[ Being that little bit extra Extra pays off sometimes. With the apparent lack of ways to dramatically sacrifice himself for people, Finn is going to have to pick up whole new ways to prove that he's ride or die and would drop anything for them. Showing up fast is definitely on the list.
Finn definitively perks up when he sees her. What is a poker face, and where can he get one? ]
Hey.
[ The cramped quarters and lack of privacy are things he hasn't needed to adjust to, necessarily. It's mostly familiar, if in a less than ideal way that doesn't exactly make callbacks to all the good times.
Rey, though, Rey makes any room she's in feel like home. Whether it's familiar or not. Which is saying something for someone who's never really had one and who's also standing in a makeshift lounge by vending machines.
He belatedly brings an arm up to lean against one of the vending machines, in an effort to look chill. He can be chill. She said she's okay-- good, actually-- and she at least looks like that's true. ]
Take the scenic route?
[ Loving his friends and judging Zhautas don't have to be mutually exclusive. ]
[ Said in the tone of someone who maybe wishes it weren't. She's seen some things, Finn. Some Things. She glances over her shoulder as if to indicate just … the whole facility. Yep. That's it.
But it's also a little bit finding other things to look at because she's trying to avoid looking at him. Looking at him means engaging this conversation and she still doesn't know how to start it. Like, she has to tell Finn what's been going on. She and Poe had a long and meaningful conversation about ethics and that was what she settled on. But also like … ughhhhhh. ]
[ RIP, Rey. Saw too much too many times. Rather than press f to pay his respects, Finn raises his eyebrows and tips his head to the side as if to say, "yeah, fair point."
So she maybe wasn't joking or downplaying it when she said she hadn't figured out how she planned on doing this yet.
Which is also fair enough. Every now and then he re-realizes that when it comes down to it, he doesn't actually... know Rey or Poe very well. Like, facts about them. Habits. What they're most likely to do about something.
If he separates it out from the part where the galaxy's at risk and the war that also has the galaxy at risk may or may not actually be on hold (and he sure can't call back to ask), Finn thinks at least one of the better things about being here is having time to get to know her better. ]
You said it's something about Hathaway?
[ When you don't want to be pushy but they also might need a little nudge. ]
[ It's the push she needs. And it shows in the little smile she gives him. She guides him towards one of the lounging couches in the common space, taking her seat first and folding her hands between her knees. She hunches over like she's getting ready to formulate a bloody battle plan. It's not the best posture for what's coming, but it fits the big mood. ]
Poe told me that you and he had already discussed that Kylo Ren was with us there before her arrived here in Zhautas. I doubt he mentioned that you, Kylo, and I had worked for more than year before Poe arrived to join Hathaway with another organization, ALASTAIR. We'd been reassigned and separated, but …
What's been just six months for Poe has been longer for me and for Kylo. Closer to two years.
[ Ahh. A little more light on the Kylo Ren situation. That seems... like a good extra exposition to have, since even Poe is apparently not on board the "kill it with fire" train as far as that goes. Which was one of the bigger deterrents from trying to rally the team and get it over with. Poe is one of the most action-first, thought-later people he's ever known.
It probably goes without saying that Finn, who was looking at that battle plan posture with a certain measure of both concern and general anxiety, still wasn't quite expecting to hear this specifically. ]
Two years is kind of a leap from a few months, Rey!
[ Let the record show Finn is not actually mad. Just argumentative at a base level and maybe prone to sounding vaguely offended when he's not sure exactly what else to do. Maybe he should have asked more questions about the Hathaway stuff, weirdness be damned. A big chunk of this is definitely on him, he's pretty sure.
On the bright side, hey, Rey's lived for another two whole years since meeting him technically. That's longer than they can guarantee for any version of anybody back home. So that's worth something. ]
[ She says that in a sober voice that relays just how seriously she takes that time. Yes. This is surely the way to go about it. It has barely occurred to her that, from Finn's perspective, they must have only known one another for a few — days? A week? Has she even seen him again? She has almost forgotten to worry for his recovery, now that she knows he makes it to the Supremacy.
But she doesn't have to worry about that. Kylo will not allow him to be harmed. She will not allow him to be harmed. Executed. Whatever they fear is coming. ]
We weren't together for all of it. And it wasn't all spent in a ceasefire. [ She realizes she's saying this almost as though she feels she has to defend her credibility — prove her anger with him for what he'd done to Han, to Finn, as far away as it is now. ] I almost killed him, Finn. I left him for dead in Perdition's Rest.
And then he was transferred to another team within ALASTAIR, and so were you.
[ He settles. As much as he can. All of his proverbial feathers get a little less ruffled.
Explanations. Right. It's half the point.
He doesn't even know how old she is now.
And he's wondering how many high-impact Hathaway catch-up stories will include "and then you got transferred". Corporations at work, maybe. Or really poor timing. ]
How'd you get around to a ceasefire? [ If she almost killed him, it means Ren was probably already trying to kill her. That's Finn's immediate assumption.
Ceasefire by necessity, maybe. The most he really heard from Poe about it was that Rey's been keeping things in check. ]
Fighting each other was pointless. At the end of the day, we wanted the same thing. We were on the same side.
