A Function of How Much We Suffer
by imp

A Function of How Much We Suffer

imp

Summary

Kylo lies about Finn being his boyfriend. It only gets more complicated from there.

Notes

None

Chapter 1

The crushing, beloved weight of his master's power brought him to his knees as pain shot through him. He gathered it as he had been taught, funneling it into power, as his master said, "I sense a great disturbance in you, my apprentice."

He tried and failed not to think of Han Solo, face crumpling as life fled from his body, falling from the platform. "It has only deepened my desire to purge the galaxy of Jedi, Master," he said.

"Liar," his master hissed, and another bolt of pain shot through him, sending him to his knees.

The strength of the mind invading his nearly made him scream. He realized it was inevitable that his conflict would be discovered, that the resulting punishment would be unending and limitless in its capacity to produce suffering. His only hope was to give another, more palatable reason for the conflict, to prevent further exploration.

And so Kylo Ren took a deep breath, opened his mind, and began to lie.

"I think it's really good that you thought you could do it," Finn told Rey. "It didn't work, obviously, but —"

Rey made a face. "You're almost as bad as General Organa. It could have worked. I mean, I had to give him a chance. Luke said —"

She paled then, and looked back down at her food. Finn grimaced and patted her shoulder.

"I get it," he said. "That's the whole point of the Resistance, right? Trying to save people." Rose still lay in an observation tank, kept sedated until the worst of her wounds healed. He wasn't going to forget her lesson any time soon.

"Trying to save people," Rey echoed. "I suppose it's good that I hit him on the head, then. That counts as saving, given the context."

"Of course it does," Finn said, hugging her before they parted for Jedi training and mechanic work, respectively.

Kylo Ren had been behind enemy lines for nearly seventy-two hours now. In that short time, he hadn't forgiven Rey for bashing him over the head and carrying him off the First Order's ship. Personally, Finn thought that was way better than he deserved, but he could tell from Rey's wide eyes and troubled mien that her conscience was pricking her.

It had to be those visions. Finn shook his head to think of them. Rey had told him they were Snoke's doing, but she'd seemed to think the good she'd sensed in Kylo was still real, and not part of his whole manipulation gambit.

Maybe Rey was still under Snoke's influence too, a bit. It didn't matter much, since Kylo was locked up, kept in a Force-dampening pod in the infirmary, sedated. There was no way anyone would be questioning him for awhile.

Or so he'd thought. An hour into his tricky nav-system rewire, a droid found him and said, "Finn, Kylo Ren has requested your presence in the infirmary."

He dropped the hydro-wrench. "I'm sorry, what?" he said as he scrambled to retrieve it.

"Kylo Ren has requested your presence in the infirmary. Message: get me the traitor. I don't care what you think. Find the traitor and bring him here. End message."

"How'd you identify me as the traitor?" Finn said. "That's not — I'm a member of the Resistance now, he doesn't get to call me a traitor."

"The meaning was clear in context, Finn. Allow me to demonstrate my linguistic decision-making tree." An enormous, impossibly complex hologram sprung to life between them.

Supposedly, this kind of droid wasn't really sentient. Supposedly, there was no way it was being a pill right now because it didn't like Finn making its job harder. Right.

"Fine, fine, I get it," he said, and made his way to the infirmary. It was easy enough to find Kylo: he was the one under guard, the bed everyone else gave as wide a berth as possible. He struggled to sit up when Finn arrived, thrashing and scowling when he didn't have enough room to maneuver. "Tell them to remove these shackles," he hissed at Finn, raising his wrists to show off the thin plastisteel strips.

"Buddy, you're lucky they haven't wrapped you in ferrocrete head to toe and dropped you in the nearest ocean."

"They hurt." He sounded sulky now, of all things, petulant as a toddler. "I can feel the Force dampening, you know. The Force User Equitable Treatment Act of —"

Finn laughed in spite of himself. "Seriously? You're quoting Republic law? You're an enemy combatant. You don't even acknowledge the Republic's existence."

"I'm a prisoner of war. We have rights."

"Unfortunately," Finn said. "Since I really do think they should just drop you in the ocean."

For a moment, Kylo narrowed his eyes and Finn felt — strange. He felt like Kylo knew something, knew Finn was lying and knew he was scared, despite the Force-dampening manacles he wore. Or, he thought Kylo might have been about to say something important.

But an orderly came to fiddle with one of the monitors he was attached to, and Kylo only said, "I suppose it's your right to feel that way. I treated you poorly."

"You treated everyone poorly. It was kind of your thing." Is, Finn thought, fingernails biting into his palms.

Dropping him into the ocean would've been wrong, a horrible betrayal of Resistance ideals. But Finn, standing there faced with the man who'd once held his life in two cruel hands, who'd almost killed him, wanted to betray those ideals just then. He really did.

"But I treated you especially poorly, my dear," Kylo said, yanking Finn back to reality with his silky voice and ...

And his glances at the orderly, as though ...

Finn had been commended more than once for his ability to draw accurate conclusions based on scraps of evidence. It was a good quality for a solider to have. Right now, the scraps of Kylo's words arranged themselves into a horrifying picture: Kylo's own room on the Finalizer, coercion, twisted lust, all the forms of power that First Order officers supposedly weren't interested in when it came to stormtroopers. That had always been a lie. Stormtroopers had been subjected to all forms of abuse.

But not Finn. Only Kylo, right now, apparently wanted to amuse himself by pretending otherwise. By acting like he and Finn had been, what, lovers?

"That's sick," Finn said flatly. "You are a very, very sick man."

Something sparked in Kylo's gaze. "Yes," Kylo said. "That's what you told me before, too. You broke my heart."

The orderly dropped a swab.

"I never even spoke to you," Finn said. "What are you doing?"

He had never seen anything as sinister or creepy as the way the side of Kylo's mouth curled upwards in a half-smile. "Trying to win you back, FN-2187."

Cold stole through him. "Don't call me that. And don't try to summon me again."

"But you'll come," Kylo called at his retreating back.

No. No, he wouldn't.

He had to tell someone about it, of course. After worrying about it for hours, he went to Rey. "Oh my," she said when he related the story. "You'll want to tell the General, of course."

"That's what I was hoping, yeah. It's so —"

"Creepy." She wrinkled her nose. "And strange. Why would he try to convince anyone that you two were — like that?"

He'd never be able to tell her how grateful he was that she never asked him if it was true, that she automatically assumed Kylo was a liar. Fine, most of the Resistance wouldn't believe Kylo if he read a weather report, but Finn had seen the sidelong glances, the suspicious frowns. No one here knew what it was to be a stormtrooper, but they all had really active imaginations. He was sure if Kylo wandered around telling everyone Finn had been his — what? Boyfriend? — that people would believe him.

Ugh.

He dreamed about it that night. The other FNs watched as he prepared to go to Kylo Ren's private rooms. No one said anything, he felt himself sweaty with fear and a horrible, sick kind of anticipation. A Force user could make him want it, or think he wanted it, for long enough for him to be...compliant.

Long enough, and no longer. Finn's heart hammered in his chest as he walked down long, dark hallways, feeling the weight of Kylo Ren's desire pressing in on him, panic rising to choke his throat —

He woke with his heart racing, half-convinced he could hear whispering in his tiny bunk. Sweat stuck the sheets to his skin. He very nearly screamed.

That day, he dove into his work without even swinging by the canteen for breakfast. He let himself get lost in the tangle of wires, the spark of almost-rightness running through the broken-down ships. That spark could guide a tech to what needed fixing, if the tech paid attention. Machines weren't like sentients, but they weren't dead, either. The Resistance needed their ships to have as much soul as anything else on the base.

He almost forgot about Kylo, until the alarms sounded.

They landed in pairs, squadrons of stormtroopers flanking the entire camp. Finn had no idea where they came from; the First Order's cloaking technology was ahead of the Resistance's, but not by this much. They should have had safeguards in place; the First Order shouldn't have been able to find them at all.

He ran to fight, of course, but Poe and the other pilots stood with their hands over their heads, absolutely still. "What's going on?" Finn hissed.

"This is a retrieval mission," Poe said. "We're overwhelmed. So we're standing down."

Kylo. "They're here for him. He had a tracker?"

"It appears so. We'll have to evac after, of course." Poe swore. "I'd just gotten the still set up, too."

That really didn't seem like the biggest of their problems, just then, but Finn didn't argue. He stood with Poe, keeping his hands up, too, waiting for them to be gone.

He felt the cold and final tip of a blaster press behind his left ear. "FN-2187."

"That's not my name."

"It's your designation," said the stormtrooper. "And I've got my orders: get the Knight, get the boyfriend. Come on."

"Boyfriend?" Poe said. "Wait, hang on, what are you talking about — ow!"

Poe had been pistol-whipped before. He'd be fine. Finn, on the other hand...

"I won't go with you." He managed to will his voice not to shake, just barely. "I'm not going back there. Not ever."

"Suit yourself," the stormtrooper said, and shot him.

Blaster stunning never lasted long. He woke up as they dragged him to the ship. "No," he said. "No, no, don't do this, please don't —"

"My love, it's time for you to be quiet," Kylo Ren said. He fell into step next to the two stormtroopers who were dragging Finn.

"Don't call me that," Finn snapped. "What is wrong with you?"

"Hmm," Kylo said, and Finn felt the pressure of the Force at his throat, preventing him from talking, almost closing off his airway.

He closed his eyes and breathed. In, out, in, out. One, two, three, four.

The stormtroopers took them to the Starbane. Kylo's new ship, apparently: "A most welcome gift from the Grand Admiral," Kylo said with a sneer. Hux had given himself a promotion, it transpired, and done away with the title of Supreme Leader altogether.

Finn assumed Kylo was furious; he wouldn't know. He'd been deposited in Kylo's quarters as the ship took off, blindfolded and told to wait by a stormtrooper who sounded happy about getting the opportunity to tie up 'the traitor'.

The traitor, and the boyfriend. Finn was in so, so much trouble.

Kylo was gone long enough for Finn's fury to fade to impatience. He announced his presence, finally, by saying, "FN-2187. I missed you. Darling."

"First of all, that's not my name," Finn said. "Second of all: take this blindfold off. Third of all, no one, least of all me, is going to believe you mean it when you call me 'darling', so what do you think you're do —"

Fingers over his mouth, tight and unforgiving. Hot breath against his ear. Fear down his spine like cold water in the brig. "Silence," Kylo hissed, and kicked him, sending him sprawling to the floor.

It occurred to Finn that the whole lie might have been an excuse to get him here, on the floor and entirely helpless. The recycled air, the cool tile, the grey-and-black panels on the walls: it was all hopelessly familiar. It felt like coming home and it made him want to cry. The fact that he might now have to deal with Kylo's... attentions...on top of it all almost didn't matter. The horror of the First Order was so much greater than what one man, no matter how insane and evil, could do to him.

He turned to tell Kylo all of that, or at least part of it. But Kylo crouched and said, "Stop doing this. Stop making me — reject you."

"Reject, huh? Is that what you call kicking me?"

"I loved you. And you turned away from me. You ran, and I had to follow. I would do anything for you, but you must not reject me again."

"What are you even talking about? Can you hear yourself right now?"

Kylo met his eyes and held them. "You. Must. Not. Reject. Me. Again."

Click, click, click, went the bits of the puzzle as Finn pieced them together. He'd had a tracker: he had intended to get rescued if he was captured. But he hadn't meant for them to take Finn. Finn had been 'the boyfriend' for some reason, and now Kylo was telling him that he had to keep up the ruse, because —

I would do anything for you.

It had been important, somehow, for some reason. That was the threat. Kylo would kill him if he didn't keep up that insane lie, for no reason that Finn could see. He wasn't interested in Finn at all, not like that, but he was committing to the fiction that Finn was his — lover — and if Finn didn't go along with it, that was the end for him.

Son of a Sarlacc lover, Finn hated the First Order so kriffing much.

"Yes," Kylo hissed. "That's it. You burn with it, don't you? You're a fool, a perfect fool."

"Don't call me that."

"What should I call you then, FN-2187?"

"My name is Finn."

Kylo laughed. "Let's be reasonable, shall we? Your kind don't have names."

Finn closed his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cold floor. I will kill him, he told himself, and then he turned around.

"If you want me to be your beloved ex, or your lover, or whatever you're after: you'll have to call me Finn."

Another spark of something in Kylo's eyes, smothered again as soon as Finn saw it. "Fine. Finn. You broke my heart by turning traitor. I had become attached to how well you...augmented...my power."

"That's sick."

"It's the truth." Said with another one of those bizarre half-smirks.

"When I figure out what your game is, you are finished," Finn said, very softly.

"Of course." Kylo caught Finn's hand, touched the knuckles one by one. His touch burned like a fever. "Nothing pleases me more than seeing that spark of yours."

Finn couldn't imagine any response that wouldn't end in tears, or him being spaced, so he kept his mouth shut. Kylo made arrangements for the adjoining room to be Finn's. He implied to no fewer than six 'troopers that the door would stay unlocked so he could use Finn at all hours. He touched Finn's cheek in full view of Grand Admiral Hux, and laughed when Hux voiced his disgust.

He was playing a game, with Finn as his pawn. Finn had to look impassive, marginally willing.

Hatred burned within him like a star, long after the door of his not-private room was shut. He fell asleep with his fists clenched, and woke to silence. The door that would let him access the rest of the ship was locked. He had a holopad to order food and entertainment, and a closet of First Order uniforms that no stormtrooper would be permitted to wear.

It was very clearly a prison, couldn't have more obviously been so if the door that wouldn't open had also been covered in durasteel chains. Despite that, it was the most luxury Finn had ever been experienced on a First Order ship. That simple fact, his own relative freedom, kept throwing him back to how it'd felt to be a stormtrooper. His heard pounded; his head swam. He had to take several deep breaths through the fear that threatened to overwhelm him.

He wasn't one of them anymore, but he was trapped in a different, possibly even worse way.

After hours of silence, the door between his and Kylo's rooms opened. Kylo stepped through with his usual dour look. "Finn. Attend me."

"I thought I wasn't your soldier anymore," Finn snapped.

Kylo sighed, staring at the ceiling. A voice whispered in Finn's head: my room is not under surveillance. A pause, and then, like Finn might've otherwise doubted the source of the thought: You idiot.

"Not my soldier," Kylo said out loud. "But someone whose company I do still...require."

He couldn't have been more blatant if he'd thrown Coruscantian dildos at Finn's head. Finn got to his feet and followed Kylo into his room.

As soon as the door slid shut, Kylo whirled around and said, "Are you really this stupid? I was given to understand you tested exceptionally well, for a stormtrooper."

"Maybe freedom made me dumber. Or maybe I know how stupid it would be to just go along with this crazy lie of yours."

"They will kill you," Kylo said. "They may yet kill me, but they will certainly kill you first. If you want to die, by all means, rebuff my advances."

"Romantic," Finn said. "I can see why Rey was so into you now."

He scored a hit there: he got to watch Kylo flinch. It didn't really make up for how terrified he was, or strongly he suspected he might not survive another decade of captivity with the First Order.

"The bond doesn't matter now," Kylo said. "If you want to stay alive, then you'll do as I say."

Finn looked back at Kylo's bed, huge and flat with undisturbed sheets. He looked at Kylo. His mind presented him with a wide variety of suggestions regarding what exactly doing as Kylo said might involve.

Did he want to stay alive? Did he want it that badly?

The realization chased the question, nipping at his heels. No. The only thing he wanted that much was freedom.

"You'll do well with my mother's chosen stooges: they appreciate such idiotic impulses there," Kylo said. "I have no interest in forcing you to do anything, much less anything...intimate."

"Except you do want to order me around. And pretend we're — whatever."

"That's not forcing. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement."

"This whole thing is crazy." And he was tired of talking around it. "I'm not going to pretend to be in love with you just because you told a lie and don't want anyone to know you're a liar."

"It's not about pride. It's about life and death. My life, to be precise. And yours, as a consequence."

"What on earth is important enough about the First Order that you're willing to risk — never mind," Finn said as Kylo opened his mouth, "I don't want to know. I don't care." He looked again at the bed and then at Kylo, thought of his murderous hands and virtually unlimited power, and everything that could go wrong between them.

"Fine," he said, hating every minute of it. "I'll play along. But you can't touch me, not really. If you do, it'll be the last thing you do to me." Because he'd end his own life, he didn't have to say.

Kylo only rolled his eyes. "Somehow, I suppose I'll have to restrain myself."

Finn went to go back outside, then remembered the surveillance thing. "Will they expect me to be — gone, or —"

He wasn't going to say, are you a 'stay all night' kind of guy or a 'kick out the subhuman you used' kind of guy? — but he could tell Kylo was intruding on his thoughts again, based on the face he made.

"Stay if you want. I actually have to sleep." He tossed the covers back without ceremony, his cloak and tunic flying off him to hang in the corner.

It was a totally unnecessary display of everything: his power, his body. Finn looked away. "Fine. I'll take the floor."

"This is the biggest bed on the ship."

"Yeah, and it's full of the biggest asshole, currently." And he'd slept on worse than a floor that, unlike the stormtrooper quarters several levels below, was heated. He lay down, making a pillow out of his jacket, and forced himself to sleep.

It didn't really get better after that.

Finn rarely saw anyone else, but the people he did see were First Order officers. One of them looked at Finn, looked at Kylo, and said, "Really, don't you think letting it out of a uniform is going a little far?"

Kylo had established their whole fictional thing as affectionate. Finn didn't get it, but that incident was one time he saw benefits to it: Kylo smiled tightly as the air went leaden around them and said, "Frankly, Denbar, I think letting you in a uniform was going a little too far."

Denbar went very pale and didn't so much as look at Finn for the rest of his visit, which was how Finn preferred it. Insomuch as he was allowed to prefer anything. He couldn't have any holonet access; he had the books Kylo brought him, but he had terrible taste and seemed to think Finn would too, all weird long books about people having aggressive sex or incredibly dry military texts featuring way more Galactic Empire propaganda than Finn had ever seen, outside his own childhood education.

It sucked. And it sucked, too, that Kylo spent most of his time in his rooms, meditating or doing Force stuff and never, ever talking to Finn unless someone else was there to perform for. It wasn't like Finn wanted to talk to him, but —

He was lonely. And he wanted to escape, but it turned out that when people knew you'd escaped before, they watched you harder. He hadn't realized how much the First Order assumed stormtroopers didn't think. It would be hard to get down the hallway alone without catching a blaster shot between the shoulders, now.

"Don't try that," Kylo said sharply, and Finn realized he'd been broadcasting his thoughts. Or Kylo had been tuning in; Finn wasn't really clear on how that all worked.

"Nor should you be," Kylo said, still not opening his eyes. But to be clear, I can hear every tedious thought that passes through your still-stunted mind.

They were in Kylo's room, which meant Finn could say, "Maybe my mind would be less stunted if you'd bring me something actually interesting."

"I did. I brought you fiction. Dramas."

"Romances," Finn said, "full of people being thrown around and penetrated with the Force, which is, uh. Not my thing. And kind of gross."

"The rest of civil society disagrees with you on that point."

The rest of civil society wasn't regularly sharing a room with a deranged evil Force user. "Yeah, well, I'd like a book about — how engines work. Or how we grow food on-board. Or even just a story about something other than being Force-fingered."

He watched as Kylo's entire face turned bright red. "It's not Force— the descriptions of sex acts are tactful and restrained!"

"Sure," Finn said. "I guess you probably see way crazier porn, since you're evil and all."

"I — that does not merit a response."

Which was a response itself. Finn rolled his eyes. "I'm bored. I would be less bored if I could read something that wasn't weird propaganda, okay?" In the romance books, the Force belonged to the Dark Side and was used for sexy domination; that counted as propaganda.

Kylo huffed an angry breath, like a bantha presented with a steep hill. "Fine. I'll see what I can do."

The next day, he tossed a microchip at Finn's head. It contained two books on modern produce production, two books on the structure of the new compression circuit that powered faster-than-light communication, and a romance novel about an Outer Rim conman who discovered he loved being erotically dominated by a Sith Lord.

Kriffing Kylo. But four out of five was better than usual, so Finn spent the day reading. He got so absorbed in the descriptions of droid-built plant nutritive systems that he almost didn't notice Kylo coming into his room.

"Darling," Kylo said. "It's late."

"Sorry, what?" He looked up, then blinked at Kylo's lack of shirt and extremely fake-looking affectionate expression. "I got distracted. I should order something to eat."

"It's nearly halfway through gamma shift," Kylo said. "You're not likely to get anything but rehydrated protein. Which I already have, in my room. Where you should come. Now."

Finn spared a moment to contemplate the horrifying possibility that Kylo was actually trying his hardest to seem in love, or sexually obsessed, or whatever the story was. Maybe this was Kylo at his best and most romantically alluring.

Poor Rey. "Fine, I'm coming."

Kylo's shoulders relaxed as soon as the door slid shut. "I really wish you'd keep track of time better. I dislike those little performances as much as you do."

"I'm going nuts cooped up in these rooms, you're lucky all I do is get too absorbed in reading. You just don't like the First Order thinking you still have to woo a lowly stormtrooper, instead of me just being your willing toy." Finn snored. "Like in the books you give me."

"I told you! Those books are romantic! And half are produced in the Republic, you — ungrateful —" Kylo shook his head, looking away. "Anyway, I only got you one this time, and it's lowering to be seen in the market too often."

"You could just have them sent to my holopad, you know."

"Ah, yes, why didn't I think of that? Of course I'll open up your device with note-taking capability and an application called 'Diary' to the First Order 'net. What a sensible course of action."

Finn ducked his head, then did one better and dropped to his usual spot on the floor. "Like I don't know how to keep my thoughts to myself. You really don't know anything about stormtroopers."

Kylo didn't answer. Finn filled in his answer for himself: I don't need to know anything about the mud on my boots, FN-2187.

He was nearly asleep when Kylo gave his actual answer. "I'd let you tell me, if I thought you wanted to."

"Stop performing. There's no one listening." He barely got the words out, he was so tired. He slipped into sleep before Kylo could give another belated retort.

He should've expected the nightmares, really. There was a reason he tried to think about counting sheep, or hanging out on the Millennium Falcon with Rey and Chewie, instead of — everything else. Where he was, who he was with, who he'd been, and who he was now. Especially that last bit, because it scared him sometimes, how relatively easy it was to bide his time in First Order custody. He'd been ready to die for freedom, and he thought he still was, but —

"Stay with me," the Kylo in his dreams hissed, and Finn did, made helpless by the Force or his own weakness. A soft bed, food, things to read, and no freedom at all, but wasn't that better than it had been? Wasn't that better than dying righteously of starvation or a blaster shot to the head? Stay, hissed a vast dark force, and Finn thought, maybe I will, and then the snakes darted up from the pit and grabbed him, bites on his arms, on his legs, pain like fire in his limbs, like the only time he'd tried to talk back during training, you are no one, FN-2187, and I will demonstrate that to you however I must, broken arms, electric shock ripping screams out of him -

He woke as he often had, catching the breath in his throat before he could scream. The floor had gotten weirdly soft and warm — and then his sluggish brain caught up and realized that was Kylo's arm pressed to his side, and the pinpricks of light in the room were reflecting off Kylo's eyes.

Fresh terror rocketed through him. He held himself very still.

"Oh, stop it," Kylo said. "You were muttering. It was annoying. Now you're up here, and you can sleep without making a fool of yourself."

"I'm not — what?"

"'Where's the rest of my squad,'," Kylo said in a voice that Finn guessed was meant to be his. "'I'm so alone, don't make me sleep alone.' I had no idea the barracks were so luxuriously collegiate."

It would have been less embarrassing if he was wrong. But Finn wasn't awake enough to argue; his heart still pounded in terror, and he thought if he kept trying to talk he might cry. He rolled over instead, hugging his pillow, trying to ignore the mass murderer behind him.

He dreamed of his friends. Slip and the others, from before, but also Rey, Poe, Rose, BB-8, even Chewie, who probably made fun of him a little too much to really count. But in the dream they surrounded him, hugging him, reminding him of why he'd fought to be free. Why he'd finally really committed to the Resistance, not just for one friend, but so that people like him wouldn't have to be afraid anymore. In the dream, he knew he was just dreaming; it didn't feel real. But it felt like it mattered, all the same, right until he woke up.

Kylo lay curled around him, warmer than Finn had ever known a person to be. His arms were locked around Finn's waist, and he had been breathing on Finn's neck for awhile, judging by the gross dampness. Finn tried to move away, but as soon as he started rolling, Kylo's arms tightened around him.

Oh, come on. Finn pushed at Kylo's arm, careful to do it slow and subtle so that Kylo would stay —

"Go back to sleep. Go back to that dream. I liked it."

— asleep.

"I don't know what you were dreaming," Finn managed to say, "but you weren't in my dream."

"Warm. Nice." Kylo's clammy nose poked the back of Finn's head. "Who's Slip?"

It was like being thrown in ice water. Finn shoved Kylo away and clambered to his feet. "Don't ask me that again," he said, escaping to his room before Kylo could answer.

But he was lonely.

He'd never spent so much time with only his thoughts to occupy him. It was simultaneously boring and terrifying; he wasn't particularly interested in reliving the last time Phasma had beat the crap out of him, but that's what his brain queued up for him if he didn't keep it occupied enough. The books were great, but they weren't people, and Finn's mind still wandered sometimes. If it wasn't wandering to his past issues, it was stuck on Kylo, and in some ways that was worse.

He'd been so — not nice, not good. Nothing, really, except not-horrible and available. Nothing like being a captive of the First Order to lower your bar for human interaction, Finn supposed, but knowing it was situational didn't make him stop thinking about Kylo, wishing he had the guts to make Kylo share his bed again, wishing Kylo'd come back a little sooner in the evening so they had time to talk.

It was disgusting. He knew that. He wasn't Kylo's — whatever the First Order thought he was. He didn't even like the guy. But he was still marginally better, most of the time, than talking to the wall.

Sometimes, not so much. They'd been back with the First Order for three weeks when Kylo stormed in, clearly furious, snarling to himself and bashing his lightsaber at the wall. "Whoa, man, careful," Finn said before he could think better of it.

Kylo whirled around, brandishing his lightsaber at Finn. "You think you can tell me to be careful? You? You're nothing!"

Finn had been with the Resistance just barely long enough to get some background on what the Dark Side really was. He held up his hands and said, "Rage and pain, I get it. But I have to live here too, and —" he didn't quite glance at the cameras, let the space where he might've done so hang between them — "you love me, right?"

He watched as sense slowly crept back into Kylo's eyes. "I...find you satisfactory."

Finn watched, heart pounding, as the lightsaber deactivated. "Uh-huh. Good. Okay, then."

"Attend me," Kylo bit off, and stomped into his room.

For a second, Finn let himself wish Kylo only meant 'give me sexual favors', and not, 'put up with my tantrums and lie for me'. Giving Kylo a handjob might be one of the grosser thoughts Finn had ever had, but at least it would be over faster than this whole thing.

The bedroom door slid shut behind him. Finn watched Kylo take off his robes and then his tunic, and that was — a lot of muscles on his back, very broad shoulders, which Finn already knew. He did. But he wasn't usually made to look at Kylo's back immediately after thinking about giving —

"You do remember I can hear every tedious thought that flits across your profoundly damaged mind, don't you?"

Finn blinked. Kylo hadn't turned around yet; he stood with stiff posture, blotchy red spreading across his shoulders. Finn wanted to look away, and found he couldn't; how could Kylo be this sensitive to someone thinking weird stuff, when he could hear thoughts all day long?

"Yours are more obvious. Than others'."

Weird. Finn took a step back without thinking, then shook his head at himself. "Put a shirt on. I don't actually want to jump you."

"I'm well aware," Kylo said, his tone stiff and pissy, his lips pursed. "But I could do without graphic thoughts about my — about us —"

Wow, Finn thought as Kylo struggled and failed to finish his sentence. It really did matter to him.

Finn had thought about it more casually. Handjobs, kissing, he'd done all of that and more in the barracks. People had needs, and he'd had friends there.

But Kylo...maybe Kylo hadn't.

"I'm going to sleep now," Kylo snapped. "You should too."

For a horrifying second, Finn thought about doing something really crazy, like offering to help Kylo deal with his tension. Like asking him if he was being weird about it because he'd never felt someone's hand on him, or their mouth.

Kriffing hells, get it together, Finn told himself. He lay down on the floor and stared at the ceiling. Normally, he could will himself to sleep easily; it was self-defense more than anything else.

Tonight, he heard the chime signaling the start of the next shift before he even started to feel sleepy.

It all went to hell the next day, and it was Finn's fault.

Kylo was in the middle of some political bid. Finn didn't know any details and hadn't asked him to elaborate, since any First Order politics were just the machinations of monsters. He was really absorbed in cellular hydroponic theory when his door slid open and Kylo led some First Order goon inside.

"Darling." His smile was an angry slash of too-thin lips. "It's so lovely to see you."

Finn panicked a little. "Love — muffin," he made himself say. "Um, hi."

Kylo's eye twitched, but the First Order officer with him smirked. "You've trained him well, I see."

What would the Resistance say? Finn wondered with awful clarity of mind. What would they say if they saw him standing here, complying with Kylo's demands, weak and cowardly? He'd told Poe that he wasn't one of them, not really. What he'd meant was that he'd barely felt like a person, and he'd needed to learn how to be one before joining up with a cause.

Now he felt like a person, all right: a pathetic one. If Poe could see him now, Finn thought, he'd be disgusted. And Finn would deserve his contempt.

"I have," Kylo said, much too late — long enough for Finn to come back to himself and realize the First Order officer was looking between them with what seemed to be the beginnings of suspicion.

"I wonder what else you've taught him to do." The First Order officer looked Finn over again, eyes lingering on him in a way that made Finn realize, with sudden horror, that he might be asked to —

Perform.

"I'm sure you do," Kylo said coolly, and the officer laughed and looked away.

After that, Finn's job was just to be ornamental, basically, a humiliating task that he'd had to get good at these last few months. He thought they might finish out the night without anything else dramatic happening, right up until the officer said, "I have to know: if he displeases you, can you just toss him out an airlock, or is there paperwork?"

The air in the room went very still. Kylo's face froze for a minute, and then his eyes narrowed. The First Order officer smirked, said, "Come on, it's just a —"

"Do not speak," Kylo said, and Finn watched the officer's face go red as his jaw slammed shut.

"I have worked very hard to bring my beloved back into the fold," Kylo said. "I could not, and would not, toss him out an airlock, as you say." The officer began rising in the air. Kylo watched him with disinterest, like it wasn't his power levitating the guy, choking him. "I would have no such compunctions about you."

"Need...my support..." The officer choked out.

"I've changed my mind. Goodnight." The door at the far end of the room slid open. The officer hurtled across the empty space, landing with a crash in the hallway. Finn thought he might've heard bones breaking, but the door slid shut again too quickly for him to check.

"Attend me," Kylo said, and stomped into his room.

Why was he so angry? Was it a challenge to his control, someone threatening Finn? It couldn't be his concern for Finn's safety; Finn was well aware, every awful second of the day, how little anyone on this ship cared about him. But — why, then?

Well, he wouldn't get answers waiting out here. Finn followed Kylo into his bedroom, waiting to hear the click of the lock before saying, "Why —"

He slammed against the wall of Kylo's bedroom, and Kylo followed. For a moment, Finn felt completely paralyzed, his legs held in place by Kylo's bulk, his arms held in place by — nothing, he realized with growing panic. There was nothing at all there, except for the Force, except for Kylo's power. Oh, kriff, was he going to kill Finn right here?

"Shh," Kylo said. He screwed his eyes shut, his face going a dull, mottled red. "Just...don't speak for a moment. Don't do anything."

Finn didn't want to get thrown across the room, so he stayed silent. He suspected that if he tried to speak, he wouldn't be able to, anyway; Kylo had that kind of power. He took a moment to let the stormtrooper-fueled repression slip, just enough to think about the massive unfairness of all of this. Why was he here? Why didn't Kylo just have him killed? Was this going to be the rest of his life, stuck in two tiny rooms, vulnerable to Kylo's every whim?

"Stop," Kylo said wildly. "I told you, I can hear when you do that. Why can't you just — stop."

"Yeah, I can't stop thinking," Finn said. "That's not how any of this works."

"I can't do this," Kylo said. He stepped away. Kylo was shaking, Finn realized, his hands trembling, his breath coming in huge bursts. "Leave me. Stay in your room. Don't look at me, don't think about me."

For a moment, he felt only anger, and he knew Kylo sensed it too: he stiffened, his eyes darting to Finn and away again. Finn didn't care. He was furious.

"Don't even think about ordering me to 'attend you' again," Finn snapped, and left.

The fury didn't die down. He paced his room for awhile, glared up at the cameras, tried and failed to read the books Kylo had brought him. Books he only had because of Kylo's indulgence. He hated it. He hated it! He'd tried so hard to ignore the fury, and now that it had broken free, he couldn't stop feeding it. It screamed through his mind and his body, until he felt like he might fly to pieces if he didn't direct it at something, or someone.

He sat up, looked around, trying to find — something — he wasn't sure what. Something to throw? To destroy? The anger wouldn't stop building in him, and he hated it, he hated — he needed — he —

The door at the far end of the room slid open with a quiet snick.

He acted without thought, racing towards it. He was out of the hallway before it occurred to him that he didn't even have shoes — but who cared? He wasn't going to chance that the mechanical malfunction would fix itself in time for him to get dressed. He crept down the hallway, dodging the few people he saw with relative ease. He knew how to move around a ship without being seen. And this was an Imperial-class ship: he knew where they kept the escape craft, too.

Two more floors down. One hallway with no nooks to hide in if someone saw him. He raced down it, then stopped outside the shipping bay, trying to calm his racing heart.

All he had to do was get to a ship. No one had bothered to take out his ident chip, and these ships didn't check for validity, only that you could interface with them. If he got to a ship, he'd be very, very hard to stop.

