Returning to Coruscant mostly just reminded Finn of why he’d been so excited to leave in the first place.

The Senate was better than the First Order. Obviously. For starters, they were generally against kidnapping kids to be soldiers; they were genuinely representative of most of the galaxy; they had a firm commitment to doing business in a democratic way. The Senate was so much better than the First Order that a few years ago, Finn would have scorned the idea of being critical of them at all.

But a few years ago, the First Order had seemed likely to conquer the galaxy. A few years ago, Finn’s involvement in the democratic process had been mostly theoretical. And, possibly most importantly, a few years ago, Finn had never heard a Senator’s assessment of stormtroopers.

Walking casualties, Senator Jiatie of Kuat had said. Better off permitted to die off, if you ask me. But I suppose we can authorize the funds.

He’d said that to Finn’s face, as Finn spoke as a representative of Kef Bir - of the free stormtroopers. Finn hadn’t realized he’d still been a little naive until that meeting had taken it all away.

Now, he at least understood how the game worked, and what role people thought he should play in it. That didn’t help so much during normal legislative sessions, though, when Finn had to grit his teeth through people talking about him, about all the other ’troopers, like they were garbage.

“I think you should become a terrorist.”

“Ha, ha,” Finn said dully, taking a long drink of his beer.

Rey made a face at him. “I know you can’t, not really. But you must admit they deserve it.”

They did; that was the problem. If Finn thought about it for too long, he’d go nuts, and he had to focus right now. “If I turn to terrorism they’ll just say it was Kylo Ren influencing me. I have to keep doing the whole diplomacy thing - pressuring them to do the right thing.”

“And you hate it,” Rey said, a statement rather than a guess.

Finn nodded. “Still, though.”

“Still.”

Still. Still he had to attend meeting after meeting, still he had to vote on matters that didn’t concern him or the people he represented. He was only on a couple committees, none of them high-profile, but all of them busy enough that he rarely had time to coalition-build on his own. He suspected it made some Core Planet delegates laugh to imagine the stormtroopers’ representative being forced to make decisions on manure formulations and transport regulations.

“How are things with your bodyguard going?”

Finn snorted in spite of himself. “You can use his name, you know.”

“Ugh. Maybe I just don’t want to.”

“Things with Ren are fine, mostly. I mean, he’s unbearable.”

“Oh, so I assume.”

“And still evil.”

“I don’t think anyone really thought he’d change.”

“Also he keeps trying to touch me.”

Rey went very still. Her spine stiffened. She narrowed her eyes and glared at Finn. She said: “What.”

“Not like that, you do not need to worry about that, I promise. No, he just keeps trying to grab my wrist. It seems more like he’s…” Finn couldn’t describe it, the twitchy hunger that seemed to overwhelm Ren when they were in the same room together. “It kind of reminds me of when you gave me some training, I guess? When you were talking about feeling the Force.”

“Hm. That does sound sexual, though.” She crossed her arms. “You’ll tell me if it gets worse, right? You do actually have the right to a bodyguard who’s not a creepy, neutered harassing piece of dark side shit.”

“I know. If I protest to the Senate and they tell me ’troopers are canon fodder that survived too long, though, I’m gong to go nuts.”

“Well, then you can tell me, and we’ll ensure he’s killed in action.”

“Ensure who is killed in action?” Ren said from behind Finn.

“You,” Rey said before Finn could prevaricate, “if you keep trying to hurt Finn.”

Finn’s head spun with remembered panic of thinking he’d angered a First Order officer as Ren said, “It’s my job to protect him, not hurt him.” He moved to stand in Finn’s field of vision, then said: “What’s happened to him?”

“What do you - oh, no. Finn.” Warm, calloused hands holding Finn’s. “Finn, it’s okay, don’t worry. Nothing’s happened. You’re fine, you’re okay.”

His head pounded. He could feel himself sweating. He closed his eyes, only opening them when a second pair of hands came down heavy on his shoulders.

“Calm down,” Ren said, voice flat.

It shouldn’t have worked, but something about the sheer indignity of being ordered around by Kylo Ren woke up Finn’s normal instincts. “You calm down,” he said, shaking Ren’s hands off and pulling away from Rey’s grip. He offered Rey, his actual friend, a not-quite-real smile. “Thanks.”

“Course.” Rey glanced between them. “I’ve actually got an appointment with Poe - he wants to look at the speeder I built. Are you all good here?”

He knew what she was talking her way around. Sure, his heart might be racing, but it wasn’t like he actually thought Ren was going to hurt him. When he was able to think. “I’m good.”

“See you.” She kissed his cheek, squeezed his hands, and left.

“I thought Jedi didn’t allow themselves to have intimate relationships.”

“That’s ancient history at this point,” Finn said. “Things have changed since your grandfather killed all the Jedi, apparently.”

Ren’s nostrils flared. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“What, you think I’m going to ask you for more information? You’re as unreliable a narrator as they come.”

“I came here to bring you news you’re unlikely to hear from the Senate for another two weeks, if ever,” Ren said, “but if you can’t trust anything I say, perhaps I don’t need to tell you after all.”

It was bait, incredibly clearly laid out. Finn knew he shouldn’t ask. But the list of classified information Finn cared about these days was pretty short and centered around Kef Bir, so he said, “What?”

Ren didn’t even make him beg for it. “Another group of stormtroopers have broken their conditioning.”

Officially, all stormtroopers were refugees entitled to resettlement on Kef Bir. Unofficially, the last of the First Order’s loyalist cells still held some stormtroopers captive, and other groups hadn’t yet made it home. Finn had to clench a hand to keep from saying something stupid. “When?”