[ It feels so distant, putting to bed that animosity and trying to hold it back. Admittedly, her telling is slightly out of order. But it's easier to contextualize it this way than to rehash play-by-play the strained back-and-forth they'd had. ]
Kylo knew that, of course. [ Things Rey is tired of: Kylo Ren being right. ] He'd been with ALASTAIR a while before I was conscripted. And he tried to tell me as much, but I was so angry with him.
[ She'd been the one to tell him Han was dead. She'd been the one to show him her memories of the event, force that upon him before it had come. In truth, that had been crueler than what she'd done to him in Perdition's Rest. Seeing how he crumbled under it … that must have been the start. That's what she settles on, now. ]
But then he was gone, and … I felt so alone. [ She looks at her hands. ] I had found a teacher, Kisuke Urahara, but he wasn't a Jedi. He didn't know the Force — only something similar enough to suffice. I'd never wanted to accept Kylo's offer to teach me, but he was my only chance to learn from someone who understood, and he was gone.
Edited (AN EDIT BECAUSE I WENT TO CLOSE THE TAB AND REALIZED I FORGOT SOMETHING) 2018-06-24 00:00 (UTC)
[ Honestly? Finn kind of appreciates the to-the-point condensed version. Not that he couldn't or wouldn't gladly listen to Rey talk about probably anything at length, but-- well, the whole Kylo Ren topic bears a certain sense of urgency right now.
As far as things lining up well enough and making sense go, Finn can admit (a little reluctantly) that everything he's heard about their old setup so far makes it sound like something that means putting personal agendas from home on the back burner. Sort of like being here. Whether or not the war is forging on without him back home, he can't be sure, but he does know that he's not here to win it. He's here to try to make sure the galaxy lives to see the end of that war through.
If he went looking for Kylo Ren to PVP him, not only would it not have any real impact on what's happening back home, and not only would it probably be breaking whatever terms Rey and Poe have with the guy (which has kept Finn from gunning it thus far): it would cause trouble for him here. Possibly enough to interfere with what he's here trying to do. Basic strategy.
He guesses if he thinks about it, Kylo Ren would have learned a lot of the same ways of looking at things as he did. Finn opts not to think about it if he can help it. ]
I wouldn't exactly call Ren Jedi material, either. [ Says Finn, who has only known the Force is a real thing for maybe a week and who only ever learned that the Jedi got wiped out of existence. He's still salty about a few things. Sometimes time is the only fix, if there's even a fix to be had. He thinks about Rey, standing in the light and holding up all but half of a mountainside. He thinks he can't see a world where Kylo Ren could be tied into anything light or beautiful or impossibly good.
But. If he keeps on his trend of not thinking too much about Kylo Ren, he can at least empathize with Rey's end of things. The idea, anyway, not the specifics. The feeling of being alone. Being different, not quite right. ]
So you, uh. You thought about it. When you thought it was too late. [ When she thought she was alone. With something she couldn't really understand. Maybe for months? Finn's trying to keep the timeline on the mental table as much as he can. Everything changed in a couple of days back home, right? There has to be something to be said for years.
And he thinks he can even follow the line of thought she's laid out, up to a point. Before Jakku, if someone had told him they could show him how to do what he had to do to be a real stormtrooper, to follow his orders no matter what they were--
Likely as anything, he wouldn't be here right now. ]
[ She drums up a small smile, fond and regretful in equal parts. After all, it's still a recent memory when she had felt so indignant that Kylo had been presenting himself as her teacher, that she had allowed Keith to convey it to Poe in that way, rather than admit the truth of what was transpiring between them. It's so … convoluted. That's what makes it hard to explain. There's layers of what they allowed others to see, of what was really happening. ]
But as crazy as it sounds, I did wish that he was there.
Things got worse after the both of you were reassigned. Perdition's Rest was hard, made harder because of a vision I'd seen of a future where you were hurt and I had turned to the Dark Side. I had no one to turn to, no one who understood what I was afraid of. I spent a lot of that time thinking that if I just had someone, anyone who understood, that … it'd make sense. And I'd know what to do.
[ She looks up from her hands and over at Finn. ]
Then we joined Hathaway, and we were back in the same guild. And … he did understand. [ The things she was feeling not just about being isolated in the darkness in ALASTAIR, but with Luke, and how he'd disappointed her. She doesn't know how to contextualize that without drudging up the bond, however, and she doesn't have the vocabulary to explain it. Really, the crux of it is the emotional weight anyway — ] We grew closer, and I understood him too.
[ As much as she struggles to put it out there so simply, she knows that qualifying it would be worse. Refuting it would be The Worst. She needs to be honest with herself and with Finn. From that moment they'd reached out to each other in that hut on Ahch-to, it had been. Beyond that, in Hathaway, everything was just … the natural next step.
He'd been there for her when she was at her lowest point. When Luke had turned away from her, and from the Resistance, and from the Force itself. Their last hope, gone. And it had been Ben who picked her back up, promised her that she wasn't alone. It had only meant more in the context of the time she'd spent isolated and unconnected in ALASTAIR. ]
There's more to him than darkness and anger and hate, Finn. I can feel it.