"What exactly do you think you're doing?"

Finn looked at Kylo, standing in the doorway of the shipping bay. How long had he been following him? It didn't matter. If the only way to freedom was through Kylo, Finn was just going to have to take his chances.

He charged the door. Kylo stepped aside — Finn nearly fell, overbalancing. "I asked you a question," Kylo said, like Finn hadn't just tried to kill him. "I expect an answer."

Finn broke out in a quick walk. A few techs milled around. He found himself thinking, don't look at me, don't look at me. "I'm escaping," he said tightly. "You should let me. I know you don't really want me here."

"Too late for that," Kylo said. "All they'll have to do is look at the tapes. I could force you, you know. Knock you out and drag you back."

Finn knew. "You wouldn't."

"You have no idea what I'll do."

He didn't have time for this. "Look. Are you going to knock me out and drag me back? I can't stop you. I know I can't. So if you are, you should just do it now, because otherwise, I'm taking one of these ships and I'm going back to my friends."

"You — I — seven kriffing hells, may the Force bury your soul," Kylo hissed, and then he turned in a swirl of black and marched over to one of the ships.

Finn stared for one, two, three heartbeats, trying to understand what he was seeing and failing utterly. Was Kylo escaping too? Was Kylo helping him escape?

Get in the kriffing ship, Kylo hissed in Finn's mind.

And no, he didn't have time to worry about Kylo's motivations. So he ran to the ship and flung himself into the pilot's seat, activated the shields and got them out with alarms blaring — a smoother escape, all things considered, than he'd accomplished with Poe, even though Kylo wasn't helping even a little bit.

It wasn't until they hit open space, en-route to the Resistance, that he let himself realize what he'd done. He'd stolen Kylo Ren from the First Order. Kylo Ren was — his prisoner? His responsibility?

Oh, no.

Chapter 2

This time, they took Kylo directly to a high-security cell, and he spent the first two sun-cycles in a dead zone: no cameras, no microphones, no droids, only him and his mother, alone behind a heavy durasteel door.

She summoned Finn to her office before the rumor mill had a chance to tell him she'd finished. He sat down across from her, and she stared at him with exhaustion in her eyes.

"General —"

"Finn," she said quickly. "I'm so sorry."

Finn blinked.

"You should never have been put through that. The fact that you were a prisoner of war, captured on my watch, held by my son — you have every right to walk away from us, and if you choose to, you'll be provided with everything you need to start a new life. You have my word."

She wasn't wrong, but something about how she said it — the way her hands were clenched on the desk, maybe, or the genuine upset in her gaze — made Finn feel awful. "I hadn't meant to join the Resistance," he said, and watched as the General flinched. Okay, that hadn't been the best thing to say. But it was true, so he forged on. "I just wanted to be free. I wanted to — be a person, one who didn't have to kill anyone."

"I have contacts on several Inner Rim planets, and Core planets as well. We can set you up with a farm, or a city apartment if you'd prefer."

"Hang on." Way to go, Finn, order a legendary general around like it's nothing. "Sorry. I just meant —"

It felt like the world was wobbling all around him. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and then opened them again. "I didn't mean to be a rebel. At first. But I am, now. And I'm going to keep being that. I escaped, and it's not — I mean, it's not fine, it was terrible. But I'm still a member of the Resistance, and I don't think you'd be offering Poe Dameron hush money if he'd escaped a First Order prison."

Her expression didn't change much, but Finn had learned how to read people when they had no expressions at all, so he could tell she was surprised and a little embarrassed. Well, good, he thought, and waited.

"That's true," she said. "I apologize. Again. I suppose I'd better debrief you."

"I was debriefed, actually. They should've sent you the file."

"Indeed. I'd like to ask you a few more questions about particular parts of your account."

It occurred to Finn, way too late to be useful, that she'd probably spent the last couple days seeing the worst and most private parts of his time as Kylo's — whatever he'd been. Or how Kylo had seen it, anyway. "I tried to be — appropriate. I didn't always succeed."

"Being a prisoner of war isn't easy even when you're not being required to uphold another's subterfuge." She sighed. "Honestly, Finn, I could see that you didn't want to play along even through my son's eyes. And I'm not worried about that; you did what you needed to survive. But we've got Ben locked up and have tried every method of getting the truth out of him that we have, and he's still spent the past forty-eight hours swearing that he's defected."

"He's defective, all right," Finn said, and then the substance of what she was telling him caught up with him. "Um, that's not what he told me."

"No. He appears to have had a...change of heart."

Yeah, right. "General, with all due respect, that seems really unlikely to me."

"You're not the only one. Finn, I was in there for three days. I barely slept. When I left the room, he was observed by the best med-droids we have. No heart rate increases, no signs of Force activity that indicated contact with his master."

"Snoke's dead," Finn said without thinking.

"He told me." She narrowed her eyes. "He managed to conceal from me that he told you, too."

"So, that's that, right? He could be lying to you. You just admitted. He probably is lying, he probably has another tracker stashed somewhere —"

"Finn." Chagrin crept through the General's voice. "I didn't explore my son's thoughts about you because they're obsessive and unpleasant, and unlikely to contain anything of value from a military intelligence standpoint. Please don't make me elaborate beyond that."

Finn thought of Kylo's shoulders, then, the broad bare expanse of them, and how red he'd turned when he'd sensed Finn's thoughts.

Right. Ew. "Sorry."

"It's fine. Things happen when you're a prisoner of war; I'd have gone half-crazy, myself. But the fact remains that absent strong evidence that he is, in fact, lying, I have to treat his claim of defection as true."

"He's still a criminal, though." Right? He'd overseen the destruction of entire planets.

"That's not for me to decide. I'm still his mother." For a moment, the facade cracked. She was exhausted, Finn realized, and so, so sad.

"General, you called me here for a reason." He squared his shoulders. "Tell me what I can do."

She grimaced. "You're going to regret your good heart, Finn."

It only took Finn two hours to decide she'd been right.

The thing was, the General had explained, Kylo was fascinated with Finn. His intention to defect warped around Finn like light curved around a star. "He barely feels anything for me," the General had said wryly, "but you're provoking, apparently. He's fascinated."

Finn had expressed his horror, and to his relief, the General had agreed. Then she'd delivered the bad news: Kylo's regard, or obsession, might be inconvenient and frankly gross. It was also the best way to ensure he —

"Listens," the General had said, grim-faced. "Behaves. Doesn't fly off the handle at the first provocation and try to kill someone."

Finn hadn't said no, even though the General had encouraged him to. He'd agreed to be the resident evil-Sith babysitter. But then he'd had to actually go and find Kylo, which led him to his current situation: staring at Kylo as he refused to enter the cafeteria, wondering how long he could realistically go without eating before he turned Kylo in to the guards himself.

"Seriously, what do you think is going to happen?" Finn said. "They all see you and shoot you at once?"

"That's the more optimistic version of my concerns," Kylo said, somehow managing to sound both stuck-up and constipated.

"Okay, well," Finn said, and then his mind went blank. "— well, I'm hungry."

"How persuasive. I shall abandon my concerns for my own bodily safety immediately."

"No one's going to shoot you, you baby."

Kylo's lips tightened, whitening around the edges. He didn't respond.

This was ridiculous. "Okay, well, I'm going inside. That tracker they put in you will zap you if you try to leave the grounds without me, so. You can sulk out here if you want." Finn threw up his hands — just to make his point, which was that Kylo was ridiculous, had always been so, and was now being extra ridiculous — and went to join the line for food.

Kylo followed. He probably wasn't willing to go hungry; he liked to pretend he'd had it hard, Finn thought a bit spitefully, but skipping a meal was probably totally foreign to him. No one shot at him, as Finn had promised. In fact, no one looked at him at all, in that really specific way that meant the gossip about his release had already flown through the base. Finn did what he always did, setting his jaw and doing his best to look uncaring, even as he led Kylo over to one of the few completely empty tables.

It was only when he sat down, and Kylo sat down uncomfortably close, putting his tray down and wrapping an arm around Finn's waist, that Finn finally understood exactly why he was so nervous.

"Are you kidding me."

Kylo flinched. "Why can't you just go along with it?"

"Why can't I just go along with my friends thinking I'm dating a dangerous war criminal? Huh. Not sure. I'll think about it later, alone, in my room, which I don't share with you, because we were never anything and you're a ridiculous liar."

"You're embarrassed," Kylo said softly, his eyes searching Finn's.

"You don't need to use your Force powers to figure that out."

"But if it's not true, why be embarrassed?"

Because for a second back on the ship it had sort of felt true. "Having you this close to me is inherently embarrassing. Go around the table or I'll leave. Then everyone will really know the truth."

Annoyance emanated off him in waves, but he stood and moved to the other bench, stiff-shouldered. Gazes flickered over to them, then moved away. Great, Finn thought. Well, at least Rey would protect his reputation. "Are you lying about defecting? Your mother doesn't think you are."

"Why, in the name of a thousand star destroyers, do you think I'd tell you, if I were lying?"

"That's a dumb swear. And I don't know. I figured there was no harm in asking."

"You can tell when people lie."

"I can read faces, yeah. You know they quiz us on that kind of thing, right? They'll beat you if you're wrong too often."

"When you're in your second year of training, yes, I'm aware."

It was kind of — not interesting, Finn thought fiercely; nothing this asshole did could possibly be considered interesting. But it was kind of remarkable, how still he held himself, how carefully he watched Finn.

"I'm glad stormtroopers being science projects is interesting to you," Finn said. "It sucked for me. So tell me if you're lying."

"I defected," Kylo said. "I no longer wish to serve the First Order. My loyalty lies...here."

He'd been about to say something else. Finn knew it; he could feel it, the same way he'd feel a breeze on his face. But whatever he'd been about to say — it wasn't a lie, he thought. Not quite. Phrasing, maybe.

But he really had defected. That part was true.

"I can't believe this," he muttered.

Kylo raised a single brow, a maneuver he'd almost certainly practiced an embarrassing amount. "Can't you?"

"No, I can, and that's the problem. You know what your mom told me?"

"If I wanted my mother's opinion on my every movement, I'd talk to her directly."

"Well, I'm your babysitter now." Finn stabbed his meat with a little too much force. "That's what she told me. At length."

"I'm aware."

"Then why —"

"Finn, buddy! What's up?"

Finn blinked up at Poe as he and Rose sat their trays down on either side of him. "Um, hi?"

"Ben," Poe said, not even looking at him. It was a good choice on his part. Kylo didn't look good when he blushed.

"How's life?" Poe jostled Finn collegiately as he sat down. "Now that you're back, you'll be flying shifts with us, right?"

"Oh. I hadn't thought about it."

"We always need an extra hand in the maintenance room," Rose said. "Especially since I was out for so long, the backlog's huge."

Finn glanced at her, barely managing to stop himself from falling out of his chair when he saw how hard she was glaring at Kylo. He'd never seen her look that mad before, not even back when DJ had betrayed them.

He shoved the thoughts of fire and screaming out of his mind. "I'll keep busy, I'm sure."

"Of course you will," Kylo said, his usual snotty voice somehow worse than ever. "You were just talking about all the extensive babysitting duties General Organa has laid out for you. How exciting for us both."

"Nursery shifts, really? Wouldn't have pegged you for the — oh," Poe said, "Oh, no, really? Couldn't they have gotten Chewie, or, I don't know, a droid?"

"Or a cell block camera," Rose said tightly.

Finn really wondered how Kylo didn't react to her glare. He wanted to run away from it and it wasn't even directed at him.

I have long practice with ignoring the anger of lesser beings, Kylo whispered in his mind.

"Hey." Finn kicked him. "Stop that."

"The psychic trick, Ben, seriously? I figured you'd grown up since that camping trip we took with Chewie."

Why would that make him blush even harder? Finn hated this. At least if Rey were here she'd smack Poe and make him stop being cryptic. "Anyway," Finn said loudly, "I'm not sure how much time I'll have, but if I do have time, Rose, can you show me how the new compressor tech's coming along?"

"Oh. Yes." Her expression thawed as she looked at him. "I figured out how to do the proton recycling. You should see it — we're coming close to full energy recycling."

Kylo snorted.

"Excuse you," Rose said.

And that definitely wasn't an invitation to give his opinion, but of course Kylo didn't pick up on that part. "I'm not surprised you want to flirt, but surely you don't expect anyone at this table to believe you've invented a perpetual motion machine in your downtime?"

Bad move, Finn thought as Rose's jaw clenched. "'Close to' is not 'have achieved', which you'd know if your creepy death cult taught you basic science. We're at six nines right now, close to seven."

"Very impressive," Poe said. "Probably classified too, though."

"I've defected." Kylo said it the way Senator Mothma might've said 'I killed him'. "You can say whatever you want in front of me."

"Not quite whatever I want," Poe said with another unpleasant smile.

Kylo huffed a breath, sounding like nothing quite as much as an angry bantha pup. "You can find me when you're done here," he told Finn, and stomped off.

It didn't escape Finn's notice, the way everyone in the cafeteria followed his swirling tan robes and looked right back at Finn. Really, they should just let him wear his evil-guy gear. He was doing everything short of using the Force to look Kylo Ren-y anyway. And the tan robes looked kind of weird on him; they emphasized his gangliness and blotchy complexion, and made him look big in a weird way, almost too wide.

Kylo exited the cafeteria, and Finn realized all at once that he'd been staring after Kylo like —

Like —

"He was lying the whole time," he blurted out. "We weren't dating — or whatever. We never were. Obviously."

"Obviously," Poe said lightly. "What's going on with you, buddy?"

"I wish I knew." He gave into temptation and buried his face in his hands. "Everything's just gotten really complicated."

"There there." Rose patted his back. "You're not the first person to have to deal with all his weirdness."

"He and I used to be friends," Poe said. "There's at least as many rumors about that, I promise you. Rebels just don't have enough to do."

"The First Order's known for giving us downtime," Rose added.

"Plus, if he keeps giving you a hard time, we can get Rey to come back from New Alderaan and wallop some sense into him. I have it on good authority that she'd love to."

Which meant that Poe'd been holo-calling her. "Uh huh. She's back soon anyway, right?"

"Couple days," Poe said. "With the information we need to hunt Hux down, hopefully."

Finn felt ice creep down his spine. "He's gotten really powerful. Somehow."

"He doesn't seem like the type, but then the First Order loves their spittle-flecked jackasses." Poe leaned in and hugged Finn, tight and hard, until Finn felt a little less like he was staring down the barrel of a blaster. "Seriously, this assignment sucks, but it'll probably be short-term. The General would never keep someone she likes on babysitting detail for long, much less a Resistance hero."

"I'm not —"

"You are," Rose said firmly.

"Well, now you are, too," Finn said, and watched her blush.

This was nice. This was so nice, and normal, because no one was talking in his head or slamming him against walls and threatening to sexually kill him.

It just would've been nicer if he'd been able to stop thinking about Kylo for more than a few minutes at a time, that was all.

His life was very boring for a few days. He got to see Rose's system, which was as brilliant as promised. He did a few sentry shifts and a few fighter repair shifts. Throughout all of it, Kylo hovered in the background, a scowling testament to the Resistance's generosity.

Or stupidity. One of the two for sure.

He expected the summons for himself before it came, but when the protocol droid said, "The General asks me to remind you to bring Kylo Ren with you," he couldn't hide his shock.

"What, did you think they'd let their best new weapon moulder to dust?" Kylo said.

"I had kind of hoped so, yeah." This was a terrible idea. But it was also an order, and while the Resistance might be shockingly lackadaisical about military structures, you still had to do what General Organa told you to.

"Come in, shut the door behind you," the General said when they arrived. She was paging through a holopad and looked —

"What's wrong?" Kylo said sharply.

For a moment, the line of the General's shoulders tensed. Finn readied himself to defend her — or maybe just shove Kylo out of the room — but she looked up with a neutral expression and said, "Sit down for your mission briefing and you'll find out."

It turned out Rey was having trouble in New Alderaan. "You sent her by herself?" Finn said. "Seriously?"

"She's well versed in Jedi mind-influence, and —"

"Has a temper," Kylo said. "As I recall."

"New Alderaan is relatively free of people as irritating as you," the General told her son. "But, well, she appears to have had some trouble with a First Order loyalist."

"And now she's in prison," Finn said. They'd gone over it once already, but he was having trouble imagining — or accepting — what she told them.

"New Alderaan is not technically a First Order controlled territory, nor is it a collaborator planet. Not yet. But the First Order whisked her off before my contacts could retrieve her. They have money and power, and they framed her very well."

Kylo sniffed. "I hardly think a brand new Jedi apprentice ranks enough for them to bother."

"I didn't bring you in here to coddle your pride. She ranks."

"So, how can we break her out?" Finn said into the awkward silence. "I'm guessing New Alderaan's got pretty good, um, security."

Three hours of going over prison schematics followed. The Resistance had a wide variety of gambits they used for this kind of problem, but New Alderaan posed some special challenges: Rey was in the Underground, a high-security prison almost a mile beneath the planet's surface, at the center of the continent's biggest, and most heavily surveilled, city. The First Order had eyes pretty much everywhere, and while Finn and Kylo could try disguising themselves, they couldn't possibly get into the Underground without revealing themselves.

"Ah," Kylo had said. "This is where I come in."

Kylo could misdirect attention for the crucial time it would take them to get into the Underground disguised as guards. One of the General's contacts would get them the jobs — the actual jobs, the General had explained, were much easier to come by than fake ident cards. The First Order was filling up the Underground with alacrity.

"We're expecting you back, with Rey, within three weeks or so. Any objections?"

And Finn hadn't been able to think of any. Which was why, barely two hours later, he was sitting in a transport shuttle with Kylo, trying to pretend he wasn't freaking out.

"Calm down," Kylo said as they launched into hyperspace.

"Why should I?" Finn said. "This is crazy."

"This is what you joined the Resistance to do."

"First of all, don't sneer like that. I'm talking about the fact that I'm doing a mission with you. The mission is fine. It's great. I love it."

"You love your Rey being in prison?"

"That's not what I meant! And she's not mine, so stop looking — like that." He'd known Kylo had a thing for her, but the way he was scowling just now made it really, painfully obvious.

"Mmm." Kylo looked him up and down in that judgmental way that Finn was convinced he'd practiced, and disappeared into the cargo hold for the rest of the trip.

They had an apartment all set up for them already. The General had waved aside all of Finn's concerns about the believability of their cover story: best friends and roommates, looking for gainful employment while they tried to make it in the red-hot New Alderaanian holodrama business. On the bright side, every time Finn thought about Kylo portraying Rizi the smuggler-turned-prince, or F930 the droid in a human body, he had a good laugh.

On the not-so-bright side, he had to share a tiny, ultra-secure, one room apartment with Kylo for as long as this operation took.

Kylo clearly didn't love it either. Finn could practically feel the discomfort radiating off of him. "Look," he tried, "I could sleep in the building atrium."

"Oh, yes, where everyone can watch you, and observe any inconsistencies in your behavior. What a brilliant idea. You're truly the best soldier they could possibly have sent with me."

"What exactly are you trying to imply? You're here with me. I'm the one rescuing Rey, not you."

He'd thought Kylo was sneering before, but that was clearly way too optimistic: now, his face twisted hideously, expressing exactly what he thought of being here with Finn. "Your hero complex won't help in your efforts to woo her, FN-2187."

Hearing the designation felt like a slap. It always did, and Kylo knew it — Finn could feel his satisfaction, that vicious desire to be cruel. Somehow, knowing Kylo was acting on his own pettiness made it worse.

"You know what, you're right. I'll take the floor. Nothing I'm not used to."

The room really was tiny, but Finn managed to avoid looking at or talking to Kylo for the rest of the night. He was so tired, and so — stressed, maybe, was the word for it. He had forgotten what this felt like, the element of danger and exhaustion that came from doing something dangerous, or being under someone else's control. He had signed up for this — he was a rebel — he wasn't a prisoner, the way he had been before. He kept reminding himself of that, even as he bunked down and tried to sleep, drawing on the old mental techniques he'd used back with the other FNs.

He wasn't a prisoner. He wasn't a prisoner. If only he could convince his brain to agree.

They'd need a few days to establish a cover before going out and looking for work. Finn did his best not to think about what those few days might mean to Rey — how cruel the prison might be, how well she was keeping her spirits up.

Kylo, unbearable though he might be, was also a good distraction. Whenever he got worked up about something, or thought he was being overlooked, he practically vibrated with it. He had plenty of opinions on his mother's new home planet, the food, the entertainment, the culture.

"Holodramas," he sniffed one afternoon as they went over the prison schematics again. "I can't believe my mother thought that would be a good cover for us. Can you imagine me catering to some shopkeeper's idea of entertainment?"

"Yes," said Finn, who had in fact repeatedly imagined just that. "It's funny. Also, I'm hungry, so put your snobbery aside for a second and help me figure out what to order."

"I have no preference."

"Humor me." Finn had mostly only eaten rations, or whatever unlabeled protein-and-vegetable combination they served up in the Resistance canteen. He couldn't hop on the 'net to look up what the items on the available menus were, given the safe house's security.

"Oh, fine." Kylo moved to sit next to him, scowling down at the holopad. "What kind of food do you like?"

"You know," Finn said. "Stuff?"

Kylo stared at him. For once, Finn had no idea what he might be thinking or feeling. "Try this." He tapped an item without looking away from Finn. "Yellow meal, soaked and steamed around seasoned meat. You'll like it."

There was on reason to feel embarrassed about that, Finn told himself sternly. But he had to look away. He felt exposed in new, weird, awful way. "Well, okay then," he said, and placed their order.

The delivery came only a few minutes later. Finn checked the comm and saw domed metal: a droid. He opened the door.

The codebreaker who'd sold him and Rose out strolled into the room, tossing his weirdly-shaped hat in the hallway and saying, "Hey, kid."

For a moment, Finn felt so angry that he couldn't breathe, his whole body felt frozen in amber. Then he heard Kylo snarl, "You," and watched in disbelief as the codebreaker slammed against the wall and began clawing at his chest, his face going mottled purple.

"Kylo! Stop!"

"He sold you out."

"Yeah. To you, because you were evil," Finn said, "so maybe don't call the kettle black and also don't kill someone, we have a mission and it's not killing the codebreaker!"

"DJ," the codebreaker coughed as Kylo dropped him to the floor. "You can call me DJ."

"Yeah, that's not going to happen," Finn said, even as Kylo snarled, "Get out before I rip you throat to belly."

"Big words, big threats," DJ said. "Hmm, not too scary though. Not you." He adjusted his collar. "Relax...I'm here on. Official business."

"Whose official business?" Finn said before Kylo could snarl more threats.

"The Queen's," DJ said, then snorted. "Not quite. Leia. Princess...Leia. She sent me." He produced an ident-chip before Finn had time to ask for it; Finn fitted it in his wristband and felt his heart sink when the hologram flashed, confirming the General's own signature and thus DJ's veracity.

Well. Possibly. "Tell me why I should believe you didn't just con her into sending you here."

For a second, so brief Finn nearly missed it, DJ looked absolutely, bizarrely serious. "Kid, tell me straight. Ever seen someone con Leia Organa?"

Kylo sighed. "My mother is not known for gullibility."

It was true. Or at least — according to the books Finn had read — not since she was very young, at least, one and a half wars ago. "Fine. Why did she send you?"

DJ shrugged. "Breaking into a prison with a Force junkie and an idealist. Maybe she thinks you need — backup."

Backup in the form of a career criminal really didn't seem like the kind of thing the General would do. Finn was about to tell DJ exactly that when Kylo hissed, "This is exactly like her."

He couldn't hide his disbelief. "The General? Seriously?"

"Deceit, lies, rash actions, allying with fools, all in the name of the Light, as if the Dark doesn't crave such actions —"

"Okay, okay, calm down." Kylo was bright red, and Finn knew from experience — way too much experience, actually — that he wouldn't stop if he wound himself up into a good rant. "Fine, your mother sent him. What exactly can you help us with?" he asked DJ.

"You think the prison here is — bars, underground. Easy to get into." DJ tapped two ringed fingers together. Click, click, click. "Not true."

Finn thought again of Rey underground, alone, thinking no one would come for her. "Fine." He sat down at the desk, pulled out a recorder. "Talk."

Two hours later, he understood just how close they'd come to being set up.

The General had gotten extra intelligence after they'd gone dark. The security measures that she'd planned for had trebled over the last two months, and the guards themselves were —

"Bribed," DJ said after his third drink, "to look the other way when some so-and-so high up in the ranks decides to have some fun — see?"

Finn did. He wish he didn't; he wished he could sit there in concerned ignorance, instead of having a vivid image of all the horrible ways that they could be hurting Rey, right now, with Finn being totally incapable of doing anything about it.

Yet. Because DJ had more intel about the hiring process, the fact that it excluded anyone who wasn't a dedicated First Order loyalist — but he also had an in.

"You can't just hire all the thugs who roll in ready to salute to General Hux. You need paperwork, meaning — contractors. And yours truly has a contract."

Finn was about to agree to work with him, because what else could they do? The General had confirmed DJ wasn't lying, and they had no other contacts that could get them into the jail as quickly as DJ claimed he could. It was worth a try, at least, he told himself.

"What's in it for you?" Kylo said in a tone that could have frozen Mustafar.

"The Resistance will pay for the return of their pet Jedi." DJ smiled, all teeth. "That's the goal. Partner."

Kylo turned to Finn like DJ wasn't there anymore. "We can't trust him."

"I know that better than you do." He managed not to flinch, barely, as his mind put him back on the bridge of the ship, Hux glaring at him with contempt. "But unless you're hiding some major tricks up your sleeve, he's our best shot."

"Oh, he's got — tricks, all right," DJ said.

"Shut up," Kylo snapped. "You're really that desperate to get her out?" The last directed at Finn, half incredulous and half angry.

"She's valuable. You know she is. I don't care if you hate her —"

"She tried to kill me —"

"You deserved it!" Breathe, Finn told himself. "Anyway. However you feel, however I feel, we have to get her out. She's too powerful for the First Order to leave alone for long."

Finally, an argument that sank in. He saw it as it happened: Kylo's nostrils flared, and he glared at Finn like Finn had personally attacked him, but he knew Finn was right. After a long moment, he nodded and turned to DJ. "Fine. Explain the plan."

"You're not the logistics guy. The Princess told me." DJ stabbed a finger at Finn. "You're the guy. Let's talk uniforms, huh?"

It all fell into place quickly after that. DJ got them uniforms, and Finn got himself hired.

("You got that face", DJ had said. "That trust-me face. This one doesn't." Finn hadn't bothered defending Kylo's honor.)

But they couldn't break in simply by both of them posing as guards. No, DJ had been very clear on that point. "You, they don't care about," he'd said, stabbing a shaking finger at Finn. "But you, little Organa, they'll recognize. Unless you rearrange the bones in your face a little more. Or unless you're going in where no one will check."

It turned out, prisoners were useful: their labor produced all the smaller parts of a First Order ship that were prone to breaking, and their presence kept the tentatively held city afraid. And so, guards could just take prisoners in, without much explanation at all. Without a facial scan, or a blood check, or anything.

He could just toss Kylo in among all the murderers and prisoners of war and leave him to fend for himself.

The thought had definitely occurred to Kylo. He'd agreed to the plan — he didn't have much of a choice — but he was practically rattling out of his robe on the way to the prison. They'd hired a speeder for this little outing, leaving DJ in the tiny apartment under the Resistance base's surveillance. Finn put Kylo on the floor, cuffed, and left him there, avoiding looking at him even as Kylo's frustration and nervousness wormed its way under Finn's collar.

He was just so — present. All the time. It drove Finn crazy. And it was especially bad now, as they parked in front of the prison and Finn took hold of the shock cord attached to Kylo's cuffs.

"Keep your cool," he muttered to himself. He'd done this kind of thing before. And, okay, he'd been captured doing it recently; but that didn't mean he wasn't generally competent. They'd be fine. They would be.

If only Kylo would stop projecting his nervousness, and making Finn even more nervous by extension.

"Calm down," Kylo muttered through gritted teeth. "You're practically sending a dark-wave signal to Coruscant. They'll see right through you."

"You calm down," Finn shot back, and then they were standing at the entrance to the prison, and Finn had to focus on the lie.

The prison was somehow more awful than Finn had prepared himself for, and he'd done his homework.

The First Order wasn't messy. The hallways were as clean as anywhere else; no agonized wails cut through the duracrete walls. But behind every clear cell wall sat another pair of hollow eyes. They were in solitary, all of them, cut off from the outside world. It was torture, and some of them had been there since the very beginning of the First Order's resurgence, almost a decade ago.

Every pair of hollow eyes could have been Rey's. Finn stayed focused because he had to, but he felt like every single cell in his body was screaming to be free.

They let him pick a cell for Kylo, laughed about it. It was terrible security, Finn reminded himself as his stomach curdled in horror, to trust the uniform and his ident-card over longer-term protocol.

And it was just inhumane and terrible. That too. But it gave him a chance to look for Rey, and watch Kylo, until Kylo gave the nod-and-tap that signaled he'd managed to locate her. Finn chose the next empty cell and shoved Kylo in it.

"Stay there for awhile," he spat. "Think about what you've done."

Kylo looked up at him with huge, dark eyes, and didn't respond.

Finn looked for the fear. It should be there, somewhere; there was no way, no matter what he told Finn, that he trusted him completely. He had to have a lurking suspicion that Finn might take hold of an opportunity and just leave him. Hell, Finn had thought about it more than once, for all that he'd never, ever do it. All Kylo knew was that Finn had been a stormtrooper, and now he hated the First Order. He really should be afraid.

Finn couldn't find even a speck of fear. Kylo gave off an impression of placid annoyance, like Finn had interrupted his vacation to try to solicit funds for an orphanage.

He must just be really good at hiding it. Finn took a note of his cell number one last time and then stalked away.

He didn't see Rey on his way back out, even though he wandered as much as he could without looking suspicious. It was hopeless and he knew it; that was why they'd brought Kylo, after all. He could find her in the Force. Finn was there to be the brains, not the Force-muscle. He knew that, and he wasn't jealous.

But he was — he had hoped —

Don't be stupid, Finn told himself viciously.

He expected the guards' break room to be like a scene from a holodrama, full of vicious bullies and cruel laughter about the plight of the victims. Instead, it had a funeral atmosphere. Even the people their intel had identified as First Order loyalists didn't look happy to be here, and they were only twenty, maybe thirty percent of the workforce overall. Everyone else...

New Alderaan, Finn thought as he ate his rations. It was a weird place for the First Order to try to control. The General had dismissed it as pure delusional hubris, and having met Hux, Finn couldn't blame her. But —

But, if Finn were going to take over a prison on a planet with lots of resources, he'd choose somewhere on the Outer Rim. A rich mining planet that was already under oligarchy, say, or one of the many resort moons. He wouldn't pick a planet populated by refugees from the last war, who'd hate everything the First Order stood for.

Two-thirds. At least. Two-thirds of this prison would liberate the people put in by the First Order. Looking around, Finn felt more and more sure of it; the evidence was all around, in the way the First Order loyalists sat together, in the scowls the other guards wore as they maneuvered around that table. This whole place was a pile of tinder, ready to blow.

Even two months ago, Finn would've had a different outlook. He'd have been planning how best to grab Rey and run, before things got really dangerous. Now, he could only think of how the Resistance could leverage this to their advantage.

He didn't get a chance to talk to Kylo until late the second day. He had a phony list of things Kylo needed to be questioned about, and he pulled out the first item — intel about a mine near the Western Reaches — to get Kylo alone, in an unmonitored interrogation room.

"How's the job?" Kylo said lightly.

"Wouldn't you like to know." Awful. Depressing. But judging by the look on Kylo's face, he guessed those missing adjectives.

"Not particularly," Kylo said. "I've found her."

Finn's heart thumped in double time. "Where is she? Is she safe? Did you talk to her?"

"Two floors up and eighteen cells down, yes, only through the Force, briefly, before she told me to kriff off." Kylo looked annoyed again. "Really, she ought to be more grateful for rescuers."

Finn wanted to say she will be, when it's me, but he didn't even want Rey to be grateful; he didn't want her to think she owed him for the simple act of bailing her out of a tough spot. He just wanted to wipe that look off Kylo's face.

Super healthy, that impulse. "I doubt she's had an easy time of it."

"No." Kylo didn't look like the prospect bothered him. "However, she is hale and healthy and hasn't been beaten or otherwise harmed. She's learned to control others' actions more predictably, she tells me."

His tone made Finn think that Rey might've communicated that fact via some choice threats. He had to fight down a laugh at the thought. "Well. That's good."

"I'm sure you've had time to work out the logistics of organizing an evac."

They'd talked about this, too. Kylo and Rey could use the Force if they had to; the prison had Force-dampening tech in place, but it wouldn't be enough against the two of them. Of course, that would also blow the 'stealth' part of the op.

Finn had gone into this assuming they'd have to do it anyway. He felt Kylo's shock like a wave crashing into him when he said, "I have, actually."

He went over the prison's issues: the seething resentment, the lack of crowd control. Kylo's gaze sharpened with every sentence. "You're talking about a riot."

"Yep."

"We've quelled riots before, you know."

"The First Order has only been able to put down riots when they're in small, controlled areas. If you riot in a prison on Jakku, where will you run to? But New Alderaan is densely populated —"

"And full of Resistance supporters. Yes. I see your point." He frowned into the distance. "It makes me wonder why they put the prison here to begin with."

"To try to trap the General," said Finn, who'd been putting himself in Hux's shoes as much as he could stand. "It's her home world — well, sort of. But she's pretty much guaranteed to have stronger feelings for it. And Vader destroyed Alderaan, so this probably acts of a reminder of that, too." When he thought about it, all laid out like that, it made a horrible amount of sense. "They were probably hoping she'd overreact to Rey being captured. It's not exactly a secret that she's got the General's favor."

"My mother was never very skilled at deception."