“Two days ago.”

“Where?”

“Just off Naboo. On a transport ship.”

The planet name sounded familiar for some reason, but Finn didn’t try to chase down why; he had other things to worry about just then. “How’d you hear about this?”

“An aide of Mon Mothma’s likes to gossip and doesn’t seem to think bodyguards are capable of eavesdropping, or independent thought.”

“Huh, I wonder what it’s like to be around someone like that.” Ren’s expression didn’t so much as twitch. “That was sarcasm, by the way.”

“I had gathered.”

“Right. Well…thank you for telling me, but I don’t think I can get to Naboo right now.”

Ren’s face twisted. His nostrils flared. His face, never particularly smooth-complexioned, went mottled red. He clenched his fists at his sides.

More bait Finn shouldn’t take, damn it. “What?”

“You could leave within the hour if you wanted. I know you’ve read the procedural book - it’s well within your rights as Kef Bir’s representative.”

“Sure it is, but there’s not a ton of precedent, and I really can’t afford to burn goodwill on being censured for -”

“Governing?”

“Breaking the rules, even if it’s a case where it’s not technically breaking the rules.”

“Your cowardice is disgusting. Leia Organa would have gone and saved her people without this ridiculous hesitance.”

For some reason, that was what sent Finn over the edge. “You’re talking about your mother! Be normal! Say ‘my mother’!”

Ren sneered. “Organa -”

In the last fifteen minutes, Finn had experienced a bunch of really unpleasantly intense emotions, and Ren - or the regime he’d once led - was to blame for every single one of them. He took a step forward, then another, crowding Ren back against the wall of Finn’s living room. “Listen to me. I’m not the General. I can’t do what she did, and I’m not going to try if I think it’ll jeopardize Kef Bir’s representation in the Senate. Are we clear?”

“You’re not my mother because you’re a coward,” Ren said, and grabbed Finn’s wrist. It sent a little zing through Finn in spite of himself, and he thought Ren might have felt it too; something in the air changed, the pressure drop right before a storm.

Then Ren dropped his wrist, and everything went back to normal. Annoying normal. “Do something with the information, or don’t,” Ren said. “But if you want allies to confirm you’re permitted to govern prior to actually doing the governing, you’ll never be anything but dependent on those who hate you. I’ll be guarding the door.”

He was running away, Finn realized, and Finn himself was practically running away by virtue of not stopping him. But what else could he do, ask Kylo Ren to elaborate on his political advice? Sure, and maybe porgs would learn how to fly.

He sat down and went back to reading over the Stormtrooper Resettlement Aid Package bill, doing his best to ignore how much he wanted to sulk over a stupid fight with his stupid fucking war criminal bodyguard.

It bothered Kylo much the same way a grain of sand stuck in his helmet would have. A pity he was now legally barred from wearing a mask of any kind; he suspected his irritation showed clearly in his expression.

He hadn’t risked himself at all to deliver the stormtrooper gossip to Finn. The officials who’d been discussing it were loud enough that he expected the story would hit the news within the hour. If Finn refused to exercise his rights as a member of the Senate, it was really none of Kylo’s business. He didn’t care about stormtroopers, Kef Bir, or Finn; seeing incompetence was generally grating, but he hadn’t exactly planned to emulate Leia Organa and go into politics. He had other concerns, like the feeling of the Force, wild and expansive, rippling out from where his hand had touched Finn’s wrist. He didn’t care about Finn’s lost causes.

However.

It just bothered him. Finn was so ready to minimize his political power. Kylo had never been good at politics; he’d been terrible at making people like him, and had been encouraged by his master to simply intimidate people into obedience instead. But leaving aside that Finn could take that route if he chose -

Leaving aside that the power Kylo felt when he touched Finn was intoxicating and different from his own now-crushed power, from Rey’s power, leaving aside that Finn had a connection to the Force Kylo barely understood but knew to be incredibly powerful -

Leaving all that aside, the simple fact of the matter was that Finn was remarkably likable and most people who met him wanted to please him, to work with him. That wasn’t Kylo’s regrettable lust speaking; it was a fair evaluation of his abilities as a politician. Consequently, it made sense that he spend some of that social capital on ascertaining how many stormtroopers had broken conditioning and getting them to Kef Bir, where they’d strengthen his position as a legitimate representative of a large population.

Kylo stared at the wall opposite Finn’s apartment and thought about how quickly Kef Bir’s problems would be resolved if he had Finn’s power. He’d felt…compulsion, or the potential for it, in Finn’s power. It made sense, of course; Finn had rebelled independently, off nothing more than a bit of sentimentality and some deeply-baked morality. That he’d be strong with the Force in that way made sense.

He could likely sway a large crowd. Not the full Senate, of course; the Emperor had been able to do that, but he was singular in his range of abilities and sheer power. But a smaller group - a committee, or even a mid-size crowd. Kylo was fairly certain Finn would be able to sway all of them well enough that it never occurred to them they’d been influenced.

There was something here that he was missing, some aspect of the problem he kept almost thinking of before he lost his train of thought. Kylo bit the inside of his cheek and tried to ignore the horrible void in his mind where the Force should be, his almost all-consuming need to touch Finn and reach the Force again. He tried to focus on the problem at hand - the service which, when rendered, might buy him some time off his sentence.

(Or, a traitorous part of his mind whispered, the service that might allow him to touch Finn again. Who cared about a Republic criminal conviction when he could touch the Force any time Finn permitted him? All he had to do was make Finn want to allow it.)