[ This is where the gears sort of start refusing to turn for him. One of those things that'll get easier with time, maybe. Maybe, because Finn really couldn't put the word "hopefully" next to it.
This is the branch of thought he can logically follow but can't make himself genuinely understand. ]
Does it matter if there's more to him? Because it seems to me like what he is doesn't need to have much in common with what he actually does if that's the case.
[ She'd hoped to avoid this, but she'd also had the good sense to be ready for it. Finn's doubt makes sense to her. She understands how much of what she feels has grown out of the bond, out of the private understanding that she and Ben have shared with one another. So she'd known this wouldn't be easy, even if she'd hoped it would.
But ultimately that hope remains. Finn might be struggling with it now, but he will understand. He'll see it for himself sooner or later. More to the point, not understanding isn't a judgment against her. She digs her heels in. ]
He's changed. And his actions prove it. Did Poe tell you that Ben saved his life? [ She sounds incredulous even now as she says it. There's a huge valley between 'not killing people' and 'actively helping people,' and apparently that leap has been made. ] When we go home, we're going to destroy Snoke. Together.
[ Poe didn't mention that. Between the part of the conversation that involved Kylo Ren where he was lying on the ground trying not to be seen, and the weirdness of all the other parts of it, it probably fell through the cracks. Finn would be the first to admit that if Poe brought it up on the beach... he'd have still been so keyed up about Kylo Ren being here at all that it wouldn't have made much of a blip on his radar.
This is a more significant blip. A noteworthy blip. Rey wouldn't lie about it, for starters, which means it's cemented as a factual event. That means Finn can't brush it off or pretend otherwise. Does he, in the fashion of an anime protagonist when the last arc's antagonist apparently does a moral turn, immediately assume that Ren did it because he stood to benefit from it somehow? By throwing them off-guard or angling to get the benefit of the doubt?
Yes. That's sort of what he ends up doing when the confusion is done blatantly bleeding into his expression. ]
What does he get out of killing Snoke? What does he want out of it? [ Because there has to be something. ] And when did this turn over to Ben?
Visibly crestfallen, Rey can't help but look away from Finn when she sees the incredulity and confusion written all over his face. At least it's not resentment, she tells herself, but this isn't even the hardest part. Something dark seizes upon that look on his face and tries to tell her that maybe it's too much at once, that he needs time, and she needs to figure out how to present it, but that's the paranoia and mistrust that she has worked hard to burn out of her, to purge, nearly at the cost of purging her relationship with Ben. She can't succumb to it now.
They're hard questions to answer, not least of all because she lacks the experience still to have a strong awareness of her own feelings, but that doesn't mean Finn doesn't deserve a clear answer. ]
I told you that we grew closer.
[ The weight of this statement seems to set aside the efforts to answer the rest. Finn already has the answer, anyway. He's the one who had been so insistent that actions were what mattered. She looks back at him. Because this IS a shounen anime and Naruto is NOT giving up on Sasuke just because he did some really fucked up shit to Sakura that one time. ]
The Dark Side feeds on pain and loneliness. I've seen how easy it can be to give into that, and how hard it is to root it out once it's there. But he still has a chance to turn away from it. As long as there's light inside of him, I'll choose to have hope.
[ She needs there to be a chance for him. If there's not, it means being alone like she was before. It seems too cruel the that Force should lead her to him like this, entwine them, only to rip him away. ]
[ As far as answers to the name question go, he guesses that's a fair one.
And Rey, he thinks, has a knack for seeing things for what they could be. That's a good thing. He's not sure what else there is to say about it, because he believes that. It's not bad to hope. It's not bad to choose it.
So he takes a long moment to think over what he wants to say. Looks at the floor so intently he might be trying to bore holes into it. ]
If you say he saved Poe's life, then he did. If you say he-- helped you somehow. Helps you. I don't get it, but I'll believe it. If you say you're sure he won't hurt anyone here, I'll trust that. Because I trust you.
[ Poe seemed pretty firm on believing in that much, too.
Finn looks back up. ]
All he gets from me is a temporary ceasefire, Rey. That's as far as I go.
[ He wouldn't go back and change how things have happened to him. He wouldn't. Meeting Rey and Poe and Rose, ending up where he's ended up, figuring out what he's figured out. He wouldn't trade out getting to be Finn. That's who he is. And he knows where he belongs.
But on some level, beyond the war, beyond the scar on his back, beyond everything Kylo Ren did on Starkiller, beyond the short-lived screams of the villagers on Jakku-- putting that all aside, part of Finn still can't help but bristle with personal resentment.
To know where your home was, to know your family, to know your own name. To have someone offer you a free ticket out, after everything. To get a chance handed to you, and a door to leave through, and somewhere to go, instead of stumbling through it terrified, banking on a desperate dreg of hope in the form of a stranger in a holding cell.
To have all that and to throw it away-- to reach out and kill it-- he can't imagine it. He can't make it make sense or find it in him to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who could.
Not today, anyway. Not this fresh off of things back home. ]
[ He trusts her. Even if he doesn't get it, he trusts her. She grabs onto that, holds onto it tight. Her hand itches to grasp his, to hold onto him and take what he's giving and leave it there and forget all about making it clear.