Finn thought that was a little unfair; she was just so good at other things that her slight imperfections were sometimes overly obvious. "Right. Well, that's probably why, and if we can get Rey out and make a mess for the First Order without them realizing we've done it, that's a win for us."

"For us." More staring with exhausted, dark eyes. "Yes."

"If you want to re-defect, now would be a great time," Finn said. "Throw off your prisoner's rags, yell, 'I'm Kylo Ren and I'm here to save the day!'. Beat me up, maybe."

For a moment, the air in the room chilled, and Finn regretted even trying to clown around. "I would never leave you," Kylo said, staring holes in Finn's forehead.

The creepiest part about it was, Finn actually kind of believed him.

"Well," he managed to say. "Same. Not generally, but right now, anyway." He grabbed the cuffs Kylo'd worn to the interrogation room and offered them to Kylo. "We should get back, though, before anyone notices. Anything."

Get it together, Finn told himself, then almost swallowed his tongue Kylo held his wrists out.

"It's a bit difficult to fasten them myself," Kylo said, looking up at Finn.

Finn needed to talk to someone, a doctor, maybe several doctors, about the way his heart tripped in his chest then, how hard it became to breathe. This was ridiculous. Five minutes ago, Kylo had been forcibly cuddling him while scheming with his evil buddies, who were the reason they had to rescue Rey to begin with. He didn't like Kylo, and Kylo didn't like him, regardless of what had happened back on the Starbane.

But right now, as Kylo gazed at him, he saw only trust. Well, and annoyance. But mostly trust, deep in Kylo's eyes, as he watched Finn like he'd never think to look anywhere else.

Maybe they should stay on New Alderaan; Kylo was a better actor than Finn had realized before. Keeping that fact firmly in mind, he re-cuffed Kylo and led him back to his cell.

They'd start the riot the next day — or at least they were going to try. Finn had a whole evening to himself, and while he normally would've been glad about it, tonight he felt restless. Not quite afraid, but not excited either.

This could be a massive blow to the First Order. They kept quite a few valuable prisoners here, and the prison-duty loyalists were just that: loyalists. The First Order wasn't exactly known for its recruiting prowess; the reliance on stormtroopers alone made that obvious. It could be a huge win, more than a recon-and-rescue mission. They could get Rey out and grab a military victory for the Resistance. All Finn had to do was stay focused and execute his part of the plan.

He dreamed of Kylo in those cuffs.

This time, Kylo lay naked on a massive, plush bed, his arms above his head. He strained against the cuffs, muscles stark under his skin. It must have been for show, though, because he looked at Finn with lazy satisfaction, as though he'd been the one to plan this.

"Come here," Kylo said. "Please."

Finn felt rooted to the spot. Kylo's chest was broad, his hips oddly bony, and his cock — it was right there, flushed as much as the rest of him, hard and obviously wanting. Wanting Finn.

"I'll beg if I have to," Kylo said. He hesitated, then, licking his lips like —

Like he wanted to, Finn thought, and his half-awareness that this was all a messed-up dream faded away.

In the dream, Kylo held him tight, looping his restrained arms around Finn's waist like he couldn't imagine doing anything else. In the dream, light filtered through gauzy curtains as they kissed, much more tenderly and carefully than Finn had ever kissed anyone while awake. In the dream, Kylo went down on him and was glad for it; he stared at Finn with that intense look of his, made Finn promise he wasn't touching anyone else, didn't want anyone else.

In the dream, Finn sobbed, "No, just you, just you," as he came down Kylo's throat, and when he woke with his heart pounding, so hard he could scream from it, he worried it might be true.

So Finn had barely slept. But on the bright side, he was in a bad enough mood to single-handedly start a riot, if he needed to.

DJ had gotten the message Finn had sent him before bed. He'd deliver the exploit thirty minutes after Finn's lunch break. The code was tiny, but nasty: it would unlock exactly one cell door. Kylo had said it should be his; Finn had picked one of his neighbors, a man named Corin Velspar, jailed for six counts of aggression and terrorism against the First Order.

"They'll find a way to get footage of the first person out. The exploit will leave a trail," Finn had said. "But a revolutionary will free everyone on his block, and then we can go get Rey."

Kylo had agreed, probably because he had no choice, and so Finn sat playing cards down the hallway from Corin and waited for his signal.

The blaster bolt through the other guard's head hadn't been the agreed-upon signal. But the other guard was a First Order loyalist, and Kylo held the blaster, looking at Finn with another one of his deliberately-unreadable expressions.

"Let's go, then."

They barely made it down the first corridor when they heard the shout. It reverberated through Finn's skull, incorporeally universal in the way only the Force could be. Rebels, to me! For the Resistance! Fight!

"Hey, I think Rey got herself free."

"You think?" Kylo snarled, and they raced off together to find her.

When she saw Finn, delight suffused her expression — followed immediately by rage when Kylo followed up behind him. "Kidnapper! Scum —"

"Later," Finn said, "No, I agree, but — later. We're here with the Resistance. Again." He passed the General's token over.

For a second he thought Rey might ignore his assurances and try to kill Kylo anyway. She looked half-gone — like she'd looked in Jakku, actually, rail-thin and on the grim edge of panic, furiously frightened.

"Finn," she said, a thin line of awareness breaking through her terror.

"Yep, that's me." He reached out a hand, feeling his heart flip in his chest when she took it. "We're here for you, Rey. To bring you back."

"He's —"

"It's a long story. But he's on our side, I swear."

Her eyes searched his. "You'd know if he wasn't."

Finn felt profoundly unprepared to make promises like that, but he knew better than to explain that to Rey in her current condition. "Yeah, of course."

"We have to go," Kylo snarled. "Now."

She didn't hit him or try to kill him. She followed Finn silently, radiating menace, as they left the prison. Finn had expected more of a fight, but most of the prisoners were in the same boat they were. They didn't even see a guard until they hit the last set of doors.

Kylo dispatched of the guard as Finn stepped outside the signal exclusion zone and called DJ. "We're ready for evac."

"Good thing, too, I was getting bored." A roar of engines and the shuttle lowered in front of them. Rey hopped on without a backward glance; Finn yelled, "Kylo, come on!" and waited to bring up the rear.

And then they were off: mission accomplished. Finn's heart was pounding, his jacket drying stiff with sweat. He hated going undercover, he hated worrying that Rey had — that she'd —

"Are you okay?" he said quietly as they jumped into hyperspace.

"He feels like a liar," she said, staring at the back of DJ's head.

"I am — a liar, sweetheart," DJ called back.

"He helped us," Finn said. "I mean, we're paying him to, or so I hear."

"He betrayed you."

Finn had been thinking about that; of course he had. But normally Rey had more restraint than to pluck memories out of his head. What exactly had happened to her?

"Nothing," she said. She turned to look at him, effectively shutting Kylo out. "Only — almost. That's all."

"That's not 'only'." Finn leaned forward and hugged her, feeling her slump against him. It was so good, comforting, the kind of gesture of friendship that Finn hadn't even realized he desperately needed until he'd defected.

When he opened his eyes and moved away, he saw Kylo glaring poison. Kriffing hell, Finn thought, doing his best not to scowl. "That guard, did he get any eyes on us?"

"He did. I removed them."

"The datachip, or —"

"His head."

Finn should have known better than to ask, really. "Right."

"Did you have to bring him?" Rey said.

"Kind of yes," Finn said. "But, you know, soon we'll be back with the Resistance."

She perked up. "And then he'll be gone?"

"Um."

"You know, I like the Resistance," DJ said. "I saw this great holovid, had the Princess in it, she looked fine as a midsummer's rain."

"That's my mother!" Kylo howled.

If you'd told him two months ago that he'd be grateful for DJ's interference, Finn would've told you what sewage to go swim in. Now, he slumped back and let the argument wash over him.

Because: he had known that Kylo wouldn't be gone. Literally, of course, but also for Finn specifically.

After the mission, Kylo was no longer officially in need of a babysitter, but Finn found him turning up everywhere anyway. It was embarrassing, really, for both of them. Finn wanted to shoo him off, like you might with a cat that had bad manners. Kylo hung around Finn while they submitted their mission reports; he followed Finn to meals and to flying drills and even managed to get himself attached to Finn for his shifts on watch. Rey had calmed down after a few days out of the prison — "meditation and lots of food, mostly", she'd told Finn — but when she saw Kylo hovering behind Finn, she scowled like he'd just told her he'd be joining the Coruscant Centrists.

"I can't help it," he told her one night, after her glares had led Kylo to announce he'd be going to bed early. "Or, I mean, I could. But I don't want to? I'm sorry."

"You want him to hang round you like mold on a Hutt?"

"Well. No. But when he's around me, he's not off being evil." And Finn could keep an eye on him, which he did feel weirdly responsible for doing.

Rey's face went through a series of very upset expressions. "Finn. You must know that's not your job."

"You're the one who said you think he's the key to the Resistance. You told me —"

"I know what I said." She snapped it, a bit, her cheeks going red. "And I know you're an incredibly good person who cares about the cause. But that doesn't mean you have to be the only person standing between Kylo and the Dark Side. You don't have to let him harass you. We've all seen how he acts, how he pretends that he — that you two dated."

"That he cares," Finn said. "Is that what you were going to say?"

"That he wants you." Rey made a face. "Honestly, Finn. I'm not sure he's capable of real feeling, aside from anger. The Dark Side warps you like that."

Finn knew he was, but none of what he'd learned would be very good evidence. Kylo's care, his regard, whatever you wanted to call it, only arrived wrapped in anger and selfish fury. He felt so cheated by the world, so determined to keep on being wrong and shitty, and Finn —

Finn couldn't blame Rey, really, for briefly thinking he could be the Resistance's salvation. He wasn't thinking on that kind of scale, but he still wanted Kylo to be better than he was, kept having to remind himself that he was only dreaming.

What Finn really wanted was a guy who pulled him close in the night, like Kylo had done, but not under threat of death, and without immediately doing something awful afterwards. He'd never get that from Kylo. But he could, at least, prevent him from being worse; when he did that, he was also helping the Resistance in a very real way. So it was a win-win.

But when he tried to explain that to Rey, she only shook her head, looking sad and worn-down and way too wise. "That shouldn't be your lookout. You deserve so much more than that."

"Well, yeah, I know. But who in this galaxy gets what they deserve, right?"

She snorted. "Oh, I can think of a few people I'd like to deliver just desserts to."

Finn nearly cheered at the chance to change the conversation. "Hey, yeah, speaking of. Let's talk Hux."

So, it wasn't as bad as it could've been. Rey didn't think he'd been replaced by an infiltration droid, and Poe seemed almost to enjoy having Kylo around. They'd been friends once, or Poe and Ben had; Kylo had stiffly informed him that Ben was dead and not coming back, and Poe had only said, "Sure thing, pal," and then made fun of his hair for twenty minutes.

Finn had expected Kylo to break the whole cafeteria but he'd just sat there and taken it. Like that was something he liked, being ribbed by the Resistance's — and his mom's — favorite pilot. But then, Finn thought late one night, when he should've been doing anything but lying awake and thinking about Kylo — but then, no one in the First Order would have dared to treat Kylo like he could be teased. Like he was a person.

He never, ever let Finn treat him like that. Just as a random example.

So, Finn was maybe in too deep, maybe had a weird fixation that he wasn't quite able to shake. But he thought Kylo might be getting better, that he might be ready to stop being Finn's shadow, right up until some jackasses from Corellia cornered Finn in a hallway and put a blaster against his throat.

They managed to say, "Infiltrating 'trooper scum," before they were both thrown against the opposite wall with a sickening crunch. Finn snatched the blaster before it hit the floor.

Charged and ready to kill. Great.

"Kylo," he said, not bothering to try to find the shadowed alcove he'd be hiding in. "Let them go."

"They were going to kill you."

It might help, Finn thought, if Kylo sounded upset when he said it, or worried. Instead he just sounded cold, possessive, like he had back on the Starbane. This wasn't about Finn or his safety at all; it was about Kylo and his imagined sense of possession.

Sickening. "You can't go around killing people just because they almost did something stupid. That's not how it works. Let them go."

"Rather die than lick 'trooper boot," one of them snarled.

Finn felt a flash of pure rage, as all-encompassing as the center of a black hole. It wasn't his anger. "Kylo. No."

He didn't think it would work, especially not when the other guy said, "You think he'd let a 'trooper order him around like a dog?"

But then they both dropped to the floor. Kylo stepped out of the shadows, closer than Finn had realized he'd been, and said, "Finn, I apologize for my behavior. You two: leave. Never touch him again."

They'd barely had a chance to scurry away when Kylo turned on his heel and marched in the opposite direction. His cloak billowed wildly; Finn could feel the snarl he didn't let out, the blows he didn't deal to a wall. He was furious.

At who? Finn?

"Hey, wait." Finn jogged to catch up. "Thank you? I guess? For not killing them."

"I want to. I might, when you're not paying attention."

"But I'm paying attention now."

"Semantics." Kylo stopped dead in the hallway, whirling to face Finn. "You're just like her."

"What?"

"She thought she could...fix this. Fix me. Make me a better man." Kylo's lip curled in a sneer. "I'd expected you of all people to know differently."

For a second all Finn could do was stare. But Kylo seemed to be expecting an answer, and Finn wanted to set a few things straight. "Yeah, I don't think you're going to be a better man. I grew up with the First Order, remember? Rey wants things to be better — she needs them to be. I can see things as they are. People, too. You're a crazy, evil, bad dude. For some reason, I can maybe keep you from being the worst possible version of yourself. So that's what I'm trying to do. You're not going to stop me with the whole holodrama shouting routine."

For a moment the hallway rang with silence. Kylo didn't move, didn't sway forward or back up, so they were almost — but not quite — chest to chest as he took a deep breath, nostrils flaring, hands twitching at his side.

Move, Finn told himself. But he couldn't.

"For some reason," Kylo said finally. His voice was too quiet, too steady.

Move! Finn shouted at himself again. His heart hammered against his ribcage and his breath came in double-time and he didn't, couldn't, move. If he shifted so much as a toe, it wouldn't be away from Kylo; he'd move forward, inevitably, horribly, and learn for himself what Kylo's furiously flexing hands felt like.

"Go kriff yourself," he finally managed to say.

Kylo's eyes widened. He looked at Finn — really looked, like he could see down to Finn's guts — and then stepped away. The bizarre tension between them eased, and Finn took a step back, too, feeling like he hadn't been able to breathe since his would-be killers had run off.

"Tell the General about this attack," Kylo said.

"You tell her," Finn said.

He didn't turn; he didn't run. Kylo, though, stiffened, his shoulders braced like someone might tackle him. He brushed past Finn, marching down the hallway in double time.

Finn knew that march, that posture. He knew it all. He should be sickened by it. Instead he wanted to follow Kylo, push him against the wall, take him apart. Understand him through his heartbeat and the trembling of his hands, if he couldn't do it the normal way.

He didn't sleep that night.

"What's he done to you?" Rey said at breakfast.

"Nothing," Finn said, too quickly. Then he remembered himself: "Who? I have no idea what you're talking about."

She raised her eyebrows in that Jedi-y way she'd been practicing. "I don't," Finn said, but even he could hear how defensive he sounded.

"Sure," Rey said. "But, while we're on the topic: what has Kylo Ren done to you, Finn?"

Finn had learned to recognize when Rey had absolutely no plans to give up. So he told her, trying to downplay the weirdest parts of the night: the moment when he'd almost kissed Kylo, the bizarre tension between them. But that made it worse, because when he finished, he realized he'd just told a mostly boring story about Kylo defending him from some assholes.

Not really the impression he'd wanted to give.

"That's not all," Rey said as soon as he stopped.

"Well. I mean. It's all I want to talk about."

Rey's eyes narrowed. "Did he hurt you?"

"No!" Oh, kriff, was she assuming -

"He didn't exactly seem like he'd be gentle, you know, in bed."

"Rey! That's not funny!"

"Who's joking? It took me weeks to get used to the idea even of you letting him hang round. Poe had to give me all these audio courses about boundaries and respecting your friends' terrible choices. But I still sort of thought maybe he was just mind controlling you." She looked hopeful at the idea, which -

"That wouldn't actually be preferable."

"Ugh, I know."

Finn couldn't really blame her, because he'd thought something similar when he'd found out about Rey and Kylo's Snoke-fuelled Force bond. "Anyway. He's not mind controlling me, and he's not my — whatever." He couldn't even make himself think it. "But things are still kind of weird."

"Understatement of the era," Rey muttered.

Finn had no way to defend himself against that, so he didn't. He ate his breakfast and went on his perimeter shift, and when Kylo joined him halfway through, neither of them brought last night up.

For awhile, Finn thought they could just go on like that, carefully stepping around the many, many things they might fight over or mutually freak out about. His days went back to normal — mostly, almost.

Then Victory Night happened.

No one knew who'd named Victory Night. The Senator who'd introduced the bill to commemorate the destruction of the Death Star had said the date was 'popularly known as Victory Night', which didn't make any sense to Finn, because the Rebellion hadn't won then, and weren't they still fighting now? But popular terms apparently didn't care about logic; the Senate had declared Victory Night a holiday, and everyone, even the General, called it that.

It was a day marked like any other holiday, with feasting and drinking and dancing. The engineers had brewed up some kind of alcohol that tasted a bit like Tatooine grain liquor mixed with Lomin ale. Meaning, a little sweet and a lot like the inside of a speeder fuel cell. Finn had two drinks before his throat stopped hurting from it.

They were celebrating, though, and for once Finn felt light, happy. Optimistic, even. The Resistance had opened up the camp for the festival; what had once been practice grounds or tactical outposts became the site of huge bonfires, and service droids moved between clusters of people, passing out snacks that almost didn't look like they'd started out as ration packs. People played dice and flew kites; a couple droids projected a lightshow onto the cloud cover. It was nothing like the First Order's militaristic marches, and Finn loved it, found himself giddy with the messy spectacle of it all.

He started the night with Poe, but before long he found himself sitting next to Rose. "Be honest," he said, lifting his glass of whatever-it-was. "Did you have anything to do with this?"

"Me?" Rose widened her eyes as the other engineers laughed. "Of course not! Do I look like a moonshiner to you?"

"I'm pretty sure you're whoever you want to be. And I know you're creative." Finn smiled at her.

It made her stutter a little, get a bit more flushed, which was fun. Funny. Finn knew so many good, nice, attractive, brave, heroic, normal people.

He didn't want to kiss any of them at all.

"Maybe I had a little to do with it," Rose finally admitted, setting off another round of drunken laughter.

Finn wanted to stay longer, get a recipe out of her, but he found himself distracted by — a fly? No. An animal? Off at the perimeter — he could feel it, bright as a bonfire. It could be a security problem, he reminded himself, and pushed himself up on not-quite-steady legs. "Be right back," he told Rose — but she wasn't looking at him anymore. She was giving off affection in waves, looking at -

DJ? Seriously? Finn looked around, trying to see if anyone else was picking up on what that starry-eyed cross-camp gaze meant -

Then another wave of not-quite-right hit him, and he remembered his original mission. Security! Perimeter. Right. He walked off into the darkness, towards whatever it was.

The weird feeling moved away as he walked towards it. Frowning, Finn changed his tack, trying to circle around instead. But then the thing just moved in the opposite direction. It knew Finn was there and it was avoiding him. Why?

By now he'd ventured far into the weeds, on the edge of the forest that surrounded the Resistance base in all directions. "Hello?" he called out. "Who's out there? I know you're there. Show yourself!"

"You ran into the woods, unarmed, to what purpose, exactly?"

Of course it was him. Of course. "Trying to hunt down a creep. But hey, surprise: I found him."

Kylo stepped out of the shadow he'd been lurking in. Multicolored moonlight played over his face. "What did you see?"

"Excuse me?"

"I should have been entirely invisible. What did you see?"

For a moment, Finn wanted to lie. The truth wasn't worth the tantrum he was pretty sure Kylo would throw. But if Kylo had been invisible, through technology or the Force, then he might realize Finn was lying anyway. He had a lot of powers. Sneaky powers. "I felt you. Didn't see you. I could feel something weird, I thought it might be a threat, and I came out to investigate."

"Without a weapon."

"Well. I'm drunk, too."

"And tell me, FN-2187, what can you feel now?"

Anger, warm and comforting, sparked along his spine. "Don't call me that."

"Why not? It's the first name you were ever given."

Brown eyes, gentle hands. Scraps of memory Finn wasn't even sure were really memory, impressions of impressions that he might have invented as a lonely, frightened captive.

"It wasn't. Don't you dare say that. You of all people should know better."

"Me of all people? Ben Solo grew up with parents who loved him. A home and a family."

"And you still ended up like this." Finn waved a hand to encompass Kylo's whole — deal. "Big jerk. Wonder what that says about you."

Fury, fresh and clean, broke like a wave around him. He blinked and found himself pressed back against a tree, Kylo looming in front of him.

"You can feel that," Kylo hissed. "You felt me. Surely you must know what that means."

Finn blinked, heart pounding, and didn't reply.

"You're a fool," Kylo said, and Finn —

Fell.

Distantly, he knew he still stood upright, fingers curling against bark. But that knowledge played a distant second fiddle to the maelstrom Kylo had pulled him into. Fear, rage, pain, anger, every possible dark emotion, rushing over him in a torrent. He didn't realize he'd cried out until someone came running — until Rey shoved Kylo away from him, snarling, "Touch him again and I'll kill you myself!"

"I didn't hurt him." Kylo didn't just sound calm. He sounded distant, uncaring.

"I can feel his pain, you absolute —"

"It's only an echo." Now he sounded amused, but still in that awful distant way. "I thought you knew, and were just ignoring it. Silly me, expecting so much of a rank newcomer to the ways of the Force."

And Rey — who, in Finn's opinion, definitely should be immune to stupid Kylo's stupid bait by now — faltered and said, "Knew what? What do you think I'm ignoring?"

Kylo turned and looked at Finn.

Small. Smaller than he'd been when they took him, so small he didn't think in words, only vague impressions of sound and light. "Our son," said a woman, her voice far away. "My precious star in the sky. I will always love you."

"Stop it! Stop it!" Finn swung, barely missing Kylo. "Why would you — stop!" He scrubbed the tears off his face, restraining a sob. That couldn't be a memory. There was no way. But —

But it felt like it had been, and he couldn't stop himself from falling to his knees and gasping in huge breaths of night air, fingers curling into the dirt.

"I barely had to push." Again the sneering voice, the deliberate indifference. "He's drunk and he's wide open for anyone who might decide they'd like to have some fun."

"And that's what you call making him cry? Fun? You piece of Jakku scrap." A hum: Rey had ignited her saber.

No, Finn had to stop this. He pushed himself to his feet, wiping shaking hands on his thighs. "Rey. Wait."

"Why should I?"

"He's not —" That bad? No, he was, at least right now. "- wrong. About the, about what I can feel. I'm sorry. I should've said something earlier."

She turned to look at him in disbelief, flushed, eyes wide. She was drunk, too. And Kylo — Finn would eat his boots if Kylo was sober. Great. They were all about to do really dangerous stuff, completely trashed on some engineer's ultra-fortified droid-cooked hooch.

"We need help," Finn said. "All of us. But me, obviously. And..."

Brown eyes, staring at him. A language he thought he remembered. They needed someone who understood the Force, but Luke Skywalker was dead and Finn really didn't want either of the hotheads in front of him teaching him basic hyperdrive physics, much less anything to do with the Force.

Eyes. If you live long enough, you see the same eyes in different people.

He was drunk and terrified, out of his mind with soul-numbing fear, and maybe that was why he said it. "Maz. The person Han took us to. She can help."

"The bartender?" Kylo said.

"Oh, Finn, that's a wonderful idea!" Rey said, and threw herself at him for a hug.

She was so drunk. They both were. But she'd also turned on a dime emotionally, and now radiated love and joy and calm, all the things he'd never felt from Kylo. He suspected she was doing it on purpose. So he hugged back, held onto her until he felt Kylo leave.

He didn't think they'd actually do it, of course. When he sobered up the next day, he thought he'd had a really weird night, with some uncomfortable revelations that may or may not be true — because they were drunk! Who knew what being drunk could do to a guy or his weird sixth sense?

That delusion lasted as long as it took for the General to issue him a summons.

"Whew, what'd you do?" Poe said.

"Nothing! Or, well." He paused for a second to gather his thoughts, and the pilots — famous for basically requiring you to have a disciplinary record to join up — ohhhh'd as one.

"Good luck, tiger," Poe said, and laughed as Finn flipped him off and headed for the General's office.

He wasn't particularly surprised to see Kylo there, slumped in a chair and glaring at his mother. But Rey standing in the opposite corner, glaring at everyone, could only mean one thing.

"It was a mistake," he said. "We were all drunk and really stupid."

"So I've been told." The General waved at the empty seat in front of her desk. "Please, sit. I get the feeling you're not going to like this."

"Finn," Rey said, low and urgent. "I didn't tell her. I would never betray a confidence like that."

"I know. Don't worry."

"Well, I didn't say anything," Kylo said. "I never think about you. Why would I?"

"Really?" the General said. "That's your gambit?"

Finn watched in horrified fascination as Kylo turned redder than his old saber.

"At any rate, my son isn't completely lying: he didn't tell me. Nor did Rey, and no, Finn, I didn't question you and then make you forget about it." She said that gently, like the Resistance's intel was better than Finn had realized. "Maz called me. She wanted me to put you and Ben on the next ship out to Takodana."

Finn's mouth went dry. "What did you tell her?"

"There aren't Resistance ships going out to Takodana. They're officially neutral, unofficially treacherous." The General cocked an eyebrow. "And this is where it gets interesting: she told me Takodana might suddenly take an interest in the Resistance, if they had a liaison."

"You're going to make me a liaison." Not really a question, because the General was right: Finn did need the chair he currently sat in. He felt dizzy with the whole idea. "And I'm going to — what am I going to do?"

"Learn some control, so my son doesn't treat your brain like his teenage diary anymore."

"Finn can travel with Rey, then," Kylo said.

"Yes, that sounds wonderful," Rey said. "Great idea. I agree with Kylo. For once."

"Maz insists on the two of you. According to her, understanding how you read my son so easily is key to helping you."

"Stop saying that!" Kylo burst out.

The General looked over at Kylo, making it obvious: turning her whole body, placing all her attention on him. If she'd done that to Finn, he'd've been terrified, but Kylo only scowled harder.

"Are you not my son?" the General said. "I'm aware you'd have me believe you killed Ben Solo, but a parasite doesn't live in you, and Snoke's influence is gone. I'm inclined to think you're still my son, misguided and rotten as you may be."

For one horrible moment, Finn had the urge to defend Kylo. That more than anything else made him say, "Okay, okay, enough. I — we'll go. Won't we?" he said to Kylo.

Kylo didn't hesitate. "Of course."

"I'll learn about the Force. Whatever Maz has to teach me." He ignored Kylo's snort. "Did she say how long it would take?"

"She told me 'not long', but she's 1000 years old; that could mean almost anything." The General leveled Finn with one of her I'm-not-kidding looks. "She knows her stuff, and she told me enough detail to make me think you'll be a liability if you don't learn some control."

"I could teach him," Rey said. "He doesn't need to go off with this — this —"

"Cat got your tongue?" Kylo said.

"Traitor," Rey spat, looking briefly murderous before her expression collapsed in on itself.

And Finn must really be losing it, because he thought of Kylo, masked and evil as could be, saying the same thing to him. Rey was nothing like that, of course. But -

"You'll stay here," the General said to Rey, sounding almost gentle. "Luke left you in a lurch, didn't he? But he left you here with me. I can help you."

Why can't you also help me, Finn knew better than to ask. Out loud, he said, "So, General, what's our timeline for getting to Takodana?"

The General's smile was all sharp edges. "Why, Finn, I thought you'd never ask."

Chapter 3

"This is stupid."

Finn double, triple-checked his safety belt before responding. "So's going over to the Dark Side, but you know, there you are."

For thirty blessed seconds, there was only silence. Then, just as the ship chimed a warning that they were about to jump to light speed: "I had my reasons. And I'm very powerful, you know."

Finn only didn't roll his eyes because he had the horrible suspicion Kylo would know he'd done it. "Sure, whatever. You never did tell me why all your power didn't stop you from having to pretend I was your boyfriend, back on that ship."

As soon as it left his mouth, he knew it was a mistake. He wasn't actually curious; he'd thought then, and assumed now, that it was just a power trip for Kylo, a way to make himself feel important. He really didn't want some stupid First Order pseudo-justification.

Kylo said, "I had to lie to my Master. You were convenient."

"I'm sorry, what?"

"When I killed my — Solo. My Master sensed a great disturbance in me. Killing Han Solo was meant to bring me power and the clarity of purpose. I had to convince my Master that the task, once completed, had its intended effect."

That was such a complicated way to say — "So you made up an unrequited crush on me, so Snoke wouldn't know that killing your dad made you miserable, and then you kept it up, because otherwise people would know you'd lied?"

"Yes."

"That is demented."

No response from Kylo, only stiff irritation poking at Finn's mind as they hit light speed.

They met Maz at her bar. She didn't bother to say hi, only said, "Come here, then, let me look at you," and proceeded to stare at Finn and Kylo through her huge goggles.

"Hm," she said after a few minutes. "The Force is having a field day with you two. It's pinging around in your insides like sand flies."

"That's not how Force conduits work," Kylo snapped.

"Well! I bow before your superior expertise. I suppose your mind's half-grafted onto Finn's because you wanted it to be. Won't your mother think that's interesting."

Finn couldn't stop himself from staring as Kylo clapped his mouth shut, scowling and staring at the ceiling.

"Now, I could tell you I have no idea what's causing it and send you on your way." She looked between them again, very deliberately. "Or, I could send you off on a merry chase that has very little to do with the real cause of all this."

"Like you did with Canto Bight?" Finn said before he could stop himself.

"Well, I like that! I was trying to help you. It nearly worked, too, or so Rose tells me. Nice girl. Listens to her elders." Maz sniffed. For a second Finn thought it was a disapproval thing, and he felt himself stiffening, feeling defensive in spite of himself — he hadn't grown up with parents, how was he supposed to know how to act — but then he realized she was actually smelling something.

No, scratch that, not something. Kylo. She was smelling Kylo.

"Angry with me?" she said, then laughed when Kylo scowled. "Oh, no, I see. It's going to be harder if you're stubborn, you know."

"Just teach him to control himself."

"I'll teach you both to control yourselves, but you're the one who's —"

"Teach us both, then," Kylo said quickly.

Finn waited for Maz to strike Kylo down. He wasn't disappointed: she took her blaster and whacked him on the back of the head. He yelped, and Finn had to bite back laughter.

You're the one who's what, though? But he knew Kylo wouldn't tell him if he asked.

"It won't take long," Maz told them. "A week, maybe a year. No more than a decade, anyway."

Kylo gaped at her.

"I think we can take a month," Finn said. Time ran differently when you were super old, apparently.

"A month it is. There's a hut at the end of the street, made up just for you two. Go sleep until you're less irritating. Go on!"

They barely made it into the street before Kylo said, "I never liked her."

"I don't know. She's smart. Wise."

"She's annoying, and a criminal, and not trustworthy, and —"

"The General thinks she can help."

"My mother is not known for discriminating taste in associates."

"I don't know, she doesn't want the First Order around. I'd call that discriminating, personally."

There was indeed a human-scale hut at the end of the street. Finn ducked inside even as Kylo huffed his irritation.

He hadn't thought to expect anything until he looked around and saw the single, enormous bed and intimate table jammed into a sunlight-filled corner. It looked like an ad for some ridiculously rich Core Planet mogul's quaint vacation home. It had clearly been designed for humans: the bed and chairs were exactly like they'd be on a Core planet, and there was a 'fresher with all the usual stuff tucked away, too.

It couldn't have been designed specifically for Finn and Kylo. That was impossible; Finn had to keep believing that, or he'd probably go crazy. Maz just had a weird sense of humor, that was all.

"I hate that little —"

"I hope you're not about to say some slur for aliens," Finn said. "For starters, there's no way you know where Maz is from."

"She's like Yoda. Like a worse, alive, more annoying Yoda."

"Whoever that is." Finn looked around. They'd be eating rations, it seemed, but there was a cabinet of holochips, the display on the front advertising dramas, histories, instructional manuals — anything you could want, in other words. Plenty of potential there to help him ignore Kylo.

"Stop it."

"What?"

"I can hear you thinking."

"Not my actual thoughts." It better not be.

"Your nervousness. Fear." Kylo narrowed his eyes at him. For a moment Finn felt a horrible kind of vertigo, because with his lips pursed like that, Kylo somehow looked exactly like the General. "I don't plan to hurt you."

"Leaving room for spontaneity?"

"Do you work to be this tedious?" Kylo burst out. "Do you enjoy it?"

"Of course not."

"Then why must you — " Kylo huffed out a breath and whirled away without elaborating.

Finn should've just dropped it. He was a smart guy with plenty of experience around Kylo's particular brand of bullshit; he knew when not to press the issue. But -

He didn't want to drop it.

"Why must I what? Come on, say it."

"Why must you always press for more? Why can't you just accept what I say?"

"Accept it? You mean, trust you?"

As ridiculous as that sounded, as stupid as it was, when Kylo's gaze dropped and his hands clenched, Finn realized that he'd actually meant something much worse.

He'd meant — "You want me to just — let you tell me what to do. Accept it. Not question it."

"It seems," Kylo bit out, "that wouldn't be too difficult for you, given your history."

Drop it, Finn told himself. He's not worth it, not here, not now.

He wasn't worth it. But Finn was. "Do you know why I left?"

"Mad impulse?"

"Because what the First Order was doing was wrong, and seeing the blood, hearing the screams, made me understand that. Here." He touched his chest. "Five minutes, that's all it took. All the conditioning in the world couldn't keep me from thinking for myself when I absolutely had to. And you think I'll just listen to you? Just like that?"

"Dagoban hells, you really believe what you're saying."

"Of course I do."

"Did it ever occur to you, then, to wonder why no other stormtrooper broke through the conditioning?"

