“Get down! Get down!”

None of the Senators moved, so Finn did it for them, sweeping Kalaar’s feet out from under her and shoving Barié behind a stone pillar as the assassin opened fire.

Blaster bolts were nearly impossible to dodge, normally, but Finn’s mind had been open for weeks, feeling like a bloody wound in the back of his head. He used it now, listened to the Force, dodged and rolled and finally managed to knock the blaster out of the assassin’s hand and subdue them.

By the time Coruscant’s peacekeepers came and took the assassin away, Barié and Kalaar were both looking at him with the distant, confused distaste he’d started to recognize from other Senators. His bill was dead, and if he didn’t stay lucky, he might be too.

“That wasn’t an Imperial loyalist,” Finn said.

“Didn’t recognize her?” Kalaar smiled, an unpleasant curl of the lips.

“Well, no,” Finn said. “But there were hundreds of thousands of stormtroopers. What I didn’t recognize that actually matters is the fighting style.”

They didn’t care about the conclusions Finn had drawn. Barié said, “Hundreds of thousands, and yet you only represent the sixty thousand who’ve agreed to settle on Kef Bir. It’s remarkable, if you ask me, that you’re granted representation at all.”

Finn had been elected six months ago and he knew the drill by now. “Ex-stormtroopers are persons under both Old and New Republic laws, Senator. I’m the representative of citizens who’ve chosen Kef Bir as their home, not stormtroopers as a whole. My bill -”

To his surprise, Kalaar laughed. “You really never stop, do you? I’ll vote for your damn bill, but you need to get yourself a bodyguard.”

So Finn petitioned the Senate.

“This is unjust.”

“I know, but -”

“This is a blatant expression of anti-stormtrooper antipathy! Half the members of the Senate, and the worlds they represent, weren’t even part of the Resistance! They allowed the First Order to rise and they have the gall to lecture child soldiers -”

“Rey. I know.”

She clenched her jaw in that way that meant she wanted to go do some pull-ups to forget whatever was making her angry. “I know. I’m sorry. I just - of all the people to assign to guard you. It’s clearly meant to be a rebuke.”

“Yeah.” Finn shrugged, a single lifted shoulder. “But I agreed to do this, which means I can’t tell the Senate to go kriff themselves, even if I have a Jedi by my side.”

“Even if you are a Jedi?”

It was another old argument. “Not yet. Maybe not ever.”

“Uggggggh.” Rey flopped back in her chair. “I know you’re right. I know. But Finn, if he lays a finger on you, I will kill him. I don’t care about the consequences.”

“He won’t,” Finn said with more confidence than he felt. “And anyway, I know how to defend myself against Kylo Ren. I’ll be fine.”

“Murder,” said Rey, who apparently wasn’t too worried about going dark side under these very specific circumstances.

Finn toasted her with his plum wine. “Hopefully not. But yeah. Murder.”

“This wasn’t my idea.”

“You’re a reviled war criminal who’s permanently blocked from the Force and has no political power. I know it wasn’t your idea.”

Finn steeled himself against the curl of Ren’s lip, the hatred in his eyes. “You’re going to die,” Ren said. His voice sounded the same as it always had: cold, furious. Utterly inhuman. “You’re going to die because you think some pathetic cannon fodder is more important than your life and talents. You turned traitor to advocate for people who could never touch you in skill. You’re pathetic.”

“And you’re my employee, which means you’ll shut up or I’ll deliver you right back to your cell.”

Ren was already the palest person Finn had ever met, but that made him go white as the sands on Crait. He glared and Finn could feel the fury rolling off him, but he didn’t say anything else, which was all Finn really cared about.

He understood why Ren hadn’t been put to death. Rey had talked about what he’d done: stood up to Palpatine, given his strength and nearly his life to save Rey. Finn loved Rey, and he loved that she was so in tune with the mysticism of the Force and all that implied, but still: he couldn’t quite accept the mercy she had asked the Senate for. Sure, Kylo’d saved her life and potentially the galaxy in the process, but he’d killed so many people; he’d done things that weren’t even in the same galaxy as forgivable.