Focus. Focus. There had to be a way to turn this situation to his advantage. To make Finn understand the sheer magnitude of the power he was stubbornly leaving on the table.

There had to be.

Finn gave up on his work shortly after lunch, locking his office door over Ren’s protests so he could stare at the ceiling and try to calm down.

Plenty of things were bothering him: the situation with the repatriation bill, the fact that a Core World alliance of First Order sympathizing assholes was trying to push through a motion stripping Kef Bir of governing rights, the ongoing efforts to find and help ’troopers and, where possible, reunite them with family members. He had so much on his mind that it was a wonder he could sleep at all. But what really kept bothering him, what came up again and again with such frequency that Finn was almost tempted to suspect Kylo of somehow mentally influencing him, was the issue of the ’troopers on Naboo.

They’d been moved to a hospital site on the planet proper. Finn’s communication with doctors there indicated that they were stable and recovering, though obviously traumatized. With any luck, they could travel soon, and then Finn would get to meet them the next time he returned to Kef Bir. That plan was fine. It meant they’d lose another chance to observe deprogramming in the early stages, and the question of how to get ’troopers freed would be pushed off to another day. But the population of ’troopers who’d freed themselves was only growing, and Finn knew all the arguments for focusing on his responsibilities in the Senate. He’d made them to Kylo just the other day.

But he couldn’t stop thinking about the tens of thousands he knew were still out there, in First Order splinter cells and missions they hadn’t received word to stand down from yet. If they studied this group, if they figured out how to replicate the switch-flipping that led to them being able to think for themselves, they could save lives. A lot of lives.

And then Kef Bir will become a client state, and ’troopers will be barely a step above droids, just like in the Empire. Yeah, Finn and Jannah’d had this conversation before. Their conclusions hadn’t changed. It just sucked as a choice - it was monstrously unfair and made Finn want to break something.

“Welcome to politics,” said a dry voice from Finn’s very empty window seat.

He nearly fell out of his chair. Then he turned around and saw the General, and he did fall. “Ow. Hi. What are you - who are you? What are you doing here?”

“One question at a time, Finn. What am I: a vision, of sorts. Who am I: General Leia Organa of the Resistance. What am I doing here: you’ve been dodging my calls, so I figured I’d show up in person.”

Finn didn’t respond. He simply could not. His chest squeezed up and he had to spend all his focus on trying not to shout.

The General had apparently gained mind-reading powers when she’d lost corporeality. She smiled gently and said, “Finn, it’s okay. I’m with the Force now; what you see is an echo, of sorts. I’m not here to hurt you.”

“I wasn’t really worried about that.”

“No, I expect not. Your concerns are more existential, aren’t they? Your people; your home. My son.”

Finn couldn’t stop himself from making a face. “Not so much that last one.”

“He’s your responsibility, is he not? I can tell how much you feel he is. You’re a big-hearted person.” She smiled a little, as crookedly as she had in life. “That’s going to be difficult for you to manage, but I promise it’s worth it.”

“My heart could be the size of a sun and I still wouldn’t be responsible for Kylo Ren. General.”

He got the distinct, very annoying impression of not being believed. “Of course, in this case he’s also correct.”

“No, he’s not.”

The General made a pbbt sound Finn wouldn’t have guessed Force-projection could make. “You’re not wrong to worry about the consequences of travel. You’re entirely correct that your position is tenuous. But you can’t be a successful representative if you’re this risk averse. In that evaluation, he’s entirely correct.”

Finn gritted his teeth so hard he was surprised dust didn’t come out of his mouth. “It’s an impossible choice.”

“It is. You’ll face a lot of them.”

“Easy for a ghost to say.”

“Technically I’m more of a projection,” the General said, “but you’re right in that, too. I’m dead: no one cares what I do anymore. But you have a life to live and a legacy to continue.”

“I don’t -”

“As the first stormtrooper to break free, who inspired tens of thousands of others, whose own existence in the Force has changed the path of our civilization and directed us towards justice for other stolen children, you have a legacy.” The General, being glowy and semi-corporeal, shouldn’t have been able to glare quite so effectively. But she did. “I’m not actually leaving this open for debate, Finn. The only question is how you plan to deal with your legacy, what you plan to do. And if your plan is to do nothing, to pretend it doesn’t exist - I won’t be the only one who’s saddened by that.”

Rey. Poe. Rose. Even C3PO. He knew what they’d all say, what they’d encourage him to do. “Ugh.”

“Indeed. It’s a hell of a world out there.”

Finn finally picked himself up, sitting back down at his desk and putting his head in his hands. Deep breaths, he reminded himself. In and out. “I don’t know how anyone does this. How you did it.”

“Half the time, I didn’t. I ran, I hid, I threw a fit. My father always told me about duty and righteousness, the history of Alderaan and how I fit into it. When I was young, I thought it was a lot of words to tell me I wasn’t free.”

“And then?”

“Alderaan was destroyed.”

“But you were in the Rebellion before then.”

“I was indeed, but I thought of the stakes as something lower than destruction of everything I’d held dear. I thought I understood how bad things could get, until I stood there and watched my people die. Then it became clear to me that I didn’t understand at all.”

So she’d dedicated her life to democracy, and eventually been killed by her own son. Two generations of evil, and the General and Luke Skywalker had stood between them. Finn held back a shiver. “It feels different now.”

“It always feels different. Still. I get the feeling you understand what the Force has led you to do, and why it’s you who has to do it.”