Every night, as he replayed the moment he'd known Slip would die. "I just know I did. So, no. It's not easy for me to accept things without questioning."

For a moment he thought Kylo might attack him, or at least start shouting. He was breathing hard, hands still in fists, staring at Finn like — like -

Finn didn't know. He wanted to stop forward, to get under Kylo's skin, to force him to act. But whether that action would be punching Finn, choking him with the Force -

Kissing him —

He didn't know. He didn't want to find out. So he said, "I'll take the floor," and spent the rest of the night pretending Kylo didn't exist.

"Oh, good, you're here. Ben, you'll be with the woodworkers today. Pip here will show you the way."

"My name is Kylo, and what do you mean I'll be with the woodworkers?"

"Would you like to learn about ancient empathetic expressions of the Force?" Maz blinked slowly at him as he sputtered. "Didn't think so. Off you go."

Kylo thus dispatched, she turned to Finn and said, "The impression I've gotten is that you two didn't intend to burrow into each other's minds like sandworms."

Finn shook his head.

"My question then becomes why you haven't shut it down."

"I couldn't! I don't know how!"

Maz snorted. "A thousand years of Jedi-Sith nonsense has really damaged this galaxy. You don't need to know how. You'd need training to lift a grown man off the floor or glimpse the future. You need no training at all to exercise basic control over your own mental privacy. If it had bothered you enough, you'd have done so already. You did, back in your 'trooper days. Don't bother denying it."

He hadn't thought about it, but as soon as he did, his stomach sank. Yes, he'd closed himself off during the conditioning, during their lessons and drills. He'd thought of it as — self-protection. His teammates did it, too. "Gotta keep sane somehow," they'd joke.

But even then, he'd known his methods were a little different. He'd felt it, the same way he felt others' fear or love.

"Maybe Kylo forced me to keep it," he said, a wild stab in the dark.

"You really think that?"

No. He didn't.

Maz's expression changed, shifting almost to pity. "You came here for a reason, Finn. Drop your assumptions about what that boy wants or could do; they're half-wrong, anyway, I promise you. The mental link is a signal of something larger. That's what I'm going to tell you about."

Finn swallowed around a lump in his throat. "Thanks."

"Of course. Here, this is 180-proof whiskey. Drink it, then we'll talk about the Force."

Finn felt vaguely like he should protest, for his health if nothing else. But thinking about what she'd gotten him to admit — thinking about Slip, about the FN squad, even about Phasma and the screaming fury he'd always cowered from — overrode his other senses. He took the drink and downed it in a single gulp.

And then he and Maz discussed the Force. It wasn't like any lesson he'd ever had. She didn't tell him how the Force worked, or even really what it was. She just had him expand his mind, tell her what he saw. He left not even sure he learned anything — but then he got back to the hut, and he felt Kylo before he saw him. Not just his feelings, either: he knew, before he opened the front door, what he'd find.

"Wear a serum next time," he told Kylo's incredibly sunburned back.

"Leave me alone."

"At least you got to go outside. My day was boring."

A flash of envy from Kylo, then a flash of — something else, buried too quickly for Finn to categorize it. He followed it, curious, but found himself firmly shut out.

"Stop it. Couldn't that witch teach you manners?"

"She told me we could kick each other out if we wanted," Finn blurted.

Kylo's back went stiff, and then he whirled around. "What are you talking about?"

"She said it wasn't learned. It was instinctual enough, if either of us really wanted..." Finn shrugged. "We'd be different."

"Archaic nonsense. Of course it's learned."

"I'm going to trust the ancient, super-smart alien over you, just so you know."

"She's as batty as the rest of them. The Resistance." He said it with a sneer, clearly bait.

Bait that Finn couldn't help but take. "You joined up! Your mother is the leader! Who do you think you're kidding with this?"

"If I returned to the Core, I'd be prosecuted as a war criminal." Kylo spoke like he was explaining something to a very stupid child. "And the First Order is under General Hux's control, which leaves —"

"Bullshit."

"Excuse me?"

"You could kill Hux if you wanted, without breaking a sweat. You could bring plenty of stormtroopers to your side just by using the loyalty conditioning. You chose to leave the First Order, and you chose not to just run and hide." As Finn had wanted to. As part of Finn still wanted to, if he was being honest with himself. "You're not fighting for the Resistance just because, what, you're too embarrassed to go anywhere else, or you need a defected stormtrooper as a comfort blanket."

"What if I did?"

The question was stupid enough that it took Finn a minute to work through it. "What if you —"

"Needed a comfort blanket." Kylo stabbed a finger at Finn. "What if the only reason I'm in the Resistance at all is because I can't stand to leave you?"

The moment stretched out, thin and brittle and so, so dumb. "We went over this," Finn said. "You told a demented lie. Fine. Just...stop lying, okay? About the Resistance, at least."

"You really don't want that," Kylo said, still holding Finn's gaze.

Maybe Finn was a coward, but it was too much, in the end. He shook his head and stood, going over to the hut's little 'fresher and fetching the ointment Kylo needed.

Maz really was wise. She was ancient and unapologetic about telling you when she thought you were full of it, and two hours with her taught Finn more about the Force than he'd have thought possible. But —

"You should seal the bond off, you know."

— she was also way, way too perceptive.

"I," Finn said, gearing up to lie. No; no point there. "I'm — I want to. I can't."

"He can't be that interesting."

"He's not." Having Kylo in his head was like having a sore in his mouth in just the wrong place. But — "I can't explain it, but I don't want to get rid of him. I won't."

"If you think this will keep him from going back to the Dark Side, you're kidding yourself," Maz said, not unkindly.

Finn laughed in spite of himself. "That's definitely not what I'm thinking."

He didn't know why that made Maz look at him with pity. "Well, then," she said. "Let's discuss healing."

He didn't turn out to have a talent for it, except that he could calm people down with a touch, if he wanted and if he concentrated. He tried it on some people at the doctor's, and she thanked him so profusely that it was embarrassing. "Don't you have peacekeepers in this town?" he asked Maz afterwards. "That's a lot of stab wounds for a city this small."

"We're a port city full of bars," Maz said. "People get drunk and disorderly. It happens."

"But if you had people to keep order, then it would be safer."

"Tried that. Attracts the wrong kind of attention, at least for now."

Finn almost protested. The argument sprang to his mind fully-formed: any attention attracted by having a robust police force would be good attention, or good practice for the police. There was much more to be lost by not having a policing force than there was to be gained. An armed force was necessary to preserve order on a planet, any planet.

He caught himself just in time. Those weren't his thoughts and never had been.

"Got it," he said finally, after an internal struggle that went on way too long to go unnoticed. But Maz didn't say anything. She patted his arm and then turned, pulling a jar of seeds off a shelf and launching into an explanation of how to use the Force to coax them to life.

"Of course," she said, "the Jedi call this sort of thing immoral."

"Wait, why?"

"Bringing life back where otherwise it would stay dormant. Exercising control over the universe."

"It's just a plant! They can't be serious."

"Oh, they were, just as the Sith will tell you the brutalization of entire planets is a reasonable price to pay for power." Maz snorted. "Yoda, bless him, called me a coward once. We weren't out of bed for even twenty minutes, and he stroked my shoulder and told me if I had half the courage of one of his little padawans, I'd be fighting against the Dark. He kissed me and told me he could never see me again, because the Jedi were taking a new course, one of disconnection from physical pleasure. Imagine!"

Finn had seen holovids of Yoda. "I'd rather not."

"Oh, fine. Spoilsport. My point is, this galaxy won't be healed by more ancient dogma, and that includes me. I want you to use your head and figure out what you think is missing, yourself. You have three days."

"What am I supposed to —"

"Three days!" Maz said, and shooed him off without another word.

Even if the town was full of sober, honest people, Finn would've felt weird talking with them about his ideas about how to heal the galaxy. In reality, most of the people he encountered were some mix of drunk and dishonest.

Kylo was really sober, and Finn could tell when he was being dishonest. So that night, Finn cornered him as he sat at their little kitchen table. "How would you heal the galaxy?"

Kylo blinked at him. "Do you really want me to answer that?"

"Sure. If it's bad advice, I can just ignore it."

"I killed my own father."

"I know."

"Snoke told me to do it, but I didn't have to obey. I chose to obey, because I wanted to bring the Republic back to my master."

It was incredible. Kylo sounded totally steady, completely solid in his conviction, and yet Finn could feel the maelstrom of anger in him. Anger at Finn, sure, but also anger at Snoke — and implacable fury at himself. "I know. Kylo —"

"If I cared about the galaxy, I'd commandeer a ship and fly myself into the nearest star." Kylo offered him a thin-lipped, unpleasant smile. "So you see, I'm the wrong person to ask."

The worst part was that he was right and Finn knew it. Snoke had pushed him one way, but Kylo had adopted the ideology as his own. Even if he stuck with the Resistance, he'd never be trustworthy; he had a core of rage and fury that Finn knew would never go away. He'd tortured Finn; Finn didn't even like him.

But he couldn't ignore what he felt. He said, "Someone should've protected you."

"Excuse me?"

"From Snoke."

Kylo sneered. "My parents tried. So did my uncle. Well, my uncle got tired of it, I suppose."

Finn decided he wouldn't point out that Kylo had said my parents, not his parents. "I don't think he was tired of you. I think he was scared. The Jedi weren't up to combating someone like Snoke, and Luke Skywalker was just one person."

"I didn't think Maz would teach you philosophy like that. So it's no one's fault, then? Not Skywalker's, not General Organa's, not Han Solo's, and not even mine? If I didn't know any better, I'd say the Dark Side had corrupted you."

And if Finn didn't know any better, he'd say the Kylo sitting in front of him was further from the dark than he'd ever been before. "Someone should have protected you," he said again, "because if there's anyone more responsible for all of this than you, it's Snoke. And you know it. You don't want it to be true because it means you're not all-powerful like Vader, but —"

"Stop," Kylo said.

"Someone. Should. Have —"

The Force tightened around his throat even as it lifted him in the air. He blinked and found himself slammed against the far wall, his breathing almost completely cut off.

"I said stop," Kylo snarled. "Why do you never listen?" The Force moved against Finn, pressing into his shoulders and his hands, like Kylo wanted to send him straight through the wall. "I don't want to hear your sniveling apologies for my behavior. I did it all, I liked it, I'm proud of it. I'd enjoy killing you right now. Is that enough, or would you like more?"

Finn didn't answer, and Kylo stepped forward, once, twice, three times. The hut was tiny: he stood inches from Finn, fury in his eyes. "I wanted to kill your little desert love," Kylo said quietly. He sounded almost tender; the grip on Finn's throat loosened a bit. "On the Starbane, I wanted to kill you. I thought about it every day. What do you think about that?"

Run! Finn's instinct screamed. Hide! He's not kidding!

But Finn felt pain swirling around both of them, and he was tired of fighting. Maz had asked a question he had no way to answer. He thought part of an answer might be right here.

"I think you're a dick, and maybe a psychopath" he said, "but someone still should've protected you, because plenty of people are dicks and don't go full evil. And I think the only reason you don't agree is because it means you weren't super special after all. If you're just some jerk who got taken advantage of by a bigger jerk, you don't have a special destiny or anything like that. You have to really be responsible for yourself, then."

The pressure on his throat disappeared, but the Force still held him tight, shoulders to toes. Finn forced himself to breathe slowly and look at Kylo calmly. He couldn't let Kylo think he was freaked out.

"You're a fool," Kylo said finally. The words slipped out quietly, almost like —

A flash of a half-remembered dream: whispers of endearments. Gentle hands on him.

Embarrassing. "Maybe," Finn said. "Let me go."

Kylo's eyes flicked down to Finn's mouth. For a moment, Finn felt something awful, a yowling hunger that filled him and made him reach out and —

The Force around him disappeared, the hunger with it. Kylo stepped back.

"Don't try that again," he said coldly, and left the hut before Finn could answer.

Finn's heart still pounded furiously. What was that? Why did Kylo twist every emotion into some weird blend of anger and lust? Why did Finn keep falling for it, like a freshly minted cadet?

He'd only rarely felt as threatened and wild as he did right then. He sat down on the bed and closed his eyes, like Maz had taught him, trying to find some kind of peace.

The bed was still warm; Kylo had been here recently. He could smell them both, if he concentrated, Kylo's scent sharper and —

No. The point of this was to focus on something other than Kylo. He guided his mind out, widening his awareness to include the city. There were so many emotions here, most of them negative in some way: loss amplified or barely muffled by alcohol, fear, anger. Maz did keep the peace, mostly, but not in the way Finn was used to. People only rarely died, but everything was so messy. And when he expanded his awareness beyond the limits of the city, he found that the surrounding forest was the same way. Maz had kept it wild; he felt her influence in every dripping leaf and copse of mushrooms. Safety, here. Guardianship.

Guardianship. Finn's mind snagged on it, and he followed the thought. Someone should have protected you, he'd told Kylo, but that was only half the truth. Someone should have protected him, too. He told himself he didn't remember, but here, with half a world in his mind and the Force flowing through him, he knew that wasn't true.

He had been so frightened.

Someone should have protected you. He was frightened now, too. When he thought of the First Order, he felt like he couldn't breathe. All that power, bent to a single, horrible purpose.

Someone should have protected you, whispered the Force as it flowed through Finn. And then: I'm looking at the eyes of a man who wants to run.

He did then and he did now. The farthest edge of the galaxy might not be far enough, but maybe there he'd find peace, at least for awhile. Protection.

The forest disappeared in his mind, and he saw instead a distant outline of a map, a system he hadn't seen before. It was in the Outer Rim, but the labels were a little too smudged to read. What was it? Somewhere to run? Was the Force giving him an out?

The wind rustled leaves on the trees outside, escaped into the window and caressed Finn's cheek. Someone should have protected you, he thought again, and he knew this time it wasn't just his thought.

The map disappeared. He opened his eyes and grabbed his holopad, scribbling as quickly as it would let him, reproducing what he'd seen.

"Well, butter a wampa and grill it for breakfast. This is better than I thought it would be."

"I don't understand," Finn said. "Why did I see this?" He'd reproduced the map faithfully, but that hadn't really helped.

"Why do you think?"

"I think it's really unlikely the Force was just like, hey, kid, I'm done with you. Go take a vacation." Finn hesitated, but the truth was there, and Maz knew it. "And — I don't want to. I mean, I do, but I have other stuff to do."

"Right you are." Maz patted his hand. "If you want to find out why you saw this, my suggestion would be to get a ship and tell General Organa you need a few more weeks. Just make sure you take her wet blanket of a son with you; he's damaging my sales down at the bar."

"Also, if I left him here, I'd be stranding him."

"Pfft. You'd rather."

True enough. "Well, I — thank you. You've been really helpful."

"And well paid," Maz said, "so there's no need to get sentimental."

Finn smiled in spite of himself. "Do I need to register on the exit docket?"

"Ha! That's a good one. Just send me a postcard, would you? I have a few old friends out that way."

"Time to pack," Finn said when he got back to the hut. "We're taking a trip."

Kylo swore in Wookiee, then in Standard, then in a language Finn didn't recognize. "Is your goal to tour the galaxy and drive me insane with packing and leaving? Or is it simply to drive me insane?"

"I'm sorry, what? This isn't about you. It never has been, actually. But this time, it's really, specifically not. I saw a map, I told Maz about it, now we're heading out there." Finn pulled up his copy of the map and pointed at the spot he'd seen.

"It wouldn't surprise me if she put that image in your head," Kylo said grimly. "An Outer Rim planet. Imagine something so ridiculous."

Finn had been to plenty of Outer Rim planets during his training. He'd preferred them, since there were fewer crazy commanders that far out. "We're going to head out in a couple hours. Just make sure you're packed, okay?"

"I could stay here."

He didn't know why Kylo thought that was a threat. "Sure. I mean, Maz told me to take you with me, but she's probably got work for you down at the bar."

He couldn't possibly have missed the waves of malice emanating from Kylo. "I dislike you so much. More than anyone I've ever met."

"Same," Finn said, and starting putting clothes back in his travel sack.

Despite all his whining, Kylo followed Finn onto the ship barely an hour later. Finn keyed in the coordinates and they were off. It would be nearly a full day before they'd leave light speed; he had plenty of books on his holopad to keep him busy.

Of course, Kylo interrupted him before he'd even finished a chapter. "What do you plan to do after this trip?"

"Sorry?"

"Will you go back to the Resistance, keep fighting their hopeless war?"

"Will you?"

Kylo looked unmoved. "Perhaps. I don't share your fascination with running and hiding."

Finn half wanted to be mad at that. It would be convenient, getting all worked up over Kylo's jackassery; it was an easy target.

But they were hurling through space faster than a human brain could comprehend, and Finn was tired of their weird never-resolving back-and-forth. "Sure you don't. Look, we'll get a hotel when we land, and you can have a room to yourself, get your aggression out all on your own. But we're still hours out, so what if we just left each other alone until then?"

He couldn't possibly be feeling disappointment from Kylo — but of course he was; Finn couldn't imagine he was feeling anything else. Ridiculous, he thought, even as Kylo huffed his way down to the cargo hold.

Twenty-six hours later, Finn secured landing codes and guided the ship down to the hovering landing strip. He didn't bother saying anything to Kylo except, "Hey, we're here."

"Where is here, exactly?" Kylo said as they walked down the gangway.

"Ben and Finn, right on time," Lando Calrissian, Rebellion war hero and historically popular mayor, said. "How's that old bat Maz, anyway?"

Finn recoiled from the lash of fury he felt in the Force. "Whoa. Kylo, what —"

"I am going to kill you," Kylo snarled, and raised his hand, gathering the Force around him.

Chapter 4

It only took a second for Finn to realize he wasn't the target of Kylo's wrath, for once. "Kylo, no!" he shouted, even as Kylo lashed out at Calrissian.

"Traitor. Fool. My family haunts me at every turn, and this is the last time I will tolerate it."

Finn felt the Force leaving Kylo, roiling with darkness — and he felt the Force part around Calrissian, dissipating like mist against the wind.

"Party tricks," Kylo snarled. "Who taught you that? Skywalker?"

"Your uncle's got a lot of talents, but subtlety was never his thing." Calrissian didn't appear particularly upset, but they were all alone on this platform — deliberately, Finn realized, because Calrissian didn't want any witnesses for what might happen.

He had to stop this. "Kylo," he said again. He put a hand on Kylo's arm, tightening his grip when Kylo didn't try to throw him off. "Think, come on, don't kill him. I really do not want to become a fugitive right now and I doubt you do either."

It wasn't exactly his most persuasive speech, but Kylo faltered immediately, glancing over at Finn with something like bafflement. "He's the reason you're here. Can't you feel it?"

"I can feel it, all right," Calrissian muttered.

"Shut up, old man."

"Kylo!"

"What? Does my disrespect for elders shock you? I nearly killed one, just now."

"Keep dreaming," Calrissian said.

"You're not helping!" Finn said. "Kylo. Don't."

Kylo slowly lowered his arm. Finn felt it tremble under his grip. "Do we have rooms?" Kylo said, not looking away from Finn.

"Really nice ones. There's a droid on Floor 25 ready to show you to 'em."

"Wonderful." Kylo broke away from Finn's grip, shaking his hand as if in disgust. He stomped past Calrissian without another look.

Calrissian waited until Kylo had gotten into a transport pod to say, "Just out of curiosity, how many times has someone said 'you've got a lot of explaining to do' to you lately? Ballpark figure."

"Um." Any time he was with Kylo, so -

"How often are you with Ben? Ah, don't answer that, I'm not sure I want to know. Maz loves to leave the important stuff out." Calrissian shook his head. "Let's start over: I'm Lando, the mayor around here. Nice to meet you."

"I'm Finn, and I think the Force told me to come here."

"Better advice than having you hang around Ben."

"Kylo's, um, well." Any excuse Finn might have made died just then. Kylo had already attempted murder; it was a little too late. "Sorry about him."

"Don't worry. I know him from when he was little."

"I'd guessed."

Finn didn't need to elaborate; Lando offered him a sympathetic smile and said, "It's hard to disappear into the dark when you're always running into people who knew you as a snot-nosed brat who couldn't mind-trick a slug."

"I guess. But he could have killed you."

"Hmm, not so much." Lando winked. "You think Maz would send you to someone who goes down that easy?"

"But —" Finn knew what he'd felt. So much power, crushing everything in its path. Lando would have been worn down eventually.

"You look tired," Lando said. "Why don't you go down to your room? I'll have someone get you for breakfast in around ten hours, local time, and then we can talk."

"About what, exactly? Sorry, I just — I'm here because I had a vision, it's all a little vague, and I'd really like for it to not be. As vague."

"Of course. And it won't be." Another smile from Lando, calm and charismatic and totally unmovable. "After breakfast."

Right, Finn thought, and resigned himself to another night of confusing dreams.

He slept like a rock in his spacious room. The bed was huge and there was no Kylo to elbow him or make weird, intimate sleeping noises; he didn't see a broad back in the morning that made him want to reach out and touch. Consequently, when he showed up in Lando's dining room, he felt both awake and obscurely grouchy in a way he didn't want to even think about.

Lando, sitting at the head of the table, smiled upon seeing him. "Finn. Come, sit down. What's your favorite kind of jam?"

"Whatever's available, mostly."

"Try this one." Lando passed him a dark orange preserve. "How'd you sleep?"

Alone, was Finn's first thought. Kriff, he needed to get a grip. "Great, thanks."

"My nephew didn't sleep so well."

Finn blinked. "Wait. Your —"

"Not by blood." Lando snorted. "Han and I weren't brothers. We had a different sort of relationship."

He couldn't mean that the way it sounded. He just had a natural charisma, Finn supposed. He took some bread and spread jam on it. The flavor of the jam exploded in his mouth, sweet and tart at the same time — shockingly tasty, really. "This is really good."

"Isn't it? We make it here. You can't find it anywhere else in the galaxy." Lando winked. "Kind of like me."

"Stop flirting with Finn," Kylo said from the doorway.

"Flirting? You've been with the First Order too long. They call this making polite conversation, in the civilized world."

"Polite conversation doesn't involve winking." Kylo moved to stand next to Finn — well, next to and slightly behind, like a squad leader would stand by their commander. Finn didn't know what to do, so he just sat there, stupidly, while Lando looked between the two of them.

Finally, he said, "Maz sent you both here so Finn could learn."

"Learn what?" Finn blurted out before he thought better of it. "I'm sorry, I just — I don't even know why I'm here, really. And all the mysterious way-of-the-Force stuff is really not what I want."

"Sit down, Ben." Lando waited until Kylo had sullenly taken the chair next to Finn to continue. "What do you want?"

"I want you to leave Finn alone and let us go," Kylo snapped.

"That's nice. I wasn't talking to you, though." Lando looked back to Finn. "Tell me what you want, Finn."

He'd have been much more ready to explain what he didn't want. He didn't want to deal with Jedi anymore unless he had to, but his best friend was sort of one and he kept getting into Jedi-adjacent trouble. He didn't really want to fight the First Order, but he would, of course; he planned to. He didn't want to be around Kylo, but they were stuck together until this trip was done.

"A bunch of things I can't have," he said finally.

Lando took that in stride. "Would you like to learn to live with the Force?"

"No." Oops, too vehement. "I mean — no, thank you. The Jedi way of life seems, um, stressful."

"The Jedi are fools, who play with forces they can't hope to control," Kylo said coolly, glancing at Lando like he expected to see him flinch.

"And those who go dark side think they control the Force, when in fact it's just their own tempers making them morons," Lando said easily. "Ben, you and I can have this conversation later, if you like. I'm talking to Finn right now."

Kylo took a vicious bite of toast.

"You can't ignore the Force," Lando said. "I get why you'd want to, and believe me, it's definitely tempting to me too. But all that happens when you ignore the Force is it decides to make itself even more annoying."

Kylo huffed.

"Okay," Finn said. It wasn't like this was the first time he'd encountered the whole, the Force is everywhere all the time thing. "But plenty of people never interact with it at all. I'm saying I'd like to be one of those people."

"We all would," Lando said. "But according to Maz, and Leia, and a bunch of other important people, you're not."

"I knew it first," Kylo said.

Finn blinked.

"No one asked you," Lando said, but he didn't sound particularly mad.

"He broke free of the conditioning. We use the Empire's methods, refined past even what Vader could do. It should be impossible —"

"You really think your order of clowns can stop the human mind from seeking freedom? You should know better, Ben."

"I am the one who found him," Kylo snarled. "It should be impossible, but he did it anyway. I noticed, when he hesitated on Jakku. I saw his pain, his determination, his personality, when he stole the pilot from me. I knew! Me!"

Lando frowned and opened his mouth to object, but Finn beat him to the punch, irritation completely overriding the keep-your-head-down instinct he normally felt around an angry Kylo. "Seriously? You didn't find me. I'm not a new vein of kyber. I know they warp you in the First Order, but that's not how any of this works."

Kylo's mouth flattened in a surly line. "Snoke found me. I found you. Just because your stupid band of —"

"Our band of resistance fighters, who only exist because the First Order is evil," Finn said, "which I know you know, or at least you kind of agree with me, or I'd be dead and you'd be off sucking Hux's toes."

Kylo scowled at him. Finn just looked back. He didn't have it in him to imitate the wounded-bulldog expression that Kylo thought was intimidating. But he wasn't scared anymore — or he wasn't as scared, anyway. Kylo didn't want to hurt him. He felt that very clearly, just like he felt the mix of annoyance and love Lando couldn't help but feel for Kylo. The whole room was lit up with people's feelings and personalities, and Finn —

Finn just wanted Kylo to admit it, really. If he were as evil as he was trying to pretend, he'd have gone already. He was strong enough and scary enough to break free of the Resistance, no matter who they got to hold him. On some level he'd chosen to be here — with the Resistance generally, and with Finn specifically.

Finn just wasn't sure why he couldn't admit it, that was all.

"Ah, to be young," Lando said. Finn jumped, looking over at him, feeling caught out.

"Now, as I was saying." Lando took a sip of his tea. "You can't avoid the Force. We can quibble on the specifics, but the fact remains that if it seeks you out — and it has sought you out — eventually it'll want to do something with you. Jedi training is all about pretentious meditation and thinking you know best, and also lightsabers. I'm telling you there's other stuff out there, and I can show you a different way to live."

Finn thought of Rey alone on the island with Luke, of his own need to get back and help and fight. "I don't think I can do months of training."

"This won't take more than a week."

Kylo muttered something under his breath that sounded like, 'Charlatan.' But Finn didn't think Lando was. Oh, he looked tricky — and he felt tricky, too, the kind of guy who could sell you your own socks and make you feel glad for the opportunity. But he radiated sincerity, and General Organa trusted him and Maz both, at least enough to send Finn here.

It would have to be good enough. "Sure. Okay."

"Excellent," Lando said. "Ben, you're looking flushed. Try the fritters. You won't find better anywhere in the galaxy."

Finn felt Kylo's simmering rage the entire rest of the meal.

He expected to be sent off to a mysterious cave or locked in a meditation dungeon or something. Instead, Lando sent him to the hospital. He met with a woman named Larisa and spent a day helping out with patients, who were mostly victims of some kind of farming accident. They had plenty of modern treatments, but Larisa explained it was more cost effective to bandage some of the less serious injuries and let the body do its normal work. Finn dredged up his field training and did his best.

The second day, Lando sent him out again, this time to a bakery. Finn got covered in flour and learned how to proof yeast from a bossy droid who reminded him of that protocol droid General Organa kept around.

The third day, Lando gave him instruction to meet up with a fisher in the harbor. When he arrived, he found Kylo standing next to the man's boat, wearing a heavy black cloak and scowling.

"Seriously?" Finn asked Kylo, and the Force in general.

"I'm bored," Kylo said, "and someone needs to keep you out of trouble."

"I'm not in trouble. And almost all the trouble I've gotten into was your fault."

Kylo scowled and crossed his arms.

"Right, well," the fisherman said, looking between them. His green skin paled a bit and he flexed web fingers in a universal expression of dismissal. "I gotta get going, so you guys coming, or what?"

Finn spent the day hauling up nets of fish and ignoring when Kylo used the Force to raise heavier loads. The fisherman whistled when he saw Kylo do it. "Damn, that's handy. Where'd you learn it?"

"In fire and blood, in pain and sorrow, beneath the tutelage of the nightmare of the galaxy," Kylo replied.

"Whatever, man. That's like a seven hundred pound tuna. Thanks."

Kylo flushed, then scowled, like his response had surprised even him. He looked — don't think 'cute', Finn told himself, but it was too late.

He hadn't dreamed about Kylo in weeks, long enough that he'd hoped maybe that whole thing was just a weird phase he'd since gotten over. That night, his brain crushed all his hopes by presenting him with a dream of Kylo, lounging in a soft bed on a luxury yacht. Waves lapped against the low-set windows as Finn kissed him.

It would've been better, almost, if he was just having a straight-up sex dream. Instead, he only felt Kylo's hard-on against him as they kissed, drenched in sunshine, smiling wordlessly at each other.

The next day, Lando sent Finn out to work with some kids at the local school. He kept Kylo with him. When Finn got back at the end of the day, Kylo wouldn't tell him what Lando had made him do. "It wasn't illegal, was it?" Finn asked in a fit of desperation.

Kylo only sneered. "As if an associate of my mother's could be so creative."

"Then why won't you tell me?"

"Because desperation is a pathetic look on you, and I don't want to enable it."

"Dick," Finn muttered, and left to find Lando.

With two days remaining, Finn felt like maybe he'd missed important parts of his lessons. "So, should I be able to control the Force by now?" he asked Lando at breakfast.

"Do you think controlling the Force is what you were sent here to learn?"

"That's a trick question. You're going to tell me it's not about control."

"Well — kind of." Lando smiled. He probably meant it to be a gentle, benevolent smile; to Finn it looked like the smile a carnival worker gave you before he sold you bottled booze that was half rubbing alcohol. "It's not only about control. The Jedi said they had no will to power, but that was all just PR spin. They hoarded power, same as the Sith. The First Order continued that tradition. You and me, on the other hand — we're different."

"Give me a break," Kylo muttered.

"No contributions from the peanut gallery, thanks," Lando said. He turned to face Finn more fully, his usually smirky expression resolving into seriousness. "Finn, I come from a tradition of guardianship. I can't pop out of the woods to teach you how it works; you have to seek the knowledge yourself."

"Okay, well — here I am. What can I learn from all this?"

Lando held out of his hands. Finn took them, their palms pressing together. "Try to sense my emotions," Lando said.

Finn reached out, as he was accustomed to. As he'd had to, the last few days, using his extra sense to find his way around jobs and people he wasn't used to. He found, in Lando, an unending light.

Oh. Here was the empathy that Finn himself had, writ large and expanded outward. Here was the Force flowing through Lando — not changing him, but shaping him. Lando wasn't perfect; Finn saw his mistakes and trickiness and occasional horrible cruelty. But he had an unyielding power, a core of durasteel, a will to -

"Guard," Lando told him, though his lips didn't move. "I'm a guardian, Finn. And if you keep going on this path, you'll be one, too."

He saw again the children on Canto Bight, a little older now, growing into their power. The Resistance symbol was hidden all over the planet now, hanging on doors and spray-painted inside barns. Little by little, the unnoticed children siphoned away money to send their brothers and sisters to freedom. To the Resistance.

He saw a foundering moon, nearly entirely hollowed out, held together by the Force and by the spirits of those who'd called it home. He saw the moon's descendants, living on a far-flung Outer Rim planet, teaching one another the traditions they'd nearly lost. He saw people who looked like they could be his own family, baking missives from a Resistance cell into bread being shipped to the Core.

He saw so much, and not enough. When Lando dropped his hands, he was crying.

"Lando," Kylo said in a low, steady voice. "Give him a second to breathe."

Finn dimly thought that Kylo had a lot of nerve, just then, acting like he knew Finn well enough to set boundaries in his stead. But the intensity of emotion receded, and when Finn was able to look around and focus again, he saw that Kylo had moved himself to stand behind Finn again, the same way he had their first day here, at rest and waiting.

Protecting Finn, in the Force, until Finn was ready.

He swallowed. "Thanks." His voice was a little too rough, a little too revealing.

But Kylo only nodded, brusque as ever. "Let's get dinner now. Okay?"

The last was directed at Lando, who cocked his eyebrows and looked between the two of them before agreeing. Finn had the sinking feeling that General Organa was going to hear about all this later.

He followed Kylo, though, and let him buy Finn's dinner, and sat down with him in the dining hall to eat it. They knocked knees under the table as Finn took a bite of his food.

"I'm sorry."

Finn blinked, chewed his beans, and swallowed. Then he took a sip of bubbly water. Then he said, "Pardon me?"

"I said I'm sorry." Kylo stabbed his pasta and scowled at his plate. "Don't ask me to say it again, I won't."

"No, I heard you this time, and I know it wasn't just a weird hallucination." What else could he say? "Um. Thanks?"

"I thought you'd ask what for."

"I mean, there's lots you could be apologizing for."

"I'm aware."

"Like. Really a ton of things." Finn tried to think of what, in particular, Kylo might be referring to. "You were rude to me a bunch."

"Yes."

"Lied and kept me captive."

"I did."

"Oh, and perpetuated the system that made me a child soldier, so."

Kylo's nostrils flared. "Yes."

"So I guess the real question is, why are you apologizing now?"

He hadn't thought it was a particularly difficult question, but Kylo threw his fork down and stood, like Finn had asked him to recite every Republic law the First Order had broken. "This was a bad idea," he said between clenched teeth, and fled as Finn gaped after him.

He followed, mostly because he thought he might die of curiosity if he didn't. Kylo made it to their floor in the mayor's quarters before Finn completely caught up. "Why won't you tell me?"

"Why do you think?" Kylo snarled, whirling around.