“I know,” Rey had said, the last time he’d brought this up. “But someone has to stop the bleeding. If we can’t be better than they are, what are we?”

Finn had told her she was right, and part of him had thought it was true. The rest of him hadn’t, and burned with anger still.

Now, facing the object of the galaxy’s hatred, he found himself feeling a confused mix of fury and resignation. Nothing he could say right now would get through to Ren. The fact that stormtroopers were all children or barely-adults - that they’d been stolen and tortured, that they had never had any choice but to serve, and the enormous wonderful fact that some of them had managed to resist anyway - none of that would matter to him. He was totally irredeemable and Finn would be an idiot to try.

“I’m flying back to Kef Bir tomorrow,” Finn said finally. “You’ll be coming with me.”

“Do you want to tie me up while you sleep?”

For a dizzying moment, Finn thought this was some kind of come on, like he was - they were -

No. “I refused to fight for the Empire for a reason. Just be here at 0800 tomorrow.” He very deliberately turned his back on Ren, going into his bedroom and locking the doors.

The truth was, Finn hadn’t been sure what to expect immediately after they won. He’d only ever seen the ad hoc organization of the Resistance or the obsessive fascism of the First Order, neither of which seemed like it’d work well for long-term governments. But he’d only just settled in on Kef Bir when they’d received communication from Coruscant: the Galactic Senate was re-forming, and Kef Bir, its population quintupled, qualified to send a representative.

Sixty-two thousand, three hundred and forty-five stormtroopers had arrived on Kef Bir so far, including nearly all of the ones who’d rebelled prior to the First Order officially surrendering. Word had spread, and spread, and spread; Finn was famous, and so was Jannah, and Kef Bir itself was under a newly enormous spotlight.

“Pathetic,” Ren muttered under his breath as they made their way to the community building.

“Keep your commentary to yourself.” No, it wasn’t grand like Coruscant or even naturally impressive like D’Qar had been. But the community building had been put up by Jannah’s old company; the houses most citizens lived in had been collaboratively built by droids and stormtroopers who’d been liberated after Palpatine’s defeat. It was home, sure, but more importantly, every single person walking around represented a triumph of humanity, a restoration of rights. There was no way Ren could ever come close to understanding what Kef Bir meant to them.

“Damn,” Jannah said when Finn arrived. “I’d hoped it was just a nasty rumor.”

Ren didn’t say anything. He’d taken up a bodyguard stance so traditional that Finn assumed its primary purpose was to mock him, hovering behind Finn’s right shoulder with his hands behind his back.

“The Senate’s really mad at us,” Finn said. “For -”

“Wanting specific provisions for stolen children and appropriate punishment for surviving First Order financiers,” Jannah said. “Yeah, I know. I speak for ninety-seven percent of us when I say we want you to keep pushing anyway - but I’m sorry it came to this.”

“Ninety-seven percent?”

“Every society has its clueless contrarians,” Jannah said. “Meanwhile, planetside, I’ve got more boring problems. Every time we get a salt rain, our equipment has trouble. We’re trying to bargain for ’proofers, but no such luck yet.”

“Bargain with who?”

“Traders passing through, Tana, then Cerea. They’re expensive, but that’s not really the problem.”

“No one wants to trade with former ’troopers.”

“Or even take our money.”

It filled him with a kind of helpless, hollow rage to think of. It wasn’t like Kef Bir was some kind of idyllic paradise; they needed supplies, people willing to work with them. Respect. Without it, their long-terms plans would be so much dust.

Or, more realistically, salt-crusted rot. Damn it.

“I’ll think about it,” Finn said. “There must be something - there will be something.”

“Thanks. Now, let’s talk about Cerea.”

They didn’t need ’proofers.