“Is that why you showed up?”

He looked up in time to see the General smile again. “I told you: I was bored.”

He tried to say thank you, to tell her he wished she hadn’t been killed. His throat closed up.

She stood up from the window seat and walked over to him. This close, he could feel her odd warmth, and see the edges of the projection, where reality became faded myth. “I know, Finn. Don’t worry. I’m going to head out now; I might not see you again. May the Force be with you.”

He nodded. Some small part of him still wanted to disbelieve it, to fight it. But even just thinking of Rey made him stop, determined to be better than his most cowardly self. “May the Force be with you.”

True to her word, the General faded from view.

Finn took a deep, watery breath. He looked over at the window seat, then back at his still-locked office door, then down at his work.

She was right, damn it. He had a job to do, and he was going to do it.

For some reason, Kylo had not anticipated the obvious, in retrospect, condition of Finn traveling to Naboo: he brought Rey with him.

It made sense. Stormtroopers freeing themselves of conditioning, rather than being carefully deprogrammed with the Republic’s imperfect mental imaging technology, was a new phenomenon, and one generally suspected to be associated with strength in the Force. Rey had a vested interest in those sorts of events.

Rey was still his dyad in the Force, after everything, and Kylo found that he hated her even more in the small confines of a transport ship, where he couldn’t feel her mind or anything else outside his own body.

“Stop staring at me,” Rey told him. “We’re still days out from Naboo, and if I have to deal with this the whole time, I’m going to -”

“What? Throw me into space? Who will guard your precious FN-2187 then?”

“I know you don’t think of him like that, and the answer’s me, you enormous idiot.”

Kylo did think of Finn ‘like that’, in Rey’s parsimonious terms. Finn was a stormtrooper; he had been a stormtrooper, and he’d continue to be a stormtrooper regardless of how high he rose in the Senate or how large Kef Bir’s population grew. Kylo kept that in mind because he knew Finn’s friends wouldn’t. They would refuse to acknowledge how others saw him, even as Finn’s ability to help his people dwindled because of that perception. Kylo, on the other hand, convicted criminal though he was, at least understood how the world worked.

He knew how dangerous it would be to express those particular thoughts, however. “I wasn’t staring at you. There are simply not very many places to look.”

“You’re lying. Or do you think I can’t tell?”

“I’ve had the Force taken away from me,” Kylo said coolly, “so I have no idea what you can and can’t tell. Our connection was always volatile, anyway.”

“Because you were evil.”

“Yes.” No point in denying it here, when the stakes were so low. Plus, it threw Rey off; he saw it clearly in the way her eyes narrowed, in how obviously she bit back a cruel comment. Rey would have done so well on the dark side, but Kylo now knew she’d never agree to travel down that path. “However, your own hesitancy to embrace your power affected us as well.”

Rey snorted. “Hesitancy! I went off to train and you were bothering me. That’s different.”

“Is it?”

“Of course it is. You wanted to kill me.”

He had, and in fact he still wanted to. It was funny; he could sense his own old desire to hurt, to conquer, to rule, alongside the human bit of him that recognized the Jedi in front of him as her own being, a person he didn’t particularly want to hurt. It was like holding two selves inside him at the same time.

In other words, it wasn’t very comfortable. “Wanted.”

“You won’t do it while Finn’s here.”

He raised an eyebrow at her unearned confidence. How on earth had she come to that conclusion? Not through whatever lingering connection she thought she could still feel, certainly. “Hm.”

She stared at him for a moment longer. He got the distinct impression she was waiting on something, but of course he had no idea what it might be, and he couldn’t give anything to her. After awhile, she huffed in dissatisfaction and left the passenger area, presumably heading to the cockpit to bother Finn instead.

Kylo kept breathing, in and out very slowly, reminding himself that this was just a job keeping him out of a cell. What Rey thought of him didn’t matter. What Finn thought of him didn’t matter. His own dreams, nightmares, none of it mattered. What mattered was the mission.

Ren waited until they’d docked in Naboo to get incredibly annoying.

“Why is he so twitchy?” Finn hissed. Ren had just physically blocked the doctor monitoring the ’troopers, refusing to let her talk to Finn until she and her three assistants had been vetted by the Senate’s database. “The biggest danger to me on this planet right now is him!”

Rey shrugged. “It’s not like I disagree with him being protective of you. What? I don’t. The Senate certainly hasn’t done due diligence.”

“And running a doctor’s name through a database is supposed to help with that?”

“It’s better than just assuming she is who she says she is - and that she’s not some kind of, I don’t know, radical anti-stormtrooper activist.”

“So like half the Senate.”

“Point.”

They sat together in silence while Ren did his interminable interviews in the lobby. Finally, he returned. “They’re fine. You can talk to them.”

“Wow, thanks,” Finn said, but as always, his effort was wasted. Ren didn’t seem to even notice sarcasm unless he was bored enough to already want a fight.

The doctor, a short Human woman with curly brown hair and teal tattoos on her shoulders, came over and said, “Senator Finn? I’m Doctor Blake. It’s an honor to meet you.”

“The honor’s mine, doctor. This is Rey. She’s a Jedi.”

“Hello.” Rey waved and smiled.

“A Jedi, you say?” Doctor Blake looked between them with obvious dubiousness. “And you brought the criminal Kylo Ren with you, too.”

Great, great. Finn loved this part. It definitely wasn’t a huge pain at all, navigating around the deliberate obstruction of having his bodyguard be the galaxy’s most famous criminal. “He’s my bodyguard, appointed by the Senate. I didn’t get much of a say in it. Rey’s here because, well, we think ’troopers breaking conditioning is often related to their strength in the Force. She can help me evaluate that.”