He was trying to intimidate Finn, that much was obvious. But Finn had already done a lot of really dumb stuff, and he'd faced off against Kylo everywhere — on ships, planetside, even in his own dreams. He wasn't going to back down now. "I don't know what to think. You're an enigma, one who's done a lot of really shitty stuff, so —"

The Force wrapped around him, but this time it wasn't choking him. No: an achingly gentle power curled around his wrists and legs, holding him immobile, sending pulses of warmth through him. Finn opened his mouth — to object? To call for help? — and found Kylo inches from him, his lips so close that Finn could feel the heat of his skin.

"You don't understand," Kylo said. "You can't."

Finn flexed his fingers against his bonds. He could push Kylo away, he was pretty sure. If he wanted to.

"I definitely can't if you won't talk to me," he said, and Kylo kissed him.

It was nothing like in his dreams. Kylo's fingers bit into his arms and he was shaking, trembling head to toe against Finn like he was the one restrained by creepy dark power. But Finn could move, if he wanted; he pushed against the power holding him, raising his arms up to Kylo's shoulders. When he placed a palm against Kylo's cheek, Kylo flinched backwards like he'd been struck.

"I didn't. I don't." He clenched his jaw, looking away from Finn. The power around Finn's middle began to fade.

Which, okay, being able to move was nice, but — "Hang on," Finn said, and kissed him again.

The kiss said what he couldn't figure out how to articulate: this felt good, and right, and he wanted more of it. It wasn't as easy as the joy-drenched dreams he'd almost stopped having, but that didn't matter when stacked up against the reality of Kylo's hands on his hips, pulling him close, gasping into Finn's mouth when their cocks pressed together.

"I want you," Finn said. "I want this. Which is objectively insane, but —"

"I could be compelling you." The Force pressed against Finn's legs again as Kylo kissed down his neck. "This could be just what I want, what I'm making you want —"

"You said all the First Order methods failed." Finn shook his head. He didn't feel even the slightest bit fuzzy right now. He knew his own mind, his own — yeah, kriff it: he knew his own power. He knew that this was his own desire right now, and no one else's. "Are you scared?"

"Of course not." The bonds around Finn tightened. He let them; he enjoyed it, a bit, the frisson of power he felt from Kylo. Maybe this was what trust felt like. "Why on earth would I be scared?"

Finn shrugged. "You tell me."

The power pushed him back against the wall, and then Kylo kissed him again, harder and clearly angry, his teeth nipping at Finn's lips. Finn let himself go, rocking his hips against Kylo's, not bothering to hide his moan. Kylo's hands shook as he cupped Finn's face. His voice, when he spoke, sounded like it was coming from very far away. "You can still stop this."

"Yeah, maybe," he said. He closed his eyes and focused. Kylo's power might be overwhelming, but it was fragile, too. One push in the right place -

And he was free again, stepping forward to pull Kylo back. But Kylo shied away from his grip, avoiding Finn's gaze.

"Right," Finn said. Rejection really shouldn't sting this much. Kylo was a jerk, he reminded himself, and a monster, and kind of hugely dishonest on top of all of that. Who would have a crush on someone like that?

Finn. Finn would. Ugh.

"I guess I'll see you at breakfast?"

"Sure," Kylo said, and all but ran away. Finn and Lando ate alone the next morning.

"I won't tell you I've taught you all I can."

"It's been a week," Kylo said in that pedantic 'First Order drone' voice he loved so much. "If you told Finn that, I'd challenge you as a charlatan."

"Ben, you've called me much worse." Lando winked then, like he'd told a joke. Finn watched in fascination as Kylo's cheeks turned bright red. "But I did teach you what I could, and what Leia asked me to. From here, it's up to you."

Right. Focus on the mystical responsibility, not Kylo's lips. "I have to be ready for it to seek me out."

"Correct. And...?"

"And I should look for information on being a guardian." Finn sighed. "You know this is super cryptic and weird, right?"

"Wouldn't be the Force if it wasn't."

"The First Order's training methods are very straightforward," Kylo said.

"Yeah, because they're evil," Finn said. "Which I know you know, so why are you —"

"Just because the overall goals were evil doesn't mean Jedi training is —"

"This isn't Jedi training, you heard Lando explain, why can't you just —"

"Okay," Lando said loudly. Finn almost swallowed his own tongue. For a second it had been like everyone else had just — disappeared.

Maybe they had? Was that how the Force worked? Finn still wasn't an expert, clearly.

"I'll send Leia a report on your progress," Lando said. His tone said, and gossip about you, too.

"He won't be ready for a mission any time soon," Kylo said.

"Missions. Hah." Lando raised his eyebrows at Finn. "You already know what I'd say about that."

Unfortunately, Finn did. The mission wouldn't be assigned, it would find Finn, et cetera. "Yep."

"Time for you to be on your way, then. Say hello to your mother for me," he told Kylo.

"You just said you'd comm her."

"Yeah, but I like pissing you off."

"Uncle —"

"Ben."

They stood there in a weird standoff for a few seconds. Finn did his best to look uninterested. Oh, look, a bird, he told himself, studying the sky.

They found open space soon enough after that. The hyperspace route they'd used to get to Lando would have been horribly inefficient to return directly to the Resistance, so Finn had plotted them a course that saw them refueling on a nearby moon, and picking up a few items on the Resistance's shopping list, before going all the way back. He explained the whole plan to Kylo, expecting pushback. Kylo only nodded and said, "The First Order has very little presence out here. You should be safe."

"We should be safe."

"Members of the Resistance, among which I do not count myself, should be safe," Kylo said coolly.

He really was the most frustrating fake-boyfriend Finn had ever had. Or not had, as the case may be.

They got to the moon within a few hours. Finn packed the cargo hold with meal bars and climate-safe cloth, and then they were off again. He was about to jump into hyperspace when he saw the reading on the wide-range radar. A class II ship, following them at a distance.

"Kylo."

Kylo was at his shoulder in seconds. Finn kind of hated the way every nerve in his body lit up at his nearness, despite the clear and present threat on the screen. "Kriff," Kylo said. "That's an interceptor, locked on us."

"I know. Can you feel anything?"

He watched Kylo's face pale as he closed his eyes. After a moment, he shook his head. "Shielded or not carrying anyone strong in the Force. I can't tell which."

"Do you think they're here for me or you?"

"Could be anything." Kylo laughed hollowly. "They might think we're just low-level Resistance scrubs, exposing ourselves foolishly."

"But you said there wasn't a strong First Order presence out here."

"And we're well hidden. Yes. We got unlucky."

Or, Finn thought, the Force was messing with them both some more. "How do you put up with this? All the running and hiding?"

When he spoke, Kylo's voice sounded utterly hollow. "I joined the winning team."

"We'll see about that. Can you man the guns?"

Kylo sat down obediently. Finn pulled up his star charts and flipped the hyperdrive toggle.

The chase was on.

Five minutes later, Finn was certain they'd been caught. The pilot couldn't be a trooper or even a low-level commander, not with the way they evaded Kylo's fire and stuck to Finn's tail. Finn had been trained by the best the First Order had to offer and then again by Poe Dameron. Whoever sat in the pilot's seat of that interceptor was a dangerous foe.

And Finn couldn't shake them. "We only have so much fuel," he told Kylo. "What do you think I should do?"

"What does the Force tell you to do?"

"This isn't the time for a weird Force lesson!"

"I know." And Kylo did sound deadly serious, as well as just plain deadly. "Tell me what you feel."

He had to stop evasive measures for a moment, close his eyes and reach out to the universe. He saw — solitude, peace. A battle waged on earth. "There's a moon nearby. With forests, arable land. Habitable —"

"But remote." Kylo's grim tone made it clear: he knew what Finn was suggesting. Being marooned together indefinitely, on a remote moon, with no guarantee of rescue. "I can dispatch the pilot once we land."

"Trust me, after all this, I'm happy to help." Finn guided them towards the moon, set the ship on autopilot, and went back to get ready.

He had no armor. The Resistance had uniforms, but Finn's was dirty; he'd figured he'd swap out when they got back to base. And they were light-years behind 'trooper tech anyway. Instead, here he was, in loose pants and an undershirt, about to face a foe strong enough to outwit Kylo Ren.

Yeah, he wasn't exactly feeling good about their chances. Especially not since the interceptor followed them down to land, not firing a single shot. Whoever was in there was confident in their ability to win a ground-level fight.

Finn and Kylo scrambled for higher ground, crouching behind their ship. They watched as the interceptor landed and a hooded figure stepped out.

Carrying a lightsaber. Great. "Great," Finn muttered to himself, fighting down hysteria.

"When I kill her," Kylo said, "I want you to run."

Finn blinked. "Excuse me?"

"This won't be a clean fight. You haven't seen me embrace the dark."

"I was living with you on the Starbane. Does being evil give you memory problems or something?"

Kylo put a hand on his arm. The contact burned. "Just be ready to run."

Before Finn could tell him there was no way in hell he'd do that just because Kylo got it in his head to give orders, Kylo stood and stalked towards the hooded woman. He waited for her to ignite her saber; red, Finn saw, like Kylo's own.

Kylo's saber glowed more steadily than Finn remembered. It sent half-remembered panic through him. His side ached where he'd almost been gutted, despite the bacta tank's near-perfect work. That Kylo, the one in his memories, was usually just a faded image, one that bore little resemblance to the person he put up with every day.

Put up with, right. Wanted. At least, normally he did. Right now...

The Kylo whose saber nearly took his opponent's head off looked nothing like the one who'd just left Finn's side.

It wasn't just all the fucked-up memories, either. Finn squinted and marshaled what he'd learned from Lando, using the Force to examine the fight. Kylo had gathered darkness around him — and Finn realized a little too late that the sickness he felt wasn't only his. It was Kylo's, a side effect of the power he was using to drive the woman back.

This was the Dark Side, then. Pain, hatred, anger. It twisted Kylo's features and yowled around him, an aura of fury that only grew with each almost-landed blow. Finn wasn't familiar enough with lightsaber duels to say how good either of them were, but he'd guess the answer was 'very': Kylo was Vader's grandson, after all, and for the moment the woman was meeting him blow for blow.

The fight wore on. Finn watched as closely as he could. The woman kept trying to circle around — she was trying to get past Kylo, Finn finally realized, and get at Finn himself. Why? Was he the target? How in the hell had she even known he was there?

"Give me the traitor," he heard her snarl, "and perhaps the Grand Admiral will let you live."

"Never." And for all that Kylo was wreathed in evil and hatred, Finn heard the sincerity in his voice. "I will die before you lay a finger on him, and I'll bring you with me." He twisted his saber, just a few feet from Finn now. The woman just barely dodged the blow. "Finn, what are you doing? Run!"

Finn would have liked to say he wasn't afraid, but of course he was. He was pants-pissingly terrified. He'd just had a lot of practice being scared, and so instead of following Kylo's instructions, he dug his heels in. "I'm not leaving you!"

The woman smiled, sharp and cruel. "Oh, how touching." She reared back for a body blow, stomping on Kylo's foot. She didn't have the reach: Kylo's saber came down on her arm, severing it cleanly at the shoulder. Finn flinched in anticipation of her scream -

And then she laughed, bringing her lightsaber down onto Kylo's hilt, sending his saber flying.

"Kylo!"

Time seemed to freeze. The malevolent forces surrounding Kylo sank into his skin. His expression was twisted, frantic, a cornered animal about to die, saturated with hatred and fury. Finn could feel it coming off him in waves, met by a hollow void where the woman's feelings should be. He could feel so much pain and anger and darkness.

"No," he whispered. Time restarted itself, and he understood what he needed to do. He stepped forward, dodged the woman's blow, scooped up Kylo's saber, and beheaded her.

It took only the time required for Kylo to shout his name.

He eventually became aware of Kylo talking, but nothing he said made sense: "Get away, get away, come here," hands all over him, pushing him away from the ship. They'd burned too much fuel; they were stuck here. Finn tried to tell Kylo, but his ears were ringing and something odd had come over him; he couldn't get the words past a suddenly-clumsy tongue. He could only follow as Kylo led him into the woods, both supply packs on his back.

Words came back to him as Kylo built up a fire. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me." Kylo's voice was low, brittle. He sounded furious, but Finn could feel his emotions, as clear as they'd ever been. Clearer, he realized, than they'd been in weeks.

He was scared.

"I don't know how you did that," Kylo said. "I wrote it down. For the Resistance."

"In case I go evil?"

"Of course not." Yes, whispered Kylo's fear. "You disarmed a Sith Lord and warped reality around yourself. We need to try to understand how you did it. And what sort of discipline leads to that power."

More Force mumbo-jumbo. Finn reached inside himself and found he couldn't currently care. "I'm really tired."

"I know." More fear. It stank, Finn thought, and leaned against the tree at his back.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Finn said. He couldn't imagine Kylo being afraid for any reason other than his own safety. Being selfish was kind of a prerequisite of being evil, wasn't it?

"That's not — I know. Here. Eat this."

Kylo handed him a ration bar. Finn took a few bites, then said, "Shouldn't we be eating as little as possible? We might be stuck here for awhile."

Kylo stared at him.

Finn was too tired to try to solve the mystery of Kylo's behavior. "What."

"You need to eat. You just — your hands are shaking."

They were. Finn had noticed, kind of, the way you'd notice you were tired midway through a day's march. It hadn't occurred to him to do anything in particular to fix it. "I'm fine."

"Just eat the kriffing ration bar." Kylo stood and walked away. Finn thought for a minute that he was going to go do recon, check out the terrain, but instead he just paced in a broad circle, looping around trees and occasionally glaring at Finn.

Finn missed the Resistance more than ever. Rey at least would've been fun to be stranded with.

"There's wildlife," he said when he'd finished the ration bar. "And I saw a tree with what looked like berries. We still have a toxin test kit, don't we?"

Kylo nodded stiffly.

"So we'll be okay. Probably."

"Provided this isn't a moon with vicious storms, or a sudden winter, or massive man-eating fauna."

"I think we could run from big animals," Finn said. "You've got those long legs."

He knew it was a mistake as soon as the words left his mouth. Kylo turned bright red, and Finn found himself staring at the legs in question. They weren't that long.

"Let's just work on survival," Kylo said, staring at a spot over Finn's shoulder.

"Trust me, I'm good at that." Finn looked around. He could see the Force more easily now, or rather more deliberately; instead of it just showing up, he could choose to focus. That was good, except that when he chose to focus just then, he saw fury and darkness swirling around Kylo, almost as bad as it had been during the duel.

The duel where Finn himself had killed someone. Finn closed his eyes and swallowed hard. "Shelter. We can't stay on the ship; one of our packs has an emergency tent, doesn't it?"

"You're not worried about sharing?"

"We don't have much of a choice. And at least you won't be making me pretend to date you. There's no one around here to impress."

"That's not what that was about."

"Uh-huh." Finn didn't see the point in pretending he cared why Kylo'd done it. "Well, it was still really weird, and there's still no one here. So."

"Plenty of people would be happy to be romantically linked to me."

"Romantically linked? Please. You're a terrorist, not a holodrama star."

"I'm very powerful. I have — had — the ear of the Supreme Leader." Kylo scowled. "I have the ear of Grand Admiral Hux, too."

"I kind of doubt it, since you've defected. Anyway, I have the ear of General Organa."

"She's my mother! I have her ear more than you do!"

Finn crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows. "You don't really believe that."

He could tell from the way Kylo sputtered that he didn't — though Finn didn't really care. It was true enough that Kylo was powerful, and it was also true that Finn didn't much care. It turned out that killing someone wasn't too hard after all. It certainly didn't indicate power.

It had been easy to kill the Sith Lord. Terrifyingly so. Finn thought about the light fading from her eyes. He wanted to shy away from the memory, but for a second it was like she was right in front of him again, only this time her stare was empty and dead and it was his fault and —

"Finn," Kylo said quietly, patiently. Like he'd said it more than a few times already.

"Sorry. What?"

"I said we should see what supplies we have." And, oh kriff, Kylo was looking at him with worry. "She deserved to die."

Finn wanted to tell Kylo to leave it alone. It wasn't his business; he had no right to comment; he was evil anyway, so why would Finn care about his reassurance? Instead Finn said the stupidest thing possible. "The people you've killed didn't."

Kylo didn't flinch. He didn't even blink. He wasn't human, Finn thought half-frantically. "Probably not."

"Probably?!"

"Some of them were likely murderers. People who hurt children, or animals, or —"

Suddenly Finn couldn't take it anymore. He leaped to his feet, hands curling into fists. "I'm tired of hearing this. Stay away from me."

He expected Kylo to storm after him, like he always did. Apparently Kylo had learned some kind of lesson: this time, he didn't follow.

Chapter 5

The rain outside had already lulled him back to sleep three times. This time, he opened his eyes determined to actually wake up. He was rewarded by Kylo nuzzling the back of his neck.

"Not time to get up yet," Kylo mumbled, kissing his ear.

Finn sighed. He had a whole to-do list...but the bed was so soft, and Kylo was so warm behind him. Warm and hard, rocking his hips into Finn's ass, slowly but steadily. It felt familiar, perfect.

"Maybe a little while longer," Finn said, and turned over.

Finn woke with a start. Silently, of course; he still hadn't shaken fifteen years of trooper training. Next to him, Kylo shifted a little in his sleep, mumbling something unintelligible and scowling into the moon's permanent twilight.

He could tell from the way his heart was pounding that he wouldn't get back to sleep, so he slipped out of the tent as quietly as he could. It was a nicer model, modestly climate controlled and with automated doors. There was enough room for three normal size troopers, which meant Kylo almost never bumped Finn in his sleep. And on top of that, they had enough ration bars for a three-month stay, plus emergency hydration kits, plus a year's worth of nutri-gel. They were likely to be rescued long before they ran out of emergency food, leaving aside the edible plants and animals. It had been four days, and Finn was pretty sure they were going to be fine.

Except for the minor detail of how he might go legitimately crazy before then.

Kylo wasn't being annoying. It actually would've been less terrible if he had been. When Kylo was being annoying, all of Finn's other concerns receded in the distance. As it was, though, Kylo had spent the last four days carefully attending to Finn's needs, often keeping a downright respectful distance, speaking up to be helpful occasionally but mostly just taking care of their camp and leaving Finn alone. It was awful; it was the worst. It made Finn want things he couldn't have, like for Kylo to be a whole different, less awful person.

"Someone lived here a long time ago," Kylo said on the fifth day, while they ate some local greens and legumes that Finn had gathered while Kylo communed with the Dark Side.

(Did that count as aiding and abetting? Stuff like that was why Finn didn't want to dream of him at all, even if he was fake-Kylo in the dream.)

Finn spent a long time chewing his legumes before he answered. "Well, it's clearly habitable. So that makes sense."

"No. Not just some random bantha traders. Force users lived here."

Finn, who'd spent the better part of a full week doing his best to ignore the fluctuations in Kylo's moods and power, shook his head. "I don't feel anything."

"Because you're closing yourself off from me, and by extension the rest of the Force."

"That's a little self-centered, don't you think?"

"Do you think I can't tell?" Kylo snapped. He sounded like an entitled new recruit just then, full of anger and the conviction that he was right. "You think I haven't noticed when you touch me so closely, when your life force mingles with mine as you seek information? Open yourself up and you'll feel the same things I feel. Hell, based on what Calrissian told you, maybe you'll feel even more. I don't care: I just want you to stop being so kriffing stupid."

"You're the worst. I'd rather share this tent with a Hutt," Finn said, but he closed his eyes anyway for want of better options, expanding his senses to encompass Kylo, the moon, and the Force itself, moving around them in enigmatic oddness.

It came over him all at once, like a wave when his squadron landed next to the ocean. He felt the force, and Kylo's anger — his hope, his rage, all mixed up and toxic as ever. And then he felt history, and love, power that had come from sentient beings soaked into the otherwise dead rocks and earth around them.

Someone, something, had lived here. But they'd done more than that. This wasn't a Jedi or Sith signature, eons-old power damaged by distance or pain. This was watchfulness, hope, care. The keeping of a tradition that Finn had touched, once or twice, with Lando.

"The Guardians," he found himself saying. "They were here."

Kylo frowned. "Guardians."

It wasn't a request for more information. Actually, Finn thought Kylo might be trying to hide that he had no idea who the Guardians were. But Finn's weird affection for Kylo won out over his desire to be right, and he said, "Yeah. The Guardians of the Whills. Lando was — is — one; that's what he was teaching me. I can feel them here. Old energy, old — impressions." Spirits, he didn't say. "They're watching us now."

Kylo looked around like he might suddenly be able to see a bunch of judgmental ghosts. He scowled, and Finn — appalled with himself the whole time — felt a weird wave of sympathy pass over him. "They don't mean us any harm."

"You mean they don't mean you any harm," Kylo snapped.

Finn was poised to object, but — actually, that was true; the Force bent around him, recognizing his training and skills. It didn't reject Kylo, exactly, but Finn got a distinct impression of sorrow and pain. It, they, wanted Kylo to be something different from who he was. Something better.

Get in line, Finn thought.

"They know you matter to me," Finn said. When Kylo's expression contorted in disbelief, he hastily added, "I mean that you're — I mean — it would suck if you died, after all this. Before you even got back to your mom. Plus, then I'd have to tell everybody I messed up and got you killed."

"What part of me killing my father makes you think I care?" Kylo said coolly.

But Finn knew the answer to that, as surely as he felt the Force hum beneath his skin. "The part where you haven't killed me yet. The part where you haven't tried to stop the Resistance."

Kylo scowled. "I nearly shot my mother out of the sky."

"Close isn't a bullseye," Finn told Kylo, Phasma's admonishment echoing in his ears. "Look, this was a moon the Guardians of the Whills inhabited: fine. So we'll listen to our instincts. But it's safe and I'm tired, so let's just eat dinner and rest, okay?"

He didn't really expect Kylo to agree, and was vaguely shocked when Kylo scowled but said, "Fine, whatever."

That night, another dream wrapped itself around him.

*"I like when you tell me what to do," Kylo said.

*They were lounging together on a hill they'd seen earlier in the day. A fresh, clean breeze blew over them, and Finn twirled a purple flower between his fingers. Despite knowing it was a dream, he felt utterly, perfectly relaxed.

*Except: "Ha. Nice one."

*"No, really." Even if Finn hadn't instinctively known this was a dream, Kylo's behavior would've alerted him to it. He sounded warm and genuine, and he rolled closer to Finn before saying, "It's easier. Everything is so confusing right now, with Snoke dead and me...reconsidering things. It's easier when I have someone to follow."

*Finn turned the idea over in his mind. "So you're saying I'm kind of like your replacement Snoke."

*"What? No!"

*"Someone to follow —"

"I don't — I never thought of Snoke likethat.*"

*Finn watched Kylo turn bright red and thought of the kisses in the other dreams, the relatively easy affection. How embarrassing, that his subconscious produced this as a relaxing fantasy. "Right. Well. Still, it's kind of weird."

*"But you like it," Kylo said. He spoke so quietly, staring at Finn with odd light in his eyes. "You wouldn't be here if you didn't; you're too powerful for me to hold you. I think part of you knows that."

*And his subconscious also wanted him to think this was, what, some kind of magic Force dream? He really needed to talk to a doctor when they got back to headquarters. But even here, in his own dream, he could see the Force moving around himself and Kylo. Everything else might be fake, but that was real. Ish.

*"Maybe I do," he finally said. "But you're just a projection of my hopes, so I guess 'know' is the wrong word, huh?"

Kylo stared at him for a long moment, looking more like the Kylo who actually existed in real life: stubborn, annoyed. Finally, he exhaled, nostrils flaring. "Whatever you say."

The dream spun on, golden sunlight and warm breezes lulling Finn into a kind of sleep-within-sleep. The next day, feeling nervy about the crap his brain had served him, he decided to strike out from camp a bit. "We need more food, and ideally a backup water source," he said. "And of course we'll want to find as many potential shelters as possible."

"We'll be off this moon before any of that matters."

"Hopefully," Finn said. Or I might just space myself, he didn't add. "I'll be back before sunset."

"I'll find you if you aren't."

He thought Kylo meant it in a nice way. Well, he didn't look like he was trying to threaten Finn, anyway. But Finn still flinched a little, and then Kylo scowled, like there was no possible reason for Finn to feel like the former leader of the Knights of Ren was threatening him.

Ugh. He was going to go crazy if they were stuck here for long.

Luckily, the moon was densely populated by both flora and fauna. None of it was big enough or poisonous enough to be a real threat, but having to stomp through thick vines and clear away dense underbrush did stop him from dwelling on Kylo's weirdness as much as he wanted to.

Of course, the fact that he was using the wilderness as a distraction also meant that it took him embarrassingly long to realize it wasn't wilderness, exactly. He was walking through ancient ruins.

The plants were the first giveaway. Sure, they were overgrown, but they were overgrown with purpose. The areas they tangled over the most vociferously were, in fact, paths the plants handily concealed. Were meant to conceal, Finn suspected.

He felt the Force nudging at him. Of course he did; learning to feel that, to know what it meant, was half of what Lando'd tried to teach him. So he followed it.

The woods were old, older than he'd have thought possible for a forest on a moon. He felt ancient lives pressing down on him as he moved through the undergrowth. The further in he went, the more it felt alive, watching and thinking and waiting. He pushed the plants aside, careful not to damage them too badly. His arms got tired; the deeper he went, the more the daylight faded. Eventually, just as he'd started to wonder if he should turn back in spite of the silent urging of the Force, the woody vines and tall bushes gave way.

He'd expected something a little more exciting than what he saw: a mound of dirt around the base of a huge tree. The tree might have once been majestic and impressive, but right then it just looked kind of — sad. Drooping, faded leaves.

But the Force contracted around him, practically humming with interest. "All right, I can take a hint," he muttered. He moved closer to the tree, looking for some kind of hole in the mound of dirt, an entrance or a door or something.

He wasn't expecting the tree to sigh, leaves shivering against each other. He wasn't expecting the branches of the tree to part, revealing an entrance that came up to Finn's shoulder, gnarled roots with dark red earth packed around them.

He walked inside. Or he tried to. The entrance wasn't an entrance, exactly; the tree hadn't been protecting an actual structure. Instead, he saw curving ledges crammed with carved figurines, vases, tablets. Some of them were stone, like an ancient Core World tablet. Others were porcelain, even ferrocrete, sometimes painted and sometimes plain.

All the hair on the back of his neck stood up. What the kriffing hell was he looking at, exactly?

But he already knew. He reached out, only feeling half in control of his own actions, and touched one of the tablets.

The earth shivered, and Finn gave in to the Force.

What had they guarded?

I'm a guardian, Lando had told him.

What had the Guardians known?

You will be too.

The answer lay here, in the same light and connection Finn had felt back with Lando. It was different on this moon, tempered yet somehow even stronger. The inhabitants of this moon had possessed such power that it lived on even now, when the moon had been empty for millennia.

But it wasn't power, exactly. Finn felt the whispered objection as he tried to understand what moved around and inside him. Not power. What had Lando said? Understanding. They guarded understanding. They guarded the Force, and in doing so, they understood it. They lived it.

And so they had never quite died. The power didn't weaken; it shifted, changed. It sank into the earth, grew trees and birthed animals. All around him were thousands of souls, beings of the Force who had shed their bodies but had never lost their lives.

He drifted. It didn't occur to him to wonder how much time had passed. There was too much to explore, to feel, inside himself and all around. The Force had things to teach him, about the universe and about himself. He felt time in the changing of his own cells, the wind shaking ancient trees. Hours and minutes were meaningless in comparison.

And then he heard Kylo shouting, and felt a horrible panic crash into him like a speeder piloted by a drunk second-year 'trooper kid. He came back into his body all at once, feeling Kylo's huge hands on his arms, shaking him until he could practically feel his brain rattling in his skull.

"Augh," he said.

"I thought you were dead!"

"I don't — I told you I'd be back!"

"You said you'd bring food! Two days ago!"

"...oh," Finn said weakly.

Kylo made a furious noise that sounded a little like a bantha mid-beating, and kissed him.

Honestly, so much of Finn's life would be simpler if it had felt bad, the way it should've. If Kylo was worse at kissing — well, no, he was pretty bad. If Finn didn't want it so badly, if Kylo's desire and fear and need weren't absolutely pouring out of him. If the Force didn't wrap around them like so much incorporeal approval.

If, if, if.

Finn did enjoy it for a moment. Or several moments. Kylo had him practically bent over backward, holding him up so he didn't fall. Arousal shot through him, wrapped around him; he felt like he might explode if Kylo didn't keep touching him.

But then he remembered who he was, who Kylo was, and most importantly, that Kylo had pushed him away. That he didn't want this when he wasn't freaking out.

"Wait. No. Stop."

Kylo jumped away from Finn as suddenly as he'd kissed him. Which of course meant that he dropped Finn onto the ground.

"Ow." He glared up at Kylo, whose face was now bright red as his too-familiar anger turned the Force dark around him.

"You were gone," Kylo said through clenched teeth, "for two days. I thought you'd died."

"That would've solved a lot of problems for you, huh?"

"You imbecile. You ungrateful, idiotic, foolish, waste of talent piece of —"

"Yeah, okay, I'm going back to camp," Finn said, and went to grab his bag.

It had several leaves on it, like it'd been sitting there awhile. Kylo was telling the truth, most likely; he had no reason to lie. How could it have been two days?

"What were you even doing here, anyway?"

Finn had sort of hoped Kylo would go ahead of him, but of course he fell into step next to Finn, even though the undergrowth was barely diminished from the two of them going through it. Vines tangled around them in a way that was almost romantic, or would've been romantic if Kylo hadn't been such a jackass.

"Hey! I asked you a question."

"Guess you didn't want to leave time for me to think, huh?"

"Come on," Kylo said. He probably thought he sounded threatening. Really it sounded like a whine.

"I followed the path."

"There's no path!"

It was on the edge of Finn's tongue to call Kylo an idiot, to say that of course there was a path: just look around. But then he actually looked around, at the tangled forest they were walking through.

There wasn't a path. Or at least, there wasn't a path when the Force didn't feel like creating one.

"Whatever," he said, and forged forward.

"Tell me what you learned," Kylo said, his feet tripping over Finn's heels.

"Why should I?"

"I'm worried about you."

The Force surged around them as Finn's heart twisted. Kylo was lying, of course, omitting the most important truth. "You're worried about what I know. Compared to you."

Yes, whispered the perversion of the Force that lurked around Kylo. "Of course not," Kylo said out loud, sounding awfully offended for a literal murderer.

The lie came easily. "Don't worry. I didn't really learn anything."

"You're lying."

He had no right to sound so betrayed. Finn shook his head. "No, I'm not. It was just history you've probably heard before. It's not like I had a great education with the First Order."

"You are glowing," Kylo hissed. They were close to the camp now, and Finn walked a little faster, feeling uncomfortably like he was running away.

"That's just the lack of a 'fresher, it's not —"

He felt Kylo's intention but didn't have enough time to react to it. Invisible hands caught him squarely across the middle, slamming him back against the thick trunk of an ancient tree.

He felt the Force even here, slowly wending through the tree's branches. It was nothing compared to the double-time beat of his heart, the old ingrained fear that screamed at him to run away from this nightmare in front of him.

"Tell me," Kylo hissed. He looked frantic, his eyes searching Finn's face like he could pull Finn's secrets out.

Rey had told Finn about her time with the First Order. Finn had been briefed plenty as a 'trooper. He knew what Kylo could do if he wanted to.

Somehow, that was almost comforting. Kylo wasn't being the absolute worst version of himself. He wasn't forcing Finn. Though, that was definitely arousal against Finn's leg, and the longer he went without speaking, the more Kylo's color rose.

What must it be like, for these ugly feelings to be a source of power? Finn hoped he never found out.

"I found information left by the Guardians."

Kylo sneered. "Calrissian's cult?"

"Your uncle's faith. Yeah."

"And yours now too, I suppose."

Finn shrugged.

Kylo's skin was so hot. He looked so red Finn was a little worried that he was about to pass out, but that was nothing compared to the panic-arousal that shot through Finn when Kylo licked his lips and said, very quietly, "Tell me what you learned. Finn."

It wasn't like Finn thought he was Finn to Kylo. He wasn't stupid. Kylo might be sort-of-reforming, but at the end of the day, Finn was absolutely sure that he was still FN-2187 to Kylo, a baffling conundrum who'd served a few useful roles. Not a person. Not someone to hold, to kiss, to relax in dreams with.

Not someone at all, really.

"I learned how the Force sustains life," he said, barely more than a whisper. "I learned how the Guardians learned how to cheat death. And I learned why a lot of them died anyway."

Kylo's breath caught. It was obvious with the way they were standing: his chest pressing against Finn's, his fingers biting into Finn's skin. This close, Finn thought he understood the appeal of the dark power Kylo drew around him. It felt warm, almost comforting. It reminded Finn of those achingly tender, laughably unrealistic dreams he'd been trying not to have.

Kylo's words were a whisper of breath against Finn's cheek. "Do you know what the Dark would do for immortality?"

"Kill. Maim. Torture. I know how you guys work."

"You don't know much about them at all," Kylo said.

The Force hung between them, inside them, shimmering and full. Waiting. Finn's heart beat faster and faster, frantic and terrible evidence of what Kylo could do to him.

And then Kylo stepped away. The terrible pressure of nearly-touching was replaced by a cool glance, a disapproving set of the shoulders. "Keep your secrets," Kylo said, and started walking again.

Yeah, Finn thought, suddenly tired. That had always been the plan.

As inconvenient as being stranded had been before, now it was driving him literally, legitimately crazy.

Three days had passed since his adventure in the woods. The Force hadn't popped out from behind a rock to lecture Finn on the pros and cons of immortality, or whatever would've happened in a slightly more melodramatic universe. In fact, very little had changed — and that was what freaked Finn out.

It meant that the General and Lando and even Kylo were right: the power he had, the power he'd tried to deny, was real and already shaped him. He couldn't consider who he was without it, because he'd always been who he was now, and the Force had always been with him.

And he couldn't even talk to anyone about it! He definitely wasn't going to try to have this conversation with Kylo.