But hadn't she just been the one to point out that pain and loneliness feed the Dark? Her fear of those things does too. She bites down on it. ]
I understand. [ She wouldn't have been able to either. Not so fresh off of Han's death. ] I'm not trying to make you see him the way that I do. But I need you to understand what I see, so that you can understand why …
[ Her brow furrows. She searches his face. She really doesn't even know how to make this happen in words. ]
I have feelings for him.
[ Is it cowardly to hope that their present circumstances fill in the rest? ]
[ How to progress from No Fear to One Fear in a sentence. He doesn't know what he expected, but it probably wasn't that? ]
You have feelings for him?
[ That came out louder than he thought it would. Yikes. I'm sorry your friends and loved ones are all disasters Rey 2k18. Finn adjusts his volume appropriately, leaning in a little. ]
[ Wow that was … loud. Rey looks around like she's expecting the other people around to care or something, but let's be honest, the only people who care about this soap opera are the ones engaged in it. Still, it apparently cues Finn to drop his voice, because when he repeats himself it's only for her.
But no less scandalized, incredulous, and possibly judgy. ]
Yes. Feelings.
[ That's slightly snapped. This wasn't easy!!! To admit!! R'iia's shorts, she's trying to open up here. ]
[ Half of them are just waiting to walk past them to the vending machines without feeling they might get roped in, probably.
His first thought is to ask something like why or how, but before either of them gets out, Finn remembers that a lot of this conversation so far has been covering exactly that. The only thing it didn't include was him thinking to draw a potential... Feelings line between any of it in the process.
Rey has feelings for Kylo Ren. It's a whole real thing that's really happening. There are enough of them being felt to be worth mentioning, here on the sex island facility. Which yeah, Finn can put two and two together on without needing it spelled out.
He was so sure he was used to the maximum level of things he doesn't inherently get. It turned out to be the equivalent of saying "I have a a bad feeling about this." He's left unsure of exactly what to do with this information or how to kickstart the processing on it yet.
So where he settles as far as responding is: ]
And I'm gonna assume he has feelings back.
[ This is the only aspect of this moment in time that Finn can 100% understand. Like, it's been 2 years. Literally anybody should probably be in love with Rey after that long or they're not reasonable. ]
[ Honestly Rey could kiss him for that conclusion because if she had to do another round of Keith's new mixtape, the title of which is 'He acts like you don't matter at all,' she'd probably scream. Repeatedly. Instead, something kind of … unclenches, in her chest.
And she realizes it's not Finn being like fuck this crazy girl who falls in love with serial killers in prison that she has feared, but rather the chaotic hellscape of other people delegitimizing this Thing she can't articulate or describe. Finn, being the perfect human being that he is, sidesteps it all in one fell swoop. One well-reasoned conclusion.
It assuages her primarily because it's obviously rooted not in 'Kylo Ren has the capacity to love another human being,' which Finn is probably still processing, but rather on the premise that 'Rey is someone worth loving.'
It's fine. She has zero self worth issues after being sold into scavenger slavery. This would be revolutionary to anyone … right? ]
Yes.
[ And she can answer it honestly because she's sure. As sure of it as she is of her own feelings and of the fact that the sun makes the sand warm. There's been a lot of back-and-forth, and they have lots more push-and-pull to go before they understand how to deal with those feelings while being so opposite despite being so similar, but that question is easily answered.
She opens her mouth with some further justification or explanation or — well, she's not sure what. But ultimately she shuts her mouth and bites her tongue because the whole point of telling Finn is giving him the chance to Have Feelings about it. ]
[ He's not sure if he buys that Kylo Ren legitimately does have the capacity for something like that. Or-- not in a way that's good, if Finn factors in that it stands to reason that Ren loved Han Solo somehow. Something that either stopped or warped.
Not that he guesses he's all that knowledgeable on the matter? It's been about a week since he hit the real world emotional circuit, and before he got to this place in particular, things were pretty much stressful and fast-paced the whole time. Breathing room is wild. Softness is nothing short of novel.
He's still not sure he believes Kylo Ren has it in him.
It's like, he would try to argue this into the ground somehow, but he also isn't sure what his arguments would... be. It would just be him telling her things she already knows about Kylo Ren, or things that he knows that she's apparently been working on for two years. She's known Kylo Ren longer than Finn's known her now.
At the very, very end of the day-- well, he's not anybody's keeper. Certainly not Rey's. His people aren't things he keeps on leashes while he tells them where to go and what to do and who they can or can't get feelings for.
He's been on the other end of that. The only thing more terrifying than going back under that metaphorical thumb is the idea of doing it to someone else. ]
I don't like it.
[ But yeah, he still wanted his opinion out there.
Could Rey wipe the floor with Kylo Ren if she had to? Undoubtedly. Does knowing that prevent a thrill of fear, some instinctive dread tied into not wanting her to get hurt, wanting her to be safe? Not really. It prevents nothing. ]
[ Candor has always been one of Rey's greatest strengths, and she withholds none despite the seriousness of this topic. She didn't think he would like it, but she told him anyway. And he doesn't like it, but he's not running away or acting disgusted with her.
