in and disturbed. He thought it was because of what the Resistance was asking her to do, until she said, "I hadn't realized it was like that for you."

Finn managed, barely, not to ask what part of it all she meant. "It's, uh. Pretty rough."

She half-smiled and hugged him, so tightly he could barely breathe. He took the intended comfort and did his best to squish the anger that came with it. It wasn't Rey's fault that the Resistance was - well. Ignorant, that was a good word - about stormtroopers.

Of course, then the shit really hit the fan, in the form of a summons from Reyes.

"Sir," he said, saluting.

He could feel Reyes' unease when he said, "Finn, thank you for coming. You're aware the Resistance is currently holding a TK-class stormtrooper?"

"I captured her, sir. I'm aware."

"That's right, you did. Well done. Well, no one's been able to crack her just yet, and some of our best have tried."

Finn didn't quite manage not to wince at his terminology. "I'm sorry to hear that, sir."

"It happens. That's the nature of the beast. But when I spoke to the General, she seemed aware that we were withholding a certain...tool. A Force user who's aware of the various little traps the First Order puts in stormtroopers' heads."

Finn's brain froze for the first time since he'd been ordered to fire on villagers in Jakku. "Sir?"

"I'm talking about Kylo Ren, son."

"Sir." He licked his lips and swallowed past the sudden dryness in his throat. "You know I'm a stormtrooper, right?"

"You're a citizen of the New Republic, last I checked."

"Yes, sir, but I'm also - I'm still - I mean, I was one of them. I don't know if I'm the person to say - this to."

"To say what?"

Get it out, Finn told himself. Don't be a coward. "I don't want to help Kylo Ren torture a prisoner, even if you think she's - not a person. Sir."

Reyes smiled. "That's what I'm looking for. Good for you."

Finn blinked.

"General Organa told me to expect this; I'm glad her assessment of you was spot-on, as it usually is."

"Sir?"

"You're going to go with Kylo Ren and make sure he doesn't go too far. The New Republic is still debating the legitimacy of Rights of Sentience for stormtroopers. We're the Resistance for a reason: none of our prisoners will be denied basic rights."

"So you're sending Kylo Ren in as an interrogator?"

That got him a dry smile. "Yes. We've tried everything - everyone - else. He's skilled, he knows how stormtroopers are..."

"Brainwashed. You can say it."

"Yes. Well. General Organa says he might go too far; she suggested we bring you in, to regulate him."

Finn wanted to protest, could feel the words building in him. He'd never been impulsive before rebelling, and now it was like he couldn't stop. He even opened his mouth to say something almost guaranteed to be risky and disrespectful, but Reyes held up a hand.

"We'll be watching him. It'll be...think of it as a controlled explosion."

"Have you ever seen Kylo Ren angry? I mean really, really out of control, and fully dark side?"

"I've seen recordings."

"Well, I've seen it personally. It's not a controlled explosion. Sir."

Reyes regarded him with almost-perfect impassivity. Finn didn't know if it was the Force letting him know that Reyes was nervous, or just his own good instincts. Either way, it was comforting in its own perverse way. If Reyes felt entirely confident about this "let's let our pet bad guy do interrogations" scheme, Finn would've known he really didn't get just how dangerous Ren could be.

"Okay," he said when Reyes didn't reply. "I guess I can do that."

Reyes ran him through some basic safety stuff, giving him a panic button in case the observation room lost contact and reminding him over and over not to do anything stupid to stop Ren from hurting the stormtrooper. Finn didn't really understand why that was what they thought they had to emphasize. It wasn't like he had a history of those kinds of heroics.

He met Ren outside the interrogation room. Someone had apparently warned him that Finn would be there; his face did a weird twitchy thing and Finn felt his emotions spike weirdly, but he didn't object to Finn following him inside.

The stormtrooper sat at a desk, her hands bound with energy cuffs. She looked at them both with a perfectly blank face. Finn stood in the corner while Ren sat down across from her.

"Do you know who I am?" Ren said, his voice quiet and even.

She didn't reply, didn't even twitch.

"My name is Kylo Ren, recently Master of the Knights of Ren. I could reach inside you and break your mind into little pieces, if I wanted."

She blinked placidly.

"Or, I could make you sing the praises of the Resistance. I could turn you into their most devoted slave. Look at FN-2187 over there. Look how obedient he is."

Finn honestly hadn't been sure what to expect, but this was flat-out creepy. And the stormtrooper didn't even look at him, just kept staring straight ahead. They'd had 200 hours of interrogation training; nothing was emphasized more in mental conditioning. He wasn't sure what Ren was trying to accomplish.

"Once you're kissing General Organa's feet, I'll send you back to the Supreme Leader. And then, of course, they'll send you to be...fixed."

A silent scream tore through the room.

Finn jerked back, hitting the wall. Ren didn't glance back, but Finn saw his shoulders stiffen. The stormtrooper still hadn't moved, but -

"Ah, there it is," Ren said. "Do you want to know what your fear feels like?"

The screaming doubled in pitch. The stormtrooper's eyes watered, just a little. Finn fell to his knees, his thumb hovering over the panic button. This hadn't been part of the deal. This hadn't -

He'd never know if he actually heard General Organa in the room, but something, her real voice or just his own memories, got hold of him long enough to say, Finn. Focus. Shield. And because he was a good soldier, he did it, reinforcing his mental shielding as best as he could.

The screaming faded enough for him to stand; it didn't disappear altogether, not remotely. His hands still shook even as the stormtrooper finally spoke.

"I don't know what you want."

"All the information you have locked away in there. Codes. Battalions. Plans."

"I was infantry." She spoke with near-condescension; Finn had to give her credit for that. "You know more than I do, sir."

"Maybe I just want to hear you talk."

The pressure from Ren increased, then. Finn could feel the stormtrooper resisting, and Ren pressing forward. There was a horrible look on Ren's face, equal parts glee and determination. He was hurting her - he knew he was hurting her - but he didn't care, or he was enjoying it. Finn felt sick watching, horrified as the wrongness of the moment expanded and consumed the room.

This, this darkness, was what he'd been brought in to stop. "Ren," he said, a little too sharply.

He saw the moment Ren realized what he was doing; he felt it, too. Ren's shoulders hunched, his hands went in fists. The stormtrooper looked between them with a puzzled frown.

"I," Ren said, and broke off in a near-sob.

Finn took a step forward, readying himself to press the panic button, and -

Darkness. Pain. Pressure, so strong Finn felt himself about to break.

Speak. Speak. Give me your secrets. Show me what's under there.

It was an intrusion of the worst kind. Finn fell to the floor, trying to fight it off and then, as he felt the darkness increase in response, giving up. Ren couldn't stop himself right now, that much was clear. Better Finn than the stormtrooper.

The room disappeared. Finn found himself back on the old ship, the first ship, where he'd woken up and been given his designation.

They beat the small ones; they always had. Finn had forgotten most of it, or had tried to, until right now. Fire, pain in his face and his fingers. Broken bones mended too slowly to be easily forgotten. And - conditioning - always a threat. Finn had been - he had - even in this Force-induced nightmare, the thought faded.

There was more to explore. Cold teachers. A man Finn thought, somehow, might be his father, until he realized he wasn't, until he realized all the other FN-class stormtroopers were missing their fathers, too. Endless drills, loyalty training, weapons training, training training training -

Finn came back to himself with a cry. He looked up at Ren, staring down at him with horror on his face, and hit the panic button.

-

So, the interrogation attempt had gone really, really badly.

He'd been debriefed with the kind of careful handling that meant he had a file somewhere with a big old red flag on it. He hadn't seen Ren at all. Presumably they assumed Finn would run away from him, or maybe try to punch him. He wasn't really sure they were wrong. What had he been thinking? Had he been thinking? Finn had thought he was making good progress with the General, but being in the room while Kylo Ren lost control had really put a damper on that. He had known so many kinds of fear. None of them measured up to the full, implacable weight of the darkness in that room.

Well. He had two days' leave after the interrogation, and he spent a good day and a half of it convincing himself not to desert the Resistance entirely. He felt mostly confident that no one knew what had gone through his mind, but then he got the schedule adjustment that put him in General Organa's office first thing after his leave ended.

"General," he said, trying to tamp down his wariness as much as possible.

Her smile said she wasn't buying it. "Finn. Thank you for coming."

"It was on my schedule, sir."

"Oh, all right. Yes, I'm worried about you. I don't think any of us had anticipated my son redirecting his - efforts - towards you."

Finn had had plenty of time to think about it, in theory. He hadn't been able to make his mind actually go there, had instead done his best to just - ignore it. All of it. "Yeah, I didn't either."

"And you're okay, the doctors tell me."

"Sure."

"Finn." Said with unbearable gentleness. "Be honest with me, now."

Finn hadn't cried in years. They didn't just punish anyone who did; it was trained out of you, along with everything else. Right then, though, he couldn't have stopped himself from crying if Phasma herself had a blaster to his head.

What surprised him was that the General hugged him, arms tight around him, radiating comfort in a thoroughly non-Jedi way. He let it all out, big shoulder-heaving sobs, and eventually he felt okay enough to sit back again.

"Go ahead," he said after he wiped his eyes.

Mercifully, she did. "We debriefed Ben after the incident. He says he couldn't stop; he claims he didn't do it on purpose."

Finn forced himself to rewind the event in his head, picturing the look on Ren's face and the sudden spiraling lack of control. "He's probably telling the truth."

She nodded. "He wanted me to pass on his apologies; you certainly don't have to accept them."

"No, that's all right." He could be - gracious? Conciliatory? Whatever he needed to be. If they weren't kicking Ren out, and they weren't demoting Finn, he'd have to deal with it.

"Well, then." Leia clapped her hands with the brisk relief of someone who was ready to drop a subject. "Let's get going with your lesson, then."

Between the early Force training and his mid-morning gym work, Finn was exhausted by the time he got to the mess hall. The pilots usually ate on third shift, so he took a table alone and made his way through his jumble of local vegetables and meat of dubious origin.

The long shadow that fell across his table halfway through his meal was almost not a surprise. "Ren," Finn said. "Sit down, I guess."

"Thank you." He sat, apparently blithely unaware of what Finn had thought was a pretty hostile tone.

After a long moment of silence, Ren said, "General Organa finished the interrogation. The stormtrooper had a few useful pieces of intelligence regarding the location of various classified First Order factories that I was unaware of."

General Organa finished the interrogation, Finn repeated to himself. He tried to imagine what that might look like, what she'd done. He couldn't come up with anything that didn't make him feel sick with fear. "That's good."

"I didn't want to see what I -"

"Stole from me?"

Ren pressed his lips together. It wasn't a good look, made him look even more sallow and parsimonious. Then again, what did Finn care what he looked like? "What I happened to see," Ren said, like stepping around the reality of it - the brutality - could somehow make it better.

"I didn't want you to see it, so we're even there."

"But we're not!"

It came out of Ren like it'd been wrenched from him; Finn struggled to keep his face impassive even as Ren's eyes widened, obviously aware of what he'd given away.

"I mean," Ren said after a tortured moment, his voice going gravelly like it might in the middle of a fight, "I mean...I owe you. Something."

"Your own childhood trauma?"

Finn regretted it as soon as he said it, but that was nothing compared to how he felt when Ren blanched. Sickening waves of horror rolled off him, so strong that Finn had to bring up his still-new self-protection techniques.

"Or, you could just buy me dinner."

Ren tightened his fingers down against the table; they both watched as they stopped trembling. "The food here is free."

"Some other time, then."

"How do you do it?" Ren said.

"Um -"

"You look fine. I dragged out of you - the most awful things. Worse than I've ever - but I'm like this." He held up his shaking hands and laughed, bitter, hatred directed entirely inward. "What do they do to stormtroopers? I need something to fix my cowardice."

"Um," Finn said. His brain was spinning; the pressure from Ren's mind, the panic and fear, set him off too. "Nothing much, really. Brainwashing, mostly. Beatings, which you saw."

"So it's just you, then?"

Finn didn't lose his temper, quite, but he did feel - a spark. Irritation, rushing rich and heavy through his veins. "Come on. You know I can't tell you that. How would I even know?"

"Have you ever seen your compatriots collapse, screaming, in agony?"

He had. And Ren knew that. He was baiting Finn, and Finn was midway through falling for it.

"You're an asshole," Finn said, and returned to his food.

He looked up several minutes later, halfway through a sticky bun, to find Ren still staring at him. "Oh, come on. What?"

"General Organa told me to study you."

"You mean your mom - wait, what?"

"She called me a coward, too. She told me that if I wanted to know what bravery looked like, I should look to your example."

Finn had always missed his parents, but right now he wasn't so sure he'd trade his missing parents for Ren's very present mother. "Okay."

"So I'm looking."

Finn wasn't going to ask what he saw. He wasn't. "She probably didn't mean literally."

Ren smiled, a narrow mostly-grimace. "You've met the General."

"Yes. Your mother."

"Ben Organa's mother, you mean."

Finn rolled his eyes and went back to his sticky bun. But when he finished it and moved on to the veg skewers, Ren was still sitting there, still staring at him. "This is ridiculous."

"She threatened to make me follow you around. Watch you. Imitate you."

"Did she tell you you could tell me this?" They sounded like the kind of empty threats meant to scare someone straight, not something General Organa would actually make Finn put up with. Probably. Hopefully?

"You're not going to tattle."

Finn didn't know what it was. Maybe it was the weirdly intimate tone, or the way Ren leaned in and spoke a little more softly; maybe it was his eyes, disturbingly intent on Finn's face, or his hands, just inches from Finn's own. But suddenly everything was too much, and Finn had to leave.

"Whatever." He abandoned his veg and stood. "You should talk to a base doctor or something. You've got some serious issues going on in there."

Ren let him leave, at least. He probably knew he'd be arrested again if he didn't.

-

The thing was, he'd had bad memories for a long time. He'd learned to deal with them, or more accurately to deal around them. He couldn't do anything about his past, and dwelling on it would only make him less effective.

Ren had ruined that for him. He understood now what he'd been trying to do: redirect the power to someone who could deal with it, keep from going full dark side again. As someone with a lot of vulnerable bits and no ability to fight off an uninhibited dark side user, Finn appreciated it. He just also had nightmares, and felt jumpy, and kept wanting to snap at people or start fights where he would've just brushed things off before.

The Resistance had a lot of options for someone going through this kind of thing. There was a building with little sensory deprivation pods, where you could talk out your problems with an AI or watch soothing holovids for hours on end. There were exercise courses that you could book to ensure you'd be alone. There was alcohol, and in Poe's words, 'you've got a bunk and a sex drive'.

Finn tried the pods, and the exercise. He didn't try the sex, mostly because he was worried he'd do something weird with the Force and traumatize either himself or a partner for life. He even thought about talking to General Organa a few times, but he couldn't quite figure out how to politely say, "Your son just totally wrecked my psyche and I think he'd do it again and enjoy it in the moment, does that worry you?"

So he did what he'd done as a soldier, back in the day: he patrolled the perimeter. After he walked past it three or four times, the spot where he'd dreamed about kissing Ren became just another spot on the base. He walked and walked, listening to the animals in the trees and the water in the brook on the other side of the monitoring fence. He took deep breaths of slightly too-humid air and spent time sitting on hills with weird-looking bugs ambling past him. It was healing. Eventually, if he did this enough, he'd be healed.

"Hey."

Finn didn't jump, but only barely. "Ren. Are you - what is -" Nope, actually, the spot he'd dreamed about was only a few hundred feet away, Finn could see it and it was suddenly about as easy to ignore as a battlecruiser.

Ren held up a hand. For a moment, Finn's mind was blank except for a shockingly strong, horrible image of Ren touching him, grabbing his shoulder or hip or -

Nope. He slammed the door on those thoughts and focused on the wristlet that Ren was actually trying to show him. "Remote monitoring," Ren said.

"Would that stop you from - uh, doing dark side stuff?"

"Dark side stuff?" Ren raised his eyebrows. "You mean hurting people."

It was a sign of how terrible he was, and how appalling Finn's - inclinations - were, that Ren required clarification, sounding doubtful that hurting people qualified as the dark side. "Yes, or killing them. Maiming." Invading their minds, he wasn't quite mean enough to say.

"They can kill me through it," Ren said. His mouth quirked up in one of those not-quite-smiles he liked to do. "So relax."

"It's messed up that you think knowing that relaxes me."

"Really? I relax when I know I'm not in physical danger from an enemy."

Finn knew he was being baited. The problem was that he really didn't know what to say in response - or if any response was appropriate. He didn't think Ren was exactly an enemy, but what did that make him, a friend? The dreams he'd been having burned in his mind just as strongly as the fear he felt when he remembered the way Ren had intruded in his memories. No, definitely not a friend, but then - what was he?

"Ugh," Finn finally said, at a loss to be more eloquent.

Ren's expression closed up, which was how Finn noticed that he'd been slightly more relaxed for a second. "I came out here to bring you this," he said, and dropped a device in Finn's lap.

Finn snatched it up like it might be a grenade - but it was just an oddly welded black stone.

"It's a channeling device," Ren said when Finn didn't respond. "Not dark side, or anything like that. It should just - help. With all your problems."

"All my problems, huh?" Finn rotated it, watching the light reflect off it, reaching out with the Force. He didn't feel much of anything, but maybe the General would have more insight. Or maybe Ren was just bringing him a bit of nonsense for his own reasons.

"I know you don't approve of my joining the First Order -"

"Massive understatement. Huge."

"- but I did learn a lot when I was there. The power of channeling my emotions, the value of controlling them, was part of that."

And, okay. Finn remembered how he'd thought the first few months after he escaped the First Order. He remembered the fear, the conviction that fighting wasn't worth it. He knew Ren had been under magical influence, brainwashing kind of like Finn's. But -

"You joined up because you wanted power. You gave a whole bad-guy speech about it. We have video! Do you seriously think you can justify that? Any part of it?"

"I think justification isn't the same thing as acknowledging the Republic's flaws."

"Right, being in touch with your feelings and not murdering people, those are the worst things a person can do."

"What do you want me to say? You want me to apologize? That's not going to happen."

"I want you to admit you were wrong, you arrogant kriffing jerkoff!"

Ren shut his mouth with a click of his teeth. Finn realized, with sudden dizziness, that he'd stood up at some point, was inches from Ren, blood pounding in his ears. They both just breathed for a moment, on the edge of hitting each other, or -

Do not think it, Finn told himself.

Finally, Ren spoke, his tone as distant and cold as it had been that first day in his cell. "Keep the magnifier, or throw it in the bushes for a tree squaller to choke on: I don't care." He stomped off in a swirl of black fabric.

Finn threw his head back and stared at the sky. If only he could notice changes in Ren's behavior before they disappeared again, then maybe he wouldn't feel so - so -

Weird. That was a good word for it, nice and neutral. Ren was weird, being able to use the Force was weird, realizing that his heart was racing because of Ren's aggravation as much as his own was weird. The whole kit and caboodle was extremely, incredibly weird.

He tucked the magnifier in his pocket and sat back down on the hill, devoting the next hour to doing his best to forget about it entirely.

-

They kept the younger ones in the crappy assignments, generally, far away from places with public 'net access or really fancy architecture or anything. The thinking, Finn had since read, was that young stormtroopers were very unlikely to defect because of grueling work: the initial conditioning and years of training took care of that risk. Put a young and impressionable soldier in an environment where they might notice good stuff the Republic had accomplished, or art that made them daydream about freedom, and suddenly the risk of defection increased.

Since he'd gotten his freedom, Finn had seen a lot of fancy buildings, a lot of beautiful people, and a lot of high-quality clothes. He'd read good books and eaten amazing food. But he hadn't had a lot of time for any of it, and the Resistance's tenuous status within the New Republic meant that he didn't have credits to buy himself any of the nice things. He'd seen his first physical painting a few months ago, after over a year of visiting museums with holo-productions. It had taken his breath away, despite looking basically the same as a projection.

For some reason, he dreamed of that visit the night after confronting Ren. He knew it was a dream - the way the walls slid muddily into the floor was a dead giveaway, as was the fact that he was in a beautiful, enormous Core World museum and didn't feel a bit of anxiety about his mission.

"The Vista of the Outer Rim," said Ren, who was randomly standing beside him. "The First Order tried to burn this, you know."

"You failed?"

"They did."

Yeah, definitely a dream. The real Ren couldn't unthinkingly distance himself from the First Order like that.

"Not yet," said dream-Ren.

Finn turned back to the painting. The lines of grey smoke, the wispy stars, made something in his chest ache.

Slowly, the dream faded into one of the usual nightmares. Ren disappeared after that, and Finn woke up at his usual time. He almost tripped over the package sitting outside his door on his way to breakfast.

Well, "package" was a generous word. It was one of those cheap disposable holopads. Finn picked it up and almost initiated a data transfer to his own holopad before it occurred to him that he might be unwittingly participating in espionage. Instead, he turned it on.

The screen faded into black. White letters said, 'Please stop projecting your dreams all the time. -Kylo'

Oh, no.

He flipped to the next display. He wasn't sure what he thought he'd see, but he almost dropped the pad when it projected one of the painting master Jominia's works into the air. It was an obnoxious gift, clearly meant as a taunt as much as an apology, and the idea that the Ren in his dreams had been actual Kylo Ren was enough to spook Finn thoroughly.

But the painting was beautiful, and Finn hadn't seen it before.

In the end, he transferred the data to his own holopad. It came with a coupon for the physical book it was based on, bringing the book down to the low, low price of five times Finn's annual salary. But even the holocopy was amazing. It had five hundred Republic-era paintings, and extensive biographies of all the masters included. The paintings were all rendered in perfect depth and definition, and the holocopy had all the best compression and acceleration technology, so that Finn could see the paintings in their real size and, for some of them, compressed enough to fit in his room.

So, yeah, it was an obnoxious gift. It was also so weirdly perfect that Finn wanted to punch Ren for giving it to him.

He couldn't punch someone who was technically still a prisoner, but he could and did track him down that night to say, "I didn't know I was projecting my dreams."

Ren looked up from his dinner - which he was eating alone, because everyone else wanted to punch him too - and said, "My mother must not be a very good teacher, then."

"Shouldn't you know?" Finn said without thinking.

He wasn't going to feel bad about the way Ren's face went all closed-off at that. He wasn't. Ren's family problems were entirely his own fault.

"You should tell her about it," Ren said. "I'm telling you this for your own protection. Anyone who can enter your dreams can also...influence them."

Finn immediately thought of every embarrassing sex dream he'd ever had. "Well, thanks for the late warning, I guess."

Ren looked at him for a moment with absolutely no expression, then stood and began to stalk out of the mess hall.

Following him would be a dumb move, Finn thought, and he wasn't going to do it. Only -

"Hey!" He ran out of the mess hall, following Ren down one of the base's many labyrinthine corridors. "I wasn't done!"

"I can't imagine what you think you might say that would interest me."

Finn acted without thinking, pushing Ren against the wall. His only thought was to stop Ren from moving - from running away. But Ren glared at him with murder in his eyes, gasping, and Finn...

Finn had to focus. He dragged his mind back to the present. "I was trying to say thank you."

Ren's suspicion didn't diminish. He looked like he expected Finn to take it back, and maybe try to hit him. Of course, Ren was the one with years of Force training, who'd terrified Finn every time he came anywhere close to him. Ren was the scary one, not Finn.

But Finn could feel Ren's panic, a thick and inescapable cloud, even as Ren said, "Well, look, it was just a book, I don't - I'm not -"

Panic, panic, and then suddenly Finn's mind filled with a beautiful image. He was up in the air, over some city that he didn't recognize but that had to be incredibly wealthy. Bio-crystal melded flawlessly with durasteel, spiraling up into the sky. The city walls were shaped like graceful waves, the buildings like icy flames reaching towards the atmosphere. Two bright red suns lit up the crystal, creating an effect like a casino light show. It was so beautiful that Finn forgot to breathe, much less shove Ren away.

When the image disappeared, Finn gasped. He was standing closer to Ren than he had been before. Ren looked at him, still with that odd lack of expression, still with fear lurking in the emotions Finn could pick up.

"You..." Think, Finn told himself. "You told me not to project my dreams."

"Yes."

"I can feel how scared you are."

"I'm not -" Ren clenched his jaw and glared.

"Am I supposed to be able to feel it?"

"You're not supposed to be able to feel anything. You're a stormtrooper. We screen for these things."

"I was a stormtrooper," Finn said. "And it's not 'we' anymore, unless you really want to be imprisoned again."

What he felt then went further towards convincing him this whole "rehab Kylo Ren" thing was working than anything else: shame. Thick, oily waves of shame, flowing off Ren even as Ren avoided eye contact.

Finn stepped away. "Thanks again," he said. "I, uh. I appreciate it. I have a lesson with the General now."

Ren nodded, still not looking at him. Finn, tired of being brave, booked it down the hallway as fast as his feet would carry him.

-

General Organa clearly knew something was wrong as soon as she saw Finn. She said, "What's on your mind?" and the 'tell me the truth' pressure was unavoidable. Finn explained the dreams, omitting the weirdly nice gift, but admitting that Ren had told him he could sense the dreams. By the time he was done, the General's eyebrows had climbed so high she looked like a festival mask.

"Well," she said. "This is...unexpected."

"Sir?"