So during the day he surveyed the area around them, using their lone droid to go where the terrain got ugly or otherwise inhospitable. At night, he slept alone, and dreamed of a world where he and Kylo could talk without arguing, and without Kylo being such a massive jerk.

They were still very much stranded. The next Resistance patrols that would make it to this part of the galaxy were still months off. Neither of them had any luck repairing their communications systems. It drove Finn crazy that the best thing to do really was to stay healthy and wait.

Rey, he thought every night, staring up at the endless stars. Come get me, Rey. I'm losing it down here.

The sky stayed silent. And then, after a month of boredom and avoiding Kylo, it started to get colder.

The moon wasn't exactly a stable environment. Okay, fine, it supported life: it was stable enough. But night came quicker than most planets, and the weather changed in the blink of an eye. One day, Finn was gathering edible fruit from a shrub a few miles from their camp, and the next day that selfsame shrub had withered and the air smelled like snow.

"We should both stay in camp," Kylo said when Finn told him. "I can feel the sun drawing further from us. You'll die of exposure soon on one of your monkish rambles."

Finn hadn't gone back to the Guardian temple — or whatever it was — and Kylo knew it. "Trying to get a rise out of me when we're both confined to camp, real smart."

"I'm not trying," Kylo said with a sly look.

Finn scowled and fought down his irritation. It was just — weird. It was really weird, the power he could feel winding around Kylo, reaching out for Finn. If he didn't know any better he'd call it affection, but obviously it couldn't be that.

"We've got enough heat packs to last a few years, anyway," Kylo said. "We'll have to ensure the tent stays up, be careful about returning to it to sleep. But it'll be fine."

He looked over at Finn again, one of those sidelong glances that made Finn really aware of how long his eyelashes were and also how stupid his face was.

"Yeah," he said. "It'll be fine. I'm going to go, uh, secure the camp."

They had their packs, two emergency hammocks, and a tiny pile of spongey edible plants that tasted really gross and that they hadn't been able to bring themselves to eat yet. There was nothing to secure. Kylo didn't say that — didn't say anything. He silently watched Finn, his power an uncertain cloud around him, occasionally sweeping out towards Finn but never quite managing to touch him.

They did have enough heat packs. But one only lasted for six hours, and he and Kylo had gotten used to sleeping for eight or more, since there was nothing better to do. Finn was also exhausted, deep down in his bones, and he never mentioned it to Kylo — well, okay, he never mentioned it to the Kylo in reality. He'd admitted it in dreams. But he suspected Kylo, the real Kylo, was tired too.

All of that was a way of saying that the first night it snowed, as silence blanketed the world outside their tent, Finn woke up shivering and too tired to process that he needed to grab another heat pack. Instead, he moved towards the other source of warmth in the tent: Kylo, lying only a few feet away, an easy distance to cross even half-asleep.

Kylo grumbled a little; Finn ignored it. Kylo put an arm around his waist and it almost, perversely, felt like when he'd been in the barracks, close out of necessity but enjoying the company all the same. Finn sighed and closed his eyes again as his shivering subsided. He was asleep moments later, and he didn't dream.

He woke up aware of everything: Kylo's cock against his leg, Kylo's lips against his temple. The hot thrilling humiliation of having snuggled with Kylo instead of getting another heat pack.

And, of course, the burning truth of how badly he wanted this, paralyzing him.

"Good morning," Kylo said quietly.

That slight movement was enough to send a hot rush of need down Finn's spine. He closed his eyes against it, but stayed where he was: facing Kylo in a weird kind of half-hug, Kylo draped over him.

"Tonight," Kylo said, "I'll be sure to keep the heat packs closer to us."

"Sure," Finn croaked.

And still neither of them moved.

It was just so warm, Finn thought desperately. Warm and safe and here, this close to Kylo, the Force lurking around him felt almost normal. Almost affectionate. Almost like it wasn't a horrific perversion of the power that sustained them all.

"You should use what you've learned here," Kylo said quietly. His thumb twitched against Finn's back, then moved more surely, stroking him just a little.

Finn closed his eyes and desperately tried to focus on anything else. Like — "You mean how to forage for gross berries?"

"The secrets of your Guardians." Soft breath against his temple, fingers pressing into his spine. "Immortality, Finn."

Picking him up and throwing him in the snow couldn't have served as a better corrective. Finn rolled away and hopped to his feet. "What the — no! That's not the point!"

Kylo propped himself up on an elbow and looked up at Finn. "Isn't it?"

"Of course not."

"You know it's not. That's not what the Force is for, that's not what I have it for, it's not —"

"You don't have the Force at all. You're merely remarkably strong in it." Kylo cocked his head. "Why not use it to live forever?"

"Because! Drop it, okay?"

"Oh, relax. I'm not going to steal your secrets. But if I knew how to sustain my life everlasting —"

Finn stomped out into the snow and headed down one of their established paths.

Kylo just didn't get it, was the problem. Yeah, sure, the Guardians of the Whills had taught him about immortality. And they'd set it aside. They'd used what they'd learned to heal, to teach, to make the Force everlasting among sentients. Using it to extend their own lives would've been a horrible betrayal, and they were smart enough to know it.

Kylo, on the other hand, wasn't. The worst part was that Finn felt a little shocked by that, slightly betrayed, as though he'd started to believe that Kylo really was getting less terrible.

"Stupid," he muttered to himself, surveying the landscape.

This snow acted like all other snow Finn had ever encountered. It was quiet, most of the wildlife gone to wherever they weathered storms. The branches of the trees sagged from the weight of the snow, and it crunched underfoot as Finn wandered further from camp.

Then he saw them: berries. Bright red, shiny, wet from having melted snow around them. When Finn reached out to touch them, he felt warmth, life.

It wasn't the strangest flora he'd ever encountered. He pulled out his scanner and confirmed that they didn't have any toxic compounds, then picked all of them — two whole pounds, according to the scanner — to take back to camp.

"Here, I got us lunch," Finn said, dumping the berries on the floor of the tent. "Or dinner, maybe? I got us something."

"How kind of you," Kylo said, voice heavy with sarcasm. "Why aren't they covered in snow?"

"They're warm." Finn picked one up and tossed it to Kylo.

Kylo made a face. "How do you know they're not decaying?"

"I don't. But they're not toxic; I checked."

He watched as Kylo took a very careful bite. Bright pink juice dribbled down his chin, inducing Finn to think about licking it off, or about smearing it into his skin. He had to look away, bending down to grab another fruit and trying it for himself.

He'd thought it would be sour or bitter — winter fruit often was. But instead it tasted...

"This is wonderful," Kylo said, voice throatier than usual.

"It's sweet," Finn agreed, and took another bite.

There was something in the taste of it, an echo of familiarity that made Finn eat one, two, then three of the fruits as he tried to figure out what was so familiar about it. He was halfway through the fourth when he realized Kylo had been doing the same thing — and that he'd sat down at some point without realizing, and that he was dizzy.

"Uh oh," he said.

Kylo looked up at him. His face was flushed; he was breathing a little too heavily. "Let me see your scanner," he said, his words slurring a little. Finn passed it to him.

Kylo scanned the remaining fruit, blinked, frowned, and turned it around to show to Finn. For a second Finn didn't know what he was trying to show him. It was just the scanner, with a big green check mark to indicate safety for human consumption. And -

Oh. Oh. At the bottom of the screen, small and easy to ignore, was a yellow warning sign and the text: May be intoxicating to humans. Consult local guides.

"I'm going to send Explorer Enterprises a very serious letter about user experience," Finn said. His tongue felt too big; it tripped over his mouth. "As soon as I get a holopad. Maybe! Intoxicating! Big green check!"

"We're drunk," Kylo said in agreement, setting the scanner down.

That was what he'd been tasting. Finn felt like an idiot. "I'm sorry."

"You didn't know. I wouldn't have, either, except." Kylo laughed a little bleakly. "I almost asked to suck you off just now."

Finn's whole drunk brain screeched to a halt. "Um."

"Obviously something is wrong. Obviously." Kylo sank his head into his hands.

Finn took a few deep breaths and tried to arrange his thoughts, finding he couldn't. At some point his normal defenses had dropped without him noticing; he felt Kylo's arousal and embarrassment and pain, reaching out towards Finn and then recoiling, over and over. And.

Well. He wanted.

"You know I'd say yes."

Kylo glared at him with bloodshot eyes. "You're drunk."

"So are you."

"You wouldn't want this if you were sober."

"I'm not the one who ran away last time."

Kylo kept glaring, reaching down and taking another huge bite of fruit.

Finn watched as it swept through him. He closed his eyes, dropped the rest of the fruit from his shaking hands, leaning back against the tent. "I'm so tired of this," he said, sounding half broken.

Finn took another bite of fruit, too. If either of them stopped — well, he didn't really want to rediscover logic, right now. "Yeah, I am too."

Kylo, eyes still closed, tilted his head up towards the ceiling. "Kiss me, then."

Every bit of sense he still had screamed at Finn to leave the tent, to remove himself from this clearly dangerous situation. Instead, he crossed the short distance separating them, kneeling between Kylo's own ridiculously long legs, and kissed him.

It felt like a foregone conclusion. They'd only kissed once before, but this felt achingly familiar anyway. Kylo's hands landed on Finn's ass, guiding him closer, pulling him down into Kylo's lap. It should've felt stupid or degrading, but instead the feeling of yes, this, exactly this, filled Finn and stole his breath away. Kylo gasped into the kiss, changed the angle a little so that he was craning his neck back, practically pleading with Finn to kiss him harder, more, faster —

"I still want to suck you off," Kylo whispered when they pulled apart.

Lightning striking him couldn't have had a stronger effect. "Are you serious?"

"You already know I am."

Finn did. They were too close right now for him to hold Kylo's emotions at a distance. The fruit was strong enough to make them stupid, not pervert what they wanted.

He couldn't think of anything else to say. He had no defense against this, honestly stated and desperately wanted. "Yes," he said. "Yes." He moved to lie down, pulling Kylo with him, kissing him as Kylo worked to rid them both of clothes. The Force cushioned them, keeping Finn from feeling the cold of the tent's floor or the harshness of the metal against the back of his head. It was Kylo, Finn thought, it had to be — only he could feel it around them, and he knew that to be a lie. It was them. They moved together, shaping the Force to their needs even as Kylo finally got his mouth on Finn's cock.

For a moment the world seemed to spin into unreality. This felt like one of his awful, wonderful dreams, even as he tangled his hand in Kylo's hair and confirmed that it was very real.

Kylo's breath came in unsteady bursts against his hip. He didn't know what he was doing, that much was obvious. Finn stroked his hair as he licked Finn's cock, sucked it a little too lightly, pulled off to kiss Finn's thighs and run his hands over Finn's legs and stomach. He was huge, which Finn had already known but relearned from a new angle. His fingers were — Finn wanted them. He wanted all of Kylo, really, with a stubborn acuteness that surprised him even as Kylo sucked him down again, deeper, determination etched into his expression.

"Oh, oh," Finn said. He could barely think, much less care about how stupid he must sound. The Force surrounded him, holding him close where Kylo couldn't reach, caressing him even as Kylo bobbed his head. He looked filthy down there, his mouth bright red, flushed from forehead to waist. He looked up at Finn with undisguised desperation as Finn moved his hips just a bit — then harder when Kylo groaned and sank further down on him, like he'd been waiting for Finn to fuck his mouth.

He came with a groan, all over Kylo's cheeks and jaw. He kissed Kylo, mess and all, while Kylo fucked his hand. It was messy, stupid, faster than it should've been. It felt like most of what Finn had ever wanted.

"Don't leave," Kylo mumbled into his shoulder when Finn moved to get up.

"Our sleeping bags are just a few feet away."

"Still." Kylo clutched Finn to him and kissed his shoulder with almost unbearable tenderness. "Stay."

So Finn stayed. And he woke up hours later like he had that morning, clinging to Kylo pathetically. This time, though, his head was pounding from the berries, and he sort of thought he might die, just a little.

"Oh, kriff," he said. "Why did we — what did we —"

"You know the answers to both those questions," Kylo said, sounding even more First-Order-stick-up-the-ass than usual.

"I meant metaphorically. You wouldn't understand."

"Wouldn't I?" Lazy sarcasm now, but when Finn turned on the tent's lights, he saw Kylo wince. Good: Finn wasn't the only hungover one.

"Well, you haven't been having stupid dreams."

Finn recognized his mistake even as the words left his mouth. Kylo narrowed his eyes and said, "What kind of stupid dreams."

"Nothing." An obvious lie. "None of your business, anyway."

Kylo raised his eyebrows. "You realize, do you not, that Force users sharing dreams is a broadly known phenomenon?"

"Are you trying to say rolling around in the sunlight and being stupid, lazy boyfriends is how you dream about being with me?" Finn shook his head. "Come on, I know how to spot a lie better than that."

"Oh, I'm lying, am I? When I say I told you my secrets? That I remember kissing you, wanting you, laughing with you, fucking you?"

He had to have been. It was probably a lucky guess, that his vague not-really-details matched Finn's memory. There was no way Finn had been using the Force to make out with Kylo in dreams. He wasn't even going to let himself think about it being possible. "You lie about everything else. Why not that?"

He wasn't expecting Kylo to recoil like he'd been slapped. He clenched his jaw, breathing heavily, and around him Finn felt in the Force.

"I suppose I can't force you to see otherwise," Kylo said coldly. He waved his hand, and a long black cloak flew across the room to him. Once dressed, he left the tent without another word.

At first Finn thought the sound of a ship landing was just a really weird, overly specific hallucination. But then he heard Kylo saying coldly, "You will release the exploratory ancillary ship into my care, or I'll release your head from your shoulders. Your choice."

"Kylo!" he shouted, struggling into his pants. "We're being rescued, what is wrong with you? Don't just — oh, hey, Rose."

He'd run out of the ship without a shirt on, a fact that he was now hyper-aware of. "It's great to see you again," he added lamely, when no one else said anything.

"Hi, Finn. Hi, Finn's, um, chest." Rose eyed Kylo suspiciously. "Don't cut my head off, please."

"Give me what I want, and I won't have to."

Rose sighed. "Your dossier is so tragically accurate."

"Excuse me?"

"You're not going to behead me. Especially not in front of Finn." Rose crossed her arms. "If I give you the ancillary ship, you'll just go back to the First Order with it."

"He wouldn't!" Finn said, at the same time Kylo said, "And how is that any of your business?"

"Well, I'm a member of the Resistance. You could say it's actually my main business, stopping people like you from doing —"

"Stuff like that?" Kylo said with the beginnings of a smirk.

In response, Rose crossed her arms and glared.

"I will hurt you," Kylo told her. He spoke quietly, evenly, like he thought he was being reasonable. "I don't want to, but I will, if you don't give me a ship."

"I'm not going to enable you getting back to the First Order."

It occurred to Finn, way later than it should've, that he should probably be doing something. He reached out to Kylo with the Force, trying to figure out his intentions — and then recoiled. All he felt was anger.

"Let him go," he found himself saying.

Rose blinked. "Excuse me?"

But he knew it was the correct thing to say. "He wants to leave; let him. He won't go back to the First Order."

"You seem really sure of that, considering he's a literal evil Sith-guy."

"The Knights of Ren aren't Sith," Kylo said in that dumb pedant voice of his.

"Oh, excuse me, I just figured you were, what with the murder and hatred and everything." Rose shook her head. "Finn, I don't think we should let him go."

"He's been traveling with me for months." Kind of an awful thing to realize, really. It had been so long, and they were much closer than they should be, even forgetting what they'd just done. "If he were going to defect, I think he would've done it already."

"He didn't have a second ship."

"We were chased by a First Order assassin. He didn't join her. He tried to kill her."

Rose glanced around at the wreckage, only partially cleared away, and then at Finn. "Tried?"

Ah. "I finished it."

He half expected her to be shocked. Instead she only nodded, then returned her focus to Kylo. "The ship has a tracking device."

"I'm aware."

"If you disable it, we'll find you anyway. And stop you."

"Yes, my mother is known to be ruthless with regards to her fanatical Resistance. Do you have any other admonishments for me, or am I free to go?"

Rose shot Finn a look heavy with meaning. It was Finn's call. Right. Okay.

"Give him the ship."

The Force jumped between him and Kylo, burned. He couldn't even begin to say what Kylo was thinking just then. He only knew that this was the right choice. Kylo wasn't going back to the First Order. He might fly the ship straight into a dying sun, but the First Order would never get their hands on it.

"Finn," Kylo said in a low voice.

There was something there — more anger, maybe. Finn did his best to ignore it. "Rose?"

"Yeah, okay." She pulled out a keychip. "Here you go. Second panel on the right."

Kylo didn't so much as glance at Finn. He didn't look through the ship for any other supplies, either. Saber at his waist, he walked over to the panel, extracted the ship, and flew off, all while Finn stood there like an idiot.

Without him there, the Force felt faded, wrong. How much of what he'd learned had depended on Kylo being near?

"Wow," Rose said when Kylo broke atmosphere.

"What?"

"You look like someone just died."

He glanced at the sky again, in spite of himself. "I'm a little worried someone just did."

"I don't know, he survived Snoke. I think he can probably survive, uh, whatever this is."

Finn blinked at Rose, who was looking at him with significance, like she wanted him to know she knew something. Which was — oh no. Finn still wasn't wearing a shirt. "This isn't what this looks like."

"I promise, I don't want to know." She made a face. "But still. He'll be fine, okay? We should go back to the Resistance."

"Thanks for the rescue, by the way. How'd you even know we were down here?"

"Rey. She said she felt you in the Force."

That lightened Finn's mood enough for the next hour or so, as he packed up the camp and got ready to leave. Kylo hadn't left anything out; Finn hadn't realized how little he'd had, how much he'd kept to himself. Would he be okay wherever he was going?

Did Finn even care?

"It's okay if you're having feelings about your, um, Force companion, going evil," Rose said.

She was trying to be nice. Finn reminded himself of that so he didn't break down crying, or yell at her that Kylo wasn't going to go evil. "He's my friend. I think. Well, he sucks. But he's not going evil."

"Again," Rose said with the Resistance's dark irony.

"Again," Finn confirmed.

They sped through the black in silence, Rose shooting Finn worried glances, Finn trying to pull it together before he had to report to the General.

Chapter 6

"Finn!" He felt joy in the Force before Rey barreled into him, clutching him close. To his shock, tears sprang up in his eyes. He'd missed her, even more than he'd missed the entire Resistance. "You're finally back!"

"We had kind of an adventure on the way home," Finn said.

"I heard." She pulled away, her face falling. "Kylo's gone back?"

"Finn doesn't think so," Rose said.

Rey raised her eyebrows at Finn. "Really? We're talking about the same Kylo Ren? Tall, rude, sulked, and tried to run back to Hux five or six times after I whacked him over the head?"

"Same guy." Finn grimaced. "I don't know how to explain it."

"That's how I feel about the Force every day. Only I didn't think you and Kylo — I mean —" She made a dubious face. "Well. I suppose he did tell everyone that you used to, um."

"Date."

"That wasn't the word," Rose muttered.

"Still, though, it's not like it was true."

She couldn't have laid a more accurate hit if she'd actually shot him with a blaster. Finn grimaces. "Yeah. I mean, it wasn't. True. But —"

"Oh boy," Rey said, very quietly.

And — it was easy sometimes to forget how much he and Rey had in common. She shared Finn's delight at new experiences, strange places, the wealth of a galaxy that had been mostly closed to them. And she'd been raised half-feral, exactly the same as Finn and yet the opposite. Where he'd had Phasma beating him and the First Order brainwashing him, she'd had the endless silence of the desert and starvation at the hands of a stationmaster.

So it wasn't a surprise, really, that she immediately understood. She looked at him with sympathy, fellow-feeling, even though she clearly felt disgust at the idea of anyone having feelings for Kylo Ren.

"Ew," Rose said.

"Hey, get in line," Finn said. "I mean — it's gross! I know! I just — augh."

"Oh, Finn." Rey's voice quivered with barely-restrained laughter. "Let's go get a drink, shall we? I'm off for a whole forty-eight hours, that never happens. And Rose has promised to teach me how to play a Core Planet game!"

"Tiles," Rose told Finn in an aside.

It was clearly their way of consoling him. "Yeah, okay," Finn said, and let them lead him away.

As it turned out, half the pilots had the day off, too, and Rose's entire engineering crew. He found himself wedged between Rose and Poe, watching Rey take on Jess Pava for a full month's wages. The General surely wouldn't approve of this, since the Resistance barely had money to pay people at all some months, but Finn was delighted. And distracted from the fact that he still had bruises on his thighs from Kylo's too-strong, too-good grip.

"Okay, enough, I'm pretty sure you're cheating," Poe said when Rey won the third round in a row. "Hey, Finn, you went off on some Jedi quest, right? Is she cheating?"

"If I went off on a Jedi quest, would I tell you?" Finn said. "All is as the Force wills it, and all that."

Poe laughed. "Hey, good point. Only one way to fix that." He nudged Finn's drink towards him and winked.

Finn tried to will himself to feel into it. Flattered. Horny, even. Mostly he just felt sad; he missed Kylo and wondered if Kylo was thinking about him even a fraction as much as Finn thought about him. Ugh, he thought, and took a drink.

"So there's three Jedi now, is there?" said a pilot whose name Finn didn't know. "Rey, Finn, and the evil one?"

"He's not evil," Finn said reflexively. Oh. "And he's not a Jedi, either. And neither am I."

"Whatever, lots of denominations." The pilot waved his hand. "Still, though. Three? Against the First Order?"

Finn tried to think past the alcohol, which was suddenly feeling like a much worse idea. He reached out with the Force and felt Rey's tough watchfulness, power beyond anything he'd felt even from Kylo. And then the pilots: touched by the Force, strong in it, most of them. The pilot asking questions didn't mean anything bad by it; he was just drunk and a pessimist, which Finn could hardly blame him for.

"The First Order has a bunch of brainwashed kids and a megalomaniac nepotism-appointee as a general." Finn shrugged. "We've at least got talent on our side. I mean, look at you guys."

It was an obvious ploy for sympathy, but it worked. The pilots laughed as one, and then one of them challenged Finn to a game of cards, and on the night went without another blip.

But later, after almost everyone had left, Poe said, "Not a Jedi, huh?"

Finn shrugged and took a long drink of water. "No."

"Rey told me you're different. In the Force, I mean. I think I can kind of feel it, but —"

"The General sent me off to some people who are...not Jedi. Kind of like, aggressively not Jedi. Ever heard of the Guardians of the Whills?"

Poe snorted. "Is that a joke?"

Okay, fine, they were kind of obscure. "They're an old order. Not Jedi, but Force users. Or Force practitioners, anyway. They —"

"Finn." Poe held up a hand. "I meant that I know who the Guardians were. Well, were. You grow up with the Rebellion, you learn about the destruction of Jedha."

Finn had never heard of it, but he'd gotten good at covering up gaps in his knowledge; he'd look it up later. "Well, so — I learned from one. A survivor, or, um, acolyte? I'm not sure. But he taught me how to deal with the abilities I have, and how to kind of...shape them."

"And Kylo comes into this how?"

"He came with me. And he helped me, kind of."

Poe made a noise of polite disbelief.

"He did, I swear."

"I guess you had to be there."

"Hey, I'm not saying his personality got better. I'm not that good a liar. But he's powerful, I mean, he's the General's son."

"And wouldn't he like to forget it." Poe's tone was light, but his eyes spoke volumes, bright with old, bitter anger. "Listen, I'm happy for you, but this isn't exactly convincing me that the Force doesn't just cause people to have psychotic breaks."

Finn laughed in spite of himself. "It kind of does feel like that sometimes."

"What else does it feel like?"

Finn couldn't answer for a moment; he had no idea what he might say. Finally, after taking more than his sweet time considering it, he said, "Hope. It feels like hope."

The Force bloomed around them. Poe smiled. "Hey, good enough for me."

The war, somehow, dragged on.

Hux wasn't exactly a master strategist, but thanks to laundered money, he didn't need to be. The Empire had had some very old, very rich supporters, and they were clearly giving the First Order all the money they'd previously reserved for the Emperor.

Poe led strike teams, and General Organa directed raids according to what their growing spy network said were high-value targets. It was working, in the sense that the First Order's expansion had halted for now. Finn told himself that was enough — or, if it wasn't enough, it was the most they could do. He thought of that as a very mature response, very Guardian-y. He couldn't single-handedly win the war. No one could, not even the General herself.

But when Rey said glumly into her drink, "I honestly think more of these cautiously strategic raids might drive me insane," Finn couldn't help but agree.

"Obviously they're valuable," Rey said. "And I mean — well, the Force."

"The Force," Finn agreed. He knew exactly what she meant. He could feel the Force all around them, even when the First Order attacked, the malignancy of their power overwhelming and painful. Rey spent the time she wasn't actively fighting doing lightsaber drills and practicing physical manipulation of the Force. She got Finn to practice with her, sometimes, but the thing about their respective training was that Finn loved all the sitting around and exploring the Force. He'd gotten a kick out of her telling him about Luke poking her with some grass. He'd gotten better at detecting people's feelings and the Force moving in and around them, and at pushing things his way — calming the panicked, redirecting the darkness around squadrons of 'troopers.

It wasn't enough. Rumor was they were gearing up to destroy another system. None of it was enough.

"Ever feel like we're doomed?" Finn asked before he could stop himself.

"All the time," Rey said immediately, with the wide-eyed honesty he both loved and was terrified by. "Less now that Kylo Ren's disappeared, I suppose, but — well, they've got all the money. And a whole, massive army. And their wannabe-Snoke guys."

Because of course Kylo Ren vanishing had led to others stepping up in his place — the woman Finn had killed, sure, but others too. "Yeah. Well. He hasn't defected, at least."

Rey raised an eyebrow, scooping up her green sauce with her bread. "This isn't another conversation about him, is it?"

Finn didn't miss the implication. Whatever; he'd only talked about Kylo a few times. Well, three or four. But he'd been stranded with him, and traveled with him. It was only natural that he'd come up occasionally. "No. I just. I don't know what my point was."

"Doomed," Rey said around a mouth of sweetcake.

"Yeah." Finn sighed and looked down at his plate. His noodles and egg, which had seemed almost unimaginably luxurious when he'd selected it, looked suddenly limp and pale. Like the Resistance's chances of winning the struggle, he thought, and felt the Force shake around him with reflected cynicism.

"Hey." When he looked up, Rey was staring at him with her brow furrowed. "We've still got each other."

"True."

"And Poe, and Rose, and the General." Rey pursed her lips. "And engineering's terrifying liquor."

That, at least, made Finn laugh.

It was Chewie who realized the new recruit was Finn's sister.

Finn had barely noticed. They got defectors all the time now — courtesy, many of them said, of the holonet's efficient distribution of Resistance news. Even in areas where the First Order had banned the communications, people found a way around the firewalls. Recruits were great news, but Finn, somehow, had become sort of — well, he was busy, and he spent a lot of his day talking to the General and Rey.

So at first when Chewie started howling furiously, Finn went cold down to his toes and thought: Kylo's back.

He realized moments later what a ridiculous thought it was. He'd know if Kylo was back, he felt that deep in his bones. He'd know the moment he broke atmosphere. But then, what was wrong?

"What is it, you old lug?" the General said, looking up from her map of First Order sympathizing banks.

Chewie howled again, pointing at the door.

The General's expression barely flickered, but she glanced at Finn before she pursed her lips. "You're absolutely sure?"

Chewie nodded, then said something more quietly.

"It'll be fine. Go get her."

"So, what just happened?" Finn said when Chewie left. He could feel the General's distress, and he could feel it directed at him. "Is Kylo back?"

"No." The General did something with her face, a grimace that was trying hard to be a smile. "Chewie just told me he's met the new recruit. I — there's no easy way to say this. She's your sister, Finn."

For a moment, the world seemed to stop. "I don't. My —"

"Sister," the General said. "I understand if you'd rather not meet her, at least not right now; she was working on a First Order kyber mining venture, is my understanding, and she has quite a lot of high-level knowledge, so they're sending her to me. But —"

"No, no, I want to meet her," Finn said, tripping over his own words in his haste to say them. "She's my sister, I don't —"

He bit down on his tongue to keep from stating the obvious, which everyone in the room knew, and which would only make him feel pathetic: I don't have any family.

It didn't help. The General said with heartbreaking gentleness, "You don't have to stay if you're not ready. You know where the door is."

Finn did know, and what's more, he knew she meant it; he could feel nothing but empathy and worry for him. Great. He kept the door in his vision and white-knuckled his way through a strategy discussion until a woman appeared in the doorway.

He'd expected to feel doubt. He didn't remember his family, after all. Chewie might have a Wookiee's sense for human DNA, or whatever was going on there, but who was to say that would translate to Finn? What could they even possibly have in common?

Everything, it turned out. The Force in her reached out to the Force in him, and he knew, truth woven into his bones, without needing to say a word. He cleared his throat eventually, fighting his way through the humiliation of all the attention on them, and said, "I. Um. Hi. I'm Finn. You're...?"

"Lyssa," his sister said, and reached out with both her hands.

Her hands were warm and dry and very calloused. He held them tightly as the Force flowed through them both.

I missed you, Finn, she said in the Force. If he'd ever had another name — if she'd known him by anything else — she didn't say. He was her brother, and he was as he stood in front of her, not a memory or a disappointed expectation. He nearly sobbed with the relief of it.

Lyssa was two years older. She hadn't seen their parents or their other two siblings in over a decade. The kyber mine was brutal, and like all the other First Order activities, people were conscripted into service. It took only the blink of an eye for Lyssa to communicate all of that to him; in return, he shared his own memories of the 'troopers, and then the nicer stuff: Rey, the Resistance, and Lando.

"I'm so glad I found you," she said out loud when he was done.

He blinked and looked around. Maybe a minute had passed, and no one was looking directly at them. "Wow. Yeah, me too."

She squeezed his hands and dropped them, took a deep breath, and squared her shoulders. "General Organa. You wanted to speak with me?"

And the day continued.

He should've talked to someone about it, really. Rey or Poe would've been happy to talk to him — or get him drunk, in Poe's case. The General would have listened, too, if he'd wanted advice from someone with actual life experience. Even Chewie probably would've listened, though whether he'd care or do anything other than steal Finn's money over dice was kind of up in the air.

The Resistance was full of great people, so many people would've helped Finn through all this, but he felt panicked when he thought about talking to any of them. What was wrong with him? Why couldn't he just be happy that he'd found his sister, an event that was vanishingly unlikely against the backdrop of the First Order's tyranny?

"You're scared," Kylo said in the dream he had that night, where he blurted all of that out while Kylo picked at a flower's petals.

"I mean, obviously."

"But you don't want to admit it." Kylo glanced at him, his long eyelashes casting shadows on his cheekbones. "Kind of funny, given your mystical affinity for the Force."

"Stop making fun of me."

"Then stop being ridiculous. Acknowledge your fear and learn from it."

"Thanks, I love dark-sider advice from a figment of my imagination."

Kylo's mouth twisted bitterly "That would be something more like: embrace it. Make your fear worse and shape it into a weapon. Not that you'd know, in your imagination."

Finn wasn't sure why Kylo emphasized it like that, aside from his usual drive to be a jerk. "Sure. Well. I'm scared because I don't know her, I guess, and I'm freaked out because I don't really know how to have a family. It wasn't something I thought I'd have to learn."

"You're worried she'll hate you?"

Finn shrugged. "Sure. Or just that, I don't know, I'll be a bad brother?"

"What exactly do you imagine a bad brother looks like?"

You, Finn thought. "Selfish. Um, self-centered."

"Those are the same thing."

"You'd know."

He expected Kylo to get mad and leave the dream; he had plenty of times before. But Kylo just blinked at him, a little pole-axed, before laughing. "She won't hate you. She won't think you're a bad brother. You are absolutely, without a doubt, the most disgustingly kind and generous person I've ever met — and my mother's a war hero. Perhaps you could disappoint the Supreme Leader, but I suppose we'll never know. Anyone else would be overjoyed to call you a relative."

It was the kind of speech Finn hated knowing he'd dredged up from his subconscious, a speech that revealed with painful precision exactly the kind of nonsense he was desperate to hear someone say.

Ugh, no, it was worse than that: the kind of nonsense he was desperate to hear Kylo say. Gross.

"You have to say that. You're literally only here to tell me what I want to hear."

"Sure, Finn." Kylo reached out then, brushed his long fingers down the side of Finn's face, his neck. "What if I told you I'm jealous she's there and I'm not?"

Finn wished his heart would stop racing. "I'd say that's really weird, since she's my sister and you're. Not."

Kylo smiled. "No." He leaned in for a kiss.

It was awfully familiar, emphasis on awful. And yet, Finn started to kiss back, even as the dream faded.

"No! Wait!"

But it was gone. He woke up just enough to pull his blanket up a little, then fell back into deep, Kylo-less sleep.

He was working the midnight shift in the shipyard three days later when his sister came to see him.

"I have no affinity for machines," she said, watching him with what looked like amusement.

Finn shrugged, unable to make himself meet her eyes. "I've spent a lot of time around them, I guess."

"Were you trained to be a mechanic? With..."

"With the 'troopers?" He'd had so much practice making himself sound casual when referencing his past; he hated how necessary it was to do so now.

"Yes." She hesitated, then said, "I'm sorry. If you don't wish to discuss it —"

"No!" Too loud. "No, no, it's fine. I mean, everyone here knows I'm...well."

"I didn't think it was possible to escape." She watched him so carefully. What must she be picking up from him in the Force? Finn didn't want to think about it. "They tell me you broke the conditioning. Of course, the holonet says it can't be done."

"The holonet's wrong."

"Hm, technically. I think generally it can't, though." She reached out and placed a hand against the ship Finn had been working on. He felt her power shimmer over the metal, briefly saw an impression of an old seam of iron on a planet far, far away. "You're different. Like me."