Except this was where the plan ended. True to form, Rey got as far as Action Step 1 and was like ok that's enough planning my brain is tired. Time to go home. So now it's just out there, sitting between them, and she's not really sure what the resolution looks like. ]
[ Star Wars, the Next Generation: making plans up on the fly. Between Rey, Finn, and Poe alone, there is a consistent circulation between these memes at all times in terms of preparation.
Finn is also running pretty firmly into uncharted territory right now. ]
I don't know. I don't think I can say it is? [ He probably showed up to this meeting half expecting it to just be about a murder or some other big fight the other Finn never got to resolve or something.
It's Kylo Ren. But it's Rey. Repeat ad nauseam. ] But I don't want you to think--
[ When you've never actually told anyone you love them or care about them in your entire life and are a mess, so you mentally slam your face into the keyboard a few times hoping to come up with a good way to convey what you're trying to say. ]
Look, I really don't know how to handle this. [ Finn fails at his mental acrobatics, mostly, and reaches out for Rey's hand on impulse instead. ] I think you're still you. And I think you're good. And I don't wanna be somewhere without you when I know you're right there.
[ He doesn't currently foresee a future where he thinks about this enterprise and is like "yeah, it's okay." But he can't pretend she didn't lay out the timeline and general mood in a way he understood, either. She went out of her way to explain it instead of taking the easy way out and just not mentioning it.
He'd rather have to try to figure it out than fall into the actual worst-case scenario, which is just. Not having Rey around. He's not about that life. He lived it and he hated it. She's sort of everything. She outweighs everything in importance. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Finn definitively perks up when he sees her. What is a poker face, and where can he get one? ]
Hey.
[ The cramped quarters and lack of privacy are things he hasn't needed to adjust to, necessarily. It's mostly familiar, if in a less than ideal way that doesn't exactly make callbacks to all the good times.
Rey, though, Rey makes any room she's in feel like home. Whether it's familiar or not. Which is saying something for someone who's never really had one and who's also standing in a makeshift lounge by vending machines.
He belatedly brings an arm up to lean against one of the vending machines, in an effort to look chill. He can be chill. She said she's okay-- good, actually-- and she at least looks like that's true. ]
Take the scenic route?
[ Loving his friends and judging Zhautas don't have to be mutually exclusive. ]
no subject
[ Said in the tone of someone who maybe wishes it weren't. She's seen some things, Finn. Some Things. She glances over her shoulder as if to indicate just … the whole facility. Yep. That's it.
But it's also a little bit finding other things to look at because she's trying to avoid looking at him. Looking at him means engaging this conversation and she still doesn't know how to start it. Like, she has to tell Finn what's been going on. She and Poe had a long and meaningful conversation about ethics and that was what she settled on. But also like … ughhhhhh. ]
no subject
So she maybe wasn't joking or downplaying it when she said she hadn't figured out how she planned on doing this yet.
Which is also fair enough. Every now and then he re-realizes that when it comes down to it, he doesn't actually... know Rey or Poe very well. Like, facts about them. Habits. What they're most likely to do about something.
If he separates it out from the part where the galaxy's at risk and the war that also has the galaxy at risk may or may not actually be on hold (and he sure can't call back to ask), Finn thinks at least one of the better things about being here is having time to get to know her better. ]
You said it's something about Hathaway?
[ When you don't want to be pushy but they also might need a little nudge. ]
no subject
Poe told me that you and he had already discussed that Kylo Ren was with us there before her arrived here in Zhautas. I doubt he mentioned that you, Kylo, and I had worked for more than year before Poe arrived to join Hathaway with another organization, ALASTAIR. We'd been reassigned and separated, but …
What's been just six months for Poe has been longer for me and for Kylo. Closer to two years.
[ That seems like a good place to start as any. ]
no subject
It probably goes without saying that Finn, who was looking at that battle plan posture with a certain measure of both concern and general anxiety, still wasn't quite expecting to hear this specifically. ]
Two years is kind of a leap from a few months, Rey!
[ Let the record show Finn is not actually mad. Just argumentative at a base level and maybe prone to sounding vaguely offended when he's not sure exactly what else to do. Maybe he should have asked more questions about the Hathaway stuff, weirdness be damned. A big chunk of this is definitely on him, he's pretty sure.
On the bright side, hey, Rey's lived for another two whole years since meeting him technically. That's longer than they can guarantee for any version of anybody back home. So that's worth something. ]
no subject
[ She says that in a sober voice that relays just how seriously she takes that time. Yes. This is surely the way to go about it. It has barely occurred to her that, from Finn's perspective, they must have only known one another for a few — days? A week? Has she even seen him again? She has almost forgotten to worry for his recovery, now that she knows he makes it to the Supremacy.
But she doesn't have to worry about that. Kylo will not allow him to be harmed. She will not allow him to be harmed. Executed. Whatever they fear is coming. ]
We weren't together for all of it. And it wasn't all spent in a ceasefire. [ She realizes she's saying this almost as though she feels she has to defend her credibility — prove her anger with him for what he'd done to Han, to Finn, as far away as it is now. ] I almost killed him, Finn. I left him for dead in Perdition's Rest.