"Let's sit down." She spun on her heel and marched - there was no other word for it - to the low-slung cushions at the far end of the training room. Finn sat down across from her, trying not to look nervous, but twisting his hands together in spite of himself.

"You can pick up on what other people are thinking and feeling," the General said.

It wasn't a question, but somehow he still got the impression she wanted an answer, so he nodded.

"I'll continue training you on how to block that ability if you need to - or use it, when you need to. But you should be aware right now that it's fairly difficult to just happen across another person's dreams."

Finn blinked. "Um. Sorry?"

For a moment, the General's expression - well. Finn had never really seen her be stoic. Controlled, sure, but it was almost a point of pride with her to stay emotionally connected, invested, the opposite of the First Order. She'd told him as much. But right then, her expression calcified, like she was worried about what Finn might see if she didn't hide her feelings.

"Proximity, mutual contact, and focus are usually what allow us to use the Force to sense others' thoughts. If my son sensed your dreams, it's very likely because he was already focusing on you."

Finn was about to ask what that was supposed to mean when the pieces clicked together; after that, he couldn't speak at all for a few minutes, because he was very, very embarrassed.

Finally, he said, "So. Um. I mean, maybe he was just still mad at me. We haven't always been getting along, you know, I'm sorry, but he's -"

"Difficult." Was the General blushing? "Yes, I know. It's not my business either way, but you deserve to have the knowledge at your disposal that will help you make, ah. Good choices."

She couldn't know about the kiss. There was no way. Unless she was reading his mind right then, which - oh, Force, how likely was that? What if she knew? What if she disapproved? Or worse, what if she thought that was a good way to convince Ren to stay in the light, what if Finn was nothing but a good behavior reward, what if all of this was a lie and he was just a tool, just like he'd been with the First Order, what if -

"Finn!" The General reached out and grabbed his hand, gripping so tight he knew he'd have a bruise. "Finn. Come back."

She probably couldn't hear his thoughts. Okay. "I'm...fine," Finn said. "Let's just keep going with the lesson."

He was not fine. After he finished up with the General, he went to hunt down Poe. The pilots were never on their communicators, but they all seemed to know at least one other pilot's schedule by heart, so he asked one of them, and that one helped him track down Testor, who in turn led him to Poe.

"Wow," Poe said. "What happened to you?"

"Is it that obvious?"

"You look kind of...whatever the step right before 'actively walking the plank' is."

"Ha. Ha."

"No, I'm not joking, buddy, you look grim." Poe slung an arm around his neck. "What's up?"

It would be easier, Finn thought, if he were into Poe. Poe was a good guy, funny and nice and super hot, in that way where everyone agreed. He wasn't the kind of guy where you'd tilt your head and go 'I guess his personality's really great?' and he also wasn't the kind of guy where you'd go 'seriously, him?'. He was a nice, normal, well-adjusted, smart, talented pilot who half the stormtroopers Finn had grown up with, of all genders, would die to date.

So of course Finn looked at him and just thought: friend. Poe is my friend. And every time he thought about Ren - well. If he thought about it long enough he'd know what it was, so he did his best not to think about it at all.

"I don't want to talk about it," he finally said.

"Okay. Wanna drink about it?"

"Please, yes."

The Resistance base was perpetually short on gunner oil and caf in all its forms, but somehow they never quite ran out of booze. This time, it wasn't even someone's droid's brew; the glass bottles announced that the liquor was 'the finest the Outer Rim has to offer'. "Not sure that's something to brag about," Poe said - but by the time they got three drinks in, neither of them cared.

"The thing is," Finn said, "the thing is, the thing - I just. Why are we keeping him here?"

"Ben? Hey, it's for the cause."

"The cause. Yeah."

Poe snorted into his drink. "I love when you do that. It's hilarious."

"Do what?"

"Act like you don't care."

"I do not!"

"Oh, you sure do. You know, Rey told me about your whole, gonna bolt thing. You were kidding yourself, man. I was there, remember? I know you're in it for good."

Finn wanted to protest. Okay, fine, he was with the Resistance, but he wasn't - he couldn't be - he hadn't told -

"It's a secret," said a cold voice above them, echoing the thought Finn couldn't quite wrap his very drunk mind around.

Poe's voice went flatter than Finn realized it could be. "Ben."

Ren didn't object to the name this time. He sat down across from Finn, next to Poe. He nodded at Finn and said, "Dameron."

Poe snorted. "I'm over here."

"I'm aware of that."

Finn could...Finn was drunk. But Finn could feel so much just then. Ren's anxiety and whirlwind of terrible thoughts, no surprise there. But also he could feel Poe's earnest concern and his weird, intense mixed feelings towards Ren. He could feel the whole universe outside, dancing, whirling.

Oh, no, the whirling wasn't the Force. Well, maybe it was the Force, but also -

"I'm gonna get some water," he said, and lurched to his feet.

He made it to the cooler and got his water without incident. Poe and Ren were both sitting over there, not speaking, not even looking at each other, which was fine by Finn: he kind of thought if they tried to talk about their history, one or both of them might cry.

But over here he could still feel both their emotions. The Force surrounded them, dark and polluted where it touched Ren, shining bright all around Poe. He still wasn't used to seeing it all like this; he didn't think he ever would be, really. But he took a deep breath and let it soak in anyway, the determination, the bravery, the will and the love and the tiny frozen speck of terror and the surety and -

Wait.

He raced out of the room as soon as he realized what he was feeling, dimly aware of people shouting behind him, but unwilling to stop and see what they wanted.

Down twisted corridors, out through emptying pathways, past the maintenance hangar, behind the droid station, he found her. She was crouched down behind some ship scraps, fumbling with a communicator that he immediately knocked out of her hands.

He wanted to say something a Resistance officer would say, like 'who are you?' or 'come with me, First Order infiltrator!' Instead, what came out was, "Unit and designation!"

Her hands shook. She didn't quite look at him. He thought she must know who he was - what he was - how could she not, when every stormtrooper he met called him traitor? But she only said, "I'm - I escaped. I'm - I escaped."

"Finn!" Poe shouted, racing up to him. "What happened - oh. Oh, no."

It was all a blur after that. They summoned some on-duty Intelligence officers to take the stormtrooper into custody. One of them questioned Finn, and he tried to explain that yes, she'd defected, but no, she wasn't like Finn, and no, he didn't understand why. They didn't say anything about their previous captive, and Finn didn't ask. He had the feeling that they'd tell him if he did, but he knew he couldn't handle the answer, whatever it might be. So he gave his report and shook his head when they asked him if he had any questions, and that was the end of it.

Hours later, after he'd sobered up and slept, and conscientiously avoided Ren, the General summoned him.

The walk to her office was just long enough for Finn to work himself into a near-panic about the night before. "General, I want to apologize for my conduct. I shouldn't have been so, um, drunk, and I'm still not sure how I found her, and I know I wasn't very clear when I gave my report -"

She held up a hand. "Finn. Sit down, would you?"

He sat.

"First of all, you're allowed to be drunk when you're not on duty." A faint smile touched her lips. "I'm not sure we'd have any pilots if that weren't the case. Second of all, I assumed the Force led you to her. Was I wrong?"

Remembering the terror he'd felt in the Force made him flinch. "Um, no."

"Then your eyewitness report - in the capacity of an off-duty officer, who was as observant as any other off-duty member of the Resistance - was accurate. Correct?"

Finn nodded.

"Wonderful. We're in agreement, then." She tapped the holofilm in front of her. "We managed to convince the young woman to tell us what brought her here."

Don't ask, Finn told himself. Keep your head down. It's probably fine.

He blurted, "Sir, what does 'convince' mean? Did you compel her? Drug her?"

"Torture her?" the General said, echoing what he hadn't quite been able to say. "No, we didn't. I calmed her down, and our doctors ensured her physical stability - with her consent - until she could talk to us."

Finn swallowed. "Oh. Thank you."

"Of course. She had some interesting intel. Did you know stormtroopers are equipped with a kill switch?"

"You mean on the suit? Yeah, it's so we - they - it's for decommissioning. In the case of, um, mutiny." He hadn't thought about it in a long time; now, saying it as Finn the Resistance Sergeant made him stumble over what he thought was common knowledge. "The Resistance, I mean, don't we have intel on that? It's back here." He tapped his neck. "You need to hit the right frequency, and it requires physical proximity, but -"

It would drop an entire unit in half a second. It was why they were required to keep their helmets on, or part of why, at least.

The General didn't respond for a moment. Finn reached out with the Force, as carefully as he could, but he found only smooth, tightly controlled nothingness. He couldn't get through it any more than he could punch through granite.

Her voice revealed just as little. "I see. Well, I was referring to a phrase, nonsense syllables. According to this young woman, when spoken in a stormtrooper's presence, the kill switch removes the conditioning you spoke of."

Finn blinked. "That's not possible. Even Order 66 was considered too risky for later iterations."

"Our guest assures me it is."

"The other stormtrooper - did you test it?"

"We don't possess the switch yet." The General folded her hands on the table. "That's where you come in. Our intel indicates the kill switch is considered among the most classified information the First Order possesses. Digital copies exist, but they're rare. One is rumored to be held on the Supremacy. We're not sending you there."

Finn began to breathe again.

"The other is on Arkanis. That's where you'll be going."

"Oh," Finn said. And then the real briefing began.

His mind still reeled with information at the end of the day. He was due to ship out at the beginning of his next shift, so he ate in his room and sent Rey a quick message with what details he could give her. He wanted to tell her more, to ask for her opinion and her help, but -

What could he say about the Kylo Ren thing that wouldn't make her sad? Finn was pretty sure the answer was 'basically nothing', at least until he managed to squash the weird - whatever - between them. So he didn't mention it, and as a result his message looked sterile even to him.

"Welcome to being a spy, Finn," he muttered, and hit send.

He didn't yelp when someone knocked on his door, but it was a close thing. "Ask the robot next time!" he yelled, then said, "Computer, who's out there?"

"Kylo Ben Ren Organa," the computer said.

Finn groaned.

"Should I tell him to leave?"

"No." He'd yelled too loud for that. "Let him in."

The door slid open to admit a glaring Ren. When he didn't say hi, Finn said, "So what's the deal with your name?"

"Excuse me?"

"Computer, who is standing in front of me?"

"Finn, the person in front of you is Kylo Ben Ren Organa, Resistance citizen and enemy of the Resistance."

Finn looked at Ren and raised his eyebrows.

Ren's entire face bloomed red. It was so sudden and violent a color that for a moment Finn was wholly, completely distracted.

That distraction was what enabled Ren to surprise him. He stepped forward, pressed his hands on either side of Finn's face, leaned in until his lips were a whisper away from Finn's, and...

Stood there. Just stood there, kind of breathing on Finn's face, face still bright red, fingers clammy on Finn's temple.

"Um," Finn said, "are you going to, uh."

Ren kissed him.

The really embarrassing thing was, it didn't really occur to Finn to push him away. He felt the kiss so strongly that for a second he thought Ren was using the Force, and for a second it thrilled him, and for a second it didn't even occur to him that he might be in danger.

Even as self-awareness rolled over him, Ren made a low desperate noise and pulled him closer, and - he wanted this. They both wanted this, so Finn pressed back, rocked his hips against Ren's, pressed him against the door and dug his fingers into his hips. Ren was hard against him, moving in jerky starts and stops like he didn't know what he wanted to do first, or at all.

It was really, painfully hot. So was the way Ren touched him, like he was something precious that might bite or break, kissing his neck and pressing a hand against Finn's dick, stroking the outline of it against the fabric, making a pleased noise when Finn thrust against him.

He was so pleased, actually, practically buzzing with it. Finn could feel his nerves, his fear that bled into excitement, his overarching all-consuming need for affection and touch and -

Ren pushed him back as suddenly as he'd pulled him in. "Get out of my head!"

It took him a minute to realize how deep he was, another minute to pull back. It had felt more natural than it ever had before, which was one scary thing, but the other -

He said it as it came to him, as the bits he'd pulled from Ren without thinking coalesced. "You've never done this before."

Ren was red again, or he'd never gone back to his normal shade. "Shut up! Yes I have!"

But even thought Finn was back in his own head now, he could feel the lie, like oil on his skin. "No, you haven't. Ren -"

"Don't call me that!"

"What should I call you, Ben?"

"I - no! Don't call me anything!"

"I was going to have sex with you! For the first time! That's - I can't say, what, 'hey, you, can I stick it in now'? Come on."

"What, like you've done it before?"

Finn's brain went back for a second, to hands under thin sheets, muffled breathing, feelings he told himself were illusions, because any other option would break something really vital.

"Oh, kriff," Ren muttered.

Finn scowled. "Don't. You just told me to get out of your head."

"You're practically screaming." Ren's expression was twisted, ugly. Finn wanted to fix it, and he also wanted to not want to fix it.

"Look, this was a mistake," he tried.

"You've got that right," Ren muttered. But he didn't move away from the door.

And he still wanted Finn. No matter how much Finn tried to ignore it, or shield himself, he could feel Ren's desire, and admiration, and the tangled dark mess of feelings that surrounded those little Finn-oriented bits.

Ren must have felt something from him, or maybe he just realized what a bad idea this all was. Even as Finn took a deep breath and prepared himself to step forward, Ren stepped to the side, out of Finn's reach, and said, "I really do prefer Kylo."

"It's your evil-guy name," Finn said.

"It's the name I chose. I can't feel my Master up here anymore." Ren tapped his temple. "But I'll never go back to being my mother's son, regardless of how badly she wants me to."

His mother, Finn thought. Not 'Ben's mother', but his. Maybe there was hope for him, and maybe Finn cared, a little.

But he was still leaving the next day. He kept his mouth shut as Kylo said, "You're right, though. It was a mistake. Good luck on Arkanis."

And then he was gone.

Chapter 3

Finn had undergone extensive testing after his defection, physical as well as mental, until the Resistance was satisfied that there was nothing buried under his skin or hidden in his mind that might lead him to betray the cause. At the time he'd hated it, resented it and then told himself not to resent it in equal measure. Now, well - he still hated it, that was for sure, and thought he was right to do so, but he also found himself wishing that they'd looked a little more thoroughly.

A mental kill switch. It seemed impossible, but Finn knew not to doubt the First Order's malice or the General's knowledge of their methods. And besides, he'd shaken the conditioning, or so he thought. How could he be sure no one had said the kill switch in front of him? He might not remember if they had. Maybe that was why - why he'd escaped. Why, when he thought back, he couldn't quite remember...

Finn shook his head and refocusing on the issue at hand. He was two hours out of Arkanis. He'd need at least a week to establish his cover, to learn to move on a new planet without arousing suspicion. He had a language to review, customs to memorize, a game plan to put in place: he didn't have time to worry about the overall implications of having been a stormtrooper, or what might happen to him next.

Of course, his face was infamous with the First Order, so when he landed as the precious metals merchant Jani he had a carefully constructed, multi-layered, undetectable holoskin overlaying his normal features. He hired locals to set up his shop, and forty-eight hours later had an office that would pass casual inspection, with minerals on display in an ostentatiously spacious room. He'd need to project an aura of wealth if he wanted to be invited to high society events, and he'd need to be invited to high society events if he wanted to find the kill switch.

He first had the dream during his third night on Arkanis. Sleeping on a planet with two artificial suns and a subterranean motor that hummed in even the tallest buildings was no mean feat; this was the first night he'd managed to fall asleep deeply enough to dream at all. At first, he thought it was a normal semi-nightmare. He was in his stormtrooper underthings, the black fabric clinging to sweaty skin. The desert landscape around him wasn't quite Jakku, but it wasn't not Jakku, either. At any moment, Phasma would probably appear to kick the shit out of him.

"This is where you come when you wield the Force in your sleep? Really?"

Finn whirled around. Kylo Ren stood a few meters away, distaste in his expression. He wore clothes like his father, Finn saw, Resistance orange and grey with a fatigued brown jacket.

Hoping it wasn't a true dream, Finn waved a hand at him and said, "I'm not sure what my subconscious is trying to tell me with all of that."

Kylo glanced down at himself and turned that bright red Finn now found so familiar.

Oh, no. "Not my subconscious?"

"I couldn't keep wearing my uniform. I was informed it frightened the pilots."

Finn snorted. "Poe pulled a blaster on you, didn't he?"

Kylo's lips twitched. The expression was halfway between a sneer and a smile, and of course Finn felt himself warming to it instantly. "Not quite."

"Wish I could've seen it."

"No, you don't."

Dream logic wasn't as easy to manage as its normal counterpart. Finn only then remembered how he'd left Kylo, or how Kylo had left him: well-kissed, thoroughly insulted. "Oh. Right. Well."

"I wasn't focusing on you." Kylo said it so defensively that in an even slightly different context, Finn might have laughed. "I was trying to meditate."

"And yet, here you are."

"Maybe you were focusing on me!"

"I was just trying to sleep."

They glared at each other for a minute, Finn's heart pounding. Three bright red rose petals appeared from nowhere and drifted gracefully to the ground between them. When Finn looked down, he saw the sand shift and disappear, replaced by warm wood floors. He looked up past Kylo and saw a fire; he looked to his right and saw a bed.

Yikes, Finn thought. "Um."

"This is your dream." He was trying so hard to sound cold, and not quite succeeding. Finn thought if he walked over that he'd find a similarly rapid heartbeat in Kylo's chest, warmth on his cheeks, a gasp ready to escape his throat as Finn leaned in and -

Kylo stepped away, and Finn realized his dream had carried him forward to satisfy the fantasy. "Ah, kriff. Sorry."

"Are you?"

"I'm not some Sith master or whatever you are. I'm not exactly an expert at dream sharing."

"The Knights of Ren aren't Sith."

"Sure, whatever you say. I don't care, though."

"You -" Kylo spun away, stalked back towards the fire. "You are completely. Maddening."

"You could leave." Well, Finn was pretty sure he could, anyway.

Kylo laughed. It wasn't a good noise; it was harsh and angry, almost frightening in its hostility. "I could, couldn't I."

"Why don't you?"

"Nearly everyone on the base hates me."

They were right to.

"I know." Finn started, but Kylo didn't seem to realize Finn hadn't actually spoken. "I know they do, and I hate them too, so that's fine. But you talk to me. And you're annoying, and dense, and -"

"I get it, you don't like me."

Kylo glanced to the side, at Finn. His eyes flicked up and down Finn's body, and then he looked away, at the far wall, his gaze determinedly fixed way above the bed. "You talk to me," he said again, more quietly this time.

The bed was of a sort Finn had never slept on, even undercover. It had a huge, high mattress, fluffy pillows, and a gorgeously embroidered coverlet. He wanted to sink into it with Kylo, to get his mouth on him, see if he could make him fall apart. He burned for it, even in this stupid dream, even with the real Kylo half a galaxy away.

Everything about this was a bad idea. Finn closed his eyes and focused, and the warm room faded away, replaced by a smooth grey enclosure that resembled a First Order hangar.

"You should go," he heard himself say.

He didn't open his eyes, and Kylo didn't say anything else. Eventually, the dream faded; Kylo didn't interrupt the next one.

-

Arkanis high society was full of First Order sympathizers.

It made sense, a fact that Finn told himself over and over until the knowledge stopped hurting so much. Senator Sindian was from Arkanis, after all, and plenty of the Outer Rim planets were gripped by avarice and the commonly held conviction that if they fell in with the First Order, they'd be given all the wealth and power that the First Order meant to take from the Republic.

He understood them: that didn't make it easy. He lost sleep; he clenched his hands into fists to keep from shouting; he barricaded himself in his quarters and let himself cry until he was capable of lying again. The first two weeks were the worst; after that, he'd gotten used to locking it all down as he sold his fictitious goods and scooped up invite after invite to rich, evil parties.

He had to search so many swanky apartments, fool so many recording devices into forgetting he'd ever been there. He did his best not to think about what was waiting for him on Yavin 4, the weird stuff with Kylo or the stormtrooper kill switch, but every time he went to one of the yay-First-Order parties it got a little harder.

Finally, two months in, he found the files. 'Stormtrooper Conditioning and Psychological Normalization' was the title of the report, and he only had to read three pages to see evidence for the kill switch. He could've stuck around, searched this docking officer's room a little more, tried to find more information, but -

Two months of dreamless sleep that didn't actually help him heal. Two months of choking fear in his throat, wearing a false face, lying to literally everyone he met.

No. He couldn't stay. He reserved a slot to go off-world and made it to hyperspace before his next dinner.

In the end, the only thing that saved him was his radio. He'd programmed it to listen to some First Order frequencies awhile ago, less because he thought he'd actually need it, and more because it gave him peace of mind.

Finn didn't even need to think to process the commands he heard on Band C. At least four battalions, maybe as many as six, were about to descend on Yavin 4.

He'd been trained for this, albeit in the opposite direction; he didn't hesitate for longer than it took cold awareness to wash over him. He called in the mayday commands to HQ on the ground, and moved into defensive maneuvers.

They fought. It never felt real. One, two, three ships went up in blasts of debris, and Finn manned his gunner and did his best to stay alive.

His legs shook when he got out of the cockpit hours later. He felt simultaneously far away from his body and too close; he felt sweat dripping down the middle of his back, but everything people said to him seemed to be coming from down a long tunnel.

Back-slaps, congratulations, a few sympathetic looks from the pilots. Poe offered him bioluminescent green whiskey, but he found himself shaking his head, walking to the perimeter of the crowd.

Later, he received his summons to be debriefed. When he got to the command room, he initially thought it was empty. The room was dark, the normal proliferation of glowing lights having been dimmed. It wasn't until the shadow in the corner said, "Why are you here," that he realized it was a person.

The flat tone couldn't belong to anyone else. "I was summoned," he told Kylo. "Why are you here?"

A shift in the shadows: Kylo Ren was squirming under Finn's inspection. "I fought on the ground," he said. "Apparently that requires a full military debrief, and perhaps a reprimand. Maybe I'll be thrown in prison, and you can be my guard again."

"It's messed up that you sound like you're looking forward to that," Finn told him.

Kylo huffed. A moment later, Poe and the General entered the room. Poe had on his work face, all determined angles and giving absolutely nothing away. The General, on the other hand, looked furious.

She said, "Please raise the lighting level in here." The newly harsh light made Finn wince. He saw Kylo, paler even than usual, turn so his mother was no longer in his line of vision.

"Don't. You. Dare," the General said, and suddenly Finn understood Poe's carefully blank mien.

"I don't know what you mean," Kylo said, still so flat that Finn knew he was hiding some kind of upset.

"Oh, you do," the General said. "You always do."

And then they were off.

"How could you!" the General shouted. "When you know Snoke is looking for you! When you know how dangerous it is! What if you'd been caught?"

"I couldn't just sit there!" Kylo shouted back. "Do you have any idea how close it brings me to the edge, just sitting there, doing nothing, you don't, you've never understood, you never -"

"I am his daughter!" the General roared. "Of course I understand!"

Eventually, Poe got between the two of them. "Ben, stop it," he said, and then, "General, let's go - over here." It seemed to Finn that the air between the two of them was a few breaths away from lighting up in sparks. He watched as the General allowed herself to be led, her hands still clenched in fists, shaking from head to toe.

He didn't mean to end up standing next to Kylo. He was just trying to move where he might be useful, and if Poe was exerting some kind of calming influence on General Organa, it made sense that someone should be in range to grab Kylo in case he decided to do something stupid.

Which, of course, he did. "You don't care," he told the General. "You never cared. You like to think you do but you never, ever did. You're more like him than you want to be, and you're not even brave enough to commit to it."

It would have been less terrifying if the General had exploded then, tried to hit Kylo or kicked him off the planet. She only went very quiet, very still, her eyes bright on Kylo's face. For a moment, the air was so still that it seemed to take on weight.

Power. It filled the room, eddying around the General as the wind might around a mountain. Finn held his breath and dug his fingernails into his palm.

"Leia?"

They all turned at once to see Luke in the doorway. The General's expression shifted, almost crumpling as she said, "Luke, I don't - he -"

"I know." Luke didn't so much as glance at Kylo. He went straight to his sister, hugging her.

Poe glanced at Finn, one of those war-teamwork looks that Finn interpreted without needing to think about it. He grabbed Kylo's arm and tugged him out of the room. Poe hung back - to report, Finn assumed, but he'd ask later. Right now, he needed to get Kylo down the hallway, far enough away that -

"You're a bigger idiot than my fool mother. In a sense, it's impressive."

- no one could hear either of them yell.

Too late. Finn settled for the second best option, and shoved Kylo into the nearest small room.

"The General's brilliant," Finn said. "A legend. Everyone loves her. It's too bad you didn't take after her."

He saw the successful hit in the way Kylo flinched and looked away. But of course, that just made him madder, because: "Do you have any idea what I'd give for a family like that?"

Kylo mustered up a half-impressive sneer. "This isn't really about you, FN-2187."

"Don't call me that," Finn snapped, "and don't interrupt. Any of my siblings - teammates - any of the FN squad would. Any of the stormtroopers, probably half the officers, plenty of orphans that Snoke created, we'd all kill for people who love us enough to yell at us when we scare them. And you just push it away. Is Snoke back in your head, or are you just a pathological asshole?"

He stopped then because he had to, he had to; if he kept going he'd horrify both of them by talking about his childhood loneliness, or the time his sim-training had him shoot an entire family dead, one after the other, and how he'd done it and felt cold afterwards, because he didn't remember his own family; he had no idea if his mother would shield him, or even what she looked like. They had told him she'd given him away.