His first thought was that it sounded ridiculously self-aggrandizing — only of course she was right, and he felt her gentle humor when he came to that conclusion. He had no idea what kind of person his sister was, only that she was nice when she spoke with him, and very possibly even more powerful than he was.

No. No, he was lying to himself. He knew who she was through the Force. She was genuinely kind to everyone; she was a good person. She'd never practiced killing people. She'd never shouted 'Hail the Supreme Leader!' with love and belief in her heart.

"Finn." He was yanked back into reality by her hand on his arm. "They put those feelings in you, you know. I think it's amazing you managed to resist them."

She was telling the truth, too. He bit the inside of his cheek against the waves of shame and desperate longing that filled him. He just wanted a family. He didn't deserve a family. He wanted -

"Oh, Finn," she said, and hugged him.

Finally, he cried.

He wasn't sure how long it lasted — minutes, probably, but it felt like hours. When he pulled away, she offered him a scrap of rough fabric. "My old mining uniform," she explained.

He paused in horror, midway through blowing his nose. "I'm dumping all this on you, and you —"

She shrugged. "It's a terrible existence. It all is. But we in the mines, we weren't reconditioned. We were mistreated, but not brainwashed. Oh, Finn, it's okay to be sad. I cried on the General the other day, you know, because I was showing her a mine shaft where my wife died. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

And he knew all that, he did. But to have his sister saying it -

"Stop that," she said when self-recrimination closed up his throat. "Let me be your big sister: it's been long enough, I need practice. So you can cry on me, and I'll call your crush on Kylo Ren gross."

"Aughhhhh," Finn managed to croak.

She rolled her eyes, and — oh. They really did look alike. "What, did you think I wouldn't notice? He's all threaded through your memories, you know. Like mold ruining fine bread."

"Ha, ha." He needed to change the topic, faster than immediately. "Tell me about our family?"

Sorrow in the Force, powerful waves of mourning. "Gone. But I know you want to hear more than that."

"Please. If you can."

"I've got records. Holovids, some handwritten letters. They're back in my barracks." She stood. "Meet me after your shift's over, yeah? I'll grab some dinner from the canteen, and we can go through it together."

"I'd like that."

She smiled at him, a crooked sort of smirk he'd seen in the mirror. "Don't think I'm going to forget about Ren!"

"I wish you would!"

She left laughing. Despite his humiliation, he finished up his work with a lighter heart.

So, family.

He was surprised to find that his sister really was a lot like him. They put her to work almost immediately in engineering, since she'd worked on both the practical aspects of how to keep the kyber mines from collapsing, and the actual droids that brought the kyber in and out, and mined it in areas that weren't too dangerous.

"They reserved the really dangerous spots for people; we're less expensive," she said as she fixed up a droid's laser sight. "There you go."

Finn's heart twisted, but he got it; he thought of being a trooper the same way. Not something to talk about unless it was relevant, brutality not really worth dwelling on. Through the Force, she reached out to him, and he held her, a grip of solidarity and growing love.

It was nice. It was good. He caught Rey wistfully not-looking at him a few times, while he hung out with his sister and learned about his family's history, their place in the galaxy. The Resistance was still a grind, long hours and danger around every corner and the twisting awful fear that none of it mattered, that the First Order was bound to win — but having Lyssa there lightened it. It made him think that maybe, if it all ended someday — maybe he could go back and ensure their stories lived on.

And then Kylo came back.

It started as a whisper, a rumor between pilots, lurking in the back of Finn's own mind. Or maybe it started as a dream after that first time he heard someone say Kylo Ren had been spotted looking for the Resistance base.

"What are you doing?" Finn said in the dream, as Kylo unbuckled his tunic.

Kylo paused, long fingers curled around dark fabric, looking as supercilious as he ever had when Finn had been captive on his ship. "Undressing. What does it look like?"

"Pava said you'd been sighted a system away."

"Is that so."

"Are you coming back? Half the Resistance thinks you've deserted."

"I did."

"You're not with them, though." Thinking of Kylo back with the First Order made Finn's chest clench. It couldn't be real, it couldn't. It couldn't.

"No." Kylo cocked an eyebrow. "Maybe I'm thinking about forming my own cult. I'd be better at it than the self-styled Grand Admiral Hux, don't you think?"

"No."

He spoke without thinking and realized it was true afterwards. "You're not very good at being ruthless," he said when Kylo made a face at him. "You've got a ton of feelings and you're also, um." This was a dream, so it didn't really matter if he told this Kylo the truth, right? "You're a dumbass."

Kylo's lips twisted, his annoyance plain. "I suppose you'd do a better job?"

Finn shook his head. "Look, most people don't do a good job at being evil dictators. It's fine. It's actually a good thing. The only person I can think of who'd really be good at that is the General, and it's really just lucky she doesn't want to."

A weird look passed over Kylo's face, like he knew Finn was right but didn't want to admit it. After awhile, he said, "Well, thank you for the psycho-analysis, but I had planned other things for this little rendezvous."

"Like what?"

"Like this," Kylo said, and walked towards Finn with his open tunic billowing dramatically behind him, slipping one huge hand behind Finn's head and kissing him.

He was, as always, a little too clumsy, a little too strange. He must have been alone for awhile, Finn thought, before remembering that this wasn't really Kylo. This Kylo, a construct of his mind, was just what Finn thought Kylo might be like, after months of traveling.

Apparently what his subconscious wanted was Kylo falling to his knees and looking up at Finn like Finn held the secret to happiness, to finally being free of the Dark Side. He felt desperation from Kylo, and desire, and something else that he couldn't pin down: an intense almost-angry focus that held Finn at its uncompromising center.

"Let me do this," Kylo whispered, his tone begging despite the words. "Let me touch you, let me — let me." He pressed his forehead against Finn's hip, shaking.

Finn reached down and touched his hair, clumsy, feeling stupid. This was his fantasy? Really? "Sure," he said lamely.

Kylo looked up at him — and then gasped, "No, wait," as the dream faded.

Finn woke up sweating and shaking as Kylo had been. Weird, stupid dream, he thought, pressing a hand against his eyes.

He was so lonely. That was the problem. He'd realized it after Lyssa arrived. Before, he'd been singular. If he felt lonely, it was just because there was no one else like him: no other defected stormtroopers, and no family either. He and Rey had bonded over that, the feeling of being alone in basically every way.

Now, though, he had a sister, and it threw his loneliness into sharper relief. He didn't just want anyone. He wanted Kylo, and he wanted the lie Kylo'd been selling — or a version of it, anyway. He wanted love. He had the love of friends, and now of a sister. It had made him demented. He wanted someone to love him in the way where they'd kiss him, too.

And of course, as always, it wasn't just anyone he was thinking of. After all these months, he still wanted Kylo. Ugh, it was gross even to think about here, lying alone in his tiny barracks room.

Maybe he knew before he left his room that day. He had learned, with Lyssa's help, how to pay closer attention to the Force, so that he was consciously aware of the people and power moving around him. That new consciousness came with a price, though, because halfway to the cafeteria he realized he could feel Kylo close by.

This wasn't a dream. He took off at a run, following the feeling and his own panicked half-joy, running down the hall and across the repair yard and -

A ship, small, of indeterminate origin, definitely not a First Order ship, but not a Resistance ship either. Kylo stood in front of it, tall and weird-looking as ever, a sarcastic, half-bored look on his face as he pointedly didn't look at the six blasters pointed at him.

"You should've called ahead if you wanted us to throw a party," Poe said.

"Don't. Move," Rose said.

"What have you done to Finn?" Rey said. And then, when everyone else looked appalled: "What? I thought now's as good a time to ask as any."

"I told Finn I wasn't returning to the First Order, with the implication being I'd come back eventually, I'm not moving, and I didn't do anything to him." Kylo's lips curled horribly. "Aside from telling him I wasn't returning to the First Order."

"Oooh, you —"

"Hey, guys," Finn said, before Rey went full Dark Side and killed Kylo in front of Poe and everybody. "Maybe we should take him to the General?"

"I'll come quietly." Kylo tilted his head a little. "If you come with me. Finn."

"Oh, don't worry, we're all coming with you," Poe said grimly.

"I was talking to Finn." Kylo might've sounded pleasant if he hadn't been so, well, Kylo. "You can do whatever you want. Obviously."

"Oh, obviously." Poe tucked his blaster in his waistband. "Come on, then."

Finn walked beside Kylo, mostly because he felt like Kylo would be a real pill if he didn't. They didn't talk, even though Finn was bursting to, wanting so badly to find out why Kylo'd come back, where he'd been, what he planned to do next.

If he planned to do anything next, really.

The General had clearly been briefed on who'd landed. She didn't even blink when Kylo walked into the war room; if Finn hadn't felt the Force screaming between them, he'd have assumed she didn't feel anything at all.

"Ben," the General said. "Sit down."

It wasn't a suggestion. Kylo sat.

"Let's start with the debrief," the General said. "We've taken Finn's report of being stranded on that moon. Now I'd like to hear yours."

Finn felt panic in the Force, and he honestly couldn't say how much of it was his and how much was Kylo's. He'd been honest with the General when she'd debriefed him, but then, he hadn't had an audience and she wasn't his mother. They'd done so many inappropriate things.

"I would request privacy," Kylo said stiffly.

Finn moved to leave.

"Except for Finn."

"Oh, come on," Rey said.

But Kylo didn't give in. He only sat there, looking as stupid as Finn had ever seen him, but also pretty inflexible.

"This shouldn't take long," the General said. "Go ahead."

And so the next thirty minutes of Finn's life were taken up by Kylo haltingly recounting their time on the moon, makeouts included. Finn had recounted it as dully as he could, not sparing any of the ridiculous behavior, but not discussing his feelings, either. Kylo did the same — or he tried to. But it was painfully obvious what he was feeling at any given time. He turned bright red, his voice shook, his hands began moving like panicked birds. Finn's heart twisted when he described the way Finn had killed the other Force user, even though the words were as dispassionate as Finn's had been.

When he finally finished, the General said, "Good news: your story's consistent," and waved the others back in.

With four witnesses, she then said, "Now tell me what you were doing when you deserted the Resistance."

"I didn't desert!" Kylo said hotly. "You'd have to join to do that, for one."

"Is that a fact? My mistake."

"I'm not a member of the Resistance."

"How do you identify yourself, then?"

"As — I'm —" For some reason, Kylo glanced at Finn then. Finn couldn't have said what what going on in his head just then if a million credits had been on offer. Kylo sat in the middle of an unfathomable maelstrom.

"Any time, Ben," the General said, her tone drier than the deserts of Jakku.

"I'm here because I want the First Order to burn," Kylo said finally. His voice was dark and furious, and it sent a shiver down Finn's spine. "I don't need to be a sworn loyal member of the Resistance to do that."

He was sneering at the Resistance, and personally, Finn was ready to knock him on the ground for it. What did he know? Nothing, apparently, judging by what an asshole he was being. But -

The General only smiled. "Of course. And so you'll stay here, not officially a member, but serving us, loyal to us, reporting to...us."

"Yes." Kylo glared at her, as furious as Finn'd ever seen him.

"I'm missing something here," Rey mumbled. Finn, safe in the privacy of his own thoughts, heartily agreed.

Finally, the interview was done. Kylo was officially a Resistance-allied fighter pilot, and as such was free to go till his next rotation. Finn half expected the actual pilots to revolt at the news, but when he asked about it, Poe just shrugged. "We'll try the sociopaths who stuck with the First Order, after we win. Who's going to tell General Organa's heir that he should be rotting in a prison cell instead?"

"He's not her heir."

"No, probably not." Poe looked at him thoughtfully. "But he's something to her, and to you. Everyone's something to someone. We're here to win a war. He's got power. That's pretty much the end of the conversation, you know?"

Finn managed to keep himself from scowling. Barely. He didn't want — Kylo wasn't anything to him! Except, of course, that he was, and the Resistance loved gossip and was tight-knit and frankly understimulated in between battles. So everyone knew about his thing for Kylo and most of them seemed to pity him for it. Even Lyssa regarded it with baffled tolerance, not angry with him but fundamentally uncomprehending.

That was all bad enough. Worse was the fact that Kylo would not, even if Finn literally begged him, stop following him around all day. Like right now, as Finn worked on an X-Wing and Kylo just sat there, not helping at all.

"I just keep asking myself," Finn said for what felt like the hundredth time, "don't pilots have responsibilities? Duties? Jobs?"

"Everyone has a job in the Resistance, Finn, don't be ridiculous."

But Kylo wasn't meeting his eyes, and he'd clearly slammed up some kind of barrier to keep Finn from poking at him with the Force. All that added up to one thing. "There's something you're not telling me, and it's related to the fact that you're following me around like this."

"Hm, is it?"

"Yes! It is! It's really obvious and weird and — and awkward!"

Kylo shrugged. Faced with that wall of determined nothing, Finn found himself falling back into silence.

But it wasn't a comfortable silence, because his thoughts just kept swirling. Why was Kylo doing this? Was it pity? Was he really that worried about Finn? Why? Finn was — he was becoming a Guardian, he had family now, not to mention the secret to immortality that he'd sort of half-forgotten for everyone's own good — but still, it was a pretty significant accomplishment. Who was Kylo to worry about him through all that?

"Lunch."

"Huh?"

Kylo smiled thinly. "You didn't eat breakfast. I followed you straight here. It's lunch hour for the zeta shift, and your hands are shaking."

"They are not — they are, oh." Finn very carefully put the oscillating plasma wrench down. "Okay, well. Let's go?"

"Of course."

They went to get lunch. There was a line because of course there was: it was zeta shift lunch hour. Finn was psyching himself up to wait in it, which he hated for a variety of reasons: it was boring; it reminded him more than anything else of being back with the First Order; he often felt awkward and stared at in the cafeteria even when Kylo wasn't following him.

But instead, Kylo said, "Go find a spot to sit down, I'll get you food."

"I — what about you?"

"I had energy paste." Kylo smiled at him. It looked like he was having some kind of weirdly specific face seizure. "Go on, sit down."

For a second Finn felt the Force howl around him, and only some of it was due to his own feelings. "Are you — okay? Do I need to call someone? A doctor, or, I don't know, a Jedi?"

"The only Jedi on this planet would rather vivisect me than help me resolve this specific problem. Go sit down and let me bring you lunch, okay?"

Finn, utterly at a loss, let Kylo bring him lunch. And then watch him while he ate it — like a fish in a too-small tank, Finn couldn't help but think, or a droid model you weren't totally sure you'd successfully reprogrammed. What the spaced Emperor was this?

He lasted two days. Two days of solicitousness and Kylo following him around like a lost bantha before he broke and said, after Kylo had brought him another lunch, "What are you doing?"

"Excuse me?"

"Why are you doing this? Being nice to me, giving me food and —" Staring at him. So carefully, like he was waiting for something that Finn didn't understand. "- everything! Why are you doing this? Do you think it'll, I don't know, redeem you? For everyone else?"

"Do you think I need redemption?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"Just a question." Kylo's watery eyes sought Finn's, held them. "What do you think of me? Finn?"

He had done so much in the last year. He'd learned about what the Force was, how to use it, and how to guard it: a much more important duty, he thought furiously, and one he'd fought to be loyal to. And now Kylo Ren was quizzing him about, what, his soul? Finn felt simultaneously furious and utterly, fundamentally exhausted.

"I think you're a jerk," Finn said finally. "And you want something from me, but I don't know what it is, and I don't know why you don't just tell me. Okay?"

They were in the cafeteria. Kylo couldn't murder him in the cafeteria, a very important thing to keep in mind when he was looking at Finn this murderously. "Do you really not know?"

"No, I don't."

And it was true! Kylo'd have been able to tell in the Force if he was lying, and anyway: he wasn't. He wasn't lying. He had no idea why Kylo, after having deserted the Resistance and after having been really weird and sexual towards Finn, had returned only to be — watchful. Nice. Romantic, maybe, not like Finn had a huge frame of reference to go by.

"You really don't know."

"You know I don't."

Kylo stared at him, wide-eyed, some kind of tortured emotion all over his face. It was ridiculous how many feelings he had — and in the cafeteria, of all places, where everyone could see him and gossip about it later. But Kylo didn't seem to care. He shook his head and said, "You still haven't figured it out. I thought you must have."

"Figured what out? Throw me a bone, here. Tell me what's going on, why you're so —" But then Finn couldn't finish. He couldn't think of a single word to embody the unbearable feelings moving between them, the bond he could feel and almost touch but didn't understand at all.

"Never mind." Kylo stood, looking down at Finn with a totally unreadable expression. "I'll see you later."

And then he was gone.

"Whew," Pava said under her breath, the next table over. "Breakups suck."

"Hey, stop it," Rose said. "Finn. You okay?" She switched tables, bringing herself over to Finn. "He's a, um. You won't like it if I say he's a jerk, huh?"

"Not really."

"He's just having some problems, that's all." Rose wrapped her shredded meat in the day's flatbread and took a bite with confidence Finn envied. "It'll all be fine."

"Sure. Um, thanks," Finn said, and ate his beans.

It wasn't fine. He didn't see Kylo at all for the rest of the day, and when he fell asleep, the first thing he saw was Kylo.

They sat in some anonymous plaza on a planet with beautiful bright sun and lots of rich green plants. It seemed fake, really; they were on top of a huge building, in an enormous city, but Finn could see beautiful sunlit meadows on the horizon. It was too good to be true.

"We're on Naboo," Kylo said.

"Where?"

"Don't play dumb, it doesn't suit you."

"I know what Naboo is," Finn said. "A rebellion terrorist hotspot." Or so they taught 'troopers. "But I've never been here, so how would I know what it looks like?"

"At this point I have to assume you're doing this on purpose."

"Doing what?"

There was something there — an answer to a question that Finn desperately needed, an explanation for whatever was happening here that had Kylo so worked up. He was forming a question, the outlines of an interrogation that would get him the information he needed, when Kylo made a furious noise and stomped forward, kissing him.

Always, always, every time, he felt like this: enveloped in Kylo's scent, his literal actual life force, as Kylo kissed him. All coherent thoughts fled, and Finn kissed back, feeling his grip on the dream loosening.

He woke with his heart racing, his dick hard, aching all over. He lay alone in the dark and tried not to cry.

The First Order was planning something.

"I do wish I could be more specific," Lyssa told the General. "I only caught — wisps. They're good at hiding from Force users."

"Ironic, since there are so few these days. The Emperor made sure of that."

"It's not surprising that people who seek to misuse power fear others having some for themselves," Lyssa said. "Don't you think?"

The General raised her eyebrows. "I think that was in a speech my mother gave to the Senate many years ago. How'd you learn that on a mining rig?"

Lyssa smiled. "You wouldn't believe the holobook black market."

Finn really wouldn't. Stormtroopers were never brought in on that kind of thing. "So we know they're planning something, we know it's big," he said. "It's gotta be focused on the Resistance, right?"

"Oh, almost certainly," Lyssa said. "That's how I knew to run away here. It took me awhile to piece together the memories they tried to take, but...here." She handed the General a microchip. "That's everything I know."

Finn assumed it had something to do with Rey: capture the fledgling Jedi before she had a chance to put Skywalker's training to use. But the general, after reviewing the information, seemed to think differently. "There are a bunch of implications here that don't fit with what they know of Rey," she said during the second meeting Finn had been called to that week.

"Like what?" Finn said.

"They keep referring to 'the traitor'," the General said. "Setting aside confirmation bias, it could be anyone, really, at least half our troops. But..."

Finn's heart felt like lead in his chest. "You think it's me."

"We all think it's you," Rey said. "Sorry."

"Space it, I never should've gone to learn from Lando." Because of course he was still afraid, and now on top of being afraid he also felt — worried, angry. Infuriated, really, that the First Order thought they could have him again. And worst of all, he could feel everyone else's emotions, too. Concern from Rey, nervous anger from Poe, bone-deep exhaustion from the General. "What do I need to do?"

"Nothing, for now," the General said. "I've told my son that he has a real job now: guarding you."

"Oh, great."

"He's agreed to behave." The General gave him a speaking look. "I expect to be told if he's not."

Something awful occurred to Finn. "Could it be Lyssa? Could she — I mean, they know about her, right?"

"Not as much as they know about you," Poe said. "Sorry, buddy. I know it's not great news to get. But we're not going to let anything happen to you, okay?"

"Of course. Yeah, no, I'm not worried." He was, he was so worried. "Um, can I — I kind of want to talk to Kylo. About it."

"He should be right outside. Go ahead."

"Finn, you're sure you're all right?" Rey said.

"Hey, this is war, right? I knew what I was getting myself into." He forced a smile. "See you."

Kylo was, in fact, waiting right outside. He stood at attention, his hands clasped loosely behind him. His eyes widened when he saw Finn. "What's happened? Are you — is your sister —"

"Everything's fine. It's just, I mean. The First Order's hunting me now, but you knew that, so."

"They're what?"

"The General said she told you." Only, she hadn't. She'd said Kylo had orders to protect him. She must not have said from what.

Tricking Finn into talking about it. Kriff. "Yeah, I guess because of what I learned about Guardian of the Whills stuff."

"They won't capture you. Of course not. But you need more than one person watching out for you, what was my mother thinking?"

"Probably that the Resistance has barely enough people to count as a Resistance. Also you're super powerful." Finn forced himself to shrug, to stay relaxed. "It's fine."

Kylo stared at him for a second, the harsh lights of the hallway doing really unflattering things to his face. "Let's go," he said, whirling around and starting to walk without even checking to see Finn was following.

"You're supposed to be guarding me, not bossing me around!" But Kylo didn't so much as twitch, and he'd put up mental walls around his feelings yet again, so Finn really had no choice but to go ahead and follow him.

They walked out past the shipyard, beyond the droid-patrolled boundaries of headquarters, down a path Recon had worn into the forest, then past that, too, into a copse of trees sheltering a meadow. It was very beautiful, Finn thought, looking around. Like something out of one of his shameful, stupid feelings-dreams.

"I didn't want anyone to overhear me," Kylo said, "when I told you that I know exactly the methods used to train stormtroopers to hide their emotions. It won't work on me."

"I'm not a stormtrooper anymore."

"No. But their mark is still on you." Bitterness shimmered around him. "I know you're afraid, and I know you're upset."

"Okay. Well, I guess that doesn't have much to do with protecting me, so..."

"Seriously?"

"Do I not sound serious?" Finn felt anger rising in him. He tried to dismiss it, tried to be — who Lando had told him he could be. Better than he was, currently, with all the terror and horniness. "I don't need a — lesson, or a talking-to, or whatever you're thinking about."

"Neither of those." Kylo sounded impossibly cold. "If you're upset it will impair my ability to protect you. It's in my best interest to resolve the problem."

Bullshit, Finn thought. Kylo's scowl deepened. "You need to get better at hiding your thoughts."

The mature thing would be to try to shut this whole argument down. Instead, Finn said, "You need to get better at hiding your emotions."

At the best of times, Kylo was a pale that could reasonably be described as 'corpse-like'. Now, though, he went white as a salt lick. "You — selfish, in-denial little — argh!"

Really: Finn should've seen the kiss coming. But he was too busy reeling from the wave of something coming off Kylo, emotion so strong it nearly physically knocked him over. He was unprepared to be pinned against a tree, unprepared for tender hands to clasp around his face, unprepared for Kylo to lean in and press himself against Finn as he furiously kissed him.

"Why do you think I lied to Snoke?"

He might as well have asked Finn to solve quantum penta-dimensional math problems. "What?"

"I lied to Snoke. About you, about...us."

There is no us! Finn wanted to yell, only of course there was: Kylo's hand on his hip, his breath mingling with Finn's. All Finn wanted, really, was an us.

"I wanted it." Their connection prevented him from thinking the vicious whisper could possibly be a lie. "I needed to tell Snoke a lie he'd believe, something that had the taste of truth. I watched you, when you weren't you. I wanted you. As a stormtrooper, with no will of your own, no self —"

"Stop it."

"Why should I? You wanted to know, didn't you? By the time I was punished for losing you and Rey, I'd already imagined a thousand ways to fuck you."

"We have — they have will," Finn said. "They have thoughts, okay, I had thoughts. It's not — we're still people. Every time the Resistance kills 'troopers, they're killing people, you realize that, right?"

"We."

"What?"

"You're part of the Resistance, Finn." A finger stroking Finn's jaw, tender and cruel at the same time. "So you kill 'troopers. Your friends."

"What exactly is the point of this?" He should've been able to tell. It should've been obvious. But he couldn't and it wasn't; the typhoon of feelings coming from Kylo illuminated nothing at all.

"The point is to remind you that I'm a monster, and the absurd affection you're harboring should be directed at anyone or anything else."

"I'm not —"

"Whatever dreams you might have. Let them go. I will keep you from being assassinated, and you will deal with your anger and fear so that I can do so." Dark eyes pinned him in place. "Promise me."

Beneath the frankly insane story about Snoke, there was a grain of real truth: people who were angry behaved irrationally, and if Kylo was going to protect Finn, they had to work together. Finn hated it, but there it was. "Fine."

"Good. Let's go, then."

They left the beautiful, sunny meadow. Too bad, Finn thought. It would've been a nice place to spend an afternoon — romantic, even, like in his dreams.

He didn't think of it till later, lying alone in bed and trying to convince his insomnia to take the night off. In his dreams. Whatever dreams you might have.

He bolted upright, suddenly wide awake. Shit. That couldn't have been what Kylo meant. They were just stupid dreams, inventions of Finn's subconscious. They couldn't be real. Kylo couldn't possibly know about them.

The things Finn had said in the safety of a dream...

No. There was just no way, and that was that.

It was weird having Kylo lurking behind him while he went about his daily routine, though. Lyssa definitely thought so, too. She kept casting him uneasy glances while they worked on repairing Pava's hyperdrive.

"Sorry," she said the third time Finn caught her at it. "I know you can feel how —"

"Nervous you are? Yeah. It's okay. I mean, he's —"

"A monster?" Lyssa said. The truth of her anger and fear rang between them in the Force.

And she was right. Finn hated the truth of it: Kylo had become the monster Snoke wanted him to be, and a year of semi-repentance didn't erase that fact. But — "I was a monster, too."

"The first time you had to kill someone, you ran."

"I wasn't the close personal apprentice of Snoke." Finn shrugged, thinking about what Poe had told him. "I'm not making excuses for him. He fucked up. But when we're done here — when we win — we're going to have a lot of fucked-up people to govern. So if he's truly repentant — and that's what this is. The General's having him guard me because it's boring, it's not particularly important, but it does require loyalty."

He felt anger in the Force, and he knew it was coming from Kylo. Whatever. His fault for eavesdropping.

"I know you have a point." Lyssa shook her head. "I just worry, you know? About you, about both of us."

About, he heard in her silence, the family they barely had, just the two of them. All the more precious for how fragile it was.

"Me too," he said. "Hey, can you take a look at this? It looks like the sub-atomic scanner's on the fritz."

He had lunch with Rey that day, as he always did on odd-shift days. He probably should have anticipated that she'd spend the hour clutching her silverware in fists, staring at Kylo with murder in her eyes.

"I hate this plan," she said.

"Careful. From what I'm getting, you're close to going darkside."

"Ha ha," Rey bit out. "He's —"

"Evil? Not anymore, technically."

"Untrustworthy in general," Rey said, "but specifically, incredibly untrustworthy for someone who's meant to be protecting you! I can't believe the General's permitting this!"

"Well, he's her son."

"She was ready to blast him out of the sky. If she's allowing it, it's because she thinks it's a good idea — for somereason."

"But you said you can't believe —"

"She's worried about you," Kylo said. "It's obvious."

When he hadn't spoken for awhile, Kylo's voice got throaty and even deeper than usual. Finn, unfortunately, knew it was also how he sounded when he was turned on. It made him all topsy-turvy: he almost dropped his glass of water.

"No one asked you," Rey said icily. "Finn, let me guard you."

"You're too important. And the General trusts you enough to go off-base alone. Push comes to shove, I could stop Kylo from doing anything too bad, planet-side."

Kylo snorted.

"He could wipe the floor with you and you know it," Rey told him.

"I suppose we'll never find out, will we?"

Finn reached out without thinking, wrapping them both in the Force the way you might swaddle a kitten in a towel. "Both of you, knock it off. We all have our orders, and we're following them, and that's that."

"Auuuugh," Rey said, and stabbed her textured vegetable protein with alarming force.

Kylo snorted. He was looking at Finn like — Finn didn't know, but it was way, way too intimate, too knowing. Finn dropped his control of the Force and drank the rest of his water.

It happened on a clear and beautiful day, a week before Finn was due to be sent to the Core planets on assignment, two weeks into Kylo protecting him.

The ships appeared as if from nowhere; they tripped no alarms, and Finn felt nothing in the Force until, suddenly, he felt a terrible screaming rage. He fell to his knees, nausea and shame ripping through him —

Kylo shouted his name —

And a battle erupted. Stormtrooper boots on the ground, the Resistance mobilizing. He saw Rey in the thick of it, brawling in the way she truly excelled at, and he saw Kylo firing blaster shots at 'troopers. He saw a fighter in the air that could only be Poe, loop-de-looping and firing at the destroyer like a tiny little X-Wing had a single hope of stopping them.

And then he saw Hux, and his heart went cold.

This wasn't a full-bodied assault on the Resistance. It had only been a few minutes. This was a targeted retrieval mission.

"Grab him," Hux said.

Kylo was too far away, in the thick of three — no, four fighters, specialists and not troopers. Rey was facing off in a lightsaber duel against another Force user. Finn tried to pull protection around himself, but he was too late. He was hit with one, two, three blaster shots, and darkness overwhelmed him.

Chapter 7

He woke to see the Hux staring at him, and immediately felt the sinking certainty that he was in a lot of trouble. Hux had lieutenants to do the lower-level torturing for him.

"Good evening," he said.

"Eugh," Finn said. All terror about his future aside, he felt like he'd been chewing on death-flavored cotton. "No, I don't think so."

"How did you learn to be so impudent? We don't teach that to the troopers."

"You know we're not droids, right? They don't just — power down and stop thinking once they're out of the classroom."

But he'd already shown a weakness, and he knew Hux had noticed, smirking at him. "We? Or they? Where do your loyalties lie, FN-2187?"

"Not with you, that's for sure."

"Then whom? That ragtag band of fools fashioning itself the Resistance? Or perhaps your lover, the fool Kylo Ren?"

Finn pressed his lips together. If Hux thought he'd give answers willingly, well, he'd be waiting a long time.

"Ah, I see. Well, no matter: we've all the time in the world." Hux stood. "Your room is guarded in several different ways. Do us both a favor and don't try to escape. I can tell my soldiers not to kill you, but I've had it on good authority that quite a few of the stormtroopers would like to kill the traitor regardless of what their beloved Grand Admiral says."

Finn closed his eyes so Hux wouldn't see him rolling them.

"I look forward to changing this...mood of yours, FN-2187."

And Finn was left alone in the dark.

Or, well: Hux certainly thought he was alone. He must have known about Finn's training with the Force, but maybe he didn't understand what it meant. Kept in a distracting environment, beaten or drugged, Finn wouldn't be able to reach out with the Force. But he was fine now — a little fuzziness in the head didn't stop him from closing his eyes and extending his senses, trying to figure out where he was.

The Force wasn't a cure-all. For starters, it was everywhere and in everything, so getting an actual sense of place from the Force was easier conceptualized than achieved. But Finn was also tired and scared, and it was harder than usual to get a fix on himself, much less the world around him.

When he finally managed to extend his senses outside himself, he found himself desperately wishing he hadn't.

Pain reverberated through the ship. The lower hold, where stormtroopers slept, was screaming — but even the area where pain was lightest still ripped through him like a direct hit from a blaster. The whole ship was so full of misery it was a wonder it could propel itself through space.

And the Force mourned.

Finn rarely thought of the Force as having feelings. He carried the Guardians' lore inside him, the closest-kept secret he'd ever have, and that lore said the Force was alive, in some mysterious and unknowable way. But feelings as Finn understood them were beyond it; it wasn't a sentient being as they understood such things. Finn shouldn't be able to feel mourning, agony, pain, from the Force itself. But right now, he could.

He didn't discover where he was. He could only sit with the pain and try to find a way out to the other side. Hux visited him again, after a day had passed, presumably. It was hard to gage the passage of time even when just serving on a ship; when being held prisoner, under constant light and completely alone, it became nearly impossible.

"Ready to talk? We know you went to see the traitor Calrissian. We know he tried to teach you some ridiculous ancient Force pap. We know everything, FN-2187."

"Don't call me that."

Hux laughed. Finn had expected it; he didn't respond.

"Come now, why don't you just tell me? What do you possibly have to gain from staying loyal to the losing side?"

Finn closed his eyes and reached out again with the Force. Hux was an ugly blemish, simultaneously so awful the Force bent around him, and utterly insignificant. He reached out further, past the maelstrom of pain that was the First Order fleet, out into the stars. Technically there was no life here — but there was the Force. And somewhere far beyond, there was the Resistance.

And Kylo, his heart whispered.

Hux left at some point; Finn didn't notice. Either he'd try to hurt Finn for information or he wouldn't. He was holding back for some reason that Finn didn't quite understand. It wasn't really in Finn's best interests to dwell on Hux's motivations, so he didn't. He had to get off the ship, and to do that, he needed to contact the Resistance.

He reached for Rey, reached and reached. For Jedi, the power it took to cross the universe could kill a person. The Guardians had a different view of it. Finn drew power and strenght from the stars he passed, from the Force itself. It didn't drain his life energy; instead, it sustained him, even as his consciousness raced further from his body.

This was how the Guardians had lived so long, and the potential behind such power was why they'd died. If Hux caught him at it, if he somehow knew what Finn was doing -

He needed to find Rey. As soon as possible.

Finally, after what felt like an eon of searching, he felt her in the Force. She was unmistakably herself, strong and fierce and shining so bright. "Rey."

"Finn! Oh my stars, oh — Poe, wait, it's Finn!"