And then he was transferred to another team within ALASTAIR, and so were you.
no subject
Explanations. Right. It's half the point.
He doesn't even know how old she is now.
And he's wondering how many high-impact Hathaway catch-up stories will include "and then you got transferred". Corporations at work, maybe. Or really poor timing. ]
How'd you get around to a ceasefire? [ If she almost killed him, it means Ren was probably already trying to kill her. That's Finn's immediate assumption.
Ceasefire by necessity, maybe. The most he really heard from Poe about it was that Rey's been keeping things in check. ]
no subject
[ It feels so distant, putting to bed that animosity and trying to hold it back. Admittedly, her telling is slightly out of order. But it's easier to contextualize it this way than to rehash play-by-play the strained back-and-forth they'd had. ]
Kylo knew that, of course. [ Things Rey is tired of: Kylo Ren being right. ] He'd been with ALASTAIR a while before I was conscripted. And he tried to tell me as much, but I was so angry with him.
[ She'd been the one to tell him Han was dead. She'd been the one to show him her memories of the event, force that upon him before it had come. In truth, that had been crueler than what she'd done to him in Perdition's Rest. Seeing how he crumbled under it … that must have been the start. That's what she settles on, now. ]
But then he was gone, and … I felt so alone. [ She looks at her hands. ] I had found a teacher, Kisuke Urahara, but he wasn't a Jedi. He didn't know the Force — only something similar enough to suffice. I'd never wanted to accept Kylo's offer to teach me, but he was my only chance to learn from someone who understood, and he was gone.
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As far as things lining up well enough and making sense go, Finn can admit (a little reluctantly) that everything he's heard about their old setup so far makes it sound like something that means putting personal agendas from home on the back burner. Sort of like being here. Whether or not the war is forging on without him back home, he can't be sure, but he does know that he's not here to win it. He's here to try to make sure the galaxy lives to see the end of that war through.
If he went looking for Kylo Ren to PVP him, not only would it not have any real impact on what's happening back home, and not only would it probably be breaking whatever terms Rey and Poe have with the guy (which has kept Finn from gunning it thus far): it would cause trouble for him here. Possibly enough to interfere with what he's here trying to do. Basic strategy.
He guesses if he thinks about it, Kylo Ren would have learned a lot of the same ways of looking at things as he did. Finn opts not to think about it if he can help it. ]
I wouldn't exactly call Ren Jedi material, either. [ Says Finn, who has only known the Force is a real thing for maybe a week and who only ever learned that the Jedi got wiped out of existence. He's still salty about a few things. Sometimes time is the only fix, if there's even a fix to be had. He thinks about Rey, standing in the light and holding up all but half of a mountainside. He thinks he can't see a world where Kylo Ren could be tied into anything light or beautiful or impossibly good.
But. If he keeps on his trend of not thinking too much about Kylo Ren, he can at least empathize with Rey's end of things. The idea, anyway, not the specifics. The feeling of being alone. Being different, not quite right. ]
So you, uh. You thought about it. When you thought it was too late. [ When she thought she was alone. With something she couldn't really understand. Maybe for months? Finn's trying to keep the timeline on the mental table as much as he can. Everything changed in a couple of days back home, right? There has to be something to be said for years.
And he thinks he can even follow the line of thought she's laid out, up to a point. Before Jakku, if someone had told him they could show him how to do what he had to do to be a real stormtrooper, to follow his orders no matter what they were--
Likely as anything, he wouldn't be here right now. ]
And what, you changed your mind?
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[ She drums up a small smile, fond and regretful in equal parts. After all, it's still a recent memory when she had felt so indignant that Kylo had been presenting himself as her teacher, that she had allowed Keith to convey it to Poe in that way, rather than admit the truth of what was transpiring between them. It's so … convoluted. That's what makes it hard to explain. There's layers of what they allowed others to see, of what was really happening. ]
But as crazy as it sounds, I did wish that he was there.
Things got worse after the both of you were reassigned. Perdition's Rest was hard, made harder because of a vision I'd seen of a future where you were hurt and I had turned to the Dark Side. I had no one to turn to, no one who understood what I was afraid of. I spent a lot of that time thinking that if I just had someone, anyone who understood, that … it'd make sense. And I'd know what to do.
[ She looks up from her hands and over at Finn. ]
Then we joined Hathaway, and we were back in the same guild. And … he did understand. [ The things she was feeling not just about being isolated in the darkness in ALASTAIR, but with Luke, and how he'd disappointed her. She doesn't know how to contextualize that without drudging up the bond, however, and she doesn't have the vocabulary to explain it. Really, the crux of it is the emotional weight anyway — ] We grew closer, and I understood him too.
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He opts to say the first thing that comes to mind when she pauses there. ]
This is sounding less like a ceasefire and more like making friends.
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[ As much as she struggles to put it out there so simply, she knows that qualifying it would be worse. Refuting it would be The Worst. She needs to be honest with herself and with Finn. From that moment they'd reached out to each other in that hut on Ahch-to, it had been. Beyond that, in Hathaway, everything was just … the natural next step.