The worst of it was, he ought to hate Kylo for rejecting his family, for his selfishness and deliberate obtuseness. Instead he felt frantic to make him understand. He wanted to reach out, touch Kylo, fix things.

Kiss him, too. He was in so much trouble.

"What if I can't tell you?" Kylo took a step forward. Finn didn't, couldn't, move. "What if I'm not sure, or I don't want to be sure? Or what if it's both?"

He shouldn't answer. Every word was quiet poison, and meant to be too. But - "Welcome to being a person. It doesn't excuse acting like having family that cares about you is just, what, a huge imposition or something."

Kylo took another step forward, and Finn again failed to move away, or push him, or do anything useful at all. "I think Rey would die for you. Dameron, too."

"What does that have to do with -"

"And if you keep training with her, my mother might, too." Kylo's eyes looked as black as a pit of building tar. "And then Skywalker as well, of course. What should I do, then? Do you think I'll kill you?"

"Oh, come on," Finn said. "Of course not."

Whatever Kylo had been expecting, it wasn't that. His expression grew even stiffer as he said, "I might. If I was influenced by Snoke. I killed -"

"Children," Finn said. "Yeah, I heard. You sleep well at night, remembering that?"

Kylo didn't so much as twitch. Maybe he did, Finn thought; or maybe he'd just learned to lie so well that he hid the worst of it even from himself. Maybe he'd also been reconditioned, put in a room and...

It faded again, which of course was the point. "I changed my mind, I don't care," he said. "Stop being such a jerk to your mother, or I'll tell Chewbacca, and he'll hit you so hard you're laid up for the rest of the war."

"Maybe I don't want to fight the First Order."

They were so close that Finn could feel the heat radiating off Kylo, and see the sweat on his brow. "You just did. Like, six hours ago."

Caught, Kylo could do nothing but snarl. Finn surprised them both by laughing, a harsh bark of mostly-humor, twisting so that he could move out from between Kylo and the wall.

He had some time alone after that, thankfully. The General's influence was still in the back of his mind, so he meditated, slipping into the Force and doing his best not to think about Kylo, or anything else that might make his dreams true.

He dreamed of meadows and cool mountains and peace.

-

Rey chased him down as soon as his next shift ended. "You won't believe the gossip I've been hearing."

Finn blinked at her, momentarily completely at a loss. "Oh?"

"Apparently, Kylo Ren's been going around apologizing to people, and you're the reason why." Rey took a bite of snackfruit and added, mouth half-full, "Jess thinks it's a trap, but she's not spent much time with you, or she'd understand."

"Understand what?"

"You know, you're very persuasive. Like the General."

Finn could almost feel the Force eddying around him at that. He scowled. "I'm not - like that."

"Hmm." Rey shrugged. "Well, it's nice. I was in the middle of the melee with a lightsaber, and I've hardly been mentioned, given everything else there is to talk about."

Finn had never been so glad to have been taught stoicism. "People haven't been saying much about me, right?"

"What do you mean?"

"Like, it's mostly about Ky- Ren. And his apology. Not - me."

Rey did a thing with her face sometimes where she looked like she was just barely repressing a laugh. It made Finn want to laugh with her, normally; right now, he could only answer it with a scowl. "Rey..."

"Oh, fine," Rey said. "No, they talked about you too. Half of HQ knows you better than him, or knows of you in the very least. Of course they talked about you."

"That's really not what I was hoping to hear."

"Rough luck. Someone called me 'Jedi' the other day. Not even my name. They knew Master Luke's, of course."

"See, when you say it like that it just sounds glamorous."

"It's not, I promise. I -" She bit her lip. "Can you keep a secret?"

"Sure."

"I keep having dreams where I become him."

"Who, Skywalker?"

"No, silly. Kylo Ren. With all the murder, and the evil."

"No way. You could never."

"There's no way to be sure, though. That's what Luke says."

The General had said similar, when training him. Finn could see it of himself; he'd trained as a stormtrooper, after all. Rey, though? "You would never. Not in a hundred years."

Rey had gotten too good at Jedi empathy. She narrowed her eyes at Finn and said, "You wouldn't either, of course."

Finn hesitated a breath too long.

"Finn! You can't possibly think you're prone to evil that I'm not."

Finn tried and failed to think of something to say that didn't rely on admitting he had sympathized with Kylo more than once, almost automatically, even as he was furious with him. "I think that being trained by the First Order kind of warps you. Permanently, probably."

"And being raised by junkers on Jakku doesn't?"

"That's different."

"I wouldn't say it's better, though. Plutt used to beat me, when I was still young enough to beg for more portions."

Rey said stuff like that, casual and open, and Finn knew it was a way of making connections and extending sympathy, but he still flinched and moved away a little. Her expression fell, and she reached out to touch the back of his hand, radiating apology. "I didn't mean to - I'm sorry. We both have some stuff like that."

"Rough edges. Yeah."

"I don't think you could ever be anything like him. So I suppose I have to accept that you think that of me, too."

Only one of us has kissed him! Finn wanted to yell. But of course he didn't, saying only, "Yeah. Bump on it?"

They gently bopped knuckles, and Rey said, "Anyway, Master Luke wants me to tell you that you're welcome to come do saber work with us. I told him you probably wouldn't."

"I know how to use a blaster, and several kinds of blade," Finn said. "I don't really want to do the Jedi-y stuff that makes a saber worth it."

Rey blinked. "What stuff?"

"You know, the Force manipulation, the kyber, all that."

"How do you know about that?"

"It's in the First Order's archives. Everyone with access to the Empire's data will know."

Rey frowned, and it occurred to Finn that maybe that was a stormtrooper-y thing to know. Great. "Anyway. Thanks, though?"

She hugged him, pressing cold fingertips into the back of his neck. "You're a really good friend, Finn," she said.

He grinned. "You only think that because I was your first friend."

"Don't be silly; that was BB-8."

Rey laughed long and heartily at Finn's squawk of indignation.

-

A day later, Kylo was put back in his cell under surveillance again, and the General chose Finn to be his alpha shift guard. Since Finn would have rather died than said, "Ma'am, I can't watch your son because I keep thinking about how I kissed him," he agreed to the appointment.

And then almost died in embarrassment when the General said, with a lingering frown, "If he behaves inappropriately - dream-sharing, or otherwise - please let me know, and we'll pull you off. I trust your understanding of the Force, and you have very good instincts, but that doesn't mean you have to do this."

She was too nice, and Finn was a total, complete disaster. The only good thing about it was that spending time with Kylo meant he got to see just how much it was bothering Kylo, too.

"Snoke doesn't have a hold on me again."

"That's what the scans say," Finn said, "but the last time you successfully lied about him having a hold on you, you also did a massacre. So."

"And of all people, they think you could stop me?"

"No," Finn said. He was going to elaborate, but he wasn't sure he wanted Kylo to know about Finn training with his mother, or about what Finn's own talents were. Supposedly. Mostly right now they manifested themselves as unsettling dreams and weird vibes in the cafeteria.

"My mother thinks so, though. She thinks you have empathic abilities of historic proportions. A true child of hers in ability."

"Sure. I mean, she has shields that are so strong I don't think I could get past them even if I took Luke Skywalker up on the training offer, but I'm sure you're right and you got all that off her the last time she came in here."

He realized too late that he'd let Ren manipulate him right into revealing too much.

"So it's true. He does want to train you."

"He just offered because Rey -"

"They've both found such creative ways to replace me."

"Wow. You're really paranoid, huh?" And then it clicked. "You're sure you're not under Snoke's influence?"

He hadn't realized Kylo was even flushed until his face drained of blood. He stared at Finn, nostrils flaring, knuckles white where he gripped his knees.

Finn was pretty sure that anything he said would be poorly received, and might actually end in Kylo trying to break out of the prison and - kill him? He hoped they weren't at the point where Kylo would do that, but then again...

Then again, Kylo seemed to be realizing what Finn had already seen: Snoke's influence clung to him like cobwebs on old wood.

"You should just leave. It'll fade again."

"Yeah, that's kind of why I'm here."

"Why you were told to be here."

Finn turned those words over in his head. He didn't understand why Kylo sounded so bitter; he settled on saying, "Yes, I'm under orders. I mean, obviously. I'm part of the Resistance, so." Now he was babbling. He clicked his mouth shut.

"Ugh, fine." Apparently, that was the end of it; Kylo stared into space after that, willfully ignoring Finn. Finn spent the next three hours going over flight drills in his head, and gave an incredibly uneventful report to his relief officer.

If he'd thought about it ahead of time, he might have said he'd be surprised to see Kylo in his dreams that night. During the dream, though, he didn't feel surprised at all. He came across Kylo sitting under a copse of trees, staring out at the rolling landscape of a cool, pastoral planet that Finn didn't quite recognize. Kylo said, "You should."

"What?"

"Recognize it. This is your dream."

"You really love telling me that, huh." Finn sat down next to him. "I've seen all sorts of planets. Did you know there's a whole class of planets with mixed climates?" When Kylo didn't answer, Finn sighed. "Of course you did, you traveled all over with them."

"Them." More bitterness. "You can't even hold the thought in your mind, can you?"

"You tell me. This is real, isn't it? You're you. Which means you're crazy powerful."

"The Force brought me here, but my own abilities are muted. You should really learn more about this kind of thing. Dream-influencing is central to the General's abilities."

"I thought it was influence in general."

"We're never so vulnerable as when we dream."

Finn very deliberately didn't ask Kylo what his mother had said in his dreams - or if he was sure it had been her. "Well, I'm tired," he said. "So don't try to choke me out, or whatever."

Kylo moved in a blur of dark clothing. Finn's heart leaped in his throat, but no hand - physical or the Force - went around his neck. Instead, Kylo hovered over him, not quite in his lap, not quite forcing Finn's head back against the tree. He was breathing too quickly, his nostrils flared, and he looked -

"Wow," Finn said. "You look awful."

For an odd moment, suspended the way only a dream could be, Finn thought that Kylo might crumble. His mind began racing down the path of what he'd do if Kylo started crying - apologize? He didn't think he needed to. Try to end the dream? That was probably an overreaction. But what else could he do?

He didn't get the chance to do anything. Kylo kissed him.

It was a bad kiss, desperate and wet in the wrong places, and Finn didn't quite understand how Kylo's grasping fingers could be so uncomfortable when none of this was even real. And, too, there was the moment when they broke apart and Kylo gasped, deep and shaking his own chest, half sobbing. Finn's head spun to see it, he wanted - he wanted, a little, to berate Kylo, to tell him to pull it together. He wanted to sink to his knees. He wanted to know, for once, what he was doing, and why he was doing it, before he actually acted.

But he only said, "More?"

"More," Kylo agreed in a choked-off voice, and then he was the one sinking to his knees, pulling Finn's loose pants down, mouthing at his cock.

It wasn't real. But it didn't feel like a dream. Kylo's fingers bit into Finn's thighs, and he looked up at Finn with frightening intensity as he sucked the head of Finn's cock into his mouth. There was a moment, too, when Finn's hand stiffened against Kylo's head -

He was so close, oh, so unbearably close, and trying desperately not to be rude -

And his hips were slammed against the tree by an invisible force, by the Force, and he came down Kylo's throat with a shout, his fingers curling in despite himself -

He watched as his curled fingers tugged Kylo's head back, so that the last of his come landed on Kylo's face, his chin, his lips. He was still all angular and exhausted looking, still nothing Finn thought he should want. But as he stayed kneeling, pulling his own cock out and getting himself off with a few too-quick tugs, Finn discovered that he couldn't look away.

Every movement of his expression, every breath, the way he licked his lips, the thin film of tears over his eyes when he looked up at Finn: all of it, together and separately, made Finn want to kiss him, hold him close, keep him. He definitely wasn't going to get that last bit, not when they could only do this in a dream, and not when it was kind of weird and awkward even there. But he could have a kiss, and so he took one, sinking to his knees and holding the back of Kylo's head as they kissed.

Kylo moved into it like he'd never wanted to do anything else. It was somehow both terrifying and the hottest thing Finn had ever experienced. Finn reached down to touch him, found him hard and aching for it, his need reverberating in Finn's mind. He sobbed into Finn's mouth when he came, and Finn held him through it, kissed him over and over, his lips, his cheeks, his jaw.

Time faded then. The dream became more of a dream: shifting landscapes, reality blinking in and out of existence. Finn thought he and Kylo might have briefly shared a bed, but later, awake, he wasn't sure. He remembered stroking a thumb over Kylo's cheek and saying, "You need to forgive yourself so you can get to work fixing things."

He remembered Kylo laughing, loud, bitter.

When he woke up, he registered bone-deep exhaustion before anything else. It took him until he got to the cafeteria, after using the 'fresher and doing his morning stretches, before he really remembered the previous night. And then -

Oh, no. Yikes. He'd - oh boy. This was a way bigger problem than anything he'd done with the other FNs.

His first instinct was to talk to someone about it, but on the heels of that was the obvious fact that he couldn't tell anyone. What would he say? "Hey, Rey, so I kissed Kylo Ren awhile back, and we keep meeting up in dreams, and last night I'm pretty sure I popped his dream-cherry?" No. She'd probably stab him and she'd be right to.

Luke and Leia, being related to Kylo, were right out. He couldn't imagine Poe really understanding - or worse, he'd understand all too well, and then Finn would have to think about who exactly Ben Organa was before he went evil. BB-8 would just whistle angrily at him, and also Finn wasn't sure it was old enough to even know about sex, and he wasn't ready to find out how droids aged just so he could have a confidant.

He had no one to talk to this particular problem about. It was kind of sad to realize, but then, he'd been alone so much. After the first reconditioning, as everyone else had cried in the bunks -

Anyway, the best course of action was clearly to keep going with his work and do his best to forget that whole weird Force-powered interlude had ever happened. The only problem with that was, his current work was guarding Kylo.

And his next shift was right after breakfast.

"You okay?" Poe nudged him as he stared down at his oatmeal.

"Oh, yeah, sure." Finn did his best to force a smile.

Judging by Poe's half-incredulous, half-disgusted look, it didn't work too well. "Sure," Poe said. "You know you can talk to me about whatever you need to, right?"

"I really appreciate that." That, at least, was honest, even if Finn had absolutely no plans to discuss anything about his current predicament with Poe.

"Sure, buddy." Poe took a bite of his omelet. "Any time."

It was, in all, a heartwarming gesture of friendship that did absolutely nothing to make Finn feel less terrified of his upcoming shift. He finished his breakfast and drank as much caf as he thought he could bear, then took a few deep breaths, trying to center himself in the Force.

Oh, no. That just made him think of his dream-Force-sex. He was really in trouble.

He wasn't sure what he expected from Kylo. When he opened the outer cell door, he realized he never should have expected anything but this: Kylo staring into the space past Finn, not greeting him, not even looking at him.

"You know, I have to fill out evaluation forms about your behavior, so they can try to judge if you've been released from Snoke's influence."

He winced even as he said it; it was impulsive, ruder than he ever wanted to be. Kylo raised his eyebrows very slightly, but didn't so much as look at Finn. "Are you trying to imply something? Would you like me to do you a...favor...here, as well?"

"What? No!"

"Careful," Kylo said, syllables as sharp as Finn had ever heard them. "There is no part of this cell that isn't monitored for abnormalities."

Finn had, of course, known that. But he'd reacted anyway. He wasn't thinking; he was getting sloppy. All because of Kylo Ren. If it weren't so worrying and horrifying, it would be overwhelmingly embarrassing.

"My apologies," he said. "How are you feeling today?"

Kylo's eyes flicked up and down Finn's body in a way Finn could only see as deeply, upsettingly sexual. "Unsatisfied."

Finn pressed the frowny face on his holopad and read the next question. "Appetite?"

"Hungry."

The questions went on for fifteen minutes. Kylo somehow managed to make every single one of them refer to their dream. The weirdest thing was, he didn't look like he was enjoying himself. He looked mad, like this was less a joke and more a way to try to get Finn to talk to him. But what was there to talk about, even? What did he think Finn could say? 'Hey, sorry about the dream sex, on the other hand I'm pretty sure we both enjoyed it, same time tomorrow night'?

It was just a nightmare. Navigating the asteroid belt of Phasma's violent moods had been easier.

Finally, they were done, and Finn could sit down at his usual desk and try to do his reading. The General had assigned him some Old Republic philosophy on the Force, and while it was pretty easy to understand as subject matter, every other paragraph laid out ideas that would've gotten him reconditioned if he'd so much as mentioned their existence. He had to keep taking breaks to breathe and remind himself that no one here would beat him for anything, especially not reading philosophy.

"She has you reading Jehrat?"

Finn gritted his teeth and touched the page-forward on his holopad.

"He's full of bantha piss, you know."

Finn focused on the first paragraph. Presupposing an existent yet undetectable set of physical properties, the Force may be understood as that which sentient organisms are capable of sensing, through some form of interaction with the outside world, contemporaneous with movement of said physical properties. Presupposing a lot there, if anyone asked Finn. Which the General would, so he'd need to take notes.

"Nothing he has to say is even true anymore. He was a simplistic, doddering old man when he was alive, not even a real Jedi. Why are you reading him?"

"The General told me to," Finn said, a little too quickly, a little too angrily. "Look, just - do you need something to do? A book to read? A game to play?"

"The General is under the impression that amusements only help Snoke retain his hold on me, so you'd have to clear it with her first."

"Your mother is worried about you. Wait, no, you know what? I don't care. Never mind." Now let us imagine a way of detecting the Force through some physical aspect, a tool or talisman which allows -

"I'd do it again."

It was unfair and terrifying in equal measure that Kylo could be talking about either the sex or his murderous defection to the First Order. Finn honestly couldn't tell, and acknowledging that made him feel sick. Who was he, that this was the guy he'd been fooling around with?

"That's nice," he managed to say, and went back to his reading.

Well, he tried. Mostly he stared at the page and berated himself. He was curious about what Kylo thought he should read instead of Jehrat, whether Kylo had ever done the sort of persuasion the General was having him work on, what he thought of the modifications Poe had made to the X-wing gunner that Finn would be using in case of hostile engagement. He'd probably be interested in Kylo's opinions on his shoes too. He definitely wanted to ask Kylo about the kill switch - and ask him what it meant if it worked on Finn, Force powers aside.

He shouldn't want any of that, and every impulse just made him feel worse.

"Are you just really lonely, then?"

"No!"

But Kylo smirked at that; he knew he'd scored a hit. "It's okay if you are. Though I suppose I should tell you, that's how the Dark finds its way in."

"I don't care." But he did. Oh, he did. Was it loneliness? He had friends. Seriously cool people, even, badass members of the Resistance, legends in their own right, who weren't gross traitors.

"You could find anything you want from me somewhere else. I'm sure Poe would suck you off. Or Rey."

Blood rushed to his head at that. "I'm not - I don't -" See them that way. But he did see Kylo that way, ugh, there was no way he was going to admit that out loud. "Shush," he managed to say, and turned his chair around so he couldn't even see the cell anymore.

The cell had been constructed in such a way that it was impossible for Kylo to reach him with the Force. He knew that, had in fact repeatedly confirmed it with everyone from Resistance maintenance techs to the General herself. But...

But: he felt Kylo's eyes on him the whole rest of his shift, and it didn't matter how impossible that technically was.

-

Finn had his usual lesson with the General the next day. They'd extended it half an hour to allow for Kylo-related debriefs, too. Finn hadn't really thought about what he'd say until he was sitting across from the General, under her sympathetic gaze, being asked if everything was okay.

Then he found he couldn't keep a single secret. "You asked about dream sharing. I - he - he did. We did. It was - bad? No, it was private. But he's definitely, he's got a lot of problems right now, and I - messed up, I guess, I'm sorry."

The General was capable of being the most inscrutable person Finn had ever known, including all the commanders who generally wore helmets all the time. He watched as her expression stiffened, feeling dread rise in the back of his throat. "Sir?"

She shook herself a little. "You didn't do anything wrong. The only person to blame for my son's actions is my son." It sounded like something she'd had to tell herself more than once. "I do feel obligated to clarify a few things, however. You're aware that my son is under Snoke's influence currently?"

"It was in my briefs." Which she knew, of course.

"Yes. And...I apologize for asking, but did you know my son back when you were held by the First Order?"

"We all knew of him, ma'am."

The General's hands were folded on her lap. She wasn't clenching them into fists or even twisting the fabric of her pants, but Finn got the sudden, indelible impression that she desperately wanted to move. "I'm just trying to confirm this isn't some...syndrome, of some kind, from the captivity. I want you to feel free to live your life here, Finn. Date whoever you want, be - friendly with whoever you want. You're a hero, you know, and you've got a lot going for you. You should be free to experience all that life has to offer."

Sixteen kriffing Siths, Finn thought faintly, she thinks Kylo's sexually brainwashed me.

"You know, General, thank you, I - that's very helpful, that's good. But I actually am, um, I'm living, it's all fine."

"Dream sharing -"

"Intimacy! I know." He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was going to have to just say it. "That's. Kind of the problem. That I know."

She was silent for a long time before saying, "I suppose the rumors about his motivation to apologize were true, then."

Finn thought he might die if he confirmed it, so he just sat there.

"Well," she said. "I did say I want you to be happy; that remains true. I won't bring it up again unless you choose to."

"Thank you," he said with feeling.

"Now, on to other matters: ske teh la ra ney puh ma."

"General?" His brain caught up. "That's the kill switch?"

"So it is." She narrowed her eyes at him. "Feel any different?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"We'll be deploying a few operatives to...test...the efficacy of it, on stormtroopers who aren't you."

"What about the prisoner?"

"Yasha has chosen to join the Resistance, and is no longer a prisoner. We tested it on her first, two days ago."

That was a relief. But - "You're sure it removed conditioning? It didn't add something else?"

"We tested her with every tool at our disposal, including using mine and my brother's talents. We're as sure as we can be."

And now the Resistance had one more really motivated fighter. No wonder they'd chosen to focus on that intel. "That's - good?"

"Indeed."

It was probably also really highly classified. "Thank you."

She nodded. "Now, to the lesson. Tell me what you thought of Jehrat."

He left a few hours later feeling wrung out, the way he always did when learning about the Force. It felt almost threatening sometimes, looming; it had the power to unmake him, and yet the General was teaching him how to channel and use that power. He knew he was right to be scared, but...

Maybe if he got good enough, he could figure out a nice, normal, non-Jedi way to be sure Kylo didn't get caught up by Snoke again.

And maybe also he could show Kylo his brand new magic and Kylo wouldn't laugh at him and mock him. Right. Keep dreaming, Finn.

It was Poe who told him about the party, by way of sending an email to his room computer. The official invite just said they'd be celebrating the Wookiee festival of the moon in three alpha shifts. Poe's note said, "Be there or be square...and possibly the one who has to kiss Chewie to celebrate." Finn laughed and sent back his 'going' right away.

At breakfast the next day, he said, "So how does the festival of the moon work?"

"I only know vague details," Poe said, "but it's for renewal, cleaning, all the good stuff. It's a happy one - we'll eat and drink and be merry."

"Will Kylo be there?"

He regretted the question when Poe looked at him like he'd asked if they could expect General Hux to be the DJ. "I'm not sure. Guess that depends on if he's still locked up; you'd know more about that than me. He might not want to deal with people who don't want him there, though."

"Wants who where?" Pava called from down the table.

"Kylo Ren, at the moon festival."

All the pilots groaned.

"Ben was annoying even when he was just Baby Ben," Pava said. "So, no thanks."

She said it without any heat, and Poe agreed with her right away, but it just - it bothered Finn, more than a little. "Hey, if he does show up, be nice?"

Poe laughed.

"I'm serious! It's my job to, you know, make sure he's doing okay in society. It's probably harder to shrug off dark side stuff if everyone's bullying you."

"To be fair, calling him a murderous asshole isn't bullying. It's not bullying if it's true."

"Poe. For me?"

For a second he thought Poe was going to call him on it; he didn't believe for a second that he wasn't being as transparent as it was possible for a person to be. He did his best to project innocence and then, when he got the feeling that wasn't going to work, patheticness.

He didn't want to talk about why he'd be upset if he saw people being rude to Kylo. He knew it was deserved. He just...he'd hate it, that was all.

"Fine," Poe said. "You're getting good at that, by the way. I could barely feel the pressure."

He went back to his breakfast like he'd mentioned the weather forecast. Finn sat there, stunned, unable to eat until the shift start bell rang.

-

Kylo hopped to his feet as soon as Finn entered the outer cell. "What happened?"

"Huh? Nothing."

"You think I can't tell when you're lying? Out with it. What. Happened?"

"I already told you, nothing happened." He couldn't quite manage to be calm about it.

But the hint of anger in his voice just made Kylo more intent. He walked forward until he stood a hair's breadth from the edge of his cell and said, "Tell me."

"No," Finn shot back. "Don't ask me again."

He'd have locked it down forever after that if Kylo had kept pressing. So of course Kylo dropped it, looking away from him and stalking back to the far end of his cell.

Finn barely made it five minutes before saying, "I just had a weird moment. I sort of - almost accidentally compelled Poe. Or made him want to do what I wanted, anyway."

"That counts as compulsion." Kylo sounded totally unruffled by the possibility. "I assume the General has prepared you for this?"