He turned it over in his mind as Jannah and Finn continued to indulge in fantasies of farmland and agrarian complacency. ’Proofers could ensure any object remained free of salt buildup, true enough, but surveying and navigational equipment, speeders, and the like could be individually proofed against salt, sand, and water without using fancy polymers and sixty-directional sprays. At most they’d need a few droids, and this far out, simple non-sentients could likely be purchased for a scrap of durasteel pried off the corpse of the Death Star.

How could entire battalions of stormtroopers think a device intended for wealthy diplomats was necessary for a bunch of small farms? Well, stormtroopers weren’t taught much about self-sufficiency; quite the opposite. The First Order had followed the Empire’s standards for creating tractable troops, including extended periods of persuasive education and careful regulation of available information. But.

Finn was brilliant, that much had been obvious for a long time. And Jannah seemed relatively intelligent as well. They really ought to have been able to figure it out.

Finally, during a lull in the conversation, Kylo said: “You don’t need ’proofers. If your equipment is being damaged by the climate, buy a few droids through an anonymous party and ’proof the most valuable pieces yourself.”

Jannah’s stare would have withered most people, but Kylo had been glared at by Leia Organa for half his life; it didn’t trouble him. “We know. It’s a relatively minor example of the problem that’s plagued us with everything else: cloth, foodstuffs, mechanical supplies. But I don’t think a bodyguard needs to know the details of Kef Bir’s economy, actually.”

“If I’m going to protect Finn adequately, I need to make sure he’s safe and fed,” Kylo said, then contemplated surrendering his soul to the Force.

“I’m fed.” Finn didn’t even look at him. “But we’re negotiating our deal with the Senate, and I need to understand where our weak points are.”

Kylo didn’t answer. No one asked him to, either. They went on talking like he wasn’t even there.

The duties of a Senate bodyguard were well regulated and laid out so strictly it made the First Order look lackadaisical. Kylo suspected a death lay behind each elaborately worded rule, but nevertheless, they were rules. If he violated any of them, he could find himself back on a prison ship or even executed. Officially, the Republic wasn’t executing sentenced prisoners, no matter how egregious their crimes. Unofficially, he was Kylo Ren. No one would miss him. Many people would cheer his death.

But that was beside the point. The point, for the purpose of Kylo’s current life, was that he had a duty towards Finn, and that duty did not involve giving him a private suite to sleep in.

“A private room is acceptable, but I must always be close at hand,” Kylo said. “I’m fitted with a tracker: if I shirk my duties, it’ll be recorded. Unless your goal is to send me back to prison -”

“Of course not,” Finn said.

Kylo believed him; unfortunately, FN-2187 lacked even basic duplicitousness, one of the many traits that made him an inappropriate pick for Senator. “Then you will allow me to sleep in the adjoining room.”

“It’s a closet!”

Kylo shrugged and didn’t continue arguing. He’d already won. Any second now -

“Fine,” Finn said finally. “But I don’t like it.”

“No,” Kylo said, and took his leave.

He lay on a cot in the closet and closed his eyes, trying, as ever, to sense the Force.

Finn couldn’t stay on Kef Bir for long. One weird irony about being a Senator was that he spent way more time arguing on the Core than he did out at his actual home, among the people he represented. But he had a few days this time, long enough to tour the area, meet new residents -

(“Family,” Jannah had said. “We all are. We’d welcome anyone, of course, but no one has come. No one except other ’troopers.”)

“I just can’t figure out what it is. Of course, they had me doing recon, not mechanics,” said Khajee. She shook her head. “Not much cause to spy on people out here.”

“Did you check the igniter?”

“Sure, and the heat regulator, and the safety sensors. None of them were the problem. I meant to get Hera down here, she worked on speeders, but she’s busy at the community center getting systems up and running.”

“Uh-huh. Let me take a look.” Finn shrugged out of his formal jacket, and then - thinking of waste and Kef Bir’s tiny budget - his shirt.

“Ridiculous,” he heard Ren mutter.