He'd been there for her when she was at her lowest point. When Luke had turned away from her, and from the Resistance, and from the Force itself. Their last hope, gone. And it had been Ben who picked her back up, promised her that she wasn't alone. It had only meant more in the context of the time she'd spent isolated and unconnected in ALASTAIR. ]
There's more to him than darkness and anger and hate, Finn. I can feel it.
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This is the branch of thought he can logically follow but can't make himself genuinely understand. ]
Does it matter if there's more to him? Because it seems to me like what he is doesn't need to have much in common with what he actually does if that's the case.
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But ultimately that hope remains. Finn might be struggling with it now, but he will understand. He'll see it for himself sooner or later. More to the point, not understanding isn't a judgment against her. She digs her heels in. ]
He's changed. And his actions prove it. Did Poe tell you that Ben saved his life? [ She sounds incredulous even now as she says it. There's a huge valley between 'not killing people' and 'actively helping people,' and apparently that leap has been made. ] When we go home, we're going to destroy Snoke. Together.
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This is a more significant blip. A noteworthy blip. Rey wouldn't lie about it, for starters, which means it's cemented as a factual event. That means Finn can't brush it off or pretend otherwise. Does he, in the fashion of an anime protagonist when the last arc's antagonist apparently does a moral turn, immediately assume that Ren did it because he stood to benefit from it somehow? By throwing them off-guard or angling to get the benefit of the doubt?
Yes. That's sort of what he ends up doing when the confusion is done blatantly bleeding into his expression. ]
What does he get out of killing Snoke? What does he want out of it? [ Because there has to be something. ] And when did this turn over to Ben?
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She was doing so well.
Visibly crestfallen, Rey can't help but look away from Finn when she sees the incredulity and confusion written all over his face. At least it's not resentment, she tells herself, but this isn't even the hardest part. Something dark seizes upon that look on his face and tries to tell her that maybe it's too much at once, that he needs time, and she needs to figure out how to present it, but that's the paranoia and mistrust that she has worked hard to burn out of her, to purge, nearly at the cost of purging her relationship with Ben. She can't succumb to it now.
They're hard questions to answer, not least of all because she lacks the experience still to have a strong awareness of her own feelings, but that doesn't mean Finn doesn't deserve a clear answer. ]
I told you that we grew closer.
[ The weight of this statement seems to set aside the efforts to answer the rest. Finn already has the answer, anyway. He's the one who had been so insistent that actions were what mattered. She looks back at him. Because this IS a shounen anime and Naruto is NOT giving up on Sasuke just because he did some really fucked up shit to Sakura that one time. ]
The Dark Side feeds on pain and loneliness. I've seen how easy it can be to give into that, and how hard it is to root it out once it's there. But he still has a chance to turn away from it. As long as there's light inside of him, I'll choose to have hope.
[ She needs there to be a chance for him. If there's not, it means being alone like she was before. It seems too cruel the that Force should lead her to him like this, entwine them, only to rip him away. ]
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And Rey, he thinks, has a knack for seeing things for what they could be. That's a good thing. He's not sure what else there is to say about it, because he believes that. It's not bad to hope. It's not bad to choose it.
So he takes a long moment to think over what he wants to say. Looks at the floor so intently he might be trying to bore holes into it. ]
If you say he saved Poe's life, then he did. If you say he-- helped you somehow. Helps you. I don't get it, but I'll believe it. If you say you're sure he won't hurt anyone here, I'll trust that. Because I trust you.
[ Poe seemed pretty firm on believing in that much, too.
Finn looks back up. ]
All he gets from me is a temporary ceasefire, Rey. That's as far as I go.
[ He wouldn't go back and change how things have happened to him. He wouldn't. Meeting Rey and Poe and Rose, ending up where he's ended up, figuring out what he's figured out. He wouldn't trade out getting to be Finn. That's who he is. And he knows where he belongs.
But on some level, beyond the war, beyond the scar on his back, beyond everything Kylo Ren did on Starkiller, beyond the short-lived screams of the villagers on Jakku-- putting that all aside, part of Finn still can't help but bristle with personal resentment.
To know where your home was, to know your family, to know your own name. To have someone offer you a free ticket out, after everything. To get a chance handed to you, and a door to leave through, and somewhere to go, instead of stumbling through it terrified, banking on a desperate dreg of hope in the form of a stranger in a holding cell.
To have all that and to throw it away-- to reach out and kill it-- he can't imagine it. He can't make it make sense or find it in him to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who could.
Not today, anyway. Not this fresh off of things back home. ]
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But hadn't she just been the one to point out that pain and loneliness feed the Dark? Her fear of those things does too. She bites down on it. ]
I understand. [ She wouldn't have been able to either. Not so fresh off of Han's death. ] I'm not trying to make you see him the way that I do. But I need you to understand what I see, so that you can understand why …
[ Her brow furrows. She searches his face. She really doesn't even know how to make this happen in words. ]
I have feelings for him.
[ Is it cowardly to hope that their present circumstances fill in the rest? ]
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You have feelings for him?
[ That came out louder than he thought it would. Yikes. I'm sorry your friends and loved ones are all disasters Rey 2k18. Finn adjusts his volume appropriately, leaning in a little. ]
Sorry, I-- feelings?