"You really don't have to call her that, you know." Finn sighed. "Sure she has. It still feels - just, I don't know. I didn't even realized I was doing it."

"The sign of a strong talent. I don't understand how we didn't find you."

"We?"

"The First Order."

It was like being tossed in a bucket of ice water, or booted out an airlock. And he'd been asking Poe to be decent to Kylo. What was wrong with him? "Yeah, I guess if you had you could've tortured me more."

"We would have elevated you, made you a member of the Knights of Ren."

"Would I have been able to see my family then? Could I have chosen a name? What about reconditioning, would I have -" He shook his head, his mind gone briefly, terrifyingly blank. "You know what, never mine. I know Snoke does a number on you, I'm not going to have this argument."

You kissed him, a nasty voice whispered in his mind.

Kylo was silent for long enough that Finn began to hope the subject had been dropped. Of course, as soon as he let himself think that might be true, Kylo said, "I'm sorry."

"Are you?" We.

"Yes. As sorry as I can be, given...everything."

"You can't blame Vader for this."

"Snoke lives in my mind, like a maggot burrowing in my brains." Kylo barked a laugh. "But as they keep reminding me, that's not a real excuse. You hid from us: well done. I commend you. When I'm out of this cell again, I might be able to help you gain awareness of your use of the Force. It was never my mother's strong suit."

It was a good apology, mostly. It also made Finn very afraid that Kylo might be free in time for the festival after all. "I'm not sure I want you to be my teacher. For - so many reasons."

Kissing. Sex. Also evil. Many, many reasons.

He wanted to disappear into the floor when Kylo's gaze drifted to his mouth. "Understandable."

The silence after that stretched on like a living thing; the smell of rotten food hanging in the air couldn't have been more prominent or irritating. Finn logged his report before leaving. He didn't say goodbye.

-

He heard the silence before he saw Kylo, and unfortunately he knew exactly what it meant.

The moon festival, per tradition, had spread into pretty much every public space on the base, and many not-quite-public spaces. Finn was in one of the latter currently, a spot that had been Poe, Pava, and Finn's barracks. Poe had somehow wheedled BB-8 into temporarily removing the walls, and now they had an almost-party-room perfect for swapping booze and all their more cheerful war stories.

Because Finn's war stories were almost universally depressing, he hadn't said much in awhile. Thus, when everyone else stopped talking, too, he noticed right away.

At the far end of the hallway, past the opened barracks, stood Kylo Ren. He stared into the distance with the kind of tortured look on his face that Finn imagined he'd wear before, oh, kissing Snoke's feet, or admitting the First Order was awful.

Finn looked over at Poe, panic at his remembered not-quite-compulsion filling him. Poe glanced at Finn, swallowed, and said, "Ben. Come sit over here. You'll like Pava's story; it's about blowing the Finalizer's sister ship to pieces."

"I don't go by Ben anymore," Kylo said coldly. But he swept down the hallway and into the room, ignoring the pilots' sidelong glances, and folded up his ridiculously long legs to sit next to Poe.

It was like Poe had decided to bring an enormous spider to sit by him. Everyone was clearly trying to be polite for Poe's sake, but they also inched away from Kylo, sending each other Looks that couldn't be ignored.

Except by Poe, apparently. "Anyway - Pava, you'd just gotten to the good part."

And maybe it was because he'd been drinking, or maybe the stress had finally precipitated a total breakdown, but Finn found himself overwhelmingly grateful for Jessika's storytelling abilities just then. She launched back into her story with gusto, describing the hack 'em slash 'em boarding style that had gotten them on the ship, and how they'd managed to pilot it to the nearest Resistance base. "We even got three new recruits - no stormtroopers, though, sorry," she added, glancing at Finn.

"Very few stormtroopers have broken the conditioning, in all the Empire's history," Kylo said.

He had to call attention to it, didn't he? Finn sighed and took an enormous drink as the other pilots smiled with obvious strain.

"I'm saying Finn is talented," Kylo added into the silence.

And then Poe, wonderful normal Poe, said, "We all knew that already, Ben. You're late to the party in more ways than one," and everyone laughed as Kylo's face turned bright red.

Finn let out a slow, relieved breath, and kept drinking.

He got up to mingle at one point, after Pava and Poe had gone off to find the doctor who "has some real dirt on Chewie's amorous habits, or so I heard", an adventure Finn supported in theory but thought he might actually die if he went on. He didn't notice, at first, that Kylo had followed him - or more honestly, he'd managed to get drunk enough that he could almost plausibly tell himself he didn't notice.

Fine. He was drunk, but he still noticed.

"You could mingle too, you know," Finn said as they walked down the hall together. It was late enough that they passed more than a few couples - and groups - tucked together in alcoves, swapping kisses. Finn did his best to ignore them. Who wanted to kiss when they were this drunk? His nose tingled. It would be weird.

"I could," Kylo said. He kept his voice quiet, so that it almost rumbled.

They were standing too close. They'd stopped, Finn realized - or he'd stopped, and Kylo had followed his lead. The thought made something in him roll over in satisfaction. Kylo should follow his lead more. "You wouldn't go evil then," Finn told him, and started walking again.

He felt like he'd unspooled a thread between them, tightly-wound and flimsy, close to snapping. Everything he said or did seemed to creep closer to some kind of reckoning, and as much as he'd have liked to blame Kylo for it, he couldn't quite get himself there. Kylo had done terrible things, unconscionable and unforgivable things - and he'd also done a lot of stuff that was just plain annoying. But he wasn't the one who kept pulling Finn into sexually charged dreams. He wasn't the one who kept reaching out, over and over again, trying to understand and trying to get closer.

No, that was all Finn. And Kylo owed him, oh, a million apologies, but Finn wasn't unselfaware enough to pretend he hadn't been taking at least one step forward for every two of Kylo's.

The night went on; the alcohol and food continued to be plentiful and in every single room. At one point Finn ran into BB-8, literally, and he thought that BB-8 might be drunk, if that was even possible for a droid. Finn definitely was. BB-8 looked over at Kylo and trilled something that Finn was ninety percent sure wasn't rude, and then rolled away and promptly crashed into a door.

It was nice. Finn hadn't realized how many people he knew on the base until they were all greeting him, handing him drinks, giving Kylo the not-quite-hostile hairy eye. It was nice, but Kylo stuck to his side all evening, until Finn had to say goodnight and stumble to his room alone and drunkenly not-think about how close he'd come to kissing Kylo, and how much he hated being alone in his room.

At dawn, as Yavin 4's three moons touched the edge of sunlight, Wookiee howls filled the air. Finn lay awake, still tipsy, trying and failing not to think about Kylo.

Chapter 4

Finn was meditating, guiding his thoughts away from distractions (Kylo, the bad sandwich he'd had in the cafeteria, whether or not the gunner on Pava's ship hated him) and towards feeling the Force, when the Force sort of -

Hit him.

Not hard. Just a little. But it definitely felt like a slap, and when Finn had recovered enough to figure out what was going on, he lurched right into panic.

If it was an attack, he'd need to be on a gunner, so he raced to the shipyard. Everyone he passed gave him weird looks, and he found he couldn't talk, even to yell 'sound the alarm!' or whatever people yelled in emergency situations like that; if it wasn't with the First Order, if there wasn't a specific button to hit and code to yell, then Finn really had no idea what he was supposed to be doing.

But it turned out that he didn't need to know what to do. He understood as soon as he got to the shipyard. The General, Poe, Rey, Luke, and Kylo stood ringed around two figures on the ground. He knew what - who - they were as soon as he saw the smooth white armor. It was Rey who turned and said, "Finn. Finn, it's okay."

He stopped shouting, and realized he'd been shouting.

"Leia deactivated them," Rey was saying. "They're safe, it's okay."

"Do you even know what that means? Rey, I felt -"

"So did I," she rushed to say, "but Finn, they're asking for you. They heard about the kill switch. I don't know how - I don't know why the Force - but they did. They are."

"This is Finn," Poe said. He was still looking at both stormtroopers with unblinking, unwavering calm. "Say hello, kids."

Both stormtroopers, sans helmets, looked at Finn. Relief and disappointment wrenched through him in equal measure: they didn't recognize him. "Squadron?"

"HJ," they said in unison.

He'd never have even come close to working with them. Which led him to ask, "How do you know about me, exactly?"

The stormtroopers exchanged a shifty, all too familiar look. "Well," one of them said, "you're a pretty high priority fugitive."

"Why are you here?" Poe said. "Who sent you here? What's to stop us from killing you right now? Think through your answers very carefully."

Finn half expected the General to protest the veiled threat, but she stayed silent. It was Kylo who said, "You'll get nothing from them that way."

"You'd know."

"That's right, I would," Kylo said. "Leave them with Finn. He'll get what we need."

The two stormtroopers not-looked at Kylo so hard Finn thought their eyes might fall right out of their heads. Finally, Poe said, "All right, let's go." On their way out, Rey grabbed Finn's hand and squeezed, whispering, "It'll be all right."

They did, in fact, leave Finn alone with the two - well, alone except for the many cameras and the deactivated droids that Finn could see half-hidden in an alcove at the far end of the room. Close enough. He pulled up a chair and sat across from the HJs, saying, "You can get chairs too, if you want."

"We're fine here," said the slightly older-looking one.

Finn looked at them both kneeling. The plates of armor over the knee joints were designed for slight discomfort: never enough to be dangerous, but never enough to let you really rest, either. "Suit yourselves. Any plans to answer Poe's questions?"

"Poe Dameron," said the younger one. "Hero of the Resistance."

"Traitor to the Republic, to you," Finn said, "unless that kill switch worked really, really quickly. How'd you know about it?"

"It actually does work quickly." The younger one tilted her head. "We thought you'd know that already."

As attempts at misdirection went, it was a good one; Finn couldn't help but think of how it hadn't done anything to him at all. It also filled him with fear of what the First Order knew about him, how he'd managed to escape, what might be wrong in his brain - or what the Force had done for him - or -

He took a few deep breaths, guiding his thinking back to where he wanted it. This was the General's most valuable lesson so far, even if she hadn't meant it to be used for his weird First Order related meltdowns. "You didn't answer my question."

The HJs looked at each other again. Finn had no idea what unspoken communication was passing between them, but seeing it even from the outside made his heart clench.

"Laura's been calling us," one of them said.

Finn said, "Who's -"

The General burst into the room. Finn's stomach flopped over when he saw how furious she looked. "That's enough," she said to the two stormtroopers. "I don't know what game you think you're playing, or who you really are -"

"We're HJs!" one of them said. "We told you!"

"Nameless, faceless, you really think I believe the kill switch can change that much? You had no way to send her a message. She has no communication with the outside world. You cannot lie to me, do you understand? You will not take him back."

She thought they were here to take Kylo back? But -

"He is the only person I've ever even tried to train. You can't have him. The First Order cannot have him."

It occurred to Finn that the General was talking about him, not her son, and also that the air had gone very still, almost as though it had gained physical weight. The General held them all, he realized, with a grip so precise he could barely feel it.

For a moment, her earlier words echoed through the air, shivering Finn's bones: I'm his daughter. She'd really meant it.

"You don't know everything about us," one of the stormtroopers said. His face had gone bloodless, but he squared his shoulders and looked the General dead in the eye anyway. "Laura's got a communicator. Just a single signal, but we pick up on it, we know to look for it. It's alpha-zeta-gamma, the distress code."

The one command didn't know about. Yeah, they weren't lying. Finn had heard of it; everyone had.

He felt cold down to his bones. "They're telling the truth."

The General's lips thinned. "Bring Laura here," she said into a communicator.

Once their first stormtrooper prisoner arrived, the General launched into several hours of furious recriminations, interrogation, and argument. She never even mentioned sending them back to the First Order, which was all that kept Finn calm; he wasn't really afraid for them, not yet, but he walked the knife's edge of fear for all those ours, constantly aware that he might have to step in between her and them.

Eventually, she put both stormtroopers, and Laura, under house arrest. "Not because you did anything wrong - well, you two did nothing wrong." She gave Laura a long glare. "But we need to ensure you're not under hostile surveillance, and that you're ready to be part of the Resistance in truth."

"I'd hope I've proven myself," Laura said.

The General's voice could have doubled for Jakku dunes. "If you hadn't been taking advantage of a secret communicator, I'd agree."

"We can build an army," Laura said. "You don't really want me to hold back from that."

The General looked at Finn then, for some reason. He said, "An army would be nice. But mass desertions...we both know how that would go."

"They can't send their dog after us anymore."

It took him a minute to realize she meant Kylo. "Well, I - yes, but still."

"Very eloquent," said Kylo's cold voice from the doorway. "General Organa, I'd like to borrow your chief interrogator for a moment."

"My son means you," the General said to Finn. "Go ahead; I'll finish up here."

The HJs didn't exactly look excited by the prospect, but Finn wasn't worried about them anymore in a real sense; he left them and followed Kylo out to the observation room.

He wasn't at all, in any way, ready for Kylo to say, "They were lying. They can feel you in the Force."

"Um. Excuse me?"

"The Force," Kylo said with exaggerated patience. "The power that flows through the universe, guiding our lives and through which our power -"

"Okay, first of all." Finn swallowed past his suddenly-hammering heart ."It's not our power. Second of all, I don't - what do you mean? They can feel me? That doesn't make any sense."

"Stormtroopers are selected for talent; the First Order has repeatedly failed to understand that such selection implies talent with the Force, in its raw, untrained form." Kylo said it all impatiently, like he knew and didn't care that this stuff could still shock Finn to his core. "You are, obviously, at the extreme end of the spectrum, but the First Order has widely publicized your image and the Force, the Light, clearly has plans for you. Of course they can feel you."

He said it all with contempt, like the Light having plans for someone was akin to, oh, being caught trying to marry a sarlacc. "Well," Finn said, and then realized he had no argument, and was in fact terrified by the idea of the Force targeting him for anything at all.

Kylo said, "I can go back in there and make them stop. I can render you utterly unimportant. They'll be so distracted, it won't occur to them to question why you're not there anymore."

Finn rolled his eyes. "Okay, sure. I get it, you're scarier than me. I'm pretty sure I can handle it."

Kylo didn't say anything, but his cheeks went a little red - and it occurred to Finn that, in a very narcissistic and awkward way, Kylo had been offering his help.

Right. "I mean, thank you," Finn said. "But I'm mostly just tired."

"Let's go back to your room, then," Kylo said. Before Finn could point out that he could get to his room under his own power, thanks, Kylo had already started stalking down the hall.

He looked ridiculous, objectively. Finn wasn't deep enough in - whatever this was - that he couldn't admit that. But he also looked kind of good.

Finn was in so much trouble, even before you got to the whole Force, stormtroopers, weird communication stuff. He followed Kylo anyway; at that particular point in time, he felt too tired to do anything else.

-

Somehow - possibly through a self-protecting delusion - it hadn't occurred to him that anyone would think he was the guy to keep an eye on the new defectors. And yet, that was what his room computer informed him his job was; he was supposed to show them the ropes, train them, and assess them for pilot and mechanic skills, those being the two most understaffed positions right now.

"I'm not surprised," Poe said when Finn mentioned his new assignment at breakfast. "You're good at talking to people, and you know the lay of the land well enough to judge their loyalty."

"They've been brainwashed soldiers since they were kids! No one can judge their loyalty. They probably don't even know it."

Poe gave Finn one of his annoyingly measured looks and said, "You really think that, huh?"

In his heart, no. In his gut...also no. But Finn scowled anyway. "I think it's impossible to know. I'm not the same as all stormtroopers. We have identical armor, but we're still -"

"People," Poe said. "I know. Only you're not, legally, to the First Order. Right?"

It was a little more complicated than that, or so Finn had been taught, but in essence - "Right."

"I'd do anything to escape that, if I knew for even a second that other people lived differently - that I didn't have to be like that." Poe shrugged, the easy, fluid movement of the always-free. "Maybe that's how they feel, too."

Rey had a different take on it. "Well, you're the logical choice, right? You're their rallying point."

"Come again?"

"Their -" She made a face. "Like a flag, or an Old Republic figure, you know. You're the First Order's most wanted stormtrooper! If they harbor even a hint of rebelliousness, I assume you're an absolute idol to them, because you got out first."

"I don't want to guard people as an idol," Finn groused.

But she had a point. He met them both in the cafeteria; they sat alone in a corner, facing both entryways, as they'd been trained. "HJs," he said, sitting down across from them. "You were trained to specialize in surveillance."

"That's correct," said the taller one.

"It's also in our file already, which I know you've read." The shorter one glared at Finn. "Let's just cut the bullshit, okay? What's our sentence?"

"Your - sentence?"

"We know all this is an illusion." The shorter one waved to the cafeteria. "We know you're here to drag us back to the cell, manipulate us into being your spies. Just give me the terms already."

It occurred to Finn that he really should've expected this. They'd all been trained like this, taught that if they were captured by any of the numerous treasonous factions within the fallen Empire, they'd be tortured and compelled to turn traitor.

Somehow, remembering all that didn't fix the sudden ill feeling in the pit of his stomach. "Right," he said. "Well, that's not what's happening here. The General wants you as pilots or mechanics, ideally, though there are other positions. Probably not intelligence, though, at least not right away. Sorry."

The taller one tilted their head, looking at Finn with watery eyes. "As a pilot, I could shoot your soldiers down. As a mechanic, I could sabotage the General's own ship. What makes you think espionage is the only area in which I could damage your cause?"

"Our cause, remember?" Finn said. "And I think it's actually a logistics thing: the First Order knows your faces, and they'll be looking for a pair of HJs. I know you think you can fit into civilian life, but trust me, it's hard."

Neither of the HJs looked convinced. Finn sighed. Rey's theory was losing its shine by the minute; there was no way these two idolized him in any way. "Look, if you're not interested, you're free to leave. You guys aren't prisoners. But we really do need mechanics."

It was the shorter one who said, "Fine. We'll try it. Right, Galaran?"

Galaran nodded. Finn said, "I don't know your name," nodding at the shorter one.

"You can call me a girl," the shorter one said. "Don't make that face, I can see you wondering. And I'm not sure I won't go to the Outer Rim still. Call me Calla."

Finn spent the rest of the day showing the two of them around. And - it was fine, really; he thought they were both going to agree to stay. But they kept referencing the training, the reconditioning, kept talking about the First Order like it was all a joke, and every time they looked at Finn - to include him, because he should've had the same experiences - he felt sick.

He couldn't think of it. His mind slid away when he tried.

Later, during his lesson with the General, he tried to explain. She listened as he laid it all out, then as he babbled helplessly, trying and failing and trying again to explain how crazy thinking about the First Order made him feel.

"I apologize if this is an inappropriate suggestion," she said as he wound down, "but have you discussed this with my son?"

For one absolutely hysterical moment, Finn thought this was her attempt at matchmaking. He barked a hysterical laugh - and then his brain connected the dots. "You mean he'd know my case history."

"I think it's likely, yes."

Finn tried to fit his thoughts around 'that's nonsensical' in a way that he could say to the General. "I'm not sure that's true," he said slowly. "I mean - there are a lot of stormtroopers, and he'd have had no reason to look at my file specifically."

"Until you defected."

"That was a year ago."

He'd never really noticed how sharp the General's gaze was. He had to fight the urge to squirm as she said, "My son is a fool, and in many ways no longer my son at all, but I can guarantee he won't have forgotten your biographical details."

If he thought about what that meant, he'd probably lose it. So instead, he said, "Right. Sure. I mean, yes. I'll ask him."

"Good. Now, let's discuss persuasion."

He did his best not to think about Kylo after that, and was so successful that when he literally ran into Kylo after his shift was over, his stomach did a stupid little swoop. "Augh," he said. Kylo had reached out to grab him; now his fingers slid from Finn's biceps. Finn didn't quite manage to suppress a shiver. "Sorry."

"Are you?"

Finn should've just brushed it off, rolled his eyes and gone back to his room. But impulse took over. "Do you practice that tone? The smirky, dramatic stuff? You must, right? You sound ridiculous."

Kylo gave him a flat look.

"Your mom thinks you know all about me." Oh, no. Stop talking, Finn told himself.

No, said the part of him that'd gotten him in this whole mess to begin with. "The other stormtroopers are fine talking about their pasts. Me, if I try to think about it, it's like my whole brain is seizing up. What's up with that?"

Kylo's face turned a deep, dull red. "I'm not sure why the General thinks I'd know anything about that."

"She thinks you remember looking me up after I defected."

Kylo didn't need to furiously deny it for Finn to know the General had been right, but he did so anyway, for several minutes. After he wound down, Finn said, "It's fine. I didn't expect you to tell me anything."

"There's nothing to tell," Kylo snapped.

They were standing too close together. "Right," Finn said, and took two steps back. "I'm going to go, now."

He thought that was the end of it, but of course it wasn't. That night, for the first time since he'd left Arkanis, Kylo showed up in his dream.

At first, Finn almost didn't notice him. On Araknis, his room had had an enormous hydro 'fresher, with floor to ceiling tile and a beautiful pool to float around in. He hadn't spent much time in there, since he'd been busy and way too tense to relax. Now, though, he could sit on the inexplicably warm tile and feel the water against his face. It felt lovely.

Then the darkness in the corner of the 'fresher resolved itself into Kylo. "How long have you been here?"

Kylo's gaze flicked down to Finn's waist, where a pair of shorts had appeared at some point. "Not long."

"And it's actually you?"

Kylo gave him a look that somehow, despite his nudity, made it seem like he was wearing a turtleneck. "You give me considerable cause to question my mother's pedagogical skills."

"Your mother?"

It took Kylo a minute to register what Finn was pointing out. He scowled. "You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I do. So do you. That's the weird part." Finn sighed and settled against the warm tile. Dream logic was so hard to get used to; this wasn't his real body and he'd experience absolutely none of the muscle-relaxing effects of the water once he woke up, but sitting there still felt like a balm to his exhaustion.

"It's a real dream," Kylo said abruptly, sounding oddly furious. "I'm not a figment of your imagination - stop doing that."

Finn paused midway through a stretch. "Doing what?"

Kylo looked away, focusing on the wall next to him. "Showing off."

Time slowed just then, in a perfectly dreamlike way. For a moment Finn didn't breathe, and in that same moment his heart hammered in his throat, and he wanted to cross the room and reach out more than he wanted almost anything.

Thankfully, his subconscious didn't try to oblige him. He stayed several feet from Kylo as he said, "You should try stretching; maybe it would help your mood."

Kylo's nostrils flared and he didn't respond.

Finn should've stopped it then, he knew, but something in the way Kylo kept glancing at him - furtive, intense looks, like Finn was the one to be ashamed of, which was so ridiculous Finn almost thought he must be imagining it - something in those looks made him keep going. "Or maybe you'd want a massage, instead."

"Oh, are you offering?"

"You missed the chance to make that part of my training. I'm just observing, based on your behavior: you need something to make you relax."

"Or someone?"

"Pretty sure you wouldn't like me forcing you to do anything."

"Be a little less sure."

He said it so lightly. None of this was really real, Finn had to keep reminding himself of that, because the way he said it - the way he looked at Finn -

Finn had only ever had quiet and rushed moments in the FN barracks, and then that one terrible, wonderful dream with Kylo. It felt incredibly unfair: every time he thought of sex with Kylo, a combination of disgust and confused libido made it impossible to focus on anything else.

Case in point, the bathroom had faded around them. Now they stood in a dream replica of one of the Resistance's many anonymous training rooms, with soft walls and springy floors.

Kylo looked Finn up and down, a spark of interest in his expression. Finn's heart started pounding even before Kylo walked over and summoned a staff with a flick of his fingers.

"Are you game?"

"It's my dream, you said." Finn held out his hand. He and the General hadn't worked on this kind of Force manipulation at all; in reality, it wouldn't work. But this was a dream, so the staff flew into his hand with a satisfying thunk. "Of course I am."

Kylo's expression lit up again, a hundred times more open and intent than Finn had ever seen him outside these dreams. "Let's go, then."

He attacked before Finn had a chance to say anything else. Finn got his defense up, then rebounded with rapid taps to Kylo's knuckles. The dream made time fade in and out around them.

When he got under Kylo's guard, knocking his staff away, the whole world shifted: he ended up on the floor with Kylo under him. He barely had a moment to appreciate the feeling before Kylo bared his teeth and reached up to grapple.

He was strong, but Finn had more practice: Kylo only gained an edge once, and it took just a minute for Finn to get it back, hitting Kylo in the solar plexus and rolling them with his thighs. He was gasping with effort when he pinned Kylo's wrists, their faces just a few inches apart, and -

It felt inevitable then. The training room faded around them. The mat that Finn's knees had been digging into became something much softer. Finn leaned in, closing his eyes. He could feel Kylo's pulse fluttering under his thumb.

He woke up all in one go. It felt like falling down a flight of stairs he hadn't realized was there. His heart pounded like it might escape, and he was perfectly, achingly hard.

"Sixteen pounds of bantha shit," he told the ceiling.

"Sixteen pounds of bantha shit cannot be ordered outside of Core Planet jurisdiction, Finn," his room computer said.

Finn knew the Resistance's habit of buying repurposed commercial AIs was economical and all, but right now he didn't exactly appreciate it. "Computer, forget I said that, and also -" He looked down at himself and grimaced. "Take a break."

"Commencing fifteen-minute privacy window," the computer said, and went silent.