But Ren’s job was to hang around in the background and keep Finn from being murdered, not tell Finn what to do when there were no credible threats in the area. Finn ignored him, wheeling himself under the speeder.

It was an older model, maybe even pre-Empire, and beat up beyond what members of a wealthy planet would’ve considered worth saving. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be salvaged.

He fell into a nice rhythm, working through each mechanical problem, his mind drifting into that special, half-meditative space he felt when doing repairs. If Rey were around she’d remind him that he was using the Force, or communing with it, and Finn would make a face and brush her off - because the Force, glue of the universe that it might be, seemed mostly like trouble. He had enough drama in his day to day life.

But Rey wasn’t here. Khajee just saw a focused mechanic, and Ren -

As far as Finn could tell, Ren was avoiding looking at him altogether. Fine by Finn.

“Here we go,” he said, some hours later. The storm that had threatened on the horizon was nearly upon them. “Should be fine now, though you’ll have to keep the salt off yourself.”

“That’s no problem. Thanks, Senator.” Khajee smiled at him. “Can I offer you payment?”

“Kinda feels like you already know I’m going to say no.”

“Hm, maybe.” She hugged him instead. “Safe travels.”

“That whole display was disgusting,” Ren said as they walked back to Finn’s ship.

“What, the hug? I knew the First Order was prudish, but -”

“The charity”, Ren said, his voice thick with disdain. “You have a natural affinity for the Force, and you waste it on talentless foundlings.”

Finn took a deep breath. “You know, I spend a lot of my time in Senate sessions modulating my tone.”

“Indeed. Representing a hated cult will do that.”

“We’re not a cult. We are foundlings. We were forced to be. Talent or not, if I hear you slander Khajee or any other ’trooper again -”

Ren laughed, harsh and bitter. “What? You’ll kill me? I can’t access the Force: you’re welcome to take your chances. I’m sure you know no one will miss me.”

“I’ll leave you behind,” Finn said. “You’ll be stuck here, surrounded by people you hate. People you tortured. And no one’ll ask me what happened to you, or argue with me if I say you ran. You understand?”

Ren stopped dead on the salt flat. His nostrils flared as he looked at Finn. “You’d really do that. Interesting.”

“Not one more word.”

“Some might call such capitulation to temper evidence of the dark -”

“Shut. Up. Ren,” Finn said.

Finally, blessedly, Ren fell silent.

Apparently he preferred silence; he didn’t say a word to Finn for two days straight, a silent shadow as Finn visited newcomers and got his Senatorial priorities straight with Jannah.

She was a local leader, no doubt; she’d already told Finn she had no patience for parliamentary politics. “I’d go crazy trying to broker treaties that, three years later, maybe affect our people,” she’d told him. But she understood Senatorial politics better than Finn did; for him, it had taken hard study to understand the complex interplay of alliance and influence. For Jannah, the connections were obvious. So he traded stories with her, sketched out their position (weak) and their allies (few), and she helped him work through what his next steps might be.

It wasn’t promising. But by now, Finn had gotten used to being on the losing side of a battle. The thing that mattered most was still true: stormtroopers had a home. They just needed someone to defend it.

The worst part of the trip was actually at the very end. Finn packed himself back into his tiny transport with several data cards from Jannah and expectation of long weeks fighting bullshit back at the Senate. And then, glaring like Finn had tried to feed him sour fish jelly, Kylo Ren followed.

“I know this is a small ship,” Finn said as he initiated the takeoff sequence, “but we’ll be on it for days; do you think you could try being a little less of a buzzkill?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Ren said, glowering.

“You’re a Sith, you do so know what I mean.”

“The Sith are gone and I was never among their number. And as you know, I can’t access the Force anymore.”

“Until you figure out a way around your implant and kill me, anyway.”

Ren sniffed and looked out the window. “You’re sure there’s not a faster course?”

“Just be glad I’m not actually detouring to Jakku.” Rey had gone back there recently and cleaned house. No little girls would be indentured to creeps anymore, and she’d even found an oasis to use for Jedi training.