“The conditioning you refer to is neurological in nature,” Doctor Blake said. “You may or may not be right about ‘the Force’, but I can assure you, there is a scientific path to understanding how to help the remaining hostages.”

Finn blinked. “Hostages?”

“I understand the Senate has worked out a variety of legal definitions of stormtroopers. My team chooses to focus on the verbiage that best describes their experiences to date and how to treat them.”

“That’s good,” Rey said when it became obvious Finn couldn’t quite make himself speak. “Thank you, Doctor Blake. And I agree about the science. It’s just that the galaxy’s in need of people strong with the Force to understand what that means, and develop their skills. I’m only here to help with that, for the people who want it.”

“They might not be ready to tell you,” Doctor Blake said. She sounded almost gentle, but also like she might pull a blaster on Rey if she tried any funny business. It made something relax, deep in Finn’s mind, to know she applied that protection to her patients.

“That’s all right then,” Rey said. “Finn’s my friend, and I’ve never been to Naboo. I’ll get along.”

“And him?” Doctor Blake didn’t need to so much as glance at Ren to make her meaning clear.

“I’m only here to protect the Senator,” Ren said. He managed to make it sound like a threat.

But apparently the words satisfied Doctor Blake, because after that she took them to the medical ward. She explained along the way that Naboo had, upon learning of the transport ship mutiny, sent a boarding party. The newly freed ’troopers had cooperated, and they’d been planetside ever since.

“Almost six weeks now, and half of that they’ve been able to come and go just as you or I might.” She sounded satisfied with their progress. Finn guessed she didn’t know about the experiences of the ’troopers on Kef Bir. Most of them had thrown off the conditioning when the Resistance won and had been ready to fight within the day. The ones who’d fled the First Order afterwards had been worse off. Finn couldn’t pretend to understand why, but that was why Rey was with them. There wasn’t a medical explanation that could justify it. It had to be something with the Force.

“Here we are,” Doctor Blake said. “Any questions before we meet the patients, Senator?”

Finn took a deep breath and willed himself to be strong. A leader. What Jannah and all the other ’troopers needed him to be - and what General Organa had known he could be. “No. I’m ready.”

Rey took his hand as they walked into the hospital ward.

Overall, it was a pathetic sight.

The stormtroopers were much as Kylo had expected them to be: barely verbal, clearly traumatized, some physically brutalized as well. They all shied away from Finn when he tried to talk to them. Doctor Blake seemed to have a competent bedside manner, but in some ways that only worsened the situation. It was very clear that deprogramming was becoming harder over time. Kylo had wondered before at the Resistance’s unwillingness to use General Organa or Rey’s power to sway stormtroopers to their side. Now he understood quite clearly that they had no idea such an option was even on the table.

Worse than the somewhat predictable confirmation of organizational incompetence was Finn’s own stupefied reaction to the stormtroopers in their hospital beds. He was clearly empathetic, strong in the Force when it came to relating to other people. Now, he expressed that by flinching away when one stormtrooper cried out in pain and clinging to Rey’s hand like she was his nursemaid. Kylo could barely bite back a sneer. This was the cream of the Resistance crop? His - General Organa’s finest hope for legislative success? Finn looked like he barely knew which way was up, and Rey watched him with a concerned wrinkle in her brow, not paying any attention at all to what must have been a horrible agitation in the Force all around them.

And of course, Kylo himself couldn’t access the Force, which made the tableau all the more annoying.

“This is ninety percent of the battalion,” Finn said. “What happened to the other ten percent?”

“We had four deaths,” Doctor Blake said, “and ten are still in critical condition. I can take you to them, if you like.”

“What would they think of that?” Kylo said, not bothering to hide his sarcasm.

“They’re in an induced coma,” Doctor Blake said, “but the battalion as a whole expressed a strong desire to meet representatives of Kef Bir.”

Kylo watched, feeling half-amused and half-annoyed, as Finn’s expression twisted through a series of overly emotional grimaces. He seemed to settle on resignation as he said, “I’ll see them, then.”

Unsurprisingly, the ICU was worse. Finn cried, and Rey’s eyes went shiny with her own tears. Kylo stood in the doorway and tried to ignore the entire display.

It wasn’t until they got back to their hotel suite that Kylo, standing in Finn’s doorway, said, “There are easier ways to deal with this debacle than touring hospital beds, you know.”

“You’re the one who told me I should come here. What exactly did you think we’d be doing?”

“You weren’t hospitalized. Nor were the original inhabitants of Kef Bir. It’s getting worse.”

“We know that. You know that.” Finn turned from his spot at his window to stare at Kylo in disbelief. “Why are you even talking to me? You’re a bodyguard, go guard.”

“I want to be sure you understand the position you’ve put yourself in.”

Finn’s expression went blank. “Is that so.”

“There are ways to remove the conditioning for any affected soldier.”

“Soldier.”

“Yes.” Let Finn excoriate him for his verbiage later. “It would be fairly simple, and avoid these pathetic displays in the future.”

Finn turned back towards the window. For a moment, Kylo’s mood perked up. Perhaps Finn would take his advice, and Kylo could get the hell off Naboo and never return. He’d be free of hospital beds and uncomfortable displays of emotion.

Then Finn said in a low voice: “Get out.”

Kylo blinked. “Excuse me?”

Finn’s voice rang out with power that could only come from anger in the Force. “Get out!”