The embarrassment of it all didn't quite stop him from thinking about that desperate look in Kylo's eyes, and how he might look if Finn slept with him again. Maybe he'd beg; maybe he'd scream. Finn wanted that so much, wanted it with an intensity he felt certain must reverberate through the Force. He didn't want to want it, but that didn't stop him now, desperately jerking himself off and thinking only of Kylo: his long fingers, his strong arms, his desperate desire for Finn, his overwhelming neediness.

Finn came into his own hand silently, eyes closed, knowing he was absolutely fucked.

-

Okay, fine. He was definitely fucked, yes. He'd spent the whole day thinking about the almost-kiss, barely able to repress it when he'd met with Galaran and Calla. But maybe it was just libido. He was a young guy, and between all the running and the fighting and the terrible life experiences, he hadn't had a ton of time to explore his sexuality. Maybe this whole thing with Kylo was just a terrible, ill-advised explosion of libido that could've wound up directed at virtually anyone else.

Maybe, he thought, watching Poe tell his ridiculous story about almost dying from swamp microbot bites. But then, why was he focused on Kylo? He was friends with all the pilots! He was a gunner! There were so many smart, attractive, good people that he was around almost every day. Instead of getting a terrible crush on any of them, he was stuck focusing on a guy who was currently sitting alone in a dark corner, glaring at his dumplings.

Why? Why?

"Finn, you okay?"

Finn blinked and refocused on Poe. "Yup. So, swamp microbots?"

"Swap micronaughts," Poe said. "They're a pest on sixteen Outer Rim planets. You should just go talk to him."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't," Poe said. He glanced down the table. Most of the other pilots were distracted by Rey's semi-unethical Force coin tricks. "Listen, I think you could do better than Ben -"

"I know I could do better than Kylo."

"Good, that means you haven't totally lost it. But you also don't want to, right?"

"I don't know what I want," Finn said. "The doctor told me I'd experience a second adolescence, as a trauma thing. Is this it?"

"I did not, at any point in time, want to kiss Ben Organa as a teenager," Poe said. "Among other things, his personality was just awful, even before he went evil."

Finn hunched his shoulders. "Well, good for you. Congratulations. I'll find you a medal."

"I already have some." Poe's smirk was devastatingly attractive. Think about kissing him instead, Finn told himself, but of course it didn't work.

"Look, maybe I do," Finn said. "But I'm hoping it's just temporary insanity."

"Sure. But you're both pretty sensitive people, so just be careful, okay?"

"He's not going to hurt me!" Probably.

"Physically, sure. But if you get your heart broken, it'll throw your aim off. I need my gunner: be careful with your feelings." Poe clapped his shoulder and stood with his tray.

Finn spent an embarrassing amount of time trying not to think about Kylo after that, so much so that when his dream faded into a comfortable furnished living room that featured Kylo reclining on a sofa, he turned around and left.

Of course, walking out the door took him right back into the room. "Ugh," he said. The firelight was glinting on Kylo's abs in a way that was definitely not realistic.

"You could try pulling Dameron into your dream instead. I'm sure he'd come willingly."

Finn's head swam at the way he made that sound like a double entendre. "I'm not - he wouldn't come." Bad word choice. "Anyway, I'm not entirely in control of this, in case you hadn't noticed."

Kylo looked away. The dull red that Finn had started to think was an inherent part of his complexion was back.

Finn examined the room instead. It didn't look anything like anywhere on the Resistance base, or the various places he'd stayed in since joining the Resistance. The walls were blue, the floors shining wood, the furniture soft and comfortable-looking.

"I enjoyed last night."

Finn let out a slow breath. "You're still there, huh."

"I'm not sure I could leave."

That sent a horrible bolt of unpleasant feeling through Finn.

"Relax. I don't mean it like that. I mean I haven't tried."

Something about the way Kylo said it was just - unbearable, really. He sounded irritated, which shouldn't have been attractive, but was. He also sounded focused, and that definitely pulled Finn in.

Literally: he took several steps forward. Kylo sat up on the couch, watching Finn approach. When he was close enough to touch, Kylo licked his lips and reached for Finn's loose pants.

He was already getting hard, yet he shied away.

"Have you ever done this before?" he blurted out. "Except for - with me, here?"

Kylo scowled. That was an answer in itself, Finn thought. "Let's - let's go somewhere."

The room faded. Kylo was once again in his customary black. They sat at a restaurant Finn had never seen before, and Kylo ordered a series of fantastical dishes that Finn had never heard of but his subconscious apparently knew how to make. "We're bleeding together," Kylo said, halfway through a meat dish.

Finn blinked. "Excuse me?"

"The food. I've had it; you haven't. I have some level of control here." Kylo looked around. "It's fascinating. My former Master would have loved it."

Something dark slithered in the back of Finn's mind. He shuddered. "Yeah, I'm not planning on introducing him to it."

"I can't imagine why you'd have such a detailed dreamworld," Kylo continued, "unless, I suppose, it's an escape mechanism, a way of denying the mental duties of a stormtrooper."

"Mental duties. That's a nice way to put it."

"I was euphemistic for your sake."

A crack appeared in the wall next to their table, racing up to the ceiling. Kylo touched a bony finger to it. "Hm," he said.

They ate in silence after that. Finn kept having to fight the urge to ask stupid questions, the kind of first-date conversation starters you'd hear in an Inner Rim sitcom. Kylo apparently wasn't capable of feeling self-conscious; he just stared at Finn for the whole meal and didn't say much of anything.

It was nice. Okay, no, it was kind of weird and uncomfortable, but it was also peaceful. Finn woke up without his usual panic or panicked arousal, and he fell asleep again soon after.

He didn't have the dreams every night. It would've been too distracting, when he had to get Calla started with fighter pilot training and find someone who could teach Galaran droid mechanics. He hadn't seen it coming, but he'd become a pretty busy guy; the General noted, with amusement, that he fell asleep on two separate occasions when he was supposed to be feeling the emotions of people half a planet away.

"It's fine," she'd said when he'd tried to offer a mortified apology. "I remember being young and overextending myself, too."

Her overextension had been literally legendary work, and Finn couldn't help but think that his own plodding efforts to master the Force didn't really compare. But he knew exactly what she'd say if he tried to tell her that.

The dreams, though. They were almost more distracting because they weren't sexual. Oh, Finn definitely wanted to reach out and touch Kylo, but they both kept their hands to themselves. The result was that as they traded landscapes and random stories and half-hearted barbs, they sort of became...friends.

"You can't possibly think that," Kylo said one night.

Finn laughed, delight sparkling through him. "I really do, though."

"He was her teacher!"

"Like, years before the vid starts."

"He went evil!"

"You went evil," Finn pointed out. Kylo didn't quite flinch. He was getting better at that.

"It's different. This is fiction. She's powerful in the Force, but he has a deeper knowledge, and greater potential to hurt her."

Finn lay back on the sun-warmed grass. He hadn't asked Kylo where this meadow came from, in his dreams or his memories; Kylo hadn't volunteered the information. It was beautiful, though, and too detailed to be wholly fabricated. "Sure, but I still think they should date."

Kylo spluttered again, hopelessly indignant. Finn smiled, keeping his eyes closed.

A blade of grass tickled the pad of his foot. He moved a little, restless, and found his ankle pressing against Kylo's.

Much like he'd gotten used to people referencing his past, he didn't pull away at Finn's light touch. And it was nice, and comfortable; Finn found his attention drifting, the dream slowly changing around him. There was something at the edge of his awareness, a glint of change that he wanted to chase down - the Force, maybe, like the General had taught him to watch for -

"Finn," Kylo said abruptly. "Hey, Finn."

"Mmm?"

Kylo kissed him. The glint disappeared; Finn's head spun, so pleasantly that he kissed back, chasing more of the feeling.

It didn't go any further than that, and by the time Finn woke up, he'd forgotten about that bit of probably-the-Force entirely.

-

So: his guard was down.

So: he didn't think he had any real reason to be wary.

So: he'd been free for just long enough to get sloppy.

He dreamed of a dark room with a wide bed in the middle. Kylo lay on the bed, watching Finn with half-closed eyes. Kylo didn't say anything; he reached out and drew Finn in for a kiss.

Finn kissed back, gasping when Kylo dug his nails into Finn's neck almost hard enough to break the skin. "Kylo, what -"

"Is this what they'll do?" Kylo said. "The others? They have more to throw off, of course, but I imagine eventually they'll want to pretend to be like the rest of us, too."

"I - what?"

"The stormtroopers." Kylo pulled back, a mocking expression on his face. Finn felt his stomach fall; he realized he couldn't move. "The reconditioning: you think you just shrugged it off, don't you? It would have cracked your mind open, you little fool."

Kylo's face was wrong. Finn couldn't quite focus on it anymore; his gaze kept sliding away. He couldn't move, he realized again. He couldn't even open his mouth to ask Kylo to stop.

"Idiot," sneered the thing that couldn't be Kylo. "Foolish, callow traitor. They'll die screaming, knowing that you lied to them, that you betrayed them."

But he didn't. He left, he couldn't shoot the villagers; he ran and he joined the Resistance. This was just a nightmare, and if he focused hard enough he could wake up -

Remember.

The halls of a Star Destroyer seemed enormous to FN-2187. He had been instructed in his new name for three weeks. Today he was meant to go to the remembrance chamber, where They told him that he would get to say goodbye to his moms. It would be the last time, They said, because his service was very glorious and essential, and he had to commit to it fully.

He crept up on the chamber because he saw the flashing light and became afraid. He watched as the other FNs walked in, one after another, the shiny white pods closing around them. He watched as they walked out, faces blank, holding newly issued blasters.

No one's moms were in there. FN-2187 ran.

He knew that They would know if he didn't go. So he forgot. He forgot so hard that he forgot he'd ever forgotten. He balled it up and stuffed into the most distant part of his mind he could. His moms' names were gone for good; They had made sure of that. This, he would just hide. Hide, hide, hide, hide like he'd tried to hide from the stormtroopers who'd pulled him out of the pantry, hide like They had told him he must not. It was the only thing he could do, and so he did it with all the excellence that would later mark him for team leadership.

Remember, hissed the voice in Finn's head, and he screamed.

-

He woke up crying, huge heaving sobs that shook his whole body, alerting him to the fact that his wrists were bound to his medical cot.

Panic made him tug against them, opening his mouth to yell - but then BB-8 whistled furiously and zapped him, and he realized he was safe. Ish.

He wasn't captured, at any rate, but there was yelling outside. It was only when BB-8 rolled over to the door and opened it that he identified the voices.

"- can't, unless you've calmed the hell down, Ben, which you clearly haven't -"

"Don't call me that! Let me see him! You don't understand -"

"The General understands plenty, including that this is your fault, you jackass, now -"

Kylo let out a snarl and marched into Finn's room. His eyes darted from Finn's face to his bound wrists and then back again, expression collapsing into relief. "You're here."

"I can't move," Finn said. "Which, by the way, was not great to wake up to."

"We had to do that," Poe said from the doorway, rubbing the arm Kylo had punched on his way in. "You were trying to scratch your eyes out. Uh, literally."

He'd been dreaming of...something. He couldn't quite pull it up -

"No," Kylo said urgently, grabbing Finn's shoulder. "No, Finn, you have to remember."

Remember. He shuddered, tears springing to his eyes again. It came back suddenly this time, like drops of water vaporizing over a fire. "I hid. I...I ran. Something found me."

"So it seems," Poe said. "Tell him the rest, Ben."

But Finn didn't need to be told; he was, after all, the person who'd been fooled to begin with. He looked between Kylo and Poe and thought of the malevolent presence in his dream. It was obvious now. "That was Snoke."

Kylo nodded.

There was something in his expression - guilt, maybe, or shame. "And you knew I was at risk."

It was only half a guess; he didn't feel any surprise when Kylo nodded again, just exhaustion. He turned his face away from both of them, focusing on the far wall.

"You should leave," he said.

He heard Poe take a step forward. "Finn, buddy -"

"Now, please," he said.

BB-8 released his wrist cuffs. Kylo and Poe let themselves out silently.

He slept again, restlessly but without dreams. He woke up with a hole in the pit of his stomach. Food and a careful debriefing by an anonymous Resistance doctor didn't help. They'd given him a cell much like Kylo's, reinforced against the Force, entirely devoid of anything he might use to hurt himself or someone else. He wanted to shout that he'd done nothing wrong, that they should let him out, but he remembered the bits of manipulation and knew they were right to keep him in there.

How had Kylo known? No: why hadn't he said anything? Because he was a coward, obviously. Because Finn had been really dumb to ever think he could become trustworthy.

On the second day, his door slid open to admit the General. Finn, who'd been staring at nothing and trying to work out exactly where in the guts of a Star Destroyer that reconditioning room had been, scrambled to his feet. "General -"

"Sit." She waved a hand at him and followed her own direction, settling on some of the cushions they'd provided him with. "You've had quite the week, it seems."

"That's a bit of an understatement."

She smiled wryly. "No, an understatement would be to say my son was a bit foolish."

Finn winced.

"He did know. You remember that?"

"I wish I didn't."

"In his extremely sparse defense, he wasn't sure, and Snoke can hide himself very well." The General's expression tightened. He'd have hidden himself from her, Finn realized. That was how he'd gotten Kylo to begin with. "We've spoken about it; hopefully it won't happen again."

"I'm not...I don't understand how he found me. Why he found me." And how he'd known about the secret that Finn hadn't even let himself keep.

"How? Proximity to my son. I'm sorry."

'Proximity' was, at least, a delicate way of putting it.

"The why is a bit more complicated." She sighed. "Ben pulled you out of the dream. He told me what he saw."

Oh, no.

"You were never reconditioned."

No.

He couldn't quite hide his flinch. He expected the General to leave, or call in some sort of reinforcement. Instead, he felt the Force around him, an impossibly thick blanket of reassurance where before it had been bottomless malevolence. "It's okay," the General said. "We've suspected something like this for a while, Finn. We never brought it up because, frankly, you seemed very convinced that you'd gone through the process. We didn't want to dredge up anything...difficult."

Finn laughed, hollow.

"You don't need to talk about it right now." She reached out and offered her palms. When Finn returned the gesture, she squeezed his hands, comfort emanating from her in waves. "We care very much about you being safe," she said. "The rest will come with time."

He slept a little better that night, but when he woke, he was still in a cage. Doctors came to see him, and the General, and they were all really nice and comforting - but when he asked, they all three confirmed that he was still stuck in the cell until they'd figured out what was wrong with him.

Okay, fine: "Confirmed that you are free of external influence, and can safely be left unobserved." Same thing.

It shouldn't have been a relief when his door slid open on the third day and Kylo came in. He was still mad at Kylo, and it wasn't a grudge he had to work particularly hard to maintain; just laying eyes on him was enough to cause a prick of fury to rush through Finn. Some of it must have shown on his face, because Kylo said, "I won't leave unless they drag me out."

"What, that determined to apologize?"

"Of course not."

It felt perversely comforting to hear the snappish tone in Kylo's voice, objective proof that he wasn't lying to try and make Finn feel better. "Well, good, because I wouldn't accept it."

"I don't owe you an apology," Kylo said. "I did what I thought was appropriate with the information I had: telling you that Snoke was attempting to brainwash you wouldn't have gone well."

He had experience with that particular kind of attempted intervention, and there was no reason for Finn to think he wasn't right. He could argue - it would certainly be a distraction - but Kylo wasn't going to budge.

Comforting, still. Weird, stupid, but there it was. "Fine," he said. "Then why are you here?"

Kylo's expression went through a series of contortions that Finn couldn't help but watch, fascinated. Finally, he settled on a scowl, accentuated by the usual blotchy flush. He held up the board game wordlessly.

It was one of the ones Finn would've been more familiar with if he hadn't grown up a stormtrooper, popular on the core planets with nostalgic young adults and pre-teens. Finn knew how to play it; he'd learned as part of his espionage training.

It looked utterly incongruous, bizarre and almost grotesque, in Kylo's hand. Finn tried to think of Kylo playing it while sitting in the bridge on a star destroyer. Nope.

"Do you even know the rules?" Finn said as Kylo set the game up.

"Sure."

It turned out he was a liar: he made everything up, except when he consulted the rules printed on the back of the box in a way he apparently thought was too stealthy for Finn to notice. When Finn said, "You can't move in a vector like that, you don't have the blue chip," Kylo snapped, "Well, I'm so glad your lifetime of tragic soldiering prepared you for this." When Finn pointed out that he couldn't cross into advance-space without six yellow cards, Kylo threw his pilot piece across the room.

It was like playing with a really annoying toddler - and Finn, he realized after an hour or so, was loving every minute of it. Nothing he could say to Kylo would be worse than what had already passed between them, and Kylo deserved to be hassled, anyway. He didn't have to watch his verbiage or pretend to feel cheerful. He could say, "Wow, you're being such a dick right now," without any qualifiers at all.

Hours after lunch, Finn finally got his pilot piece into the 7-dimension: the game was over. Finn whooped in victory as Kylo scowled.

"Hey, I'll let you win next time, how about that?" Finn said, laughing when Kylo made a face. "Or not, I guess."

Kylo stared at Finn, unblinking, for as long as it took for Finn to wonder if he was having a seizure or suddenly controlled by Snoke. He opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, and Kylo shook himself and turned away.

"Tomorrow," he said, and left without a backward glance.

-

But the next day, he didn't return alone. Galaran and Calla both trailed behind him, wearing identical scowls.

"Did you take them prisoner?" Finn said, dismayed. "Kylo, you can't do that."

"I didn't," Kylo snapped. "I told them you were imprisoned and if they wanted to see you they'd have to come with me."

"That sounds like blackmail," Finn said. "You could ask me next time, and I could give them a message, instead."

Kylo huffed a non-answer and left the cell. Finn, devoid of distractions, had no choice but to deal with them.

Once, he'd seen a poorly dammed river break free, rushing wildly towards their encampment. This felt a bit like that. Shame filled him, too strong to be ignored, too potent to be denied. He had never been like them. Not even close. He'd never had to break free of the mental conditioning; he had no idea what it was like to be them, never had. He was just - what? A coward, maybe. Someone who wasn't even a tenth of who he'd thought he was. The two of them staring at him were proof of that.

"I'm sorry," Calla said.

He blinked. "Wait, what?"

"Kylo told us what happened," Galaran said. "Oh, and by the way: Kylo Ren? Seriously? We're gonna talk about that when you're feeling better."

"I didn't - I don't - what happened?"

"Shouldn't you know that?" Galaran said.

"I mean, what did he tell you happened. He can't be trusted."

"We know that," Calla said. "He told us that you hid from them. And how when you escaped, you had these huge mental walls in your mind. It sounds terrifying, and really difficult. But you're doing better now?"

Finn looked between them, and then at the door, suspecting a trick - though he had no idea what the trick might be. When no one came in, and neither Galaran nor Calla spoke, he made himself say, "I'm not like you, I guess. I was never - re-educated. I hid." Like a coward.

"Yeah, dude," Calla said. "That's seriously messed up! You're hardcore."

"What?"

"And then Snoke almost killing you because your mind was already under so much strain?" Calla shook her head. "We're going to cover the recruiting duties for awhile, don't worry. But when you're better, we want the whole story."

"There are a few more HJs who'll be here soon," Galaran said. "And we can get the others with the kill switch."

Which was all really touching, but Finn didn't quite get how they'd moved on to planning for mass stormtrooper defection without discussing his obvious lies. "That's cool, but doesn't it bother you guys?"

"That you used the Force to hide from the First Order? Um, no," Calla said. "Even Kylo says you'd've basically had to go crazy to hide the truth from him. That's kind of badass, dude. But you should rest now; the General's making sure there are people available for intake stuff."

Finn wanted to object. He wanted to say that all of that was technically true but morally wrong, that Kylo was using his long training in the Dark Side to recast Finn's lies as heroism. But he was so tired, and Calla and Galaran had all kinds of ideas for retraining the other HJs as mechanics and including mechanic support staff on longer missions, and he actually did have input on those - ideas for how to present them, and what kind of arguments other members of the Resistance might raise.

In the end, they didn't talk much more about Kylo at all, and Kylo didn't come back to gloat or apologize. It frustrated Finn in an odd, obscure way. He wanted to call Kylo out on his lies, but he was too tired to even seriously consider it. He fell asleep almost right after Galaran and Calla left.

He shouldn't have discounted the dreams.

The moment he opened his eyes and saw Kylo sitting in the starlit meadow, he stumbled backwards. "No, no, this isn't safe -"

"Relax," Kylo said. "Or don't: it won't matter either way. We're safe."

"How can you say that? Why didn't you warn me before?"

"I didn't - " Kylo huffed, visibly annoyed. "I didn't want to talk to Skywalker about it, or anyone really."

"So you endangered me because you didn't want to talk to your own uncle?"

"Of course not. I thought the likelihood that my worst fears for you were real - I thought that likelihood was low. I was wrong; I apologize. I spoke with Skywalker while you were asleep. We're protected here now."

"Well, congrats on getting it right a little late, I guess," Finn said, and turned his attention to the night sky.

His dreams, even the true-ish ones, tended to have a hazy quality to them. This sky was perfectly clear and overlaid with maroon webbing, like someone had tossed a very loosely woven net over the horizon. "That's you?"

"That's me."

The image of Kylo's power surrounding him was - more appealing than it should have been. Finn shook his head. "So, why are you here? What would happen if you weren't?"

"There might be less energy to attract Snoke." Kylo raised a shoulder. "Then again, maybe you'd pull Rey in, or Skywalker."

"You should really stop calling him that. He's your uncle!"

"He's my former Master, and a person I do my best not to speak to. That's all."

Frustration sparked over Finn. "You're so - ugh, never mind." He flopped down on the grass and stared at the stars, trying to ignore Kylo altogether.

Easier said than done, when Kylo's magic lit the sky, and Kylo stood just a few arms' lengths away. He kept thinking of their dreams before, the way he'd never pulled anyone else in, regardless of what Kylo thought was likely or reasonable. Rey would be fun to hang out with; the General would be very embarrassing to even see. But he'd just - never. It was like the Force didn't want to provide him with a conduit to see anyone but Kylo, banging them together like a child might make dolls kiss.

Ugh.

"I can feel you thinking," Kylo said. "I'd rather you not."

"Tough luck. This is my dream, and I want to think."

"Could you at least think about something else?"

Something in Kylo's tone made Finn crane his neck and look at him. The too-bright stars showed his embarrassment in terrifying detail. "Oh, wow."

"I don't enjoy being thought of that way," Kylo gritted out.

"What way? Oh." He was suddenly too distracted to care about repeating himself. Kylo had projected his thoughts, and where Finn had been picturing two dolls kissing, Kylo -

Kylo wasn't.

Finn swallowed hard, looked away. He wouldn't think about Kylo shirtless, desperate, clutching Finn's shoulders or kneeling in front of him, or -

"Finn!"

"Sorry, sorry, sorry." Just don't think about it! Finn told himself. But then he looked over at Kylo and thought of it again.

Apparently, his near-death experience had changed him. It was really difficult now, much more than it had been, to do this platonic dream dating thing. Now, he just wanted - he wanted -

"Snoke was hiding your thoughts from me before, to an extent," Kylo said. "That doesn't seem to be true anymore."

Great. So even the nice nights, the normal ones where he and Kylo had spent time together, had been fake. What if half of them hadn't even been Kylo? What if he'd been lied to for much longer than he realized? What if -

"Finn. Stop that."

Finn would love to, but he had no touchstone for when truth had become manipulation, and it made panic rise in him with inexorable power.

"Oh, for -" Kylo huffed an impatient breath and moved closer, loosely taking Finn's hands. "Those dreams were real."

Finn stared at Kylo's hands, then raised his head and looked Kylo in the eye. There was nothing of Snoke there, but he did look - awkward. Unhappy.

Not like someone Finn should lean in and kiss, no matter how much he wanted to, or how much he could sense Kylo wanted him to.

No sooner had he thought it than Kylo dropped his wrists, hopping to his feet again. "I should probably leave."

"I'll miss you," Finn said, because he was an idiot.

"You're not," Kylo said. "I mean, I will too, but I can't - ah, Force." And he disappeared.

The meadow stayed, though, the maroon net in the sky holding steady. It meant he was safe, Kylo had said, and Finn was so very tired. He lay under the stars for a long time, drifting, until the dream faded and he could sleep deeply.

-

He had missed most of the stuff that, according to the pilots, made you good at being an adult. He'd never gotten drunk on any birthday, he'd never sexually propositioned a Wookiee, and he'd never dumped or been dumped. But still, he had friends, he knew when things were off. And with Kylo specifically, there were a whole host of reasons why things were really, incredibly, galactically off.

So he made up his mind: he was going to talk to Kylo, in person, not in a dream. They needed to figure out what was going on, resolve it and move on with their lives. Hopefully separately; Finn couldn't imagine that Kylo would go, 'you're right, I'm wildly in love with you, let's get married and raise bantha calves for their leathers'. And even if Kylo did, it wasn't like Finn would take him up on it, or would want to.

Obviously.

So Finn waited. He got discharged from observation and returned to his routines, which didn't include Kylo since they were both free of the dark side. He looked for Kylo at meal times, but he was either on a different shift rotation or actively avoiding eating in the mess hall. He wasn't in the common areas, either, or the training grounds, or working with Rey and Luke. Finn looked for him for five days, and he didn't see him anywhere.