“Showing a bias towards the galaxy’s most feared Jedi would be a political misstep I wouldn’t expect from you.”

“She’s the galaxy’s only Jedi, and thank you. I think.”

For some reason that made Ren turn rage-red. “It wasn’t a compliment.”

“Whatever.” Finn double-checked his calculations and sent them into hyperspace. “I’m going to take a nap; don’t touch anything.”

“Not even the ’fresher?”

“You know what, it would serve you right if I said yes.” Finn stomped back to his cabin and flopped down, gritting his teeth.

The thing was, it was actually really uncomfortable to have a bodyguard who was basically also his prisoner. Finn had sort of thought it might be perversely satisfying; how many times had he had to do what Ren said? How often had his fellow ’troopers told stories about barely avoiding the range of his saber? But instead of feeling satisfied with it, he just felt kind of sick to his stomach all the time.

Because of the rumblings of his conscience, the next time he saw Ren (eating a noodle cup in the gunner’s chair, like he thought someone would fire on a Galactic Senate vessel any minute), he said, “I’m sorry.”

Ren froze. His hand holding his spoon shook a little. “Excuse me?”

“It wouldn’t have served you right to be banned from the ’fresher. Legally, that’s torture.”

“I know. Legally, nothing the First Order did to ’troopers was torture.”

“Yeah, well, your laws sucked.”

“Yes.”

This conversation had gone off the rails way too quickly. “My point is, I apologize. It won’t happen again.”

“Okay,” Ren said, and went back to slurping his noodles.

He looked and sounded like one of Jannah’s horses. Finn shook his head and went back to the engine room. At least in there, all the annoying noises would be mechanical.

When Ren yelled, “Finn, get back up here! We’re being attacked!”, Finn’s first, egregiously stupid thought was: that’s the first time he’s used my name.

Then he realized how ridiculous he was being and ran to the cockpit. “We’re in hyperspace - how?”

“They’re targeting the ship’s computers. The First Order had the tech, but - damn it!” Ren shoved Finn into the pilot’s seat.

“Whoa, hey, first of all, do not touch me again. Second -”

Something metal clanged, and Finn found himself with a lapful of Kylo Ren as the ship lurched sideways.

For a moment he couldn’t breathe. Ren stared at him, eyes wide; Finn felt like they’d been thrown into the vacuum of space. Then his breath came back, and he gasped, “What are you doing!” as his heart did its level best to hammer its way out of his chest.

“We’re under attack. I need to - weapons,” Ren said, and launched himself off Finn’s legs, kneeing Finn in the kidneys in the process.

“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know,” Finn said, and threw them out of hyperspace.

It was definitely First Order remnants in the ships, but they had Resistance call signs and were Republic military vessels. So there was a mole, or maybe some corrupt officer had simply sold a ship. Finn did his best to save the information the ship received, and made his own observations out loud: “That’s a recon identifier, but they’re in transport vessels - they’re not Resistance ships. This could’ve been a dirty deal done awhile ago. Green identifiers on the sides, looks like Hutt make, maybe.”

“You’re really distracting me right now,” Ren said.

“We’ll need this information later to track down who shot at us.”

“If you distract me, we might not survive for later!”

“Oh, we’re going to survive.” Finn hadn’t made it this far to be taken out by some creepy fascist who couldn’t even accept defeat.

Ren couldn’t have used Republic weapons systems in the last decade, but if he was unfamiliar with the controls, he didn’t show it. They had three ships on their tail and even as Finn dodged shots, Ren took the two flanking ships out with two clean shots.

Now they just had the largest one. “I’m going to take us in a loop and shoot into hyperspace again,” Finn said.

“Were you not listening? They’re tracking us.”

“I know. So blow them out of hyperspace when they jump. They’ll have to jump on our tail - they’ll be vulnerable. And supposedly you’re a quick shot.”

“Supposedly, you -”

Finn jumped into hyperspace.