Kylo, made impotent by the Republic’s technology, was thrown out of the doorway by invisible hands as Finn’s door slammed shut. He staggered back several paces, staring at the doorway, before he realized someone was watching him. Rey sat on the couch, gaping at him.

“What are you looking at?” Kylo snarled, stomping out to the tiny front room that served as his guardroom. He slammed the door behind him.

It was all to regulation, perfectly safe. The only way to get to Finn right now was through Kylo. That meant he could turn his concentration inward, fuming at Finn for being a weak fool and himself for not thinking to reach out to Finn, to touch him, to take the power that positively simmered between them and use it for his own ends.

It was nearly eighteen hours before Finn sought Ren out. Any longer, and he’d have been in danger of creating some kind of diplomatic incident. Plus, Rey brought Finn some tea and said, “Do you mind talking to him? He can’t feel me, of course, but he doesn’t realize I can still feel him a little bit, and he’s been in a snit this whole time.”

Thinking of Rey being able to feel Ren gave Finn the willies, but he knew he’d have to make peace for one simple reason: he didn’t have a choice. He wanted to get off Naboo with Kef Bir’s hundred and thirty-six newest citizens, and Ren had implied -

“He thinks there’s an easy way to break the conditioning.”

Rey blinked. “I thought that was impossible.”

“So did I. If it’s not -”

“You can save thousands of lives,” Rey said at the same time Finn said, “’Troopers have been dying for nothing.”

Rey bit her lip. “I’m sorry. That’s - of course it’s awful. I shouldn’t have…”

“Been an optimist?” Finn summoned a smile, though judging by Rey’s grimace it wasn’t particularly persuasive. “You’re right, though. Jannah and I talked about the battalions still out there; we thought they might be lost. If they’re not, that would be huge.”

Rey touched Finn’s shoulder. “If I can help in any way, I’d be honored.”

“You’re kidding, right? You’re helping right now.”

“You know what I mean.”

He did. Rey had students and a weird-but-super-powerful political position and her own training, but she’d drop it all in a heartbeat for Finn. It was the kind of friendship he’d always hoped for. In a different life, the kind he imagined he might’ve had with Slip. “Thank you.”

She hugged him. “If you need me to hit him, the offer’s open.”

Finn snorted. “Yeah, I think I’ve got it, but thanks.”

He found Ren in his room, staring at the entrance to the suite. “Hey. I’m sorry about earlier; I overreacted. Can we talk?”

Ren didn’t move.

For a moment, something very strange happened: Finn found himself slightly worried about Kylo Ren’s health. Fortunately, the moment passed quickly. Ren was in a trance, not sick.

“Hey. Ren. You in there?” Finn waved a hand in front of his face.

Blaster-quick, Ren grabbed Finn’s wrist. Finn gasped in spite of himself, feeling the wave of some unidentifiable feeling sweep through him. “What the -”

Ren groaned, and for the second time in as many minutes, Finn found himself experiencing an emotion he absolutely could not square with the reality of Kylo Ren in front of him. This one was worse, though. He wanted to move forward, to keep touching Ren, to - to kiss -

He wrenched his wrist free of Ren’s grip. “Hey!”

Finally, Ren blinked and came back to himself, sunken eyes focusing on Finn. “My apologies,” he said, his usual flat voice rusty with disuse.

He didn’t sound particularly sincere, either. Never mind. Finn crossed his arms, as much to keep himself under control as to communicate distance from Ren, and said, “You said ’troopers could be deprogrammed. Explain, please.”

Ren tilted his head, examining Finn without a hint of hesitancy. Finn tried not to squirm, even though he felt like he could feel Ren’s gaze brushing against him. “Why would you trust I’m telling the truth?”

“I don’t. But if the alternative is condemning ’troopers to die -”

“I could be planning to kill them. My ‘solution’ could be a kill switch. Did that even occur to you?”

For a moment, Finn felt a wave of fury in spite of himself. He usually kept his anger ruthlessly repressed, because he had to, because if he let himself feel the full force of his anger and betrayal, he’d never, ever feel okay again. But right now he couldn’t keep it all buttoned down. He knew perfectly well that Ren wasn’t going to give him bad information, not with Rey two rooms away, able to sense his every motivation. Ren had to know he knew, too. He was winding Finn up for no reason other than his own shitty fucking evil love of seeing people in pain, and Finn was, he was in pain, because the thing Ren was winding him up about was the death of people like him, the closest thing he had to a family. Kids who’d been stolen like he had. Like Jannah had. Like Slip -

A warm hand on his upper arm, rough callouses scraping against his skin. Ren’s voice was rough again as he said, “You’re familiar with the mechanics of how kyber works? I know Rey has told you about the path of the Jedi.”

Something - Ren’s voice, maybe, or Finn’s shame - threw itself over his anger, banking it down again. Finn bit his lip and moved out of Ren’s grip again, losing the weird feeling that went through him when they touched, thank fuck. “Vaguely, yeah.”

“Conditioning can’t be broken with a word alone, but it can be broken by the Force, and that can be carried and broadcast. You’d need to hijack the holonet to deliver it, but of course the Emperor demonstrated the efficacy of such communication.”

Finn closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. There was no real reason to feel furious with Ren for having clearly thought about this before. It wouldn’t be productive to shout; it certainly wouldn’t help anything to try to hurt him. But -

Damn it, four ’troopers who shouldn’t have died would be buried on Naboo before they left. Why hadn’t the Republic gotten this intel before now?