He couldn't see Poe, but it warmed him to know he was close. It took him a moment to form words; he was so tired, it felt like he was talking through porridge. "I'm on Hux's ship. I'm not sure where, exactly."

"You're in the Karthakk system. We've been tracking his ship — it's lucky you're there, we couldn't launch a rescue operation without knowing for sure, no matter what Kylo wants. Oh, Finn, are you okay? Are you — it's been weeks."

"Weeks?" No, it couldn't have been. He'd thought a few days, tops.

"Three weeks. Kylo's going mad, so's Lyssa and me — in different ways, obviously."

"Obviously." Three weeks. It was hard to hold into the projection with shock running through him like this. "I'm okay," he finally said. "Um, Hux keeps trying to ask me questions, but he's not — hurting me. Yet."

"Yet?"

"Well, I think he's building up to it. Psychological torture, or whatever."

"He won't get a chance to." Grim determination colored Rey's tone, filling Finn with comforting recognition. "Hold on, okay? We're coming for you."

"Yeah. Yeah, I will."

"We love you."

Finn didn't have to ask who we was. "I love you, too."

Slowly, slowly, he pulled back into his own body. He half expected to see Hux when he opened his eyes. Surely someone had noticed his trance, had drawn the correct conclusions about what it meant. But the room was empty, the Force steady in misery around him. If they planned to drag secrets out of him, they were still biding their time. And if they didn't recognize a trance, they didn't know nearly as much as Hux had been trying to make him believe.

Finn closed his eyes again, trying and failing to ignore the fear stealing through him. Hurry, Rey. Please hurry, he whispered into the Force.

"Finn!"

He stood in a nightclub akin to the one on Canto Bight, only instead of being full of horrible rich people, this one was empty. Well, empty for the person running towards him.

"Finn, Finn, oh, kriffing — Rey told me — I wasn't sure —" Kylo clutched him, his fingers digging into Finn's shoulders way too hard as he peppered kisses all over Finn's head, his neck — anywhere he could reach. "Tell me you're okay. Are you — what are they doing to you? Where are you?"

"I told Rey," Finn said. He felt stupider than usual, his tongue clumsy and too-slow. "This isn't real. This isn't —"

"It is." Kylo kissed him full on the mouth. It was a bad kiss, desperate and ragged, too much tongue and biting. Finn kissed back even as terror ripped through him.

"This one's real?" he said when Kylo gave him room to breathe.

"They all are. Have been." Kylo was still holding him by the shoulders. Finn winced and his grip weakened a little. "I nearly let you die not knowing — we're coming to get you."

Finn held up a hand. His brain wasn't working right, same as with Rey. He could feel Kylo in the Force, of course, his screaming desperation and — feelings Finn shied away from, even now. But it was all dulled, like trying to see through the murky water of a pond.

"Hux has likely been — Finn — Finn, wait, no, look at me. Don't close your eyes."

Finn opened his eyes. Huh. Had he closed them?

"Hux has likely been drugging you, hoping your mind will weaken," Kylo said. Rough thumbs brushed against the corners of Finn's eyes. "It's a fairly standard step to take with captured fighters who are expected to be — mentally resilient."

People who might die before any kind of torture worked. People for whom conditioning failed; people like Finn. Right. "What can I do?"

Another kiss, this time a gentle brush of lips as Kylo's hands shook against his cheek. "Stay alive. Just stay alive, Finn, and we'll do the rest."

"But —"

It was too late. His eyes had closed again, and the pressure of Kylo's body against him lightened and lightened, until he was once again floating alone in the darkness.

"Ah, so you've figured it out," Hux said when he saw the full glass of water next to Finn's pallet.

"Drugging me's a low blow even for you. What, were you hoping I'd spill state secrets while I slept for days at a time?" It was the only thing that made sense and squared with him still being able to feel the Force. What he'd thought were long-ish nights of sleep had been days of induced unconsciousness. It chilled him to think about, even glancingly.

"It's a fairly simple and low-cost way to induce terror and disorientation," Hux said. "We'll get your secrets eventually, one way or another."

"I figured you'd strap me to a chair and start pulling my teeth out one by one."

"Is that what you fantasize about, FN-2187? No wonder Ren was so preoccupied with you."

"Ugh." Finn looked away.

"I need to know what Calrissian taught you."

Finn shrugged.

Hux sighed. "It's been a month, you see, and our best officers haven't found a way inside your mind."

Finn thought of Kylo, of all the dreams he now knew to be true. He didn't respond.

"I don't want to have to hurt you." Hux pulled a knife out of his belt. "It's tedious work, after all, and I'm a very important man. But I will."

"You know, torture produces false information more than anything else. I could just lie."

"Oh, naturally. But we lose nothing from keeping you." Hux smiled at Finn. It was almost a friendly expression, except for the watery eyes. Except for the transparent eagerness to see Finn hurting. "And I do enjoy knowing you're miserable, FN-2187. You cost me so many good soldiers, so much time and effort. Yes, I might not enjoy the work itself, but its results? Those are worth...savoring."

Finn kept his eyes on the knife and didn't respond.

After a long moment, Hux sighed. "Very well; suit yourself. We'll talk later."

He'd been gone for maybe five minutes when the mist filled the air, sickly green in color and smelling like rotten potatoes. Finn choked, almost reaching for his water to clear the taste from his mouth before remembering the drugs. It was too late then, though. He watched his hands begin to shake, felt his connection to the Force waver. Between one breath and the next, he was asleep again.

He half thought he'd wake up to a knife under his skin, so the blaring alarms were a vast improvement even before he felt Rey's blazing presence, and Lyssa beside her. He's here, he felt-and-heard Lyssa say — and then a lightsaber stabbed through his door.

"Finn!" Rey shouted. The door fell with a bang and Rey and Lyssa rushed in.

"We could have gotten it open the more traditional way," Lyssa said dryly, but she leaped forward alongside Rey to hug Finn, who realized belatedly that he was crying.

"I told you," Rey said. "I told you we'd find you."

"Is — "

"Kylo's on the ship," Lyssa said. "He's the one who said we couldn't wait to run the mission, actually."

Finn would be embarrassed about how transparent he was being later. He sighed in relief, then said, "Okay. So, evac?"

"We're going to have to fight our way out." Rey didn't exactly look sad about it. She hefted her lightsaber and looked at Lyssa for agreement.

"Finn, stay between us, please," Lyssa said, and moved to take point. Rey tossed Finn a blaster.

He still felt disoriented, like maybe this was all a very wishful dream. His hands shook a bit as he gripped the weapon. "All right?" Rey said.

Finn nodded, grim determination settling in him. "Let's go."

The destroyer had been thrown into chaos. The usual patina of misery had become a roiling ocean; they passed several dead troopers and one dead officer. Finn did his best to focus on getting through, providing cover fire for Lyssa, keeping the people chasing him clear of Rey. They were nearly to the dock when a blast rocked the ship, sending everyone in the hallway flying.

He felt the pain in the Force before he saw it: Lyssa, lying on the ground with blaster holes in her stomach, her chest. "Lyssa! No, no, no no no —" He shot out wildly, killing the advancing 'troopers without a thought. His sister — he couldn't lose his sister, so soon after finding and then losing her again. He'd do anything — he leaned down, pulling the Force around him, readying himself to lift her as the hallway emptied of people.

But when he said, "Can we move you?", Lyssa glared at the far wall like it had shot her itself.

"You probably could. You shouldn't try. Go on, run. This is a rescue mission — rescue yourself."

For a moment Finn felt balanced on a dangerous precipice, the knowledge of the Guardians and his own rage warring for his attention in equal measure.

"Finn," Lyssa said, her tone making it obvious that she knew what he was thinking. "Finn, go."

"Absolutely not," Rey said, and raised a hand.

There was no way she could sustain this long, carrying Lyssa with the Force. But she didn't have to. They were a mere minute from the evac point; they'd come so close to getting out in one piece. Rey propelled Lyssa ahead of them, past the melee and onto -

The Falcon. Of course.

Rey moved into the pilot's seat, which Kylo abandoned to support Lyssa as she floated downward. "Poe, there's your signal. Get out of there. We're stealing escape pods," she added, like Finn was going to wonder about their plan when his sister was bleeding out on the floor.

"Finn." Lyssa reached up, grabbed his jacket. "I'm — pretty sure this is a mortal wound."

"No. You know I can — you know." He'd shared everything with her, this new sister of his. She knew all his secrets, and thus the Guardians'.

"It would kill you." She leveled a look at him. "Even with everything you've learned, it takes a village to save a life when the wound is this bad."

In the cockpit, Rey pulled them out into the blackness of space. She didn't say anything, didn't even glance back, and Finn was pathetically grateful. Whatever else happened, Rey would get them home.

Kylo, in contrast, couldn't seem to look away. He knelt down next to Lyssa too, and put a hand on Finn's shoulder. "There might be another way."

"You don't know. No one does." He'd made sure of it, kept the knowledge as secret as he knew how. Unending wells of power, breaking the way the natural world was meant to function — none of it could be permitted to reach the First Order. They'd raise themselves a legion of Snokes and destroy the entire galaxy.

"You're right, I don't know," Kylo said, pulling Finn back into reality with his huffy tone. "But she's going to die."

"Kriff you."

"Finn," Lyssa said. "It's okay."

"It's not," Kylo told her. "It's not," he repeated, looking Finn in the eye. "One thing, one area our teachings overlap —"

Finn laughed, wild and hollow. "There's nothing —"

"Energy transference," Kylo said. "Yes, you learned it, didn't you? You can't close those wounds on your own. With my strength, you can."

"If we get her to a med station —"

"She'll die before we're even halfway there, and you know it."

Finn looked down at Lyssa, then back up at Kylo. Kylo's expression was unreadable. He wasn't trustworthy, Finn thought wildly, he wasn't good, he was an asshole and a monster and -

And Finn knew he'd never survive losing his sister.

"I trust you," Lyssa whispered. "Whatever you try to do. But he's right, Finn. I'm dying." Unspoken, but obvious in their bond: he needed to be ready to let her go.

No. No. Not today.

"Okay," he told Kylo. "Give me your hands."

Kylo obeyed immediately, closing his eyes. Finn opened his mind and heart as he'd learned to, and saw — felt — the well of strength Kylo had to offer him.

His life. His power, burning brighter than anything Finn had ever seen. Open and unguarded, offered to Finn with wholehearted willingness.

Lyssa's life force was rapidly draining. Finn knew he had no time to hesitate, no time to think about what it all might mean. He reached out in the Force and drew Kylo's power inside of him.

It felt terribly familiar, almost as easy to grasp as Finn's own power. It filled him, warm and comforting, reminding him of the essential truth: they were all of the Force, and always would be.

He shored up Lyssa's heart first, sent power where blood ought to be pounding through her. Then he went to work repairing her wounds. Blaster wounds were always nasty — they were, after all, designed to kill. This was worse than usual, her body riddled with holes. He knitted up one, then another, carefully sustaining her with his and Kylo's combined power when her heart stopped and her brain seized.

Here, again, lived the Guardian's secrets. The best Jedi healers couldn't do what Finn, a Guardian novice, did once he'd closed her wounds: he held Lyssa's life force stable in his power as he restored her energy, nudging her heart and her cells into renewing themselves. When he felt her skin warm against his hand, her pulse steadying, he backed off. He sat with legs crossed, blinking slowly as he came out of his trance.

Next to him, Kylo wavered, then fell to his knees, breathing harshly. It was bad for both of them: Finn felt like he'd just scraped himself utterly raw, hollowed himself out. But his sister would live. She'd live, and no one else had to die to make that true.

"All right back there?" Rey called. They'd long since jumped into hyperspace.

Finn met Kylo's eyes. He looked like he had in that last, horribly true dream: desperate and transfixed, utterly focused on Finn.

"Yes," he said, his voice rusty. "We're all okay."

Lyssa spent the rest of the flight back to base leaning against Finn, sharing her gratitude and love through the Force. When they landed, she stood and gave Finn a speaking look. Ugh, Finn didn't want to try to reach some kind of emotional resolution with Kylo. Kylo was awful and Finn was —

No, he was too tired to pretend. Kylo was awful, and Finn was in love with him. Horribly, irrevocably.

He jerked his head at Kylo, leading him back to the mess area of the ship, away from where anyone could eavesdrop. Kylo leaned against the wall, looking at-home and ready to say something sarcastic. A little like his father, Finn thought: the father he'd killed. Was he really thinking about talking to Kylo about how he felt?

Unfortunately, yes. "You, um. Thanks. That meant a lot." Kriff, he sounded like a tongue-tied trainee meeting the General for the first time.

"I did it for you. Because you wanted me to." Kylo shrugged. "I think I'd probably do the same if you wanted to resuscitate Vader, frankly."

"You're really determined to make this difficult, huh."

"Not at all. I only want to be honest. You think you're in love with me."

"Hey!"

Kylo raised his eyebrows.

Kriff it. "So what if I do? You think I don't realize you're kind of psychotic? Of course I do."

"And you think, what, maintaining proximity will keep me on the straight and narrow? Perhaps someday I'll look at some defenseless little villager and think, ah yes, the Force runs through her, too."

"You already do, asshole," Finn said. "Come on, you can't seriously think — Kylo!"

Kylo looked up from the floor, where he was bracing himself up with his hands. His knees had buckled; his arms were trembling. He'd come to the brink of his strength just to help Finn.

"You nearly died to save my sister. You can't stand right now, because you wanted to save my sister. If you try to tell me that doesn't mean anything, I'm going to finish the job."

Kylo smiled a little then, like threats of murder were what really got him going. Well, who knew what kind of messed-up stuff First Order command types were into, really.

"I feel how I feel," Finn said when Kylo didn't respond. "You're not going to change that by being a jerk, okay?"

Kylo pushed himself back to his feet. He walked towards Finn, painfully slowly. Finn, who'd had so much time alone to think about what he had and hadn't managed to do with his life yet, stood his ground.

"I'm never going to be friends with Dameron," Kylo said.

Finn shrugged. "You guys can hang out without being best buds."

"I'm always going to be —"

"Oh, shut up," Finn said, and kissed him.

The riot of Kylo's emotions hit him like the vacuum of a breached hull, and for once he didn't try to shy away from it. He kissed Kylo harder when he felt that rush of affection and terror, pressed him back against the wall of the Falcon and splayed a hand on his chest. Kylo gasped beneath the touch, and Finn was nearly bowled over by the need in his mind, the sheer power of how badly he wanted Finn. He was desperate, and Finn had never felt more powerful.

"Fuck me," Kylo breathed into his mouth. "Just bend me over and — Finn, I want to feel it. I need to feel it."

Finn wanted to. He really did: it hurt to think of just how badly he wanted it. But...

"No. Or, wait, yes," he added when Kylo's face fell. "But — not like that. I want..." He crowded Kylo back even further, leaning up into his space. Kylo was broader and taller than Finn, but he let Finn move him; he seemed to need it. Finn kissed his jaw, his neck, and said, "Like this," stroking one very careful hand over Kylo's hip.

"You've got to be kidding me."

"No," Finn said. "Sorry."

"If I asked you to bend me over the pilot's seat —"

"Where Chewie sits? Ew!"

"And fuck me until I forget my own name, any of my names — you'd tell me no. You want roses, and gentle kisses, and —"

"I'll still fuck you." He couldn't help but kiss Kylo then, lips roughly catching together and then dragging over Kylo's jaw again. "But I want — you know I can feel you, right?"

"I do. I remember every painfully foolish dream."

"So let me have this," Finn said. "This." He combed a hand through Kylo's hair and tugged, very gently, letting some part of the ridiculous softness he felt steal into his expression.

"I...Finn."

Kylo didn't need to say an actual sentence. Finn could see it in his face, all the vulnerability and self-hate, the overwhelming doubt that Finn could possibly want what he did.

It wasn't all that enjoyable. It hurt him, actually, made him sad for Kylo and himself and their whole fucked-up world. But he could do something about that, so he did, kissing Kylo again and again and doing his best to send his sincerity through the Force.

When he pulled back a second time, Kylo gasped for breath. His hair was wild from Finn's touches, his lips bright red. He looked around at the hallway and said, "I need — here, right here," and spun them around. As Finn's shoulder hit a control panel, he fell gracefully to his knees.

Finn didn't let his legs buckle, but it was a near thing. "Seriously?"

"Shut up," Kylo said, and unbuttoned Finn's pants.

It just felt surreal, was all, staring at the Falcon's nav system while Kylo pulled his dick out.

"Finn," Kylo breathed. He looked up at Finn like he was — everything, like Kylo'd never seen another person or wanted anything other than this, to kneel at Finn's feet and stroke his cock with careful reverence.

Finn couldn't think of a single thing to say, but it ended up not mattering. Kylo made the decision for both of them, taking Finn down his throat in one determined motion. He nearly choked — Finn felt him fluttering around his dick, and it was unbearable, it was too much, but then Kylo pulled back and sucked the tip, played with his balls, and it was back to just being painfully good again.

"Kylo — more, keep going, I love — oh, please, yes." Kylo's finger pressed against his hole and slipped in, just a bit — exploring, testing. He looked so good like this, bent double with his feet braced against the Falcon's deck. His hands shook a little against Finn's hips, and he took deep breaths as Finn fucked his mouth.

But Finn didn't want to come like this, so eventually he shoved at Kylo's shoulder. "Come on, let me — there has to be a bed in here somewhere."

"Several." Kylo leaned up just enough to grab Finn's hands, pulling him down to the floor. "Don't care." He kissed Finn, open-mouthed and filthy. "What do you like? I need to know. Tell me, please, anything."

"Beds. I like beds." But Kylo's hands had wandered back to Finn's ass again, and he had Finn in his lap, his thighs spread so wide he ached. He shook when Kylo pressed a finger against his hole again, arched his back and clutched Kylo's shoulders.

"Beautiful." Kylo sounded bewildered, almost insulted by it. "You're so beautiful. Do you want — what do you want? I'll do anything."

It was a dangerous offer for anyone to make, made much worse by the fact that Finn knew Kylo really would give Finn his life, if Finn asked for it. For a moment it was too much: he swayed forward, dropping his head against Kylo's shoulder, and tried to just breathe.

Kylo smoothed a hand down his spine, his finger chasing Finn's shivers. "I'm sorry."

"It's not you. It's just been — awhile."

Kylo went very still under him. "Right. Yes. Me too, obviously."

He sounded shiftier than a first year 'trooper who'd stolen a commander's holopad. "Kylo. You're okay?"

"I've had sex," Kylo blurted out, bright red.

Finn managed not to laugh or swallow his tongue, a historical pair of achievements. He kissed Kylo instead, again and again, until he didn't think they needed to talk anymore.

The next time Kylo touched him, he was staring up at Finn with wide eyes. Finn was still in his lap, and he thought he might stay there; Kylo certainly seemed to enjoy it, arching his back and thrusting his hips up whenever Finn shifted.

"Fuck me," Finn whispered into Kylo's ear.

"Anything you want," Kylo said again. "Finn. I need — you need to understand. Anything."

He felt Kylo reaching out clumsily with the Force, his desperation clear. And Finn, breath catching, suddenly did understand. Kylo really meant it; he really meant anything, he meant let me give you this. All his thoughts, his desires, centered around doing for Finn whatever Finn wanted done. He came when Finn wanted him to; he made Finn come when and how he asked for it.

Finn could barely breathe with how badly he wanted it. "Oh. Oh, wow."

Kylo lowered his head and waited.

And the funny thing was, Finn really did know what he wanted. He stroked Kylo's hair back, thumbed at his lower lip, and said, "Fuck me."

"Finn —"

"Anything I want. That's what you said. I want you to fuck me." Finn shifted on Kylo's lap to drive the point home, moving his hips just enough to communicate the idea of a rhythm. "I'll tell you what you need to do. But that's what I want."

"I know what to do," Kylo snapped. "I've read manuals!"

Finn didn't laugh: he kissed Kylo before he had a chance to, fucked him with his tongue as Kylo pulled both their shirts off.

They should've already found a bed, or a bunk or even a table: it was too late now. Finn had Kylo lounging against the wall, long and absolutely huge beneath him, and he wasn't moving.

Kylo's hand felt enormous splayed in Finn's back, but that was nothing compared to feeling him thrust against Finn with intent, his hands clenching on Finn's ass.

"Tell me," Kylo said. His voice had gone from cranky to breathy, desperate. "Please — tell me you want this."

Finn almost laughed, because of course he did; why else would he be here, all but begging Kylo to fuck him? But Kylo looked up at him with wide-eyed uncertainty, and it occurred to Finn that Kylo had always known the dreams were real, and had assumed Finn simply didn't want to face the truth.

"Of course I do," Finn said. "I always have. Look." He kissed Kylo again, tugged his hair. And — oh, Kylo gasped at that, moving his head back as his eyes fell closed.

Finn could work with it. "Here. I've got —" He fumbled in his pockets and produced the oil he'd swiped from the Falcon's bathroom to help Lyssa's skin heal. "Use this."

Kylo looked at the label and blanched. "Finn, this is —"

"Don't say it —"

"Wookiee beauty oil!"

"Just use it! It won't matter when it's inside me!"

"I changed my mind, I think I'd rather —" Kylo's voice broke off into a stutter when Finn dragged a thumb over his nipple. "Still disgusting."

"Just pretend you can't read." He leaned in and kissed Kylo's jaw, gently, pleadingly. "Please."

He thought Kylo might protest, but instead he just found himself hoisted in the air with the Force, stripped quickly and then pulled close again. He couldn't help but shake a little when Kylo pressed the first slick finger inside him, clearly doing what Finn was thinking about — what Finn wanted, and only that.

"Good, this is good." He sank down on two of Kylo's fingers, feeling the familiar stretch and ache, arousal slowly shimmering through him. "I've wanted this for so long."

"All you had to do was admit —"

"I didn't know they were real." Finn leaned in and kissed Kylo, bit his lower lip. "If I had —"

"You were in denial. I can't blame you."

"If I had, we'd have done this before I was captured." Finn knew Kylo was right, at least partially, but he needed to plant the image in his mind anyway: fucking in a dream, waking up next to each other and continuing it in reality. "I need this, I need you."

"You have me." Kylo's breath stuttered against Finn's neck as he slicked his own cock up, rubbing it against Finn's ass, not quite pressing inside. Finn ached everywhere, his legs, his jaw — around Kylo's fingers as he withdrew them. He couldn't help but moan in protest, moving his hips as though to chase Kylo's hand, even as Kylo said, "Finn, oh, Finn," and pressed inside him.

For a moment Finn thought it might be too much. He felt like he was splitting in two, and he cried out as Kylo braced his hands on Finn's hips, holding him still. "Kylo — move, wait, no, wait — move."

"Should I move or not?" Kylo sounded at least as wrecked as Finn, bright red and gasping. When Finn touched his neck, he felt the pulse fluttering there, small and startlingly human.

"Let me move," Finn said when he could breathe again. "Please —"

Kylo thrust once, hard, ripping the air out of Finn's chest. "Let me take care of you," he whispered as Finn moaned and began riding him. "Let me stay, let me — Finn, let me —"

"Yes," Finn said, and clenched around him. "Touch me."

Kylo's hand shook on his cock. Finn thrust into it, rocking his hips ungracefully, forward and back and always touching Kylo, held by him, surrounded.

He came moments before Kylo did, a cry torn from his throat and swallowed by Kylo's kiss. They slumped together afterwards, Kylo's forehead falling against Finn's shoulder, his fingers curled against Finn's back, head bowed like a supplicant before an altar.

Finn kissed him, and breathed, and stayed.

Chapter 8

"Thank you so much for coming to this debriefing with your pants on," the General said.

Finn stared at the wall and very seriously contemplated giving up his life energy to the Force.

"Mother!" Kylo was, once again, bright red. Finn hated how charming he found it. "It's none of your business what we do in —"

"A Resistance ship, which of course is monitored for hostile activity, including heat signatures and audio feedback? Interesting hypothesis. Now, let's move on to the point of this meeting: Finn. Start at the beginning."

It wasn't exactly fun, reliving Hux's not-quite-inquisition. Finn felt almost ashamed, like it'd be less embarrassing if Hux had actually physically brutalized him — which was ridiculous. No one in the room wanted that to have been his experience. But it was hard to express what he'd felt: the Force bending in agony around him, the awful anticipation of knowing, feeling deep in his heart, that Hux intended to hurt him.

But it seemed like the General understood it, at least partially. When he got to the part where he found out Hux had been drugging him, she nodded, mouth set in a grim line. "That sounds like the Empire. Well, the First Order, but there's no daylight between them. I'm sorry you had to experience that."

For a hysterical second Finn thought of his whole childhood: the beatings, the re-education, the sheer endless terror of being a tool for the First Order who also happened to be a whole person. He managed to fight his way out of the moment, long enough to say, "Thanks."

"Mother. Perhaps try to trigger fewer flashbacks in our only witness of the First Order's malicious anti-Force depravity."

"What, you don't count?" the General said. But even as Kylo reddened and prepared for what Finn was pretty sure would be an historic meltdown, she turned to Finn and said, "My apologies. Feel free to skim over the — more painful parts. We can always request more detail later, if the Council decides it's needed."

Finn had the strong impression that no one would gainsay a testimony stamped by Leia Organa, really, but he appreciated the thought. He finished his testimony as quickly as possible, then waited for further instruction.

"Thank you, Finn," the General said. "This will be pivotal when we put that cretin on trial."

"He's done enough. Let's go," Kylo said.

His voice sent shivers down Finn's spine, even here, even now. Oh, and he hadn't realized: his hands were shaking. No wonder Kylo sounded like that, angry and evil yet — not quite evil. Not quite.

"She should have let you take breaks," Kylo said as soon as they made it into the hallway. "That was utter barbarism."

"I could've asked for a break any time. I didn't want to."

"You're traumatized." Kylo reached for him, then yanked his hand back, curling it into a fist. "Next time — I'll speak to her. Breaks should be mandated."

Finn thought of the torture chair Rey'd told him about, on Kylo's old ship, and didn't respond.

But apparently he didn't need to. Kylo stopped dead in the hallway and said, "You're right; I'm a hypocrite. I should leave you to your duties." He bowed very slightly, a First Order-y salute.

Finn should just let him go. This whole thing was so stupid and fraught, and Finn had a bunch of stuff to do, including his actual duties as a member of the Resistance. Well, technically he was on leave for a few more days, but there was probably something he could do that kept him away from Kylo, and free of all the stupid feelings he engendered.

"Thank you," he said, not having gained self-preservation instincts in the last ten minutes.

"Don't."

They kept walking. When they were close to Finn's room, he said, "So — can we just go over what I'm allowed to do? I guess I can tell you what to do when we're — in bed —"

"Fucking," Kylo said coldly.

"Whatever. But I can't say thank you for defending me?"

"Most people on this base would say I'm the one you need defending from, not my mother."

"The General's amazing. But she's on the side of justice, and the Resistance. Truth and duty, and honor." Finn paused for a second, trying to dredge up just a little more courage. He knew what he was about to say was true, and he knew saying it would help Kylo understand, but — well, it just felt a little like pulling his chest open and saying, here you go, grab one of my ribs and play catch with it. "You're on my side. You watched me, you cared about me. I don't — no one else does that, really."

"Rey. Dameron. Tico. The kriffing droids." Each name said with tight anger.

Jealous anger, Finn realized as the Force wrapped itself around them. Well — the truth had to come out at some point. Why not now? "Not like you." He caught Kylo's hand, squeezed it when Kylo scowled. "Kylo. Really, seriously, not like how you are."

"What do you think this is?" Kylo whirled around and slammed the door to Finn's room open. He made the space seem crowded, as tall as he was, with his broad shoulders and thundercloud of power. "Do you think I'm your little boyfriend?"

"I think you love me."

Too late to take it back. Kylo blanched and took a step back, knocking into the wall above Finn's tiny desk. "Who — what — it's incredible that you think I'm even capable of. Why would I. You're not — it was just a lie to save my skin. It wasn't —"

"So I just hallucinated all of it on the Falcon?"

Kylo adopted a supercilious look. "I'm sure you know that sometimes people say things during sex that they don't mean."

Sure they did. And Kylo hadn't quite admitted to anything, of course; it was all implication and overwhelming Force feelings and too-desperate need. But even now, with Kylo trying to deny everything, he felt the want coming off him in waves. Kylo wanted to belong and he wanted to be forgiven and, more than anything, he wanted Finn. It burned through him.

Finn took a deep breath and tried to think of the best way to say this, the way that wouldn't end in Kylo leaving him yet again. "I'm not going to pretend this never happened. Okay? It's —" Impossible, wonderful, a massive pain but also the best possible outcome — "Important to me, this thing — between us — I told you. I love you. You can tell yourself whatever stories you want about your side of things, but I know how I —"

Kylo kissed him.

It was clumsy and more rambunctious than Finn normally preferred, the kind of kiss you might receive midway through a drunken festival day. Finn loved it. He kissed Kylo back, again and again, until Kylo smiled — grimaced — laughed -

And he knew the truth of it, shining between them and in them, in the Force and in their touches. Love, as clear and strong as any power Finn had ever felt.

Kylo had left several hours ago to do his late-night meditation, so when Finn woke up screaming from nightmare about being forced back into service as a stormtrooper, no one saw how embarrassed he was. He almost would've welcomed it, though, in exchange for someone to remind him that it wasn't real. As it was, he spent several minutes dizzy, sweat soaking his shirt, gasping for breath as he tried to pull himself back into the here & now.

When he'd recovered enough to stand, he put on a jacket and walked out to the shipyard. He saw a few techs, but no one he knew very well, thankfully. Past the shipyard, he found his favorite bench and lay down on it, staring at the stars.

He didn't recognize them. If this quadrant had astrology, it wasn't any Finn was familiar with. But just looking up at the sky, remembering the darkness of space and the feeling of sending his consciousness racing through it in the Force, helped calm him down.

It seemed to Finn like he shouldn't have nightmares. He knew the secrets of the Guardians; he could live forever, if he wanted. He didn't, and he wouldn't, which was why they'd given the secrets to him to begin with, but still. He could. It seemed to him that with that deep well of power and knowledge should come immunity from bad dreams.

A soft voice broke his reverie. "Immunity from the human experience sounds like a pretty bad deal to me."

Finn sighed and sat up, scooting down the bench to give Lyssa space to sit down. "Sorry, I guess I was pretty loud, huh?"

"Not to anyone else. Well, maybe Kylo Ren." Lyssa raised her eyebrows at Finn, a speaking sort of glance. Finn looked back at the stars.

"I'm just tired of feeling this way." Finn sighed. "Sorry, that's stupid."

"I don't think so."

"I'm not the one who nearly died a few days ago."

"No, only the one who saved me using ancient and arcane magic." He felt Lyssa's amusement even before she nudged him. "Let up on yourself a little, okay? Force knows I've had to."

"What do you even —"

"All those nightmares about mine shafts collapsing. Losing our parents. Losing you, too. And of course, worry that my little brother is climbing into bed, literally, with the worst the First Order has to offer."

"I'm not going to apologize for that."

"Nor should you." She said it easily enough. "My point is just — life sucks. We're all doing our best. Outdoors is a good place to recover from nightmares, for both of us."

He heard the rebuke and commiseration in equal measure. He leaned against her, just a bit, and took deep breaths in time to the movement of the wind, watching the strange stars above them. And when a leaf whirled past them on the breeze, when a tiny beady-eyed lizard darted past Lyssa's foot, when the sentry droids hummed behind them, he thought: we're going to be okay, we're going to be okay, we're going to be okay.

Finn had nearly fixed the dorsal engine on one of the captured destroyers when the sky exploded above him.

He felt Lyssa in the Force before he saw her, a joyous racket as she dipped and swerved, avoiding Poe's training blasts by so little that it seemed from the ground like she should've been hit a dozen times over. As she sped away again, Kylo murmured, "Your sister's not very good at shielding."

"Ah, you know that's not it. She wanted me to know she's having a good time."

"I see. Pass me that spanner, would you?"

They worked in silence for a few more minutes. Finn was about to suggest they go grab lunch when he felt a disturbance in the Force and saw someone running towards them.

"Finn! Kylo, hi." Rey careened to a stop in front of them, gasping, lightsaber at his side. "Come quickly, please, something's happened."

"Is everything okay?"

She shook her head. "I'll explain, just — follow me, please! Quickly!"

Really, he should've realized what was going on when she led him away from the barracks, into the woods. But he didn't. He thought maybe Lyssa'd crashed, or they'd found First Order spies, or —

They reached the meadow where he'd fought with Kylo. A table sat in the middle of it, heavy with all sorts of food. Lyssa, Poe, Rose, and Chewie sat around it.

"Surprise!" Rey said, and then as one, everyone said, "Happy birthday!"

Finn felt his mouth falling open, knew he looked stupid and couldn't make himself stop. "What — how — I don't have a birthday."

"Everyone has a birthday," Kylo said, only just loud enough for him to hear. He was smiling a little, watching Finn, like he was happy. Like he'd been in on this.

"You sneaky bastard," Finn said, but he couldn't help but laugh.

"Come on over," Poe said. "We've got a couple different birds here, some vegetables, and what I think is pastry." He picked up the item in question and glanced at Rey. "Got creative, did you?"

"It's a Corellian specialty!" Rey said.

"Their ships might be good, I don't know about their pastry."

Rose plucked the pastry out of Poe's hand and took a bite. "Oooh, spicy."

Finn shook his head. "This is ridiculous. What if I wanted my birthday to be later in the year, huh?"

"We'll just throw another party then. Try the chicken," Rey said. "Well, it's not chicken, it has scales and massive teeth, but it tastes like chicken."

The meat did, in fact, taste like chicken. Finn gave everyone the thumbs up, then laughed when Poe choked on Rey's Corellian pastry. The sun shone down on the sparkly red drinks Lyssa had passed out to everyone, and Kylo's thigh kept knocking into Finn under the table.

He'd never had a birthday party before, but this one was pretty good.