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But no less scandalized, incredulous, and possibly judgy. ]
Yes. Feelings.
[ That's slightly snapped. This wasn't easy!!! To admit!! R'iia's shorts, she's trying to open up here. ]
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His first thought is to ask something like why or how, but before either of them gets out, Finn remembers that a lot of this conversation so far has been covering exactly that. The only thing it didn't include was him thinking to draw a potential... Feelings line between any of it in the process.
Rey has feelings for Kylo Ren. It's a whole real thing that's really happening. There are enough of them being felt to be worth mentioning, here on the sex island facility. Which yeah, Finn can put two and two together on without needing it spelled out.
He was so sure he was used to the maximum level of things he doesn't inherently get. It turned out to be the equivalent of saying "I have a a bad feeling about this." He's left unsure of exactly what to do with this information or how to kickstart the processing on it yet.
So where he settles as far as responding is: ]
And I'm gonna assume he has feelings back.
[ This is the only aspect of this moment in time that Finn can 100% understand. Like, it's been 2 years. Literally anybody should probably be in love with Rey after that long or they're not reasonable. ]
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And she realizes it's not Finn being like fuck this crazy girl who falls in love with serial killers in prison that she has feared, but rather the chaotic hellscape of other people delegitimizing this Thing she can't articulate or describe. Finn, being the perfect human being that he is, sidesteps it all in one fell swoop. One well-reasoned conclusion.
It assuages her primarily because it's obviously rooted not in 'Kylo Ren has the capacity to love another human being,' which Finn is probably still processing, but rather on the premise that 'Rey is someone worth loving.'
It's fine. She has zero self worth issues after being sold into scavenger slavery. This would be revolutionary to anyone … right? ]
Yes.
[ And she can answer it honestly because she's sure. As sure of it as she is of her own feelings and of the fact that the sun makes the sand warm. There's been a lot of back-and-forth, and they have lots more push-and-pull to go before they understand how to deal with those feelings while being so opposite despite being so similar, but that question is easily answered.
She opens her mouth with some further justification or explanation or — well, she's not sure what. But ultimately she shuts her mouth and bites her tongue because the whole point of telling Finn is giving him the chance to Have Feelings about it. ]
i app myself into the game to hug rey 2k18
Not that he guesses he's all that knowledgeable on the matter? It's been about a week since he hit the real world emotional circuit, and before he got to this place in particular, things were pretty much stressful and fast-paced the whole time. Breathing room is wild. Softness is nothing short of novel.
He's still not sure he believes Kylo Ren has it in him.
It's like, he would try to argue this into the ground somehow, but he also isn't sure what his arguments would... be. It would just be him telling her things she already knows about Kylo Ren, or things that he knows that she's apparently been working on for two years. She's known Kylo Ren longer than Finn's known her now.
At the very, very end of the day-- well, he's not anybody's keeper. Certainly not Rey's. His people aren't things he keeps on leashes while he tells them where to go and what to do and who they can or can't get feelings for.
He's been on the other end of that. The only thing more terrifying than going back under that metaphorical thumb is the idea of doing it to someone else. ]
I don't like it.
[ But yeah, he still wanted his opinion out there.
Could Rey wipe the floor with Kylo Ren if she had to? Undoubtedly. Does knowing that prevent a thrill of fear, some instinctive dread tied into not wanting her to get hurt, wanting her to be safe? Not really. It prevents nothing. ]
GOOD SHE NEEDS IT
[ Candor has always been one of Rey's greatest strengths, and she withholds none despite the seriousness of this topic. She didn't think he would like it, but she told him anyway. And he doesn't like it, but he's not running away or acting disgusted with her.
Except this was where the plan ended. True to form, Rey got as far as Action Step 1 and was like ok that's enough planning my brain is tired. Time to go home. So now it's just out there, sitting between them, and she's not really sure what the resolution looks like. ]
Is that okay?
[ Like, does he have to? She isn't really sure. ]
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Finn is also running pretty firmly into uncharted territory right now. ]
I don't know. I don't think I can say it is? [ He probably showed up to this meeting half expecting it to just be about a murder or some other big fight the other Finn never got to resolve or something.
It's Kylo Ren. But it's Rey. Repeat ad nauseam. ] But I don't want you to think--
[ When you've never actually told anyone you love them or care about them in your entire life and are a mess, so you mentally slam your face into the keyboard a few times hoping to come up with a good way to convey what you're trying to say. ]
Look, I really don't know how to handle this. [ Finn fails at his mental acrobatics, mostly, and reaches out for Rey's hand on impulse instead. ] I think you're still you. And I think you're good. And I don't wanna be somewhere without you when I know you're right there.
[ He doesn't currently foresee a future where he thinks about this enterprise and is like "yeah, it's okay." But he can't pretend she didn't lay out the timeline and general mood in a way he understood, either. She went out of her way to explain it instead of taking the easy way out and just not mentioning it.
He'd rather have to try to figure it out than fall into the actual worst-case scenario, which is just. Not having Rey around. He's not about that life. He lived it and he hated it. She's sort of everything. She outweighs everything in importance. ]
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