Ren cursed, but he got the shots off. The transport wasn’t fast enough to evade them, and Finn was right; the ship’s pilot was too focused on following them to evade. One shot scrambled their shields, one cracked their hull, and the third sent four pieces of the ship flying in all directions.

“Fuck,” Finn said, and they lurched downward just in time to avoid the shrapnel.

“Genius plan,” Ren said.

He’d inherited Han Solo’s sarcasm. And of course, thinking that made Finn remember who he was trading barbs with - not Poe, who he’d fought a war with, or Rey, who he trusted with his deepest secrets. No, he was freely lobbing insults at a dark-side maniac who’d killed his own father.

Suddenly he felt very tired. “It worked, didn’t it? I’m going back to bed. Stay on watch; I’ll take beta shift so you can get some rest, too.”

“Finn.”

Finn paused on his way out of the cockpit. “What?”

For a second he thought Ren was going to do something, though he didn’t know what. He felt a weird, awful suspension in the air - like the moment before a commander would order ’troopers to fire, or the silence right before a star destroyer appeared over the Resistance base.

But then the moment was gone. “Sleep well,” Ren said, so stiffly that Finn almost laughed.

Almost. “Just keep watch,” he said, and made his escape.

How was it possible?

Kylo was intimately familiar with the technology the Republic had put inside him. He knew with perfect precision exactly how impossible it should be for him to access the Force. The tech had been developed specifically to restrict people like himself. How could touching a stormtrooper - a middlingly poor Senator with more optimism than good sense - suddenly open the Force to him?

Even hours later, his gut still churned to remember it: touching Finn and feeling the Force, a glorious explosion of power filtered through Finn’s too-warm, too-strong presence. He hadn’t felt the Force since his sentencing nearly two years ago, had spent rage-filled hours trying and failing to get around the tech while hating himself, his mother, and the whole cowardly Republic for not just executing him. And now it had returned to him, for exactly as long as it had taken for Finn to gather himself enough to push Kylo away.

Damn it. Damn it, and damn him.

He could feel nothing now, lying in his bed as Finn supervised their flight. His cabin, such as it was, sat across the hall from Finn’s, and both were adjacent to the cockpit; he was maybe ten feet away, but he couldn’t feel Finn, much less the Force, much less the dark side. Having briefly glimpsed was he was missing, only to lose it again, felt worse than just being shut off had.

Damn it.

If only he had his master - but Rey had killed Palpatine, and he’d helped her do it. If only he could talk to Rey - but he didn’t trust her, and there was no universe where she’d be willing to help him access the Force again. He was alone in the universe, cut off from everything he cared about.

Unless, of course, he could touch Finn again.

He tried it again after he’d rested, faking a stumble into the mess table and brushing his hand over Finn’s neck in the process. For one glorious moment, he felt the Force - and then Finn’s eyes widened and he found himself on the floor.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Finn said.

“I slipped.”

“You did not! I’ve seen you do murder-backflips, you think I’m going to fall for that?”

“Well, what else do you think it is? You can’t possibly imagine I was trying to touch you?” Kylo sniffed, doing his best to sell the lie. “The Senate won’t let me die, but I assure you, I would find a way around their surveillance before consenting to something like that.”

“You’re so - no, you know what, never mind.” Finn shuddered like Kylo touching him was equivalent to having a dozen sand worms dropped down his shirt. “Don’t do that again. Ever.”

Kylo should’ve dropped it, but his back was up. He couldn’t help himself. “Never? What if my life’s in danger?”

“You’re resourceful. You’d figure it out.”

It rankled, to feel a flush of pleasure even as he wanted to snap at Finn’s clear dismissal. Did Finn imagine himself better than Kylo? Just because he was a decorated war hero and a Senator and could feel the Force? He wasn’t better than Kylo. Force take it, he wasn’t.

It became a mantra, something he insisted to himself over and over as their ship hurtled through space: there was nothing special about Finn; Finn wasn’t better than he was. There was no reason to care about Finn at all.