“The one catch is it will require extraordinary strength in the Force to delivery the message,” Ren said. “The Emperor’s power was one of a kind, in that sense.”

“Rey’s powerful.”

“She is. She might not be powerful enough, not if you want it to be effective - and not if you want to be sure it won’t hurt the stormtroopers. You’ll need someone else.”

“Are you trying to tell me I should be clamoring to take your damper off?”

“Not at all. I was suggesting you look inside yourself.”

He didn’t know. He couldn’t possibly. Finn knew he’d kept what ability he had hidden; Ren had to be extrapolating based on what he thought of Finn throwing off the conditioning. “If Rey can’t do it herself, whatever I can offer won’t be enough to get her over the finish line. We’ll have to talk it over with her.”

“As you say.”

“And in the meantime, I want to go meet with the ’troopers who aren’t in critical condition, to get an idea of where they’re at.”

“Very well.” Ren stood. It occurred to Finn that the front room was pretty small; Ren towered over him, and Finn could smell him, too. He didn’t smell particularly good. Maybe spending half your life under a gross helmet meant you never really learned how often to wash your hair.

“Right, um, let’s go,” he said when he realized Ren was waiting on his instructions.

In spite of everything, seeing Ren nod and open the door for Finn sent a little zing of awareness down Finn’s spine. Ugh, he was losing it. The sooner they got off Naboo the better.

But first he had to make sure Kef Bir didn’t lose any more of its people.

Finn did his job. He went back and talked to Doctor Blake and ten of the newly free ’troopers; he set up a call between them and Jannah; he visited the still-comatose people in critical condition. Then, under Rey’s worried, too-sympathetic gaze, he got drunk.

“This is a bad idea,” Ren said for the fourth or fifth time since Finn had brought alcohol back up to their suite.

“I know,” Finn said. He didn’t bother to elaborate. If Ren had empathy, he’d understand; the proof was right there in the form of Rey, who was nursing a single drink as Finn drowned his sorrows. She occasionally patted his arm or hugged him to demonstrate that she cared for him, that she’d stay with him as long as he needed, and otherwise she left him to handle his shit.

“If someone were to attack -”

“We’d fight them off,” Rey said. She looked between them with an odd expression on her face: her nose wrinkled like she’d smelled something strange, her brow deeply furrowed. “Let him be. You know how hard this is for him.”

“He is sitting here here,” Finn pointed out.

“It’s not like it’s easy for any of us,” Ren said stiffly.

Finn didn’t bother to keep down the bitterness in his voice. Ren didn’t care about the ’troopers; there was no reason he should be upset. “What’s so hard about this for you?”

He nearly dropped his drink at the slap of memory that hit him just then. No, not memory - history. It was coming from Ren, Finn realized, a pointed, tortured scrap of family angst. Naboo had been where his grandmother was from, and his grandmother was long dead, killed by the grandfather he worshiped.

“Oh.” What a false equivalency, though.

“Don’t say a word,” Rey said when Ren opened his mouth.

“He needs to know -”

“He already knows.”

They were having a conversation Finn was too tipsy to follow. Was this about the Force? Of course Finn knew he could pick up on impressions and feelings, but he’d already told Rey he had no interest in developing that skill. Or at least, he’d told her he didn’t have time to, which was basically the same thing. He looked between Ren and Rey glaring at one another, muzzy confusion filling his mind. There was definitely something here he wasn’t quite picking up on.

Oh well. He closed his eyes, trying to block out the images of the ’troopers in their induced comas, the way Doctor Blake had looked when she said attempts to find their families had all failed so far. He’d get them to Kef Bir. He wouldn’t lose any more of them.

“Here, try this,” Rey said, and handed him a rosewater-flavored hydration pack. He drank it all down quickly, feeling his head clear as the enzymes within dealt with the alcohol in his blood.

“Thanks.”

She smiled at him, not bothering to disguise how sad she clearly felt to see him like this. “Want another?”

“Not just yet,” Finn said, and refilled his drink.

Eventually, Rey went to bed. Finn had done three cycles of drinking and rehydrating, and he only had one more rehydration pack before he’d be out for the night. Ren seemed to think he planned to self-destructively drink past that. It was kind of funny, in a ludicrous way; Finn wanted to tell Ren that he’d already had to learn how not to do that, but at the same time, he didn’t want to tell Ren anything about himself at all.

Instead, he nursed his drink and thought about Naboo. It had had more Resistance fighters than most planets, a relic of Senator Amidala’s early work with the rebels. He’d never made the connection to Vader before, but of course it was part of the history books; he could access thousands of articles about it with a single holopad query.

“Stop thinking about it.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” Finn said. “You don’t have access to all your mind-reading powers anymore.”

“It’s extremely obvious. This has nothing to do with Padme Amidala.”

“Hmm,” Finn said, and finished his drink.

Ren huffed impatiently when he stayed at the table, staring at his empty glass. “Are you going to rehydrate or not?”

“I’d give anything to know who my parents are, even, much less my grandparents,” Finn said. He stood, grabbing the last rehydration pack. “You know that? You’re so lucky and you act like you’re some kind of martyr.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I?” His head might be spinning a little, but he’d spent so much time lately - too much time - thinking about Kylo kriffing Ren. “I know you had a family you rejected, a home you repudiated. You chose to join the same people who stole me from my family and created armies of kidnapped children.”

Ren pursed his lips. “That’s beside the point. You’re drunk.”

“Barely.”

“And you neglect to consider the lure of the dark side.” Ren stepped forward. Finn realized, much too late, that Ren had moved closer without his realizing. Finn took a step back, and Ren followed him, until Finn stood with his back to a wall, Ren towering over him.