Drastic measures were clearly called for. He got Kylo's room number from Poe and set aside a couple hours to sort things out. Or stake out Kylo's bedroom, in a friendly and conflict-resolving way.

On his way to Kylo's room, he stopped for a piece of offworlder bread, the weird travel food studded with sweet and salty nutrient bits. He was chewing it and going over what exactly he'd say to Kylo when the alarm sounded.

"All pilots report to position. Repeat: all pilots report to position."

Two hours later, all thoughts of Kylo had fled his mind. He'd just been part of a six-plane escort to the ground. The Resistance had captured a transport ship full of five hundred HJ class stormtroopers - or more accurately, a ship full of 500 HJ class stormtroopers had defected, seemingly of their own volition, after passing the kill switch from one soldier to the next.

"You're on red alert," the General told him, pulling him into the command room. "I'm sorry, Finn, but this supersedes everything else."

He had the sudden, moderately humiliating sense that she knew about his Kylo plans, which hardly seemed to matter compared to everything else. "Of course. Anything you need."

She smiled, looking tired. "You'll regret that. Step one is convincing everyone else not to kill these kids on sight."

And then the debates began.

-

Finn told himself, over and over, that democracy was hard, that it was worth it to fight for others' voices, and that a lot of people in the Republic just didn't understand what they were debating when they talked about stormtroopers' minds and histories.

He told himself that he couldn't walk onto the floor and just start punching people, and he knew it was true, but he wanted to. He wanted to so badly that sometimes he could feel the Force bending itself around his barely contained desire.

Apparently he wasn't the only one who could feel it. On the third day of debates, Kylo let himself into Finn's room, ignored Finn telling him to get out, and said, "You're going to sabotage the hearing if you don't control yourself."

It didn't occur to Finn that he could be talking about anything but Finn's not-quite-directed rage. "It's none of your business."

"It's everyone's business, especially people who support the personhood amendment," Kylo shot back. "Which I do, unfortunately."

"What do you mean, unfortunately!"

Kylo stared at Finn with something that Finn thought might border on contempt. "It's politically unpopular."

"So was blowing up a bunch of planets, and that didn't stop you."

Kylo flinched, and Finn felt - something. A crack in his defenses, so tiny he almost didn't notice it. But he acted on instinct, pressing in with the Force. "You feel bad," he said, feeling his anger rise, "and sure, you were under Snoke's control, but now it's all forgiven, right? Oh, no, it's just that no one can touch you, because you're General Organa's son. None of the stormtroopers have that. We don't even - I don't even know who my parents were. You seriously think I care how you feel about the optics of your support? We were tortured! They deserve freedom!"

When he finished, breathing heavily and clenching and unclenching his fists, Kylo said, "I'm aware." And the crack sealed: Finn felt himself kicked out of Kylo's mind. "I'm not talking about how it looks. I'm talking about the possibility that a 'yes' vote will be voided when it's discovered a stormtrooper used the Force to interfere with the democratic process."

"I wouldn't."

"You wouldn't, knowingly," Kylo said. "That's a pretty big difference."

"And, what, you'll teach me?"

"I already offered; I know you won't accept that. No. Spend more time with General Organa, or just keep out of the debates. The vote must not be jeopardized, even by perception."

"I couldn't compel a majority to do anything. You have to know that." That would be a huge amount of effort and power, way beyond anything the General had taught him.

Kylo gave him a flat look. "Maybe."

A denial would have been a lot better for Finn's piece of mind. He kicked Kylo out after that; Kylo must have realized he was too much of a mess to be a threat, since he went without arguing. Poe's shift wouldn't end for another several hours, but Rey was available - and had possibly cheated a little with the Force, because he ran into her as soon as he left his room.

"Finn, how are you doing?" she said, all gentle concern and slightly too-keen understanding.

"Let's get drunk," Finn said, grabbing her hand.

The base had shortages of almost everything thanks to the HJs, including hygiene products and fresh food - but they still had plenty of alcohol. Finn had some of the moonshine in his glass, topped off with some fizzy, sugary thing from Mon Cala that didn't quite cut the harshness of the liquor. "We should really get the droids to figure out how to make smoother stuff," Finn said.

"I did suggest that," Rey said, "but Poe acted like I'd stabbed him. It's a matter of pride in Human enterprise, as I understand it."

"I'd trade pride for something palatable."

"You're drinking it, though."

"Yep," Finn said grimly, and downed his entire drink in one go.

It wasn't a good choice, and he knew it. He knew it when he sat down, he knew it when he got up to refill his glass four times, he knew it when he made Rey get him a drink when the room spun too much for him to do it himself. Rey tolerated it with a look that Finn disliked: pity mixed with worry, like Finn might go do something really stupid.

"The thing is," Finn said, "I wish I could."

"I don't blame you."

"I do. It's wrong. I know it's wrong." A horrible idea occurred to him. "Do you think this is because I can't stop kissing Kylo? Can you transmit - bad person-ness? Sexually?"

"I hope not. And I don't think so. Um, it's a bit disgusting to think about, though."

"Sorry, sorry." Finn's drink was empty. When had that happened? He stood to get more, because Rey was nice and not a waiter, but when he stood the room spun. "Oh no," he said, and stumbled.

Rey had nice shoulders. "You have nice shoulders," Finn told her as she helped him down the hallway. "Strong. They're so nice. You're so nice."

"Not as nice as Kylo Ren's, I imagine."

"Shoulders." He did have big ones. He was stronger than Finn would've assumed, given how much he loved throwing people around with the Force. Finn sighed. Kylo could throw him around with the Force, if he wanted. Finn was in so much trouble.

"Finn? What in the world - Rey. Ah."

"I thought about you," Finn told Kylo, who was suddenly in the hallway, "and now you're here."

"Yes, well." Kylo glanced between them. Maybe if Finn was sober he'd be able to tell what he was thinking. Maybe if he was sober - maybe -

He fell asleep for a bit, and when he woke up again, he was lying in bed. "I gave you a sober-up pill," Kylo said.

"Rey?"

"Left, because you had a nightmare."

That didn't sound like her.

"And I told her I'd take care of it. Or you, I guess."

Oh no. Rey was trying to give them privacy. Finn screwed up his face and did his best not to cry again.

"I hope you realize how pathetic you look right now."

"I hope you realize I'm going to be sober enough to kick your ass soon." But not yet. The terrible maudlin feeling that Finn could ignore most of the time still lurked near the surface of his mind, like the glimpse of a sea serpent's tail.

"It's grief."

Kylo said it quietly enough, and Finn was still drunk enough, that it didn't quite sink in for a few seconds.

"I don't have much to grieve."

"Bullshit."

Finn drank some water and avoided Kylo's gaze. It wasn't - he didn't want to talk about it; he didn't need to talk about it. He was just very tired, that was all.

"I'm sure the doctors have told you it's all right to grieve."

They had, over and over. Finn had never known how to explain that any grief he might feel lived deeply buried beneath layers of blame and anger, at himself and everyone else. He didn't know how to deal with grief he could barely feel most of the time.

"I'd like to sleep," Finn said. "That's all."

"Sure. Fresher?"

"Are you offering to bathe me?"

He watched in hazy fascination as Kylo's eyes bugged out, his skin shiny, his lips pressed together. "No!"

"Then -"

"I'll go." He stood up so quickly he knocked his chair over. "You're fine, clearly, so -"

"Wait."

He didn't expect Kylo to freeze halfway to the door, his spine held stiffly, like he was waiting for further instruction.

"I..." How to ask? How to make it sound like a normal thing, a calm request, and not a screamingly obvious departure from a norm?

But someone had taught Kylo pity. He turned and sat back down, tilted his head at Finn, and said, "Go on, then. I'll wait."

He slid under the sheets in his too-small bed, hunching his shoulders to try to give Kylo room. Kylo huffed and threw an arm over him, sniffing like he wasn't sure Finn had been sober enough to actually get clean. "I brushed my teeth and everything," Finn said.

"So I noticed." Kylo's lips moved against his shoulder; warm breath wafted over his skin when Kylo sighed. "You should go to sleep."

"Think it'll be better when I wake up?"

"Probably not." Rough fingertips drummed against his ribs.

Finn wanted, suddenly, to stay in this moment, awful as it was. He struggled to hold on to the feeling, the knowledge sinking into his bones that someone was here, he wasn't alone, he had - a person. He was a person.

But it slipped from his grasp. He fell asleep, warm and safe.

-

He woke several hours later from dreamless sleep to find himself alone.

Chapter 5

So, talking about it hadn't worked.

Technically, okay, he hadn't tried. But he thought it was pretty obvious, and would be even to the world's most in-denial optimist, that talking wouldn't fix whatever was going on between them. A big part of it, in fact, was that they couldn't talk about it - or that talking about it inevitably led to awkwardness and recriminations on both sides.

He didn't have much time to angst, though. His room computer delivered his orders for the day: he was due to report to one of the meeting rooms to discuss the defected HJs. The standard format orders came with a personal note from the General, too. "Keep your pants on. This is a positive development."

She was a clear communicator. He liked that about her.

When he entered the room, he saw the General and Luke sitting together, arms crossed and with identical serious expressions on their faces. "Augh. I'm sorry, General, but you guys look pretty dramatic for a meeting about a positive development."

"I'm told it's genetic," she said. "Thank you for coming."

"Orders are orders, ma'am."

"Would we be the Resistance if that were really true? Don't answer that. Would you like some tea?"

The General kept up small talk like that for for a solid five minutes before Finn realized that no one else was coming. "Thank you for the tea," he said, "but I'd like to know what's going on, please."

Luke stepped forward into the light, pulling his hood from his head. "The stormtrooper rebellion continues. We've received word of three other battalions defecting en masse."

"But that's not the worst part - or the best, for us," the General said. "You see, somehow, they're telling each other where to go. They're coming to us."

It sank into him like ultra-dense Tatooine sand. "And the First Order hasn't intercepted their communications?"

The General shook her head in confirmation. "To be honest with you, we're not even sure how they're communicating. If there's anything to intercept."

"You think they're using the Force?"

"We don't know enough to say either way," Luke said. "The stormtroopers we've received so far have not been as expected."

The mutinous anger in Finn coiled at that, ready to strike. "The people, you mean. Defectors. How are they doing in jail?"

The General sighed. "Finn -"

"No. You brought me here to ask me about stormtroopers, right? I think I should be able to ask some questions, too. Has the Republic decided we're people yet?"

For a moment, he thought she might tell him to go kriff himself. Her expression became durasteel, her fingers flexed like she was itching to reach out and slap him. In the time it took him to draw in another breath, he saw Vader lurking behind the General's eyes.

"Leia."

She didn't look away from Finn. "Not now, Luke."

"Yes, now. He's right; you know he's right. You've never gone out of your way to defend the politicians within the Republic before."

She closed her eyes and the terrifying fury disappeared. "They're cowards."

She didn't want to slap him, Finn realized. She wanted to strangle the Republic's Senators.

"Yes," Luke said.

"They'd sell entire towns before giving their daughters to the war effort, and they expect us to kill or imprison thousands of souls."

"We'll change their minds."

"Finn is a war hero who barely got citizenship." She opened her eyes again, directing a look at Luke that -

Well. Finn had only had brothers in arms, but he'd looked at them like that sometimes, when he thought they were being especially dumb.

"I spent a lot of social capital getting Finn a status that we're now demanding every single stormtrooper receive."

"Something like this must always be a demand," Luke said.

"I know that." And abruptly, Leia's focus returned to Finn. "How's your elocution?"

"My what?"

"Speech-giving."

"I know what it means. Why do you need to know?"

He saw a different person lurking in her expression now. "It's time we played offense with the centrists."

-

"Oh, that's a great idea," Rey said.

"Is it? I feel like I might vomit. And then die." Finn drummed his fingers on the canteen table. "I mean, the Senate is huge, and I'm not testifying in front of a committee, apparently, because that would make sense. It'll be in front of everyone."

"Luke will be there, and Leia. Probably me too, since I'm an apprentice and all."

"Great. More eyes on me. Thanks, Rey."

"Finn." She laid a hand on his shoulder, her eyes warm with sympathy. "It is terrifying. But it's still a great idea, you see?"

He didn't.

"You're a hero. Even to the centrists, what you did is beyond imagining. You have the power to advocate for others, to ensure that the Republic pulls further from the First Order's ideology. And you're convincing, like Leia; you have it in you. If I tried to testify I'd stumble over my words and try to fight someone. But you've got the ability to stand up and actually make people listen. You should use it."

"But I never got the reeducation. The kill switch, all of that stuff, it's not for me."

"All the more reason for you to be the person to argue for it. If you believe the kill switch is real, who's to gainsay you? Who in the Republic knows more about the First Order's methods than you do?"

It was a good point, unfortunately. Finn hadn't realized how little the rebels understood about the First Order; from the inside, fanaticism over withholding information had seemed unremarkable. Now, he understood how precarious it made the Resistance, how effective it was at ensuring the First Order stayed two steps ahead.

Whatever knowledge he carried around, he'd never been a commander. Four HJ squad leaders had defected. How much information did they carry? How many flaws, weaknesses, and exploitable vulnerabilities were being carried around in the minds of the five hundred imprisoned on their ship?

"They should be allowed to leave, too," Finn finally said. "We can't conscript them again. It wouldn't be right."

"Nothing the Republic wants to do with them is right. Push for the best treatment you can imagine, because they have no intention of giving an inch: you might as well go for broke."

He looked at her, at her hope-filled face, her hand clenched painfully tight on her staff. "Is this advice for me or you?"

"It's for all of us," she said, and flicked a grain of rice at his nose.

-

By her own admission, the General knew a lot more about politics than the Force; Finn had assumed that meant it would be easier to learn, less uncomfortable and esoteric. His hopes were dashed mere minutes into his first lesson. Everything mattered, apparently, when giving a speech: your posture had to be perfect, you had to pronounce everything correctly without sounding stilted, you had to make eye contact - but not too much eye contact.

Finn had asked what the security would be like, how people would know he wasn't using the Force to influence them; the General had laughed and reassured him that speeches given on the actual Senate floor were subject to all kinds of security protocols, after the discovery of all Darth Sidious had managed to do. But he still had to learn control. The General would fire rude and cruel questions at him, and he had to just stand there through them, wait till she was done to say his piece.

He needed this practice. He trusted her on that. But it also filled him with pointless fury, hearing cruel questions about the stormtroopers asked in that desultory, disaffected-politician voice.

It took two weeks before the General said he was ready enough to practice on other people. He had a whole speech on his holopad, but by that point he also had it memorized. His first test subject was Rey, who sat in wide-eyed silence through the whole thing before saying, "That was really beautiful, Finn, thanks for sharing it with me."

"But did it convince you to give the stormtroopers citizenship and allow them to join the Resistance?"

"Well, I already thought that. But you'd have to be heartless not to, so -"

Finn sighed. "Thanks, Rey."

The hug was nice, at least. And she was right: you would have to be heartless not to. Unfortunately, the Republic had an unlimited supply of heartless politicians.

What he really needed was someone cynical, someone unconvinced of his rhetorical points. Someone who knew what it was to be immoral and understood how First Order sympathizers thought.

He found Kylo in one of the Resistance's many exercise rooms, running through saber drills. "Hi," Finn said.

Kylo didn't quite stand at parade rest, but it was a close thing; his shoulders were knots of defensiveness that Finn didn't know how to counter. "Hello."

"I'm." Oration, Finn reminded himself. Persuasion. "I'm giving a speech in front of the Senate in a couple days, about the HJs who defected. It would be nice if -" No. "I'd like you to listen and offer criticism."

He had already known. He must have. No part of his expression betrayed even the slightest surprise. He said, "All right, then," and used the Force to toss the practice saber back on its rack, then sat down against the far wall. "Go ahead."

Finn had been imagining that they'd go to a common room, and he'd get a little more time to prepare. "Now?"

The ghost of a sneer touched Kylo's lips. "You won't feel ready when you're standing in front of thousands of Senators either, FN-2187."

It was an attempt at manipulation, and Finn knew it - but it worked anyway. "That's not my name," he said, and launched into his speech.

It had structure, the speech; it started with a description of his childhood, moved on to the many, many abuses and petty indignities adult stormtroopers suffered. Then it made a rhetorical argument about universal rights, then he pointed out that the Resistance was low on recruits and the Republic had hardly any military strength compared to the First Order. He'd written every single argument, he believed in each one of them with his entire soul, and he knew he delivered them strongly, persuasively. He had hoped Kylo would have feedback on the parts that were weaker from the point of view of an amoral authoritarian.

Kylo only watched, his face so blank Finn wasn't sure he was listening. Finn finished and stood there for a minute, waiting for some remark, bracing himself for it to be cutting.

Kylo said nothing.

"That's the end," Finn said. "In case you couldn't tell."

Force-users could do a lot of impossible stuff; Finn had been aware of that even before he'd known to count himself as one of them. But they couldn't teleport, even the really talented ones. Kylo must have stood up and walked over to him. There must have been a period of time in which Finn saw him moving and chose not to leave.

But no matter how hard he'd try to remember it later, that moment was lost. Finn hadn't moved an inch when Kylo reached him, and when Kylo kissed him, he surged forward, one hand moving to Kylo's hair to hold him in place, chasing the electric thrill that he felt when Kylo's rough fingers closed on the back of his neck.

Kylo was technically taller, but not by enough that Finn felt remotely intimidated. He thought, for a moment, that Kylo expected him to run away; he held a strange tension in his frame, a restraint that Finn wouldn't have anticipated from him.

Finn had learned how to fight at a very young age. He knew what a weakness looked like, and he knew how to exploit it. Kylo pushed forward, eager yet unsure, and Finn pushed back - shoved back, got Kylo against the nearest wall and kissed him with all his uncertainty and fury at the role he was being asked to play.

"It's unfair," he said when they broke apart for the first time, "I hate it, they're - I hate them."

"I know." Kylo muttered it, looking half ashamed. Well, Finn thought, of course he knew; he'd turned his back on the idea of democracy altogether.

Would Finn? Could Finn?

"You wouldn't," Kylo said. "You wouldn't, ever. You're too much like -" He paused and made a face.

And maybe it was the Force, or maybe Finn just knew Kylo pretty well by now. Both were strange to think about, but the end result was the same: "Like the General? That's really, really gross, given all of this." He waved a hand between them.

"Just - shut up," Kylo said, and kissed him again.

There was no control now, only a desperate unspoken plea. Finn responded to it instinctively, tugging Kylo's hair again, pressing against him harder until he couldn't quite move freely. It wasn't something he'd like, never something he would've done on his own, but this close, with the Force moving between them, he could tell it was what Kylo wanted.

Kylo's thoughts showed him all kinds of things, echoes of the images Finn had seen in their last shared dream. Kylo on his knees, Kylo fucking Finn, Finn holding him through it. It would have been hot - no, it was hot. But there was a thread of desperation in all the images, too, an incredible need that washed over Finn any time he turned his attention to Kylo.

He should have felt more conflicted about it, but Kylo projected incredible trust, such specific desire for him. Finn couldn't help himself: he turned towards Kylo like that need was a bonfire on Hoth, kissing Kylo again and again, holding his wrists in an almost-too-tight grip.

"Not here," he said when Kylo tried to get on his knees.

Kylo's lips were red and shiny, his breath coming in uncertain bursts. "I can - we won't be interrupted." Behind Finn, the room's doors slid shut. "I promise."

Finn thought about Kylo's focus failing at a key moment, and the General walking into find him bare-assed naked and on top of her son. Then he thought about stumbling down the hall with Kylo on his arm, both of them rumpled, Kylo with that mouth, and everyone seeing it.

"Oh, fine," he said, and sank to the floor with Kylo.

The room seemed very quiet when he kissed him again. Kylo made abortive movements to push Finn's jacket off, but then clung to him, kissing him over and over until Finn's lips stung. Only when Finn had to pull back to breathe did Kylo pull his shirt off, staring at him with wild eyes.

And that - that was the Force, Finn realized, not a person's hand, tugging his pants down.

He'd never gotten the impression that Kylo was particularly articulate or good with, well, anything related to emotions. True to form, his hands shook, he moved restlessly over Finn's neck, kissing and biting and making odd, half-whining noises in the back of his throat. But the Force that moved against Finn, undressing him, stroking his legs, pushing his thighs apart -

Touching his dick, so lightly at first, exploratory in a way that made Finn simultaneously think of course and oh no -

It was so controlled. Steady, precise touches that represented, Finn now knew, a truly terrifying command of the Force, power beyond anything Finn would hope to hold for himself.

"No," Kylo said, and bit his lip. "This is what you do. When you talk. When you persuade. This is why you don't miss. This is how you evaded them."

Them. Not us.

Finn couldn't say anything; his mind felt as chaotic as an asteroid belt and twice as dangerous. He kissed Kylo, over and over, until Kylo moved with desperation, back arching, hips thrusting so that Finn could barely hold onto him.

Whispering eddied over his ears, like water passing over cattails. He couldn't pay attention until suddenly he could: Kylo clenched his shoulders, fingertips digging into already-bruised muscle, and whispered, "Please, please, please."

"Okay," Finn said. "It's okay, you're fine, we're both okay."

"It's not that," Kylo said. "I just..."

He swallowed hard, dropping his head to Finn's shoulder. Finn opened his mouth to say something - having absolutely no plan about what something might be - but then gasped instead, as Kylo moved down to kiss his hip, mouth at his cock.

Finn was hard and leaking and at least as desperate as Kylo, but he'd long since learned to control it. He hadn't quite noticed until right now, with Kylo looking up at him through narrowed eyes, how desperate he was.

"You want this," Kylo said, very quietly. "You really do."

"Yes."

"Why?"

Finn would have liked to say he didn't know. He would have liked to lie. But Kylo's power still held him, a brush against his lips, a weight on his shoulders. For some reason, every part of him longed to reach out and find Kylo reaching back.

He shook his head, staring at the ceiling. "It's - a lot."

"I know," Kylo said, and then -

His mouth. But not just his mouth, since he was apparently determined to show off. Finn felt himself lifted in the air, Kylo's fingers pressing gently against his ass, moving inside when Finn moaned and pressed back against him. It was his turn to mindlessly talk, babbling - nonsense, about how good it was, how much more he wanted. He thought Kylo might pull off, but when Finn's hips started moving in spite of himself, when his fingers spasmed in Kylo's hair, Kylo only redoubled his efforts, staring up at Finn with impossibly dark eyes.

He came like that, into the heat of Kylo's mouth, with the Force holding him up and the landscape of Kylo's need surrounding him. It was a wonder he could even breathe, but he did, his breath coming out as wrenched gasps as Kylo fucked him through his orgasm.

He distantly felt himself lowered to the floor, so lightly and carefully that he barely noticed when his back made contact with the cool wood. His eyes had slid shut and he couldn't quite bring himself to open them, until he felt Kylo pulling back.

"Nope." He shot his hand out without thinking, closing on Kylo's wrist. When he opened his eyes, he saw Kylo staring at the far wall, looking oddly guilty, eyes shiny with feeling.

And hard. He was hard, kneeling on the floor, and the picture it made...

Finn didn't feel sleepy anymore. "We're not finished," he said, and tugged Kylo's wrist, unbalancing him and sending him toppling to the floor.

It was the easiest thing in the world to roll on top of him, kissing him, tasting himself in Kylo's mouth. When Kylo moaned it sounded like it'd been wrenched out of him, too loud and revealing. Finn kissed him again, and again, then pushed his legs apart, reaching between them.

He rubbed a thumb over the head of Kylo's dick, then said, "Do you want to fuck me?"

Kylo blinked up at him. "I - could."

But his cautious words didn't match what Finn could feel: more desperation, a really flattering amount of it, mixed up with admiration and something that -

He pulled away, even as Finn tried to figure out exactly what it might be. "Please," Kylo said.

Please don't push, said his tone. But also, please get me off.

Finn could work with that. He got himself ready, holding himself over Kylo, moaning when he saw the greedy way Kylo stared at him. He sank down on Kylo's cock with incredible ease. He wanted this so badly that he was already half-hard again, and he'd never seen anything as good as the way Kylo watched him when he thrust his hips, fucking himself and flexing around Kylo.

Kylo almost didn't touch him. Finn could feel his hesitation, so he said, "Touch me, you want this, I want this, I want to feel you come," and grabbed Kylo's hands again, placing them on his hips. He showed off a little, too, moving slowly and then faster, bringing Kylo to the edge and backing down again. It felt impossibly good like this, with Kylo beneath him, staring at him like he was some kind of rare astrological phenomenon.

Or just himself, laid bare and even more desirable for it.

Kylo didn't talk. He didn't try to flatter Finn or even send his feelings through the Force. He moaned, and he arched his body in a way that was, itself, a plea; his hands spasmed on Finn's hips when he came, sudden and hard enough to make Finn's head spin with it.

Only then did he say, "Come like this. Over me. I need - I want -"

Clumsy, Finn thought, and better for that. He leaned down to kiss Kylo, touching a hand to the wetness at the corner of his eye.

"Please," Kylo said again, not quite looking at Finn. "This is so - you're - perfect, so good, I need - please, please."

Finn couldn't tell him no. It only took a few long pulls, Kylo's incoherent words of praise in his ears, before he came, hard and messy and all over Kylo's blotchy, flushed skin.