What a ridiculous position. But it was too late to move. “Back off.”

Ren leaned into him. Finn could feel him breathing against his neck. It was gross and frightening; his heart beat frantically and his stomach tightened as Ren said, “Tell me you don’t ever think about this. Look me in the eye and say you’ve never dreamed of making the Senate pay for their neglect, their willful allowance of the worst of the First Order’s excesses.” He inhaled deeply. “Tell me, Finn, and I’ll leave you alone.”

Finn’s brain screeched to a half. All he could think was: is he smelling me? And then the rest of Ren’s words careened into his mind, and he said, “Your excesses.”

He felt Ren go still above him, around him. “Excuse me?”

“The worst of the First Order’s excesses were your excesses.” Finn gathered his strength and shoved Ren back. It felt like grabbing hold of a live wire. “Listen, I don’t know what’s wrong with you. Mostly I think I don’t even care. Stay away from me. Do your job, and stop - grabbing me, smelling me, whatever. I know you’re still all dark-side-y and I don’t care. Do not try and put me on it again, or I swear, I’ll have you thrown right back into the cell they dragged you out of.”

Ren stared at him. His nostrils flared; his weird-looking lips twisted. He was ugly and ungenerous and evil, the most evil person Finn had ever met.

Why, then, after Ren left, after Finn put himself to bed - why couldn’t Finn stop thinking about him? Why did his heart beat so hard he felt like it was about to make a break for it? Why, Force help him, why was he hard, lying in bed, thinking of the way Kylo Ren had surrounded him, how it had seemed like Ren was about to kiss him?

He didn’t get much sleep that night.

After their disastrous conversation over drinks, Kylo all but throttled himself every time he came even close to expressing an opinion he thought Finn might find inappropriate, or worse, offputting. Kylo didn’t particularly mind being offputting to Finn, except for the practicalities of it: if Finn felt put off, he wouldn’t let Kylo get close enough to touch, and then Kylo wouldn’t be able to feel the Force again.

He’d tried it with other people. Rey, of course - who had realized what he was doing, and laughed, and said, “You can’t honestly think the Republic would leave such a massive loophole in your sentence?”, and looked sad. He hadn’t corrected her assumptions, but he had also tried with Jannah back on Kef Bir, and with the administrative official on Naboo whom the Force ran through strongly. A distant third cousin, Kylo thought, but he didn’t pursue the relationship, as the Force didn’t reach Kylo through their skin.

He could only feel the Force through Finn.

Admittedly, four people were a small sample size. Still, the more he meditated on it, the surer of his instincts he felt. He was right, there could be no doubt of it. Finn was something special, and because of that - the unidentifiable characteristics which made Finn unique among stormtroopers, among rebels, among Senators - because of that irritating difference, Finn was Kylo’s only window to the Force.

“You know, I can tell you’re thinking about him.”

Kylo managed not to jump when Rey sat down across from him. They were in the suite’s living room, so it wasn’t precisely that he had expected to be alone, but - “You don’t know the nature of my thoughts.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Well, I wasn’t sure before, but now I’m glad of it.”

Good. “He’s an attractive young man. Are you really going to pretend you haven’t been panting after him?”

“I don’t think of Finn like that,” Rey said.

Before, when he’d still been connected to the Force, it would have been the easiest thing in the world to spot a lie. Now, it took him a minute to fully grasp what she was saying, to read the not-quite-lie in her body language. “You don’t think of any men like that.”

“Got it in one, good job. You sure you can’t feel the Force?”

“I’m positive,” he snapped.

She held up her hands. “Fine, yes, okay.”

“Why haven’t you trained him?”

“He’d say that’s none of your business.”

Kylo crossed his arms, glowering at her. “It’s my job to protect him. How am I supposed to do that if I’m told I don’t need to know highly relevant details of his life?”

“You’d protect him best by dying.”

“You know I won’t do that.” He nearly had, after saving Rey. He had clawed his way back to existence only to have the only thing that made the universe worth existing in taken away from him. Was it any wonder he focused on Finn now?

“He won’t let me train him,” Rey said abruptly. She frowned down at the table. “And don’t think I haven’t tried to convince him, because I have. He’s powerful enough that I worry about him hurting himself. But he doesn’t want anything to distract him from his efforts on Kef Bir.”

Powerful enough to hurt himself? Kylo had assumed Finn’s affinity for the Force was just that, affinity. Not power. That complicated things considerably. “Why haven’t you simply forced him to train with you?”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“I assure you, it does.” He hadn’t been able to resist Snoke for very long at all. It was a remarkably effective strategy, and quick to implement besides.

“Not with the light, it doesn’t.” Rey’s face twitched, almost like she might laugh - no, that wasn’t it. She felt sorry for him, Kylo realized. Disgusting.

“It’ll be on your head when he blunders his way into hurting someone, then.”

“Oi! Who do you think -” Rey’s communicator started beeping. “Yes? This is Rey. Poe - what - oh, no. You’re sure? You’re absolutely sure?” Her face went grim. “How long do they have? Right. Okay, thank you.”

Her face had gone white and she kept glancing at Finn’s bedroom door. Something was very wrong, and it involved Kylo’s charge. “What is it.”

“It’s Kef Bir,” Rey said. “The First Order has attacked it. The moon’s collapsing; it’ll be nothing but an asteroid field before the month’s out.”

Kylo didn’t say anything. With Rey’s stunted connection to him, he didn’t need to. He stood and went to do his job.