He collapsed on top of Kylo after that and just lay there, heart pounding like it had the first time he'd gone up into space. The vacuum of space had at least been a known quantity. It had terrified Finn much less than this small, fragile thing between them now.

Kylo pulled away first. He made a face like he hated the mess of it all, then glanced at Finn guiltily.

"It's okay," Finn said. "I, uh. I was kind of awkward about my first time, too."

It had been the wrong thing to say, to an absolutely epic degree. Kylo turned as red as his own lightsaber and said, "It wasn't my first time!"

Finn opened his mouth to protest, found his mind too full of comebacks, closed it again, and just looked at Kylo. The redness persisted.

"It counts if it's a Force dream," Kylo finally mumbled.

Finn stared. Then stared some more. "Please tell me you've had a Force dream with someone who's not me."

"Well," Kylo said, and looked at the far wall again.

Finn had no idea what to say, so he settled on nothing. The coolness of the air reasserted itself; the first time Finn shivered, Kylo said, "We should go," and hopped to his feet like nothing interesting had happened at all. He offered Finn a hand; Finn helped him straighten his collar.

They walked back to their respective rooms separately, both looking perfectly ordinary. They didn't meet in dreams that night.

-

He wasn't exactly at his best during his next shift. Every time he tried to think of something important - Galaran and Calla's assignments, say, or progress in the Senate for his proposed reforms - his mind returned to Kylo falling apart under his hands, Kylo whispering praise to him as Finn came all over them both. It wasn't just distracting; it was some obscure step beyond that, horrifying and alluring at the same time.

Kind of like Kylo himself, Finn's brain piped up, and he groaned.

So he wasn't at his best when he went to see the General. Normally, he'd have noticed the second person in her living room long before the General said, "Senator, stop lurking over there and come meet my protegé."

"Lurking?" Finn said, then: "Protegé?"

The woman he'd only just noticed came into the light and smiled at him. "Leia has told me about you many times. I think that's an accurate descriptor. I'm glad for it; the galaxy needs more politicians."

"We're full up on flyboys," the General said with a wry smile.

"Ha," Finn said. "I'm sorry, I just - don't meet, uh, Senators much."

"My understanding is you're to meet quite a few soon."

Finn managed not to yell 'don't remind me!', but it was a near thing. "That's very true. It's great to meet you, Senator. I'm Finn."

"And you represent the stormtroopers."

"I don't know if I do."

"Insomuch as they have representation, it's you." The Senator held out her hand. "I'm Senator Mon Mothma of Chandrila. It's wonderful to meet you."

She held herself with the kind of composure that Finn couldn't help but be jealous of. "Chandrila. I've been there."

"As yourself, or as FN-2187?"

It seemed like really presumptuous phrasing. But then Finn got it: this was how people would talk, when he took the floor to give his speech. This was practice.

"I was myself all along," Finn said. "But I did see Chandrila when I wasn't free."

"What did you think of it? Or, I suppose the more pertinent question -" And here her eyes flicked to the General. "How did you feel about it?"

The General had been giving him lessons on the Force, on control, on how to navigate through the world with a power he didn't understand or even really care about. This was a different kind of lesson. "You have to have control," she'd told him more times than he could count. "Without control, they will eat you alive. The stakes are too high for that."

Control. Right. "I wasn't really allowed to feel anything, Senator," Finn said. "I used the Force to hide myself. I kept my head down. It's a pretty terrible way to live, but since freeing myself, I've come to realize that the stormtroopers aren't the only ones keeping their heads down, so to speak. That's the only way to stay alive in the Empire."

She nodded, approval in her expression. "Thank you for your explanation, Finn. I find it...fascinating. And of course, I'm sorry for your loss, and for your captivity. We have not done enough; I will support all efforts to fix that."

This was a political commitment. The General had taught him how to recognize it, primarily because, in her words, "It's the opposite of anything you'll ever hear from an imperial goon, and that's why you need to keep an ear out."

Accordingly, he nodded and said, "Thank you, Senator. I think I speak for all the defectors when I say your support will be greatly appreciated."

Instead of dismissing him, Senator Mothma glanced at the General, then back at Finn. For a moment her posture changed, and Finn saw her hesitate, the space between thought and action that he'd been trained to take advantage of - to use as an ingress for execution.

Then she said, "When I was a girl, I believed myself growing up in a glorious, peaceful future. When I was a younger Senator, I believed that the despotism of my girlhood had been permanently ended. And now, I find myself hoping, once again, to see peace in my lifetime. I know you can't singlehandedly bring it to me. But I must say, I find what the General has told me of you, of the Jedi apprentice Rey, of her pilots, of her son's recovery, to be the strongest evidence for hope I've seen in a long while." She reached up and unclasped her necklace. The delicate chain held a single teardrop of some type of kind of iridescent rock. "Please, take this. It indicates my station on Chandrila, and serves as a kind of...talisman...other places. I hope, if you need it, it will serve you."

Finn let her drop it into his hand. Then he looked at the General, totally at a loss for what to say or do.

"Thank you, Senator," the General said.

It kicked Finn back into gear. "I'm honored." He closed his hand around the necklace, tucking it in his pocket. "More than I can say, really. Thank you."

A few minutes of small talk later, Senator Mothma left. Finn half expected some kind of debriefing, but the General only moved on to how Finn could use his natural strength with the Force without actually committing ethical violations in the Senate, or setting off any alarms.

"Isn't that still an ethical violation?"

"No," the General said. "If you were using your skill to influence people, then of course it would be. But the Force exists in us and around us whether we want it to or not; you can't opt out of it. People who will never know they're stronger with the Force use it all the time. There's a difference between using your skill and teachings as a tool, and - as an example - sensing the moods of those around you. The latter is empathy; the former is, without the appropriate venue, manipulation. I'm talking about using the latter."

It almost sounded like the kind of equivocating nonsense Kylo would have said, back when Snoke still had more influence over him. But the General said it with honest conviction, and Finn knew - couldn't pretend otherwise - that she believed it, and meant what she was saying. And -

He couldn't turn it off. That much was true. Now that he knew how to recognize the Force, he understood that he'd always used it, been in touch with it; he wouldn't deliberately bend people's minds during his speech, but he had to accept he couldn't turn it off entirely.

And so, he learned how to tell when his speech was entering unpopular territory, how to balance the things that were hard to say or unpopular with the things that would get cheers out of the crowd, the best way to pitch his voice, how to appeal to specifically powerful allies in the audience.

It was exhausting. The General, in some ways, drove him harder than Phasma ever had. She knew she was asking a lot of him, but as she said, "I can't expect you'll ever get another opportunity like this. It's my responsibility to make sure it's worth it."

Worth it, Finn thought. Galaran and Calla and hundreds of other nameless soldiers, hovering somewhere between helpless and deadly, depending on the charity of the person who had control over them that day. Yeah, it was worth it, and so he kept pushing.

He didn't see Kylo much in the lead-up to the Senate session. It was for the best, as far as Finn was concerned. The thought of trying to deal with - all of that - on top of the very real concerns of the defected stormtroopers was just too much.

Securing the future of the five hundred defectors was his first priority. It had to be. It didn't matter that he sometimes made eye contact with Kylo and felt his heart flip over in his chest - that he kept catching himself thinking of how it had felt to kiss Kylo, to have the Force and Kylo's hands on him in equal measure. None of that, he told himself over and over, was important. Not in the grand scheme of things.

It might feel important, but feelings could lie. No one knew that better than Finn.

Two nights before he was due to give his speech before the assembly, he found himself walking down a long, harshly lit hallway. It reminded him of a hospital or one of the lower levels of Starkiller Base; he shied away from the bright lights and cast his mind about for a way to escape the dream.

"I just want to stop feeling it," said Kylo's unmistakable low voice from the nearest open door.

Finn crept closer, keeping out of sight. Another voice, one Finn almost thought he recognized, said, "That's understandable, but I'm afraid we don't provide that kind of care here."

"There are ways to do it," Kylo said. "Memory modification, targeted emotion dampening -"

"Indeed, there are dozens of ways to accomplish what you think you want. None of them are considered ethical. I apologize, but I can't help you."

A low, furious noise. "Then what am I supposed to do about it? About him?"

"I suggest honest communication."

"That's useless to me."

Finn took a step forward in spite of himself - what was going on? Was this a memory, or something worse? - and the hallway faded around him.

"Wait - no! Come on."

"It's rude to snoop," Kylo said from behind him.

Finn world around on newly-solid ground. They stood in a market this time, on a planet Finn didn't recognize, peopled mostly with finely dressed Humans.

"This is New Alderaan," Kylo said. "Famous for its shops."

"I should be able to hear your thoughts, too."

"You can, if you concentrate. If you don't shut me out."

Finn narrowed his eyes and did as Kylo suggested. He felt a faint buzz - tension, guilt, fear -

"Right," he said, pulling away. "I remembered why I don't do this: your head is a pain."

"I find it interesting that yours isn't," Kylo said. "You have a long history of horrible experiences, and yet..."

Finn really had meant to withdraw from Kylo's thoughts, but he heard the end of the sentence anyway: you're peaceful. "It's hard-won peace," he said. "You have to want it, and work for it."

Kylo hadn't wanted peace for a long time. Finn nodded. "Yeah, I know. That's why."

For a moment Kylo only stared at him, eyes dark, equal parts impassive and alluring.

Alluring? Get a grip, Finn told himself.

"Come to dinner with me," Kylo said.

"I don't like following orders anymore," Finn said. "I mean. I hope it'd be obvious why."

"Yes," Kylo said.

Still staring at him. It was getting awkward.

"This is really weird," Finn said.

The street around them faded, and they sat in a beautifully appointed restaurant. "I apologize," Kylo said, and reached across the table, taking his hand.

His skin felt warm and dry. The contact sent a jolt of sensation through Finn, hard and hot and heavy. And the thing was - okay. They had been to lots of different places, on lots of different - just admit it, Finn! - dates. In dreams, at least. Still, it counted; if it didn't, Finn would've found it easier to think about.

He wanted this to be more. He wanted to actually discuss how it had been the last time they were together, Finn riding him, the way Kylo had clung to him, all the terror and weird almost-joy. Or, short of discussion, he wanted to experience it again.

"Finn," Kylo said, staring at him.

He was blushing. He blushed so much, around Finn. It made Finn want to reach out and touch his cheeks, press his thumbs against those high spots of color, lean in and -

"I had hoped to get dinner," Kylo said, and the table disappeared, Kylo was in his lap, kissing him with hunger that felt like fire racing through Finn's veins -

He woke into sudden stillness. For a moment, his heart pounded as though he'd taken a step off a cliff. When he calmed down enough to take note of his surroundings, he realized he was achingly hard, still reaching out with the Force towards Kylo.

He shut it down as soon as he realized. Then he reached down, got a hand on himself, and made himself come, thinking of Kylo, his soft skin and broad mouth, his intensity and his fear and his absolute impossibility.

-

He hadn't been sure what to expect, the day of the assembly. They'd traveled to the temporary home of the Senate, a moon in the Inner Rim. Each Senator had a small chamber to themselves; the General had told Finn to treat her space as his own, and so he'd anticipated a big, lonely room with time to meditate and rehearse his speech.

Instead, the General was there, along with Rey, Luke Skywalker, Poe, Pava, a few of the techs, Galaran, Calla, and - in a corner, by himself, glowering at nothing - Kylo.

It was Rey he approached and hugged. "Pretty sure this is what death feels like," he murmured into her ear.

"Nonsense," she said. "What's the worst that could happen?"

They looked at each other as Finn thought about long-term loss of stormtrooper independence.

"Right," Rey said. "Still, though. You can do it. You will do it, and you'll be amazing."

She had been training as a Jedi for awhile now, and she spoke with power and a kind of conviction that Finn knew didn't come naturally to her. It floored him, to have that determination and certainty applied to him.

"Rey -" His throat got tight; he realized that he had no idea what he might say to express how he felt, his heart growing, so much more certain of his own belonging than he had been before. "Thanks," he finally said. "Like - really, thank you."

She understood what he couldn't say. She hugged him again, tight, before kissing his cheek and going over to talk to the General.

Poe, in contrast, clapped him on the shoulder and said, "Remember that time we were running that defense drill and the TIE fighters came through, four of 'em?"

"And I gunned them all down while yelling at you?" Finn half-laughs. "Yeah, I remember."

"This is probably going to be worse than that," Poe said with an executioner's cheer. "But I believe in you, buddy."

It was another hour of that kind of reassurance, the sort Finn had begun to think of as being unique to the Resistance: fatalistic, kind of morbid, but somehow uplifting all the same. Then he had to go into his seat for the Senate session.

The head of the Senate called the meeting into order, and then they were off. The entire session had been devoted to stormtrooper personhood. Finn had come prepared to hear plenty of nonsense, and his expectations were fulfilled over the first hour of speeches. Stormtroopers were dangerous, citizenship in the Republic couldn't be simply assumed, and so on: it was nothing Finn hadn't heard before, and while it all still had the power to torment him, he certainly felt less in thrall to these people's opinions than he might have in the past. Three hours and forty minutes into the debate, he was called to give his testimony.

He stood, as promised, on a platform overlooking thousands of Senators. His likeness was recorded by no fewer than two hundred cameras. If he looked down, he'd see a dizzying array of Senate boxes, all holding people of enormous importance, who held some fractional power over the HJs' future.

And then there was the Force, entwining around every single one of them. He'd thought of it - he'd tried to think of it - as something he could ignore, or work around, for his speech. The Force still seemed esoteric most of the time, definitely real but maybe not worth working with any more than came naturally. Right now, though, he felt it as surely as he felt his own skin.

He felt all the fear, the hope, the sheer determination coming from all the Senators. He felt the weight of history, the pain and triumph that each member carried. This was a failed political body trying to make itself real again. He wasn't particularly important in the scheme of things; they might never remember him, even though what he said would, to him, be the most important ordeal of his life.

He kind of wanted to barf. Instead, he spoke.

"Hi, I'm Finn. Some of you might know me as, uh, a traitor. Or an applicant for citizenship. I'm also a member of the Republic, and it's in that capacity that I have come to testify on behalf of my siblings in the First Order's army."

He went on from there. His siblings, the former stormtroopers, were blameless; they were pawns in the worst kind of political games, they'd been brainwashed, they were innocent. He talked about missing his parents, slowly forgetting what they looked like over time. He talked about first worshiping, then fearing, Phasma. He talked about how he'd been forced to see himself as something other than a person: "We can't be the same as the villages we decimate, after all."

He talked about hope. He talked about sentient rights. He talked about the Force, and the universal truth that the Republic could serve, if they were brave enough to recognize the concept of universal rights once more.

And he couldn't shut it off. The Force moved before him, in him. He felt anger from Mandalore, terror from New Alderaan, fury from Riosa. He felt hopelessness from Poe, a brief and terrifying stab of it that was almost immediately pushed out by determination, love, anger, fury.

Finally, he finished. Per protocol, no one applauded, or said much of anything to him at all. He retreated into the private room, leaving the Senate box proper to the General.

Rey was waiting for him with tears in her eyes. "You know, I thought I was ready, I'd heard the speech already. It still - oh, Finn." She caught him in a fierce embrace, holding him tightly to her as his heart pounded.

"Good job, buddy," Poe said. BB-8 beeped in agreement.

Finn didn't, couldn't, look at Kylo. He hoped that he was proud, like the rest of them, or at least happy with how well Finn had done. But-

If he wasn't. If he didn't agree, or if he thought Finn had made a fool of himself, or if he'd only noticed the flaws in Finn's speech.

Finn just didn't want to know, was all. Sometimes, ignorance was bliss.

The Senate session lasted three planet-measured days, during which the General had them all travel back to Yavin 4. Finn barely slept the whole time. He couldn't do anything else; he was, in fact, being strictly monitored for evidence of undue influence. Given what he knew about Snoke, Darth Sidious, and the whole messy history of Republic politics, Finn knew the monitoring made sense. But those days still dragged on, terrifying, interminable. He only saw Galaran and Calla a few times, but he always felt like they were on a terrifying wavelength together. Maybe today they'd all be made fully people in the eyes of the New Republic.

But then again, maybe not.

On the fourth day, he woke to the news, which someone had helpfully placed on his bed in datachip form: personhood for all defected stormtroopers demonstrating use of the kill switch had been ratified. Overnight, the Resistance's membership had grown twenty percent. It was an unequivocal victory, and several New Republic papers credited Finn's speech with turning the tide of sentiment towards full citizenship.

"Finn," the General said at breakfast, clutching both his hands. "I wanted to be the first - well, one of the first - to wish you congratulations."

Finn felt half like barfing and half like telling BB-8 to put on the party music. Absent anything better, he said, "It's half due to you, General."

But the General, ever honest and determined to tutor the younger generations, shook her head. "You're the one who won them over. You brought me hope I didn't realize I was missing. You -"

But then she paused, clearly reconsidering what she was about to say. Since half her lessons had been related to diplomacy, Finn hesitated, not wanting to demand an answer.

"You make me think we can win," she said finally, "with a certainty I didn't think I'd ever feel again."

Before he could answer, or even swallow past the sudden lump in his throat, Rey tackled him. "Finn!"

What followed was half a party, as everyone who'd ever even met him showed up to congratulate him on his speech and the vote. Finn shook all their hands, saying thank you what felt like a million times; it was important, it was, and he truly was grateful. But he was even more glad when the parade of congratulations slowed down, and he could stand on the General's balcony, looking up at the night sky and taking deep breaths of crisp air.

He had done it. He had really, really done it. Galaran and Calla and all the others would be safe. They had a path forward, and a powerful weapon to wield within it. He wiped away tears, shivering a little, as his mind slowly calmed.

One of the stars moved.

He recognized the pattern before he even consciously tried to process it. Three stars that weren't stars, convening on the moon in a formation only used by -

"First Order," he breathed, then turned, yelling. "The First Order! Sound the alert! Poe, Rey -" He had the Force. He could - Rey. The First Order's found us, they're attacking. Tell Luke!

He got something back from her, panic and acknowledgment and then a brilliant flash of fury that lit up the connection just before it went quiet. For a moment Finn thought he felt something else, but -

The base alarm sounded, and Poe grabbed his shoulder. "Gunner?"

"Gunner," Finn said, and they ran towards a ship together, BB-8 rolling ahead of Poe.

Up in the sky, everything was very clear. This wasn't the final assault, Finn knew, only a kind of exploratory attack, meant to soften up their defenses for the next wave of troops. The Resistance, of course, had experienced those tactics before, and Poe gave off rapid-fire instructions for pilots to convene on the ships, drive them back, even as evac efforts started on the ground.

But something - something was off. Finn didn't connect the dots until they landed, hours later, to refuel and coordinate the pilots' evacuation.

Exploratory attack. But why launch one against the Resistance's primary base, the number one place they'd be likely to have evac plans for? Unless, of course, evac wouldn't matter, because you had bigger fish waiting for them, cloaked just outside of planetary orbit.

He ran to find the General, barreling through multiple high-ranking officers on his way in. It only took her a second to get what he was telling her, and then she said, "All right, Finn knows what he's talking about with this. Let's ready our defenses: we can prepare for a siege, too."

As the command room emptied, the General turned to Finn and said, "We could really use more of that inside info. Any idea where they'll attack from if we don't try to run?"

Finn was going to deny it, or point out that when you were a military base on the ground, they could attack from almost anywhere. Then he thought: HJs. Intelligence.

"I don't know. But I know who will."

Calla got them the First Order's confidential communication band; Galaran got the quantum keys necessary to actually listen in. And so they heard Phasma snarling, "Kill them all. Every single one of those traitorous little cockroaches. Except for FN-2187. If you find him, bring him to me."

Every eye in the room was on Finn just then. He closed his eyes and did his best to think of the Force, not Phasma -

Beating him, again and again. Trying to kill him. Successfully killing him.

"Bit of a dramatic assassination attempt, don't you think?" the General said. Finn opened his eyes to find her looking at him with a mixture of sympathy and worry. She reached out with the Force, and he met her in kind, letting her stream security and surety to him.

That's one of the best things about the Force, she'd once told him. If you can't feel it just then, someone else probably can.

"Okay," he said. "I'll deal with Phasma. No," he said when Calla opened her mouth to argue, "I should, you know I should. They've got multiple battalions: pass the kill switch around. Get as many as you can, stun the rest."

"The kill switch isn't magic," Galaran said. "Some of them will still be loyal."

"We'll deal with those, too," the General said. "Don't let me down, Finn."

It wasn't a threat, like it would've been with the First Order. It was an expression of faith and hope, something Finn needed desperately. He saluted and left.

If it wasn't for the weird ripple in the Force as he ran for a ship, Finn likely would've flown to the troop carrier without seeing Kylo standing off to one side. As it was, Finn found himself screeching to a halt in the middle of the chaos and grabbing Kylo's wrist.

"What are you," he said. It felt like his brain was buzzing. This wasn't - he wanted -

He might die. Oh, kriff, either of them might die.

"I have to go. Phasma's up there. I -"

"I know," Kylo said. "I was listening."

They'd had sex. But of course it was more than that. Finn wanted so desperately to reach out, but the whole room teemed with people. Someone would see, someone would know.

He might die. They both might die. Kylo, Finn knew, would be grounded, helping the various non-combatant members of the Resistance. He wouldn't get anywhere near a fight unless things went very, very badly.

It occurred to Finn, with the kind of clarity he usually only got at the tail end of annoyingly long meditation sessions, that he didn't really care if other people saw him kissing Kylo. Especially not if the alternative was dying wishing he'd been just a little braver.

"Take care of yourself," he said, and stepped forward.

Kylo's eyes widened. Finn wanted to say, now? Now is when you decide to be afraid? But he didn't get a chance: even as terror emanated from him, Kylo leaned down to kiss Finn hard, both hands cupping his head, pulling him back so they were pressed together toe to shoulder.

Finn only broke away because he had to breathe, but then the noise around them faded back into his awareness. "I have to -"

"Go," Kylo said.

And come back, rippled between them, mutual understanding carried on the Force as Finn launched himself up into the sky.

The First Order must've known that the Resistance would have better intel now, but apparently they had enough firepower on this trip not to care. They hung in a formation that Finn had already memorized before his tenth birthday. Phasma would be on the destroyer in the center, the biggest ship by far. If she was smart, she'd hide a little better - but Phasma's desire for glory had always outweighed everything else, even her not-too-shabby strategic know-how.

They didn't even try to shoot his plane down. The destroyer's hatch opened and let him in; he disembarked to find himself surrounded by stormtroopers, but none of them tried to shoot him.

He'd been right, then. They wanted him alive.

"Take me to Phasma," he told the VX on his left.

Another VX stepped up behind him. He had a half-second to hear the whine of a stunner -

And then he was out.

-

He woke to feel his wrists bleeding from the too-tight cuffs keeping his arms behind him. His shoulders screamed in pain. He tried to leap to his feet, to find some advantage - to fight - but he couldn't move his legs.

For a moment he thought they'd taken them, and he tried to scream.

A shock went through him, head to toe. "I wouldn't do that, were I you," Phasma said. Her voice echoed in the fathomless darkness. "You're tied down, FN-2187, in a reconditioning chair. I had doubted the reports claiming you had never experienced one before. I see now that they were accurate."

"I swear to you, when I get out of here, I'm going to -"

"Hush now," Phasma said, and the jolt of electric shock went through him again.

He faded in and out after that. He was aware of being held, of invasion: the Force, yes, but also technological invasion, a droid placing sensors on his forehead and flipping on some kind of machine. It told him, you want to kill. It told him, these are the traitors, and showed him Galaran and Calla - the HJs. An entire company of HJs. Your designation is FN-2187. Kill the traitors. Kill the traitors. Kill the traitors.

He tried to tell it no, and at first that worked. He pushed back, with the Force, with his own determination. Once, he'd used skills he didn't even realize he had to hide from this exact invasion. Now, he knew enough about the Force to grasp the monstrosity of what was being done in this room, the sheer brutality that Phasma hoped to use to program him as the Resistance's first, and last, traitor.

It couldn't happen; it wouldn't happen. The HJs were going to be citizens. Free people, as they were meant to be. Finn would die before he let anyone change that. He would die. He would die. He...

Was not Finn, the program whispered. He was FN-2187, loyal servant to the Supreme Leader. A soldier, fierce and feared as all the best soldiers are. Feel your strength, FN-2187. Feel your skill. These and more were granted to you by your commanders. You exist to serve.

No, he said, or thought, I am Finn, I am a rebel, I exist -

To serve. To kill. Kill them. Kill the traitors. Earn your place. Earn love.

No.

Yes.

"No!"

He'd never know if his mind gave out first, or if his body did. He woke free of his bonds, exhausted and disoriented. He tried to think of his name several times, but it slipped from his grasp. Had he had one? He wasn't sure anymore. He dressed in the clothes they gave him, and waited for instructions.

Phasma entered the room. He remembered her. She had backhanded him, kicked him...taught him to serve. As he must serve now.

"You will go to the Resistance base, eliminate the traitorous defectors, capture the leader, and bring her to us," Phasma said.

"Yes," he said. It lived in his bones now, the need to obey.

"You will destroy all evidence of the kill switch. It no longer exists."

"Yes."

"All hail the Supreme Leader."

He saluted. She turned to leave.

They were orders he would follow. He had just been taught, and he would do so. He could not fathom doing anything else. But in her haste and will to power, Phasma had forgotten the basics. He lived to serve the Supreme Leader.

Phasma was not the Supreme Leader.

His blade struck true, frying flesh on contact. She died instantly, her head separated from her body.

He took her two guns, and his own blade, and went to find a ship.

-

Poe Dameron answered his ship's hail on his way back into atmosphere. "Finn! Boy, buddy, am I glad to see you."

The rebels had beaten back most of the First Order. It was good news for them; he would pretend to be happy for as long as it took to reach the HJs. "Glad to see you too, Poe. Phasma's dealt with. She won't be bothering us again."

"That's great news. We canceled the evac - they weren't ready for us. We're safe for now."

"They'll send more."

"We'll be long gone by then. I'm calling in all ships; tonight, we get to celebrate."

He landed and clapped the rebels on the back, affecting joy. It was easy: soon he'd be back under his helmet, executing the orders of the Supreme Leader, living out his purpose. Even Rey didn't realize anything had changed. She hugged him tight and kissed both his cheeks, then said, "You should find Kylo. He was asking after you."

Kylo Ren. It shivered through his brain, a sliver of something -

But he forgot, even as he tried to remember. "Yeah, I'll do that," he said, and disengaged himself from her, going to find the subjects of his orders.

He didn't see the named HJs, the traitors who made his heart beat in double time with hatred. He would have to deal with them eventually. But the others were all together, kept in a complex where the rebel scum could watch them. They weren't treated with the respect that they were owed. They should be freed, he thought, in death; if they couldn't serve the Supreme Leader, it was better to go that way.

He opened the door of the complex and walked inside.

"Finn."

He turned. Kylo Ren stood in the doorway, watching him with narrowed eyes. He recalled what the traitor might do, and smiled. "It's good to see you."

"Is it?"

"Of course." Walk forward, grab his head, kiss him. Easy enough. Pathetically easy, really; Kylo Ren's shields were down, his affection there for anyone sufficiently curious to explore.

He was curious. He kissed Kylo Ren, reaching back for his blaster.

"Eugh, you guys, get a room."

He eased his hand to his front again before stepping away. He had been instructed to exercise restraint, stealth. This execution would have to wait. He turned his head and saw the traitor who'd named himself Galaran, standing a few paces behind Kylo Ren. "Finn," Galaran said. "You got Phasma?"

A thrill of joy went through him. "I did."

"Man. Congrats." Galaran hugged him.

Kylo Ren hung back, watching him with dark eyes. Why? He didn't understand. The affection there seemed unnatural. Had the rebels brainwashed him, as they'd done the other HJs? What created a traitor? Why did they want to stay here?

A shiver of electricity in his mind: don't ask questions. He flinched.

"You okay?" Kylo Ren said quietly.

"Sure." Another smile. The smile distracted people, he'd noticed. "Just glad we won the day, that's all."

Kylo Ren nodded and said, "I have to go make my report. I'll see you at dinner?"

And after. That was arousal, he knew, messy and complicated desire. Disgusting, whispered the back of his mind.

"Of course," he said.

Kylo Ren nodded and left.

The one called Galaran eyed him. "You seem awfully cheerful."

"Oh, I am," he said, and drew his blaster.

The HJ inhaled in a hiss of breath, holding his hands up. "Finn..."

"That's not my name." He set the blaster to kill. "I'm here to execute the will of the Supreme Leader. You and the other HJs are traitors."

"Oh, Finn. They got you, didn't they? On the destroyer."

"Of course not. They simply restored erroneous settings."

"They have a whole system for it, you know. They'll send any of us who deviate even a tiny bit to be reconditioned. It's torture, Finn. That's why we ran." He spoke the kill switch then.

But the switch had been reprogrammed already. It had no effect on him. "Teaching us to be useful to the Supreme Leader isn't torture."

"Isn't it? Didn't it hurt? Didn't you want to know why they were hurting you?"

Don't ask why, that threatening voice whispered again. He felt himself flinch. "Shut up," he said, and aligned the blaster again, ready to deliver the killing blow.

"Finn." He took several steps back. "Finn, don't do this."

"That's not my name. I don't have a name."

"That's not how you want to live. They'll shoot you before you get back in the sky, and you want to do this for people who don't let you have a name?"

"For the glory of the Supreme Leader." He tightened his grip. "To end a deviation that never should have existed."

"Your hands are shaking."

Kylo Ren had returned. He stood several paces from Galaran, not close enough to save him. Not close enough to get shot himself.

He looked at the blaster. Yes, his hands were trembling. So what? He'd gone through a lot, to restore his loyalty, to be made whole again after years of -

Why am I doing this -

Lies. "Shut up," he snarled, and tried to pull the trigger.

He didn't move. He couldn't. And even as Kylo Ren said, "Finn, come back to us," he felt -

Shocks. Shocks through the back of his mind that made him drop his blaster, and then Kylo Ren said, "Finn, you need to fight this," and he remembered.

Hiding. He had screamed for it, hoped for it. The droid and the sheer darkness of the force had conspired to press him down, smaller and smaller until he'd made himself almost nothing. It had almost been easy, it had almost felt safe; who was 'Finn', anyway, but a collection of traits he'd hoped to have for himself? The droid had whispered to him that he wasn't brave, he wasn't strong, he wasn't a person: he was only a cowardly traitor, easily disposed of, simple to mold into a good soldier once again.

But he had never been a good soldier. He had always resisted. If his name hadn't been Finn before he'd met Poe, he had still been himself, questioning, wondering. Hiding, yes, because hiding was how he'd survived. But he had always been a person.

Another painful zap in the back of his mind, seeking to coerce him back into compliance. But - no. He fell to his knees, pushing back, memories of the General's instruction rushing back into him. The Force was present all around him, as it had been on the ship, but here it wasn't corrupted, wasn't bent to horrific use.

Finn was so tired. He felt it down to his bones, exhaustion that made him want to give up, recede into his own mind, let the programming take over. But Galaran was watching him - and Calla had come too, and some of the other HJs, standing in a ring behind Kylo. Kylo himself had a hand at his waist, ready to pull a blaster on Finn.

He had the presence of mind to think: good. Don't let me hurt anyone. But then -

They had made him watch the raid on Jakku over and over, erasing the hesitance he'd felt, the pain, the horror at seeing children gunned down. Phasma thought that was where it had started, but of course, she was wrong. Earlier, much earlier, he'd been more than just an FN; he'd had the spark of the Force burning in him, and it made him want more. It made him want. He questioned, he thought, he was his own person, and he knew that Phasma hated that. The entire First Order hated that.

It had to be his strength now. He curled his hands into fists, shoving them in his pockets. Something bumped against his knuckle then, a cold, smooth object that he half remembered: the channeling device that Kylo Ren had given him, ostensibly for meditation. A pathetic display of sentiment, whispered the evil voice in his mind.

Pathetic. But smooth and somehow alluring, comforting to touch. The Force was the province of superstitious fools, they had taught him. He was not of the Force and the Force did not move within him. But -

He had carried the channeling device for a long time, never thinking of it. It should have been nothing, but the Force cared very little for the distinctions between sentient and not sentient, alive and inert. He felt power, shaped by his own hands, flow into him.

Kill the traitors! shrieked that awful voice.

His mind again seized up, his muscles twitched. He had hid so well for so many years. Now he needed to use that power to push through, to regain control, to say -

"No," he whispered, and he felt the conditioning break.

It had been brittle to begin with. It hurt as it fell away, like actual glass had been embedded in his veins. He became aware, after many minutes, of large hands on his shoulders, holding him up. Lips pressed into his forehead, and a voice whispered, "Finn, come on. Come back to us."

He opened his eyes and stared at Kylo. The talisman fell from his numb fingers, hitting the ground.

"Oh, thank you," Kylo breathed. Finn hoped Kylo wasn't talking to him: he had no confidence, right now, in his ability to speak at all. He closed his eyes again and leaned forward, allowing Kylo to support his entire weight, his mind - his mind, only his - going fuzzy and then, finally, quiet.

-

In the infirmary that night, he dreamed.

Kylo leaned against a stone column in a temple on a temperate planet that Finn had never been to. The breeze ruffled his hair. The whole picture was very romantic, and Finn felt vaguely betrayed by his own subconscious for coming up with it.

"Are you Finn?" Kylo said. "Or has the reconditioning come back?"

"You mean brainwashing," Finn said.

Kylo's lips quirked up in a near-smile. Finn felt his chest twist in, yup, that was arousal, even here, even after what probably qualified as one of the worst days of his life. "So you are back."

"I guess so." Finn looked around, at the green fields, the butterflies making their way down the ancient-looking corridor. "Could I dream this if I wasn't?"

"It seems unlikely, but then, they meant to entrap you."

Finn heard anger there: hot, sick, equal parts thrilling and absolutely chilling. "Would you have killed me?"

"Excuse me?"

He hadn't meant to ask it, had spoken entirely on dream-forced impulse, but now he found he needed to know. "Before I shot Galaran. Would you have -"

"Of course."

The one comforting thing about this being Kylo Ren, first of the Knights of Ren, terror of the Resistance and intergalactic criminal, was that Finn believed him. He gained nothing by lying, and Finn knew he was capable of it. "Good."

"That's not how I would describe it."

"No, I guess you wouldn't. I owe you thanks."

"For the talisman? It was nothing. A pin, when you needed a saber."

"It helped me bring myself back. That's not nothing." Finally, Finn looked back at him. He felt his gut wrench. He wanted - so many things, really, an impossible litany. But right now, more than anything, he wanted to close the space between himself and Kylo, to touch him and reassure himself that he, Finn, was still capable of being himself.

It terrified him. He'd been so close to losing himself entirely, and to look at Kylo and see a touchstone -

He didn't want to. But he did want to, also.

"When we wake up," Finn said, and stopped to breathe through it. "When we wake up. Find me. I want this to be - I want -"

"I understand," Kylo said. He looked around, took a deep breath of the sweet air. "I'll find you."

The world faded around him.

-

It had already been sort of weird phrasing, 'I'll find you'. It became orders of magnitude weirder when Finn opened his eyes to see Kylo slumped by his bedside, staring at him.

He didn't jump, but he did stiffen, and he heard the frenetic beeping that indicated that his lifesigns had all gone haywire. "Kylo."

"They weren't sure you'd wake up at first," Kylo said. "So I went looking for you."

"I had a lot going on," Finn said. "They captured me. And Phasma..."

Kylo pressed his lips together. "The initial conditioning isn't meant to be withstood by an adult. It requires neuroplasticity that's lost by the time children turn ten."

"So it should've killed me."

"It should have left you a raving madman, incapable of seeing or hearing, desperate to follow orders you couldn't understand."

"Seems like a big risk. She wanted me to kill every single HJ I could find."

"Killing doesn't require much intellect." Kylo inclined his head a bit, avoiding Finn's gaze. "As you know."

"So I should be brain-dead, and all the HJs should be dead."

"Phasma was resistant to the idea that stormtroopers could be strong with the Force. Or strong at all." Kylo grimaced. "If she'd been smarter about it, yes, you'd be dead."

Finn closed his eyes, just for a second, trying to chase the overwhelmed terror from his mind. "Right, of course."

A hand covered his. "You'll make a full recovery," Kylo said. "That's what the med droid said. If you wake up...you'll recover. And you're awake."

"Thanks, I'd noticed."

Finn expanded his awareness to the Force just in time to feel a wave of frustration emanating from Kylo. "Well. In that case, I suppose you don't really need someone hovering over you." He moved to stand.

Kriff. "Wait." Finn turned his hand over, catching and holding Kylo's wrist, feeling Kylo's pulse flutter against his palm. "That's not what I meant. I'm just - glad - to be here. And not dead, or on Phasma's ship."

"I will kill her if I see her again," Kylo breathed.

"No need." Finn went over what he'd done, how she'd failed to instruct him not to hurt her. "I took her head off. I should probably report that to the General."

"There's time for that later." Kylo shifted a little under Finn's grip, his wrist flexing. It felt good, Finn thought, to hold onto someone like this, to have anything other than the sheer terror of losing himself.

Then he thought: stop messing around. You're glad it's Kylo. You want it to be Kylo.

"I thought I'd be done after I testified. I figured I could just fight for the Resistance and not have to worry as much about the rest of it, the big picture stuff."

Kylo shifted a little, his other hand catching Finn's elbow. They must look ridiculous, Finn thought, with Kylo hunched over him. But it was comforting, in a weird way, to feel blocked off from the rest of the world. Protected, almost.

He was going nuts.

"You can do that, if you want," Kylo said. "I could - help make it happen. Probably."

Finn snorted. "You're a disgraced criminal."

"I'm still Leia Organa's son. I'm still a Skywalker."

Finn could feel the tension building in the room, emanating directly from Kylo. "Please don't go to the dark side again just so I can have a farm to hang out on."

"You've already survived too much. You deserve -"

"I know," Finn said. "Like, whatever you're going to say, I know, okay? But..."

He sat back then, leaning away from Kylo just a little. He thought of Calla and Galaran, of promises kept, of the sick fury he'd felt on Arkanis when talking to people who supported the First Order. He thought of the General's exhausted eyes, the determined set of her mouth. There was only one way to fix that kind of thing, and he knew it. He'd been taught by the best.

"I can't retire," he said. "I can't just walk away. I have to be part of the solution."

The world tilted then, threw itself out of order. Shock rippled through him before he'd even consciously registered the sensation of Kylo kissing him, desperately, passion surging between them, absolutely unmistakable with Kylo's hands on him. And oh, he wanted it, desperately and with immediacy that shocked him: he surged up against Kylo and tugged his hair, bit his lip, hissing in sheer joy when he felt Kylo's nails digging into his skin.

"Wait, wait," Kylo said. He pulled back, one trembling hand against Finn's shoulder. "We should - I should -"

"I'm not going to die," Finn said. "If I wake up, I'm okay, right? That's what you said."

"It's probably a bit more complex than that."

"Sure, but -" But Kylo was here, warm, alive, and not ordering Finn to do any murders. But Finn wanted so much, all the time, and right now the subject of a lot of that desire was looking at him with not-quite-gentle bafflement. But, but, but: Finn was tired of thinking, tired of pulling back. He leaned in and kissed Kylo, and this time, Kylo didn't pull away.

The infirmary beds were built for healing one humanoid, not sex. Still, Kylo managed to get on top of Finn, pressing him down onto the bed.

Normally Finn might not have liked it, being covered by Kylo like this. It had been awhile since Kylo had featured in anything remotely approaching a nightmare, but Finn preferred to have room to maneuver, even - especially - during sex. But something about how tired he was, how close he'd come to dying, and Kylo's own desperation combined in a potent rush, sending jolts of need through him. He pulled Kylo down on him more firmly, kissed him back and then even harder, tugging his hair and pushing a thigh against the hard line of Kylo's cock. His chest was so broad, and Finn made him move up so that he could touch all of it, shoving his shirt up and pressing sharp nails into Kylo's pecs, pinching his nipples and watching as Kylo let out a startled moan.

He surged up to kiss Kylo again, swallowing the tiny whimper Kylo let out when Finn nipped at his lip. He could feel the Force move between them, clumsily attempting to push Finn's clothes aside - and the fact that it was clumsy, the fact that Kylo wasn't in complete control, sent bolts of need through Finn, sharp and present and absolutely impossible to ignore -

The infirmary lit up, and frantic beeping overlaid Kylo yelping and falling to the floor with a thump.

"Oh, for crying out loud!"

BB-8 regarded Finn with a solemn lens and made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a fart.

"I'm fine!" Finn said. "More than fine, actually, and you could've at least waited -"

A single claw of metal darted out to flick Finn in the nose, accompanied by a babble of binary. Kylo's voice floated up wearily from the floor: "He's telling you about all the different Human bodily fluids, and how they might stain an infirmary bed."

"BB-8! That's inappropriate!"

"He says it's more inappropriate for us to be - wow, is that Wookiee for - copulating. In the infirmary." Another round of beeps. Kylo said through gritted teeth, "Now he's telling me what would happen if I, quote, sexed you to death."

"Okay, I get it," Finn said. He pulled the remaining sensors off his body. "We're off. It's all yours, buddy."

"He says that's not what he means, you should stay and heal and I should - hey."

But Finn had had enough. Of a lot of things, really, but especially of nosy Resistance members interrupting his very private sexual and/or romantic moments. He grabbed Kylo's arm and hauled him to his feet, made the rudest gesture he knew at BB-8, then pulled Kylo out of the infirmary.

It took him a few hallways to recognize the half-choking, half-braying noise that Kylo was making as laughter. "Okay over there?"

"You're ridiculous. This is insane."

"Probably. But, I don't know, isn't that the whole point of being in the Resistance?"

"Taking me back to you room won't do anything to stop the First Order's spread."

"No, but it will give me the energy to get up tomorrow morning and fight them." Finn couldn't quite hold a smile back. "And, anyway, I'm pretty sure it counts as advancing the cause, seducing you towards the Light."

"You did not seduce me -"

Here was his room. Finn stopped dead, whirling around on Kylo, backing him up against his door. "No?"

Kylo went very, very still, pulse jumping in his throat. His eyes went wide as he swallowed and said, "No. Of course not. Don't be ridiculous."

"Huh, weird. I could've sworn that's what all the dreams meant. And the saving my life, and fighting off Snoke's influence."

Kylo glanced over his shoulder, stiffening. "I don't know what you mean."

Finn had to take pity on him then. He leaned in, hands curling on either side of Kylo's neck, and kissed him.

They stumbled inside, still pressed together, Finn unable to let go for long enough to do anything except pull bits of Kylo's clothing off: his tunic, the odd scarf he had wrapped under that, his gloves. By the time they made it to Finn's bed, he had Kylo stripped down to his pants. Kylo, on the other hand, hadn't even managed Finn's jacket.

"Are you sure you wanna do this?" Finn said, running a finger over Kylo's chest.

He watched in fascination as Kylo's face went through a series of odd contortions, finally landing on determination. Finn wasn't too surprised to feel nothing-pressure against his skin, pulling his jacket off, yanking at his shirt until the seams nearly split.

He laughed when Kylo put his hands on him, rolling them competitively. Kylo scowled, like he thought Finn might be mocking him, and Finn...

Finn kissed him and put his emotion into the Force: joy, love, relief, fear, all tangled together, all aimed at Kylo like a navigation radar.

Kylo touching him with the Force always felt like the best kind of provocation. Now, Finn got to be on the other side of it. He watched Kylo gasp, felt his emotions rise in response to what Finn was sending him. His fingers spasmed on Finn's shoulders, and he thrust his hips, a fluid movement that made it impossible to ignore how turned on he was.

"You want this?" Finn said, curling a hand around Kylo's hip.

"You know I do," Kylo said sourly.

"Maybe I like hearing it." Finn kissed him again, arching his back to press them even closer together. "Maybe it's a good reminder that this isn't just some dumb, I don't know, post-being-evil fling."

"Ridiculous," Kylo breathed. But he kissed Finn again, harder, curling around him with his entire body. The Force held Finn as Kylo moved down between his legs. Finn could hardly move, and it should've felt threatening, maybe, or at least uncomfortable. Instead it was a thrilling kind of comfort, feeling surrounded by Kylo, the sheer power and weight of all Kylo's attention being focused on him.

He didn't really know what he was doing with this, it was obvious, but Finn found he didn't care. It felt so good, Kylo's mouth on him, Kylo's fingers digging into his hips. He arched his back and thrust a little, out of his mind, and immediately froze. "Sorry."

Kylo moaned. He thrust his hips into the bed. Finn moved again, more cautiously, and Kylo held on and rode the movement like -

Like he loved it. Like he wanted more.

Carefully, carefully, he put a hand on the back of Kylo's head and fucked his mouth. It was impossible to lie to each other like this, tangled up physically and in the Force. Finn felt split open, helpless, desperate, and Kylo responded by giving more and more to him, until Finn was coming down his throat, held off the bed and immobile by Kylo's own power.

It ended quickly after that. Kylo moved on top of Finn and started jerking himself off; Finn grabbed him, pushed him down, kissed him and made Kylo spill all over his fist. He shook against Finn's mouth, whispering, "Finn, Finn," as his fingers scrabbled at Finn's shoulder. Finn held him through it, watching almost in spite of himself. It should have been terrifying, the tenderness, the need to keep skin against skin. But it really was impossible to lie: he knew Kylo felt the same way. He knew that everything he gave was returned twice over.

They fell asleep in Finn's bed, legs curled around each other, Kylo with his head tucked in Finn's shoulder. Finn knew without needing to ask that he wouldn't wake up alone this time.

-

The General regarded him with what Finn privately thought of as her most Politician Face, a carefully neutral mask with just a bit of lurking attitude. "The med droids tell me you're all healed up."

"That's what they said, yep."

"Wonderful. Please tell my son the Resistance infirmary has publicly monitored security cameras." As Finn spluttered, she said, "In your absence, the Senate voted on the prospect of an electoral body to represent defected stormtroopers. It squeaked by."

"They know about the kill switch," Finn said. "They'll start trying to do damage control - they've already updated brainwashing with a new code word."

"We can find that information again. You don't think they'll cease the practice altogether?"

Finn shook his head. "I pulled that out of Phasma when I was there. They have to keep it. They use it when stormtroopers are undercover, when they abandon them for sleeper missions. It's part of their operation, and they don't have the resources to change that part."

"Then stormtroopers will continue to defect."

The HJs had a leg up on everyone else, being intelligence-focused. But Finn thought of the fear he'd sensed on that ship, the sheer choked-off rage. "Yeah, I think they will."

"Then the Senate's decision holds: they function as a people, and they'll be represented as one." The General glanced up at him, then away. "Your name, I believe, has been put forth for representative candidacy."

Finn choked on nothing.

"You're not shocked, surely?"

"Um, yes. I'm not even an HJ!"

"My understanding is that Calla has been making your case to anyone who'll listen. And, of course, plenty of people who don't want to."

And, okay, that was nice, it was sweet, but - "Maybe they want someone else. Someone less..."

"Smart? Capable?" The General snorted. "If this is your idea of diplomacy, we've still got a lot of work to do."

"Sane. I was going to say."

She looked him in the eye then, a shrewd glint setting Finn on edge. But she didn't upbraid him, didn't call him an idiot or tell him he was full of it. She only said, "You should talk to some of your peers. You know, the young hotshots that make the Resistance what it is. Ask them what's being said about you."

And with that mind-breakingly ominous statement, she left.

He didn't get around to it until the Yay, We Survived And Also We Begin Formal Evac Preparations Tomorrow party. Poe and Rey had convinced BB-8 to serve as the party's bouncer, and after he dragged out three drunken pilots, Finn broke and said, "The General told me there's rumors. About me."

"Don't worry, buddy." Poe clapped him on the back. "We all know you're Ben's boyfriend or whatever. It's weird, but we're adjusting."

Finn nearly choked on his hooch. "No, no, not that! The stormtrooper thing. The rumors about all that."

"Oh, that's nothing." Rey waved a hand, then jumped with guilt when one of the mechanic's chairs darted out from under her. "Sorry, Tico!"

"It's just," she said, turning back to Finn, "you know, you threw off First Order brainwashing and defeated one of their top commanders. And I guess technically you've defeated another one, you know, romantically."

"He didn't defeat me," Kylo said from the far end of the table.

"Close enough!" Rey shouted. "Anyway. So I suppose you're a bit of a legend, or you're getting there. They speak very highly of you."

"But I hid! I lied! Or I thought I was telling the truth, but still - I -"

"The Force loves you," Rey said. "Like, it's actually disgusting, the way it hangs around you, how much it makes everyone want to please you. The General's the same way, and it's not like you're going to walk up to her and tell her she's a fraud and should quit. Right?"

"That's different!"

"It's not," Kylo said.

A lump appeared in Finn's throat, just like that. He looked over at Kylo to tell him to shove it, but he found he couldn't. Kylo's gaze was as intense as ever, as serious and as fun-hating, but it was also affectionate. Real. He believed in Finn just as Rey did.

Just as, apparently, an entire five-hundred-soldier platoon did. Right.

"I hate this argument," Poe said. "And the googly eyes. None of us are drunk enough for this. Jess! Get us another round of whatever this is!"

"On it, boss."

"And you." Poe turned to Rey. "Can you cheat at cards, or is that breaking the Jedi code and going dark side or whatever?"

"Poe," Kylo said. "Absolutely not."

"Oh, yes." Poe regarded all of them with the shit-eating grin that Finn knew, was thrilled to know, meant trouble. He pulled a deck of cards out of his coat and tossed them on the table. "Ben, you get to teach Finn. Rey, you're with me."

Kylo unfolded his long limbs to come sit by Finn. "What are the rules, exactly?" Finn said.

"Winner takes all. Or cheaters take all, in the case of Dameron over there."

Finn closed his eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath and feeling the Force move around him.

I don't know, I think we have a chance, he told Kylo.

It was worth it to watch Kylo jump a mile high, cursing a blue streak. When did you learn how to do this!

Win me enough to buy a bottle of the good stuff off Jax in engineering and I'll tell you.

Grim determination, surprised humor, and love - a really embarrassing amount of love - suffused Finn. "Deal," Kylo said aloud.

"Hey, are you two talking? Whoa, that's not allowed," Poe said. "Table talk, c'mon."

Finn laughed and played